QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s horrifying, terrible.”
Mark Lipdo of the Stefanos Foundation, a Christian charity based in Jos, Nigeria, where two car bombs killed dozens of people at a bus terminal and market
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3 Egyptian riot police slain in drive-by
CAIRO — Three riot police officers trying to break up a student protest against Egypt’s military-backed government were killed in a drive-by shooting in Cairo on Tuesday as early, overseas voting results suggested the military’s former leader, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, was headed for a big victory in next week’s presidential election.
The riot police were dispersing a demonstration by hundreds of students of Al-Azhar University that began late Monday when someone in a passing vehicle opened fire, state media reported. Several soldiers were injured.
The shooting revived fears of violence around the presidential voting, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday next week. During the two weeks of campaigning so far, unknown assailants have also attacked or set fire to at least three el-Sissi campaign offices, in the Nile Delta, Cairo and Luxor, according to official media reports.
El-Sissi is expected to defeat his one competitor in the presidential race, Hamdeen Sabahi, who was the third-biggest vote-getter in the first round of the 2012 election in which Mohammed Morsi was chosen as president.
Cameron lauds U.S. conviction of cleric
LONDON — The British government Tuesday praised the terrorism conviction in New York of a radical Muslim cleric whom it spent a decade trying to expel to the U.S. for prosecution, and it vowed to prevent such drawn-out extraditions from happening again.
Abu Hamza al-Masri faces life in prison after being found guilty Monday by a Manhattan jury of 11 terrorism-related counts, including charges stemming from the deaths of four Western tourists kidnapped in Yemen and an attempt to set up a training camp in Oregon for would-be Afghan insurgents.
British Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the verdict, which came more than a year and a half after the 56-year-old preacher was sent from London to the United States at the end of a protracted legal battle.
“It’s good that he has faced justice and justice has been done,” Cameron said in a radio interview Tuesday.
But, he added, “we should reflect on whether we can extradite faster. … If someone threatens our country, we should be able to deport them if they have no right to be here, and that is absolutely essential that we restore that.”
Born in Egypt as Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, al-Masri was naturalized as a British citizen. He drew widespread condemnation in his adopted country for sermons that lauded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, demanded the death of nonbelievers and called for the stoning of gay people.
Video said to show undue kills by Israelis
JERUSALEM — Security-camera video showing two unarmed Palestinians crumpling to the ground during a lull in a stone-throwing clash with Israeli soldiers revived allegations by human-rights activists Tuesday that the troops often use excessive force.
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said the images back its findings that troops killed the teens without cause by firing live rounds from more than 650 feet away. The soldiers were in “zero danger” at the time, said Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem.
However, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said, “It was a life-threatening situation, so the officers acted accordingly.”
He said he hadn’t seen the video but that the images had been manipulated through editing.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a senior spokesman, said preliminary findings show forces fired only rubber-coated steel pellets, a standard means of crowd control, and did not use live fire.
China: U.S. cyberspy case imperils ties
BEIJING — China warned Tuesday that the United States was jeopardizing military ties by charging five Chinese officers with cyberspying, and it tried to turn the tables on Washington by calling it “the biggest attacker of China’s cyberspace.”
China announced it was suspending cooperation with the United States in a joint cybersecurity task force over Monday’s charges that officers stole trade secrets from major American companies. The Foreign Ministry demanded Washington withdraw the indictment.
Tensions have escalated over U.S. complaints that China’s military uses its cyberwarfare skills to steal foreign trade secrets to help the country’s vast state-owned industrial sector. Beijing has denied conducting commercial spying and said it is a victim of computer hacking.
A Section on 05/21/2014