Sen. Bob Menendez convicted of all charges, including accepting bribes paid in cash, gold
By: Larry Neumeister And Philip Marcelo
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted on Tuesday of all the counts he faced at his corruption trial, including accepting bribes of gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.
The jury’s verdict followed a nine-week trial in which prosecutors said the Democrat abused the power of his office to protect allies from criminal investigations and enrich associates, including his wife, through acts that included meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials and helping that country access millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.
Menendez, 70, did not testify. He insisted publicly he was only doing his job as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the gold bars found in his New Jersey home by the FBI belonged to his wife, Nadine Menendez. She too was charged but her trial was postponed so she could recover from breast cancer surgery. She has pleaded not guilty.
The verdict, delivered at a federal courthouse in Manhattan, comes four months before Election Day and potentially dooms Menendez’s chances of campaigning for reelection as an independent candidate.
Israeli strikes in southern, central Gaza kill more than 60 Palestinians, including in ‘safe zone’
By: Wafaa Shurafa
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes killed more than 60 Palestinians in southern and central Gaza overnight and into Tuesday, including one that struck an Israeli-declared “safe zone” crowded with thousands of displaced people.
Airstrikes in recent days have brought a constant drumbeat of deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, even as Israel has pulled back or scaled down major ground offensives in the north and south. Almost daily strikes have hit the “safe zone” covering some 60 square kilometres (23 square miles) along the Mediterranean coast, where Israel told fleeing Palestinians to take refuge to escape ground assaults.
Tuesday’s deadliest strike hit on a main street lined with market stalls outside the southern city of Khan Younis in Muwasi, at the heart of the zone that is packed with tent camps. Officials at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital said 17 people were killed.
Six found dead in hotel in Bangkok; poisoning suspected, police say
BANGKOK (AP) — Police in Thailand say the bodies of six people were found Tuesday in a luxury hotel in downtown Bangkok and poisoning is suspected.
Thailand’s Foreign Ministry said in a short statement that the dead were reported to be two Vietnamese Americans and four Vietnamese nationals. They were not identified further.
The Thai newspaper Matichon showed photos of police at the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel investigating the deaths after being summoned by hotel staff in the late afternoon.
Bangkok police chief Lt. Gen. Thiti Sangsawang said there were no signs of a struggle. He said the residents of the room were supposed to check out Tuesday and their luggage had already been packed. He said there was food that had been ordered from room service that was left uneaten, but that drinks had been consumed.
Investigators said the bodies were found foaming at the mouth, an officer from the Lumpini police station said on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release information.
French president accepts prime minister’s resignation, but keeps him as head of caretaker government
By: Sylvie Corbet And Barbara Surk
PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the prime minister’s resignation Tuesday but kept him on as head of a caretaker government, as France prepares to host the Paris Olympics at the end of the month.
The president’s office said in a statement that Macron “accepted” the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and other ministers on Tuesday. Attal and other government members are “to handle current affairs until a new government is being appointed,” the statement said.
There is no firm timeline for when Macron must name a new prime minister, following parliamentary elections this month that left the National Assembly with no dominant political bloc in power for the first time in France’s modern Republic.
The caretaker government led by Attal will focus only on handling day-to-day affairs.
‘Hellishly hot’ southern Europe bakes under heat wave as temperatures top 104F
By: Nicole Winfield And Silvia Stellacci
ROME (AP) — The Italian health ministry placed 12 cities under the most severe heat warning Tuesday as a wave of hot air from Africa baked southern Europe and sent temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius (104F), with the worst still to come.
Municipal authorities in several southern European and Balkan cities took measures to look after elderly people in particular as civil protection crews fielded calls for water-dropping aircraft such as Canadairs to douse wildfires that raged in southern Italy and North Macedonia.
In Greece, municipalities made air conditioned spaces available to the public. Certain forms of outdoor work were banned, such as manual labor, deliveries and construction, during the hottest time of the day when temperatures reached 40 C.
Temperatures were expected to hit 42 C on Wednesday and Thursday in several countries. Spain’s national weather service said thermometers could reach 44 C in the southern Guadalquivir river basin in the coming days.
Police in Kenya use tear gas to break up new protests calling for the president to resign
By: Evelyne Musambi
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Police in Kenya hurled tear gas canisters on Tuesday to break up protests in Nairobi and several other towns and cities accusing the president of poor governance and demanding his resignation, despite his dismissal of nearly the entire Cabinet last week.
Businesses in Nairobi remained closed for fear of a repeat of the looting that occurred during demonstrations last week, when protesters stormed into Parliament and several were killed by police.
