A serial killer whose five victims included two wives has died on California’s death row, authorities said Monday.

Phillip Carl Jablonski, 73, was found unresponsive in his San Quentin State Prison cell on Friday and pronounced dead within minutes. His cause of death is awaiting an autopsy, but he had been assigned a single cell, said corrections department spokeswoman Terri Hardy.

A San Mateo County jury sentenced him to death in 1994 for the first-degree murders of his wife, Carol Spadoni, 46, and her mother, Eva Petersen, 72.

Spadoni had married him while he was in prison for murdering a previous wife in 1978.

It was the latest in what court records say was a long history of violence against multiple women, dating to his trying to kill his first wife in the 1960s. At the time he was an Army sergeant who had served two tours of duty in the Vietnam War before he was discharged in 1969 for a “schizophrenic illness.”

He pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder, assault and attempted rape of his second wife, Melinda Kimball, in 1978.

He was paroled for good behavior in 1990, despite having tried to strangle his mother with a shoelace during a prison visit in 1985.

Authorities said they recovered a cassette tape in which he then described fatally shooting, stabbing and mutilating Spadoni and her mother, and raping her mother after she was dead.

He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but a jury found he was sane at the time.

Jablonski was also implicated in the deaths of two other women that same year, Fathyma Vann of Indio, California, and Margie Rogers of Thompson Springs, Utah.

Vann was attending the same community college as Jablonski at the time. 

Rogers and her husband co-owned a store along Interstate 70 where she was found dead.

A woman who says she was 14 when she had a sexual encounter with financier Jeffrey Epstein at his mansion sued his estate in  Florida court on Monday  for coercion, inflicting emotional distress and battery.

The lawsuit filed in Palm Beach County asks for an undisclosed amount of money. The lawsuit doesn’t give the woman’s name, and only refers to her as “JJ Doe.”

The woman went to Epstein’s Florida mansion in 2003 when she was “a vulnerable child without adequate parental support,” the lawsuit said.

According to the lawsuit, the teenager was first approached by another teenage girl who offered her $200 to give Epstein a massage at his mansion. At the mansion, she was led to a bedroom where there was a massage table and oils. Epstein entered the room in a towel, laid on the table and instructed her to take off her clothes as she massaged him, the lawsuit said.

“Out of fear, plaintiff complied with Jeffrey Epstein’s commands,” the lawsuit said.

Epstein then pinched the teenager’s nipples, fondled her, touched her between her legs and masturbated, the lawsuit said.

“During the encounter, plaintiff resisted Jeffrey Epstein’s advances and demands, yet was assured if she complied, then he would stop and it would end soon,” the lawsuit said

Darren Indyke, an attorney for the estate, didn’t return an email inquiry for comment.

More than a dozen lawsuits are seeking millions of dollars in compensation for women who say they were sexually abused by Epstein, sometimes for years, at his homes in Manhattan, Florida, New Mexico, the Virgin Islands and Paris.

Epstein, 66, killed himself in his New York City prison cell in August after he was arrested on sex trafficking charges. The wealthy financier had pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing girls as young as 14 and young women in New York and Florida in the early 2000s. In lawsuits, women say the abuse spanned decades.
 

A man who trained others in his Texas church to use guns to protect the congregation fatally shot a gunman seconds after he opened fire during a service, the Texas attorney general said Monday.

Jack Wilson fired a single shot, quickly ending the attack that killed two people at the West Freeway Church of Christ in the Fort Worth-area town of White Settlement. More than 240 congregants were in the church at the time.

Wilson’s bio on Facebook listed him as a former Hood County reserve deputy and a firearms instructor. He posted about the attack a few hours after it happened, saying the event “put me in a position that I would hope no one would have to be in. But evil exists, and I had to take out an active shooter in church. I’m thankful to GOD that I have been blessed with the ability and desire to serve him in the role of head of security at the church.”

Speaking outside the church, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said authorities “can’t prevent mental illness from occurring, and we can’t prevent every crazy person from pulling a gun. But we can be prepared like this church was.”

The Texas Department of Public Safety on Monday identified the attacker as Keith Thomas Kinnunen, 43. His motive is under investigation.

Previous arrests

Investigators searched Kinnunen’s home in River Oaks, a small nearby city where police said his department’s only contact with the suspected gunman was a couple traffic citations.

“He didn’t exist until yesterday,” Deputy Police Chief Charles Stewart said.

But Kinnunen appeared to have more serious brushes in other jurisdictions. He was arrested in 2009 on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Fort Worth and in 2013 for theft, according to Tarrant County court records.

He was arrested in 2016 in New Jersey after police found him with 12-gauge shotgun and rounds wrapped in plastic in the area of an oil refinery, according to a the Herald News Tribune in East Brunswick. It was not immediately clear how those charges were resolved.

Texas law

Paxton joined other Texas officials in hailing the state’s gun laws, which allow weapons in places of worship. He said the church’s security team was formally organized after a measure was enacted this year that affirmed the right of licensed handgun holders to carry a weapon in places of worship, unless the facility bans them.

