Here is some international news in brief.
Posted at 9:02 a.m.
Updated at 7:56 p.m.
A drunken gunman killed 10 people, including two children, and injured four others after an altercation at a restaurant on Wednesday in southern Montenegro. Honduras President Xiomara Castro threatened Wednesday to close U.S. military bases in her country if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his threat to mass expel Hondurans after taking office.
Ten people die in shooting in Montenegro
A drunken gunman killed 10 people, including two children, and injured four others after an altercation in a restaurant on Wednesday in southern Montenegro, before shooting himself in the head while he was surrounded by the police.
The drama began around 11:30 a.m. EST at a restaurant in the village of Bajice, near the town of Cetinje. The suspect “after arguing with a customer with whom he had spent a large part of the day, and while he had drunk large quantities of alcohol, returned home, took a weapon and killed four people,” said police chief Lazar Scepanovic.
The 45-year-old killer then went to three other locations where he killed six more people, including a member of his own family, the restaurant owner and his two children, aged 10 and 13. .
“He tried to kill four other people whose lives are no longer in danger,” Mr. Scepanovic said during a press briefing.
After several hours of tracking by the police and the army, the shooter was located and surrounded. When officers asked him “to put down his gun, he shot himself in the head,” Mr. Scepanovic said. We tried to transport him to a hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries.”
In a speech in the evening, Prime Minister Milojko Spajić announced a three-day national mourning, from Thursday to Saturday inclusive.
Referring to “a fight in a restaurant, during which weapons were drawn, and which degenerated”, Mr. Spajic also announced new restrictions to come on the possession of firearms.
Agence France-Presse
Honduras threatens to close American bases on its soil if Donald Trump deports its nationals en masse
Honduras President Xiomara Castro threatened Wednesday to close U.S. military bases in her country if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his threat to mass expel Hondurans after taking office.
“Faced with a hostile attitude of mass expulsion” of Hondurans, “we should consider a change in our cooperation policies with the United States, particularly in the military field, in which they have maintained military bases on our territory without pay a penny for decades,” said Mme Castro on national radio and television.
” In this case, [les bases militaires] would lose all reason to be in Honduras,” added the left-wing president.
In the 1980s, the United States notably built the Palmerola base in Comayagua, in the center of the country, to fight against communist movements on the continent.
Agence France-Presse
Thousands of Serbs demonstrate against the government
PHOTO OLIVER BUNIC, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Students in Belgrade wave Serbian national flags behind a banner reading “Belgrade is the world, again” as they demonstrate on New Year’s Eve.
Instead of the traditional wild New Year’s Eve street parties, tens of thousands of protesters led by university students gathered overnight in Belgrade and other Serbian cities to demand political reforms and justice in the Balkan countries.
Protesters actively demonstrated after the tragic collapse of a concrete canopy at the Central Station in the northern city of Novi Sad on 1is November, which left 15 dead.
The tragedy was blamed on corruption and substandard construction practices by Serbia’s populist leaders, leading to widespread public outcry and demands for accountability.
Students from several universities in Belgrade organized the protest under the slogan “There is no New Year – you still owe us last year”.
The noisy crowd, chanting “We want justice,” fell silent at 11:52 p.m. with 15 minutes left to honor the victims of the Novi Sad tragedy. Many of them held up banners with a red handprint, which has become a symbol of anti-government protests, to tell authorities that they had blood on their hands.
Associated Press
Illegal Channel crossings on small boats on the rise in 2024
The number of migrants arriving illegally in the United Kingdom by crossing the Channel on small boats has started to rise again in 2024, a particularly deadly year with around twenty shipwrecks and dozens of deaths.
This increase increases pressure on Keir Starmer’s Labor government, while the reduction in immigration, both legal and illegal, was one of the major issues of the electoral campaign that brought him to power in July, which also seen the breakthrough of Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party.
Over the whole of 2024, 36,816 migrants managed to cross the Channel from France, or 25% more than in 2023, according to figures from the British Interior Ministry published on Wednesday.
However, this is less than the record reached in 2022 with 45,774 arrivals. Migrants pay thousands of euros to smugglers to be able to pile onto increasingly loaded inflatable boats.
With at least 76 deaths in around twenty shipwrecks, the year 2024 was the deadliest for migrants who are taking ever more risks to evade the surveillance of the authorities on this ultra-secure border.
According to the Pas-de-Calais prefecture, at least 5,800 people were rescued at sea in 2024 and more than 870 crossing attempts were prevented by law enforcement.
Agence France-Presse
Saudi Arabia announces execution of six Iranians sentenced to death for drug trafficking
Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday the execution of six Iranians sentenced to death for drug trafficking, after a year marked by a record 338 executions, according to an AFP count based on official data.
The six Iranians were executed in Dammam, in the east of the kingdom, for having “smuggled hashish” into Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry said, without specifying the date of the execution.
Tehran responded by summoning the Saudi ambassador to convey its “strong protest” after these executions, described as “unacceptable” and “violating the rules of international law”, according to the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In 2024, 117 people were executed for drug trafficking in Saudi Arabia, including 85 foreigners, according to an AFP count.
Agence France-Presse
In Congo, at least 12 dead in new attacks by ADF rebels
New attacks by ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) rebels, an armed group affiliated with the Islamic State group, have left at least 12 dead in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, AFP learned Wednesday from local sources.
The ADF, originally mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, have killed thousands of civilians and increased looting and killings in the northeast of the DRC despite the deployment of the Ugandan army (UPDF) alongside the armed forces Congolese (FARDC) in the area.
After a series of attacks which left 21 dead during Christmas week near the mining town of Manguredjipa, in the north of the province of North Kivu, the ADF attacked two localities during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in this same region.
At least eight people were killed in the village of Bilendu, located about thirty kilometers from Manguredjipa, Samuel Kagheni, president of civil society in the Bapere sector, which includes the two targeted localities, told AFP.
This figure was confirmed to AFP by other local sources and a representative of the provincial government.
The ADF also killed at least four people in the village of Mangoya, and burned houses in both localities, according to the same sources.
Agence France-Presse
Power returns to Puerto Rico after giant New Year’s Eve blackout
Power was restored to almost all customers in Puerto Rico on Wednesday after a widespread blackout plunged the U.S. territory into darkness on New Year’s Eve.
As of Wednesday afternoon, power was again available to 98% of Puerto Rico’s 1.47 million utility customers, said Luma Energy, the private company that oversees electricity transmission and distribution in the archipelago. . Lights have returned to homes as well as Puerto Rico’s hospitals, water treatment plants and sewage facilities after the massive outage that exposed the lingering electricity problems plaguing the island.
The company nevertheless warned that customers could still experience temporary outages in the coming days. She warned that full recovery on the island could take up to two days.
“Given the fragile nature of the grid, we will need to manage available generation based on customer demand, which will likely require rotating temporary outages,” explained Juan Saca, president of Luma Energy, in a statement.
Associated Press
