Trump deepens war of words with leftist black leaders
AFP, Washington
US President Donald Trump brushed off accusations of racism Monday to step up his war of words with prominent black and minority left-leaning leaders, branding his latest target a “con man.”
Rejecting criticism that he is stoking America’s smouldering racial divisions, Trump attacked African-American civil rights activist Al Sharpton. “Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score. Just doing his thing,” Trump tweeted, adding that Sharpton “Hates Whites & Cops!”
UN official says war in Yemen knocked
country back 20 years
AP, Amman
A top U.N. official says the devastating five-year civil war in Yemen has knocked the country back 20 years in terms of development and access to education.
Yemen was already the Arab world’s poorest nation before the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people. In 2014, rebels known as Houthis took over the capital, Sanaa, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention that’s ground to a stalemate.
Chinese court jails veteran human rights activist Huang Qi for 12 years
AP, Beijing
A Chinese court has jailed a veteran human rights activist known for running a website tracking abuse accusations and helping victims of a 2008 earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
The province’s Mianyang Intermediate People’s Court handed down the 12-year sentence on Monday after it “determined that Huang Qi is guilty of deliberately leaking state secrets” and was “guilty of illegally providing the secrets outside of China,” it said in a statement.
Moroccan King
pardons thousands of prisoners
AFP, Rabat
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI has marked 20 years on the throne by pardoning thousands of prisoners, including some from the “Hirak” protest movement that rocked the country in 2016. On the eve of the royal anniversary on Tuesday, an official statement announced 4,764 people were to be pardoned including some detained during the months of protests in the long-marginalised northern Rif region.
Iran sentences ex-Tehran mayor to death for
killing wife
AP, Tehran
Iran’s state TV says a former mayor of Tehran who also served as one of the country’s vice presidents was sentenced to death for killing his wife.
Tuesday’s report quotes judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili as saying that Mohammad Ali Najafi was convicted of fatally shooting his wife, Mitra Ostad. The verdict can be appealed within 20 days. Police detained Najafi in May, after he went to authorities and confessed to the killing. At the time, officials said Najafi and Ostad, his second his wife, were having domestic problems.