“The big emphasis came after they realized they are able to protect themselves,” Paxton said.

That law was passed in the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history, which was also at a church. In the 2017 massacre at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, a man who opened fire on a Sunday morning congregation killed more than two dozen people. He later killed himself.

Witnesses’ accounts

In a livestream of Sunday’s church service in White Settlement, the gunman can be seen getting up from a pew and approaching someone at the back of the church before pulling out a gun and opening fire. Congregants can be heard screaming and seen ducking under pews or running as papers fly to the floor.

“I think you can see by the video, that that guy was surrounded rather quickly by more than just a few people,” Paxton said.

Isabel Arreola told the Star-Telegram that she sat near the gunman and that she had never seen him before the service. She said he appeared to be wearing a disguise, perhaps a fake beard, and that he made her uncomfortable.

She said the man stood up, pulled a shotgun from his clothing, opened fire and was quickly shot.

“I was so surprised because I did not know that so many in the church were armed,” she said.

Sunday’s shooting was the second attack on a religious gathering in the U.S. in less than 24 hours. On Saturday night, a man stabbed five people as they celebrated Hanukkah in an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City.

Prior to the shooting, the gunman had drawn the attention of the church’s security team because he was “acting suspiciously,” minister Jack Cummings told The New York Times. He said the team is composed of congregants who are licensed to carry guns and practice shooting regularly.

Cummings said the church added the team because of “the fact that people go into schools and shoot people.”

Two victims

The Texas Department of Public Safety on Monday identified the dead as Anton Wallace, 64, of Fort Worth and Richard White, 67, of suburban River Oaks.

Wallace’s daughter, Tiffany Wallace, told Dallas TV station KXAS that her father was a deacon at the church and had just handed out communion when the gunman approached him.

“I ran toward my dad, and the last thing I remember is him asking for oxygen. And I was just holding him, telling him I loved him and that he was going to make it,” Wallace said.

Her father was rushed to a hospital but did not survive, she said.

“You just wonder why? How can someone so evil, the devil, step into the church and do this,” she said.

White’s daughter-in-law, Misty York White, called him a hero on Facebook: “You stood up against evil and sacrificed your life. Many lives were saved because of your actions. You have always been a hero to us but the whole world is seeing you as a hero now. We love you, we miss you, we are heartbroken.”

An elder at the church told the Times that one of those killed was a security guard who responded to the shooter.

“He was trying to do what he needed to do to protect the rest of us,” said the elder, Mike Tinius.

The gunman was killed within six seconds of opening fire, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said. The quick reaction saved an “untold number of lives.”

Britt Farmer, senior minister of the church, said, “We lost two great men today, but it could have been a lot worse.”

Shooter’s motive

The FBI was working to determine the shooter’s motive. Matthew DeSarno, the agent in charge of the agency’s Dallas office, said the assailant was “relatively transient” but had roots in the area.

Paxton said Monday that the shooter appeared to be “more of a loner.” “I don’t think he had a lot of connections to very many people,” he said.

In a 2009 affidavit requesting a court-appointed attorney, Kinnunen listed having a wife and was living with four children, according to court records. He told the court he was self-employed in landscaping and irrigation work.

Church officials planned to make a statement Monday evening following a closed meeting and prayer vigil just for church members, Farmer said.

White Settlement’s website says it was named by local Native Americans in the 1800s for white families then settling in the area. City leaders who worried that the name detracted from the city’s image proposed renaming it in 2005, but voters overwhelmingly rejected the idea.
 

One U.S. citizen and four Mexican nationals were arrested near the Canadian border in Maine in what border officials called a “human smuggling attempt.”

The five men were arraigned in Bangor on Thursday, according to court documents. Two of the men were charged with bringing immigrants into the U.S. illegally and harboring them, the Bangor Daily News reported.

The other three told agents that they had traveled illegally from Mexico to Canada to gain entry to the United States, according to court documents. One of them was charged with entry after removal and the other two were charged with improper entry by an alien.

Border Patrol agents saw a vehicle with two people in it on Dec. 23 in an area near Limestone that is often used as an illegal crossing between Canada and the U.S., according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The agents stopped the vehicle after they saw it leave the area with five people.

Investigators determined that four of the occupants were in the U.S. illegally, three of whom crossed the border illegally near Limestone

Logan Perkins, an attorney for one of the men, said her client crossed the border simply to provide for his family in Mexico. Attorneys for the other four didn’t immediately return messages.

 

Bernie Sanders suffered “modest heart muscle damage” during his October heart attack but has since been doing well and should be able to continue campaigning for president “without limitation,” according to letters released Monday by his primary care physician and two cardiologists.

“He is currently entirely asymptomatic, his heart function is stable and well-preserved, his blood pressure and heart rate are in optimal ranges,” wrote Martin LeWinter, attending cardiologist at University of Vermont Medical Center in Sanders’ home state.

