2 Venezuela military officers held in plot
CARACAS, Venezuela -- The investigation into an assassination attempt on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro using drones has widened to include the arrest of two high-ranking military officers, the nation's top prosecutor said Tuesday.
The list of suspects -- including an exiled opposition lawmaker -- has now risen to 34, and officials are seeking arrests in Colombia, Peru and the United States, Attorney General Tarek William Saab said.
"There are 14 detainees who have been presented and charged before the criminal courts," he said.
That list of suspects and detainees has nearly doubled since last week, when authorities said they had eight of 19 suspects in custody.
Officials say an assassination plot involved two drones loaded with plastic explosives that detonated near Maduro as he spoke Aug. 4 at a military celebration in the capital, Caracas.
Saab identified the two detained officers as Col. Pedro Zambrano Hernandez and Gen. Alejandro Perez Gamez of the National Guard. He did not describe their suspected roles.
An opposition lawmaker, Juan Requesens, is also under arrest and charged with treason and attempted homicide.
Taiwan note in U.S. measure irks China
BEIJING -- China on Tuesday blasted a U.S. military spending bill that calls for development of plans to help self-ruled Taiwan improve its defenses and warned of possible damage to cooperation in other areas.
The provision in the 2019 military budget authorization "is full of cold war thinking" and "interferes in China's internal affairs," said a Defense Ministry statement. It said the measure "ruins the atmosphere" for military cooperation.
Beijing claims Taiwan, which split with the mainland in 1949, as part of its territory and has threatened to invade. Washington has no official relations with the island's democratically elected government but is obliged by U.S. law to see that it has the means necessary to defend itself.
Taiwan is "the most important and sensitive core issue in Chinese-U.S. relations," said the Defense Ministry statement. "We firmly oppose any official exchanges and military contacts between any country and Taiwan."
A separate Foreign Ministry statement called on Washington to "avoid damaging Chinese-U.S. relations and cooperation in important areas." It gave no details but the two governments are working together on efforts to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up nuclear weapons development.
Masked mobs in Sweden set cars afire
COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Masked young people torched dozens of cars overnight in Sweden and threw rocks at police, prompting an angry response from the prime minister, who denounced an "extremely organized" night of vandalism.
About 80 cars were set ablaze overnight, chiefly in Sweden's second-largest city, Goteborg, and nearby Trollhattan, an industrial city, and fires also were reported on a smaller scale in Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city, police said Tuesday.
In Trollhattan, northeast of Goteborg, where at least six cars were burned, rocks were thrown at police and roads were blocked.
Police noted the fires started within a short period of time and believe "there is a connection between the blazes."
"As of now we have no motive whatsoever," police spokesman Christer Fuxborg said. "Our theory is that the fires have somehow been coordinated on social media like Snapchat but we do not know why."
Two people, aged 16 and 21, were detained for questioning, Fuxborg said. They later were formally arrested over the arson. More suspects likely could be detained.
Ebola therapy tested in Congo outbreak
BENI, Congo -- Congo's latest deadly Ebola outbreak has spread into a neighboring province, the Health Ministry said Tuesday, as health workers began using an experimental treatment for the disease.
Health officials are hoping the mAb114 therapy, isolated from a survivor of an Ebola outbreak in 1995, will be effective in this outbreak that so far has 30 confirmed cases, including 14 deaths.
Five patients have been given the treatment, said the World Health Organization's director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Four other experimental treatments have been approved for use, he said.
The outbreak spread from North Kivu province into neighboring Ituri province in Congo's turbulent northeast when a man who had been treated for heart problems in Mangina, where the outbreak was declared Aug. 1, returned home, the Health Ministry said. He has since died and tests confirmed he had Ebola.
Vaccinations began last week in Mangina and Beni, the major town about 18 miles away where Ebola treatment centers have been set up. Health authorities are using what is called a ring vaccination technique in which health workers are vaccinated first, along with contacts of Ebola patients and their contacts.
More than 200 health workers have been vaccinated, along with 20 residents in the Beni region, Tedros said.
A Section on 08/15/2018