wildfire victims
AP, Washington
President Donald Trump will fly Saturday to California to meet victims of wildfires that have killed at least 59 people and destroyed the homes of thousands, the White House said Thursday.
At least 300 people are still missing and the death toll is expected to rise as recovery teams conduct house-to-house searches amid the wreckage of the sprawling blazes in northern and southern California.
Turkish police detain 12 academics, activists in raids
AP, Ankara, Turkey
Police in Istanbul detained 12 academics, businesspeople and journalists as part of an investigation into an association that was headed by a jailed prominent businessman and activist, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported Friday.
Anadolu Agency said professors Betul Tanbay and Turgut Tarhanli of Istanbul’s Bosphorus and Bilgi universities and journalist Cigdem Mater were among those detained in simultaneous police operations in the city.
Julian Assange charged in US: WikiLeaks
AFP, Washington
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged in the United States, the organization said, in a development that could have implications for Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged Russian meddling in the US presidential election.
Prosecutors inadvertently disclosed the existence of a sealed indictment in a court filing in an unrelated case, WikiLeaks said Thursday.
8 UN peacekeepers killed in DR Congo
AFP, Beni, DR Congo
Eight United Nations peacekeepers were killed in an operation against a rebel militia in eastern DR Congo, the UN Security Council said on Thursday.
One Tanzanian and seven Malawian peacekeepers were killed, the council said, raising the toll from an earlier count.
Zimbabwe bus fire kills 42
AFP, Harare
At least 42 passengers have been confirmed dead, Zimbabwe police said Friday, after a suspected gas tank exploded on a bus, with pictures showing the burnt-out wreckage of the vehicle.
“At the moment we know that more than 42 people died,” police spokeswoman Charity Charamba told AFP after the accident late on Thursday.
North Korea to deport US citizen
Reuters
North Korea will deport a U.S. citizen detained since October after he entered illegally from China and told his captors he was manipulated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the North Korean state news agency reported on Friday.