LeWinter wrote that the 78-year-old Vermont senator continues to receive “several” medications that patients commonly take after a heart attack and that he sees “no reason” why Sanders can’t campaign as normal and handle the stress of being president, should he win next year’s election.

“While he did suffer modest heart muscle damage, he has been doing very well since,” LeWinter wrote.

Sanders, the oldest candidate in the 2020 presidential race, had vowed to release detailed medical records by the end of the year, and did so the day before New Year’s Eve.

A separate letter from Brian Monahan, the congressional attending physician in Washington, said several medications that Sanders received after his heart attack, including a blood thinner and beta blocker, “were stopped based on your progress.”

“Your heart muscle strength has improved. You have never had symptoms of congestive heart failure,” Monahan wrote in a letter to Sanders. “The heart chamber sizes, wall thickness, estimated pressures, and heart valves are normal.”

He added that Sanders had a successful graded exercise treadmill examination monitoring heart function, muscular exertion and oxygen consumption that indicated “a maximal level of exertion to 92% of your predicted heart rate without any evidence of reduced blood flow to your heart or symptoms limiting your exercise performance.”

“Your overall test performance was rated above average compared to a reference population of the same age. The cardiac exercise physiologist who evaluated your results determined that you are fit to resume vigorous activity without limitation,” Monahan wrote. “You are in good health currently and you have been engaging vigorously in the rigors of your campaign, travel, and other scheduled activities without any limitation.”

Sanders suffered a heart attack while campaigning on Oct. 1 in Las Vegas and spent several days recuperating in his Vermont home. He said he had felt symptoms for weeks that he “should have paid more attention to,” including being especially fatigued after long campaign days, having trouble sleeping and sometimes feeling a “little unsteady” at the podium while speaking at events.

On the evening of the event in Las Vegas, Sanders said he asked for a chair to be brought onstage “for the first time in my life.” Afterward, he was sweating profusely when pain in his arm prompted him to head to an urgent care medical facility where “the doctor made the diagnosis in about three seconds.”

Taken by ambulance to the hospital, Sanders said he underwent surgery to insert stents for a blocked artery.

“There was some damage, but … within the next month, we’ll see what happens,” he said during a CNN interview on Oct. 10. “But so far, so very good.”

Sanders’ staff initially said stents were inserted for a blocked artery, revealing only two days later that he had suffered a heart attack. Sanders bristled at the notion that his campaign was less than forthcoming about his condition, saying that it released as much information as it could, as fast as possible, and that the full details only came later.

Scrutiny on Sanders’ health intensified after his heart attack, but it’s an issue for every Democrat age 70 or older seeking the White House.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, 77, says he will release his medical records before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3.

Earlier this month, 70-year-old Elizabeth Warren released a note from her doctor saying that she is “in excellent health” and that her only major medical concern is an underactive thyroid gland, which the Massachusetts senator easily treats with medication, the only kind she takes.

Michael Bloomberg’s doctor declared the 77-year-old former New York City mayor to be in “outstanding health,” though he is receiving treatment for several medical conditions, including an irregular heartbeat. Bloomberg also takes a beta blocker and medication to control his cholesterol, had “small skin cancers” removed and receives treatment for arthritis and heartburn, “both of which are well controlled.”

Additionally, Bloomberg had a stent put in his heart to clear an artery in 2000 and “has had normal cardiac stress testing annually since then.”
 

Indonesia said on Monday it had protested to Beijing over the presence of a Chinese coastguard vessel in its territorial waters near the disputed South China Sea, saying it marked a “violation of sovereignty.”

The boat trespassed into Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone off the coast of the northern islands of Natuna, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said in a statement. It did not say when the incident occurred.

“The foreign affairs ministry has summoned the Chinese ambassador in Jakarta and conveyed a strong protest regarding this incident. A diplomatic note of protest has also been sent,” it said.

The ambassador will report back to Beijing, but both sides have decided to maintain good bilateral relations, it said.

China’s embassy in Jakarta could not immediately be reached for comment.

Local fishermen saw a Chinese coastguard vessel escorting fishing boats several times in recent days and then reported what they had seen to the Maritime Security Agency, media reports said.

Indonesia’s foreign ministry reiterated its stance that the country is a non-claimant state in the South China Sea and that it has no overlapping jurisdiction with China.

However, Jakarta has clashed with Beijing before over fishing rights around the Natuna Islands and has also expanded its military presence in the area.

China claims most of the South China Sea, an important trade route which is believed to contain large quantities of oil and natural gas.

Beijing has been building artificial islands in the area, developments that have irked members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines – all members of ASEAN – and also Taiwan also have claims in the sea.

 

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have seized a ship on suspicion of smuggling fuel in the Gulf near the island of Abu Musa, and detained its 16 Malaysian crew, the state news agency IRNA reported on Monday.

IRNA said the ship was carrying nearly 1,312,000 liters of fuel. The report did not say what national flag the vessel was flying. Iran has frequently seized boats that it says are being used for smuggling fuel in the Gulf.

 

U.S. top diplomat Mike Pompