Quebec mosque shooter
sentenced to life
AP, Quebec City
A 29-year-old who shot dead six worshipers at a Quebec City mosque in the worst anti-Muslim attack in the West got life in prison Friday.
Alexandre Bissonnette will have to wait 40 years – longer than usual – before he can apply for parole. Judge Francois Huot rejected a prosecution request for a 150-year sentence, which would have been the longest ever in Canada, saying this would be a cruel and unusual punishment under Canadian law.
US envoy seeks Afghan peace deal before July
AFP, Washington
The United States is hoping Afghanistan can strike a peace agreement including the Taliban before elections scheduled for July, US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said on Friday.
“It will be better for Afghanistan if we could get a peace agreement before the election, which is scheduled in July,” the negotiator said, adding that there remained “a lot of work” to do.
US man arrested at New York airport
PTI, Washington
A 29-year-old New York City man has been arrested while he was about to catch a flight to Pakistan to join the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), in a dangerous sign that the Pakistan-based terror group, which carried out the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, has expanded its tentacles in the US.
In another instance of growing influence of the LeT in the US and radicalisation of young people in the US, a teenager in Texas was charged by the FBI with using social media to recruit people on behalf of the terror group and send them to Pakistan for terrorist training.
Turkey building collapse death toll hits 14
AFP, Istanbul
The death toll from the collapse of an apartment building in Istanbul has climbed to 14, a Turkish government minister said Friday.
The eight-storey block in the Kartal district on the Asian side of the city collapsed on Wednesday but the cause is not yet clear. “So far 14 of our fellow citizens have been lost and another 14 people have been brought out of the rubble alive,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told a news conference.