Demonstrators blocked major roads including the highway to Namanga on the outskirts of Nairobi, where they lit bonfires on Tuesday morning. Demonstrations were also reported in the towns of Mombasa, Kisumu and Eldoret.
The protests came five days after President William Ruto dismissed all but one Cabinet minister and promised to form a broad-based, lean and efficient government in response to the protesters’ demands.
At least 70 killed in a militia attack in west Congo
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — At least 70 people, including nine soldiers and a soldier’s wife, were killed when armed men attacked a village in western Democratic Republic of Congo, local authorities said, as violence intensified between two rival communities.
The attack took place on Saturday in the village of Kinsele, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Kinshasa, the capital. Because of insecurity and poor infrastructure in the region, deadly attacks can take days to be reported.
Kinsele is located in the Kwamouth territory, where for the past two years conflict has raged between two local communities — Teke and Yaka — leading to deaths of hundreds of civilians.
As Congo battles armed groups in the east, violence has also intensified in the western part of the country.
The attackers were members of the Mobondo militia, an armed group presenting itself as defenders of the Yaka people.
Storms with likely tornadoes slap the Chicago area, killing 1 and cutting power
CHICAGO (AP) — Storms with reports of tornadoes blew through Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, including the Chicago area, toppling trees and power poles and cutting electricity to hundreds of thousands of people. A woman in Indiana died after a tree fell onto a home.
Employees at the National Weather Service in suburban Chicago had to take cover Monday night and pass coverage duties to colleagues in northern Michigan for a time. The agency reported wind speeds in the region as high as 75 mph (120 kph).
A 44-year-old woman died in Cedar Lake, Indiana, in the southern fringes of the Chicago area, the Lake County coroner’s office said.
There were some tornado reports, but other damaging winds were the main concern, said Roger Edwards, lead forecaster with the weather service’s Storm Prediction Center. There were wind gusts in the 75 mph (120 kph) to 90 mph (145 kph) range and a report of a 101 mph (162 kph) gust in Ogle County, Illinois, Edwards said.
The weather service confirmed a tornado hit Des Moines, Iowa, as storms rolled through Monday afternoon and into the night. Police responded to calls about utility poles that snapped in two.
Pakistani troops kill 10 militants responsible for attack on military base that left 8 soldiers dead
By: Ishtiaq Mahsud
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — All 10 militants who rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a Pakistani military facility were killed in an 18-hour operation, officials said Tuesday, adding that militants in a separate attack on a health facility killed five civilians.
In its statement, the Pakistani military said eight soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber early Monday rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the outer wall of an army housing complex in Bannu, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
A splinter group of Pakistani Taliban, led by a militant commander Gul Bahadur, claimed the attack, which has been denounced by the country’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and other officials.
The military said the suicide attack collapsed a portion of the wall and damaged nearby infrastructure, resulting in the killing of the eight soldiers.
Responding to the attack, security forces killed all ten attackers, it said.
3 hikers die in Utah parks as triple-digit temperatures linger in western U.S.
By: Hannah Schoenbaum
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Three hikers died over the weekend in suspected heat-related cases at state and national parks in Utah, including a father and daughter who got lost on a strenuous hike in Canyonlands National Park in triple-digit temperatures.
The daughter, 23, and her father, 52, sent a 911 text alerting dispatchers that they were lost and had run out of water while hiking the 8.1 miles (13 kilometres) Syncline Loop, described by the National Park Service as the most challenging trail in the Island in the Sky district of the southeast Utah park. The pair set out Friday to navigate steep switchbacks and scramble through boulder fields with limited trail markers as the air temperature surpassed 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).
Park rangers and a helicopter crew with the Bureau of Land Management began their search for the lost hikers in the early evening Friday, but found them already dead. The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office identified them on Monday as Albino Herrera Espinoza and his daughter, Beatriz Herrera, of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
At least 40 die after heavy rains pound eastern Afghanistan, destroying houses and cutting power
By: Rahim Faiez
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan have killed at least 40 people and injured nearly 350 others, Taliban officials said Tuesday.
Among the dead in Monday’s storm were five members of the same family when the roof of their house collapsed in Surkh Rod district, according to provincial spokesperson Sediqullah Quraishi. Four other family members were injured.
Sharafat Zaman Amar, a spokesperson for the Public Health Ministry, said the 347 injured people had been brought for treatment to the regional hospital in Nangarhar from Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, and nearby districts.
About 400 houses and 60 electricity poles were destroyed across Nangarhar, Quraishi said. Power was cut in many areas and there were limited communications in Jalalabad city, he said. The damage was still being assessed.
