24.02.2017

News in English

VX used in Kim attack / South African police break up protest / Bosnia appeals UN genocide ruling / 35 died in Syrian suicide attack / Iraqi troops enter western Mosul / Tributes to Austrian Health Minister Oberhauser / The weather

24.02.2017

VX used in Kim attack

Officials in Malaysia say the banned chemical nerve agent VX was what was used in the recent killing at the Kuala Lumpur airport of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. VX has been classified by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction. Two women wiped the VX on Kim Jong Nam’s face as he prepared to board a plan to the Chinese territory of Macau. The two women, one Vietnamese and the other Indonesian, are now in police custody, as is a North Korean man. South Korea and the United States both believed the assassination was ordered by the North Korean leadership.

South African police break up protest

Police in South Africa have used tear gas and water cannons to break up a protest march in the capital Pretoria against foreigners living in the country. This follows the looting of stores earlier this week of shops thought to belong to immigrants. The unrest was triggered by claims that the migrants both generate crime and take jobs away from South Africans, who currently face an unemployment rate of 25 percent.

Bosnia appeals UN genocide ruling

The government of Bosnia-Herzegovina has officially appealed a UN court ruling which cleared Serbia of genocide during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The original ruling by the International Court of Justice was issued ten years ago and said that while Serbia failed to stop the mass killings of over eight-thousand Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, it was not directly responsible for the deaths.

35 died in Syrian suicide attack

A suicide car bomb attack today in northern Syria has killed at least 35 people, most of them civilians. The attack took place in a village near the town of Al-Bab. The town had been controlled since 2013 by the Islamic State, but was captured yesterday after two months of fighting by Turkish troops and Syrian opposition fighters.

Iraqi troops enter western Mosul

US-backed Iraqi security forces have entered the western part of the city of Mosul for the first time. This comes one day after Iraq troops re-captured the city’s airport from Islamic State militants. The UN is warning that the battle for western Mosul could displace thousands of civilians. Lieutenant-General Steven Townsend is the senior US military official in Mosul: “I’d like the people of the West to know how important this fight is here and that our Iraqi and Syrian partners are sacrificing, not only for their own countries but for the region and the rest of the world as well.”

Tributes to Austrian Health Minister Oberhauser

Tributes have been made to Austrian Health Minister Sabine Oberhauser. She died yesterday following a long battle against cancer. She was 53 years old.

The weather

The afternoon will bring more rain and snowfall to the south and to the mountains. There will also be strong winds out of the west. Highs today are ranging from 3 to 11 degrees.

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