Latest Charlie Hebdo cover roils Muslims
CAIRO – The famed French weekly Charlie Hebdo continued to draw a somewhat contradictory reaction across the Muslim world.
Many Muslims have expressed disgust at the deadly assault on the magazine’s Paris office by Islamic extremists who killed 12 people. However, many also remain deeply offended by the magazine’s record of publishing cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. Those passions were further inflamed this week when the magazine’s first issue following the attack carried a cover cartoon depicting Muhammad holding a “Je Suis Charlie” sign.
According to mainstream Islamic tradition, any physical depiction of the Prophet Muhammad – even a respectful one – is considered blasphemous.
In the West African nation of Niger, President Mahamadou Issoufou said at least 10 people were killed after violent protests broke out against the latest cartoon depicting Muhammad in the French publication.
Issoufou said five deaths were reported after demonstrations in the capital of Niamey on Saturday. The victims were inside bars and churches that were set ablaze, he said. On Friday, at least five people were killed in the town of Zinder after prayer services there.
Iranian judicial authorities Saturday banned a daily newspaper for publishing a front-page headline that allegedly indicated support for Charlie Hebdo. Mohammad Ghoochani, chief editor of the daily Mardom-e-Emrooz, or Today’s People, told the semi-official Tasnim news agency that his paper had been ordered closed.
Pope Francis comforts typhoon survivors
TACLOBAN, Philippines – Pope Francis braved an approaching tropical storm Saturday to travel to the far eastern Philippines to comfort survivors of the deadly Typhoon Haiyan. He was so emotionally undone by their loss that he barely found the words to offer solace, then had to cut the trip short because of the dangerous weather.
Before he left the typhoon-wracked city of Tacloban, though, a soaking wet Francis brought many in the crowd to tears as he ached at their suffering and recounted how in the days after the Nov. 3, 2013, storm he decided that he simply had to come in person to offer his comfort.
“I wanted to come to be with you,” he told a rain-soaked crowd during Mass on a muddy airport field. “It’s a bit late, I have to say, but I am here.”
Haiyan slammed the areas around Tacloban with a storm surge two stories high and some of the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone: 147 miles per hour, as clocked by U.S. satellites. It leveled entire villages, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and displaced more than 4 million people in one of the country’s poorest regions.
Russia peace initiative for Syria falters
BEIRUT – A Russian initiative to host peace talks this month between the Syrian government and its opponents appears to be unraveling, as prominent Syrian opposition figures shun the prospective negotiations amid deep distrust of Moscow and concerns the talks hold no chance of success.
The faltering effort suggests that even after four years and at least 220,000 people killed, the antagonists in Syria’s civil war are far from burning themselves out and likely will keep fighting for a more decisive battlefield advantage before any real talks can take place.
The planned meetings in Moscow, scheduled to start Jan. 26, would be the first on Syria since a UN-sponsored conference in Geneva collapsed early last year after making no headway.
But the Syrian tableau has changed dramatically since then.
President Bashar Assad faces growing resentment among his supporters in the wake of bloody defeats, while his main patrons, Iran and Russia, are feeling the pinch from the global plunge in oil prices. Syria’s mainstream opposition – armed and political – teeters on the brink of irrelevance, and the extremist Islamic State group has seized control of large chunks of neighboring Iraq and northeastern Syria.
Suspect found dead in Alberta shooting
ST. ALBERT, Alberta – Two Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers seriously were wounded Saturday, with one suffering life-threatening injuries, after they were shot at a casino in the central Alberta city of St. Albert.
The RCMP said the suspect in the shootings was found dead in a private residence in a rural area east of St. Albert where police had tracked the suspect after the shootings. Police said they could not yet confirm if he killed himself.
RCMP Assistant Commissioner Marlin Degrand said officers never spoke to the suspect when they entered the residence, nor did they fire their weapons.
Police tentatively have identified the suspect and are working to confirm this information. Degrand said he was known to police.
The RCMP said Constable David Matthew Wynn, 42 is in “life-threatening condition,” while Auxiliary Constable Derek Walter Bond, 49, remains in serious but stable condition.
The deadly attack on the national police force, a vaunted Canadian institution, shook the country.
It was the deadliest attack on the RCMP since four officers were killed by a gunman in Alberta in 2005. That attack remains the deadliest on Canadian police officers in 120 years.
Shiite rebels abduct Yemeni chief of staff
SANAA, Yemen – Shiite Houthi rebels abducted the chief of staff to Yemen’s president early Saturday in the center of the capital, Sanaa, starkly highlighting the unrest plaguing the Arab world’s poorest country.
The rebels, who have taken over large swaths of Yemen, claimed responsibility for kidnapping Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak. In a statement, they said they abducted him to disrupt a meeting scheduled for the same day that was to work on a new constitution and the reorganization of the country into federally organized regions.
Officials said gunmen kidnapped the young 46-year-old politician bin Mubarak and his two guards when they stopped their car in central Sanaa. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief journalists.
Bin Mubarak is personally at odds with the Houthis. He was the president’s choice for prime minister last October, but his nomination was derailed after the Houthis opposed him for his ties to the president.
Meanwhile on Saturday, thousands demonstrated in central Sanaa against the Shiite rebels in a protest called by civil society groups. They marched to the Defense Ministry, chanting: “Revolution against the Houthis! Revolution against terrorism!”
Market bombings kill 18 around Iraq’s capital
BAGHDAD – A series of bombings targeting busy markets killed 18 people in and around the Baghdad capital Saturday, said Iraqi officials.
Police officials said the deadliest attack took place Saturday night when a motorcycle bomb exploded near a line of cellphone shops in Baghdad’s Shiite district of Sadr City, killing nine people and wounding 25 others.
Several cars and shops were damaged in the attack. Police sealed off the area as ambulances evacuated the wounded to nearby hospitals.
Earlier in the day, a bomb blast in a vegetable wholesale market in a village near the town of Iskandariyah killed four people and wounded 14. Iskandariyah lies 30 miles south of Baghdad.
Elsewhere police say a bomb exploded at another market, killing five people and wounding 14, in the Shiite village of Sabaa al-Bour, about 20 miles north of Baghdad.
Five arrested for Pakistan school massacre
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan security services arrested five men in connection with the massacre at a Pakistan military school last month that killed 150 people, most of them children, officials said Saturday.
The men, all non-Afghans, helped support the Dec. 16 assault by the Taliban at the Army Public School and College in the city of Peshawar, three Afghan officials told The Associated Press. They said the men were arrested in recent weeks near Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to brief journalists.
Associated Press
