AFP, Washington
The US state of Alabama on Thursday executed a man found guilty of murdering of three police officers, despite a campaign to save him by activists including celebrity Kim Kardashian. Nathaniel Woods, 44, was accused of being the “mastermind” behind the 2004 deaths of police officers allegedly lured into an ambush when they tried to arrest him on drug charges.
Woods did not pull the trigger but was given the same sentence as the gunman, Kerry Spencer.
Ukraine PM ousted, President seeks ‘new brains’
AP, Ukraine
Ukrainian lawmakers overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to accept the resignation of the nation’s prime minister after a six-month tenure in which his performance came under severe criticism from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The president’s Servant of the People party dominates the Ukrainian parliament and took the lead in relieving Oleksiy Honcharuk of his post. Forty lawmakers abstained from the vote but the message of the 353-0 tally was clear.
Harvey Weinstein taken to New York’s infamous Rikers jail
AFP, New York
Disgraced former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was taken to New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail on Thursday, ten days after he was convicted of rape and sexual assault.
The 67-year-old “Pulp Fiction” producer had been in a Manhattan hospital since his landmark conviction on February 24 after he complained of chest pains following the verdict.
Children among nine dead in Gaza market blaze
AFP, Gaza City
Nine Palestinians including several children were killed after a fire broke out in a bakery in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, Palestinian authorities said, without specifying the cause.
Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave, said 85 people were injured in the blaze in a market in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Four of the dead were children, he said.