Five killed in bomb attack on Colombia police station

Agencies
January 28, 2018

Bogota, Jan 28: At least five police officers were killed and 41 others wounded when alleged drug traffickers detonated a remote controlled bomb at a station in the northern city of Barranquilla, officials said.

The attack yesterday was one of the deadliest on security personnel in recent years, in one of Colombia's most important cities.

It comes as the government of President Juan Manuel Santos seeks to bring the armed conflict that has wracked Colombia for 50 years to an end. Much of the violence has been financed by drug trafficking.

The bombing also casts a pall over preparations for the annual carnival, a major attraction in the Caribbean port city.

Mariano Botero, the Barranquilla police commander, said that the bomb detonated as the officers gathered for morning formation.

A police source told AFP that 49 officers were at the site when the bomb exploded. Of those, five officers aged between 24 and 31 were killed and 41 were wounded.

A 31-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack, according to attorney general Nestor Martinez.

"We will charge (him) with five aggravated murders ... attempted murder, terrorism and use of explosives," he told a press conference.

Barranquilla Mayor Alejandro Char quickly blamed drug traffickers for the attack.

"I do not have the slightest doubt that this is a retaliation" for successful police action against drug traffickers, he told reporters.

Botero also suggested that the attack could be in revenge after a police crackdown on local drug traffickers.

Colombia is the world's top producer of cocaine, and criminal groups have flooded the country's main cities with drugs in a move known as "microtrafficking."

El Heraldo, the main Barranquilla newspaper, said some believe the attack may have been aimed at distracting police from an armoured car robbery that took place at the same time.

The head of Colombia's national police, General Jorge Nieto, said he travelled to Barranquilla to offer his support to the blast survivors and their relatives.

He also announced a reward of 50 million pesos (USD 17.8 million) for information about the attack.

"We strongly condemn this barbaric act and soon we will find those behind it," he said.

President Juan Manuel Santos blasted the "cowardly attack" on Twitter.

"We will not rest until we find those responsible, my solidarity is with the families of the victims and the wounded," Santos wrote.

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News Network
July 27,2020

Chengdu, China, Jul 27: The American flag was lowered at the United States consulate in Chengdu on Monday, days after Beijing ordered it to close in retaliation for the shuttering of the Chinese consulate in Houston.

Footage on state broadcaster CCTV from outside the consulate showed the flag being slowly lowered early Monday morning, after diplomatic tensions soared between the two powers with both alleging the other had endangered national security.

Relations deteriorated in recent weeks in a Cold War-style standoff, with the Chengdu mission Friday ordered to shut in retaliation for the forced closure of Beijing's consulate in Houston, Texas.

The deadline for the Americans to exit Chengdu has been unclear, but the Chinese consulate in Houston was given 72 hours to close after the original order was made.

On Saturday news agency reporters saw workers removing the US insignia from the front of the consulate.

Over the weekend, removals trucks entered the US consulate and cleaners were seen carting large black rubbish bags from the building.

Beijing says closing the Chengdu consulate was a "legitimate and necessary response to the unreasonable measures by the United States", and has alleged that staff at the diplomatic mission endangered China's security and interests.

Washington officials, meanwhile, said there had been unacceptable efforts by the Chinese consulate in Houston to steal US corporate secrets.

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News Network
May 15,2020

May 15: Global deaths linked to the novel coronavirus passed 300,000 on Thursday, while reported cases of the virus are approaching 4.5 million, according to a news agency tally.

About half of the fatalities have been reported by the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy.

The first death linked to the disease was reported on January 10 in Wuhan, China. It took 91 days for the death toll to pass 100,000 and a further 16 days to reach 200,000, according to the Reuters tally of official reports from governments. It took 19 days to go from 200,000 to 300,000 deaths.

By comparison, an estimated 400,000 people die annually from malaria, one of the world’s most deadly infectious diseases.

The United States had reported more than 85,000 deaths from the new coronavirus, while the United Kingdom and Italy have reported over 30,000 fatalities each.

While the current trajectory of COVID-19 falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10% of patients, public health experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic.

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Agencies
July 7,2020

Washington, Jul 7: The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee will grill the CEOs of US tech giants Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon during an antitrust hearing on July 27.

Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and Amazon's Jeff Bezos will testify before the antitrust panel that is working on proposals to reform and regulate the digital market.

The hearing would mark the first time all four top executives testify together in front of Congress, virtually or in-person depending on the panel's call in the COVID-19 pandemic times.

"Since last June, the Subcommittee has been investigating the dominance of a small number of digital platforms and the adequacy of existing antitrust laws and enforcement," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) said in a statement on Monday.

"Given the central role these corporations play in the lives of the American people, it is critical that their CEOs are forthcoming. As we have said from the start, their testimony is essential for us to complete this investigation.”

The House Judiciary Committee announced its antitrust probe into the four tech giants in June last year.

Last month, the committee sent letters to technology giants Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet (Google's parent company), asking them to confirm if their chief executives will testify as part of the committee's tech competition investigation.

Committee chair David Cicilline said the documents that the investigators sought were "essential" to the probe and that requests like this were part of the "appropriate process" to obtain them.

"The only CEO who has expressed reservation about appearing, through a representative, has been Amazon," Cicilline said. "No one in this country is above the law ... nobody is above answering a congressional subpoena".

The lawmakers want the tech giants to furnish documents that have been produced in relation to other competition probes and internal communications.

The letters that the committee sent also posed questions related to possible harms to competition in the market.

In addition to the antitrust probe, Apple's App Store policies are also facing scrutiny from the US Department of Justice.

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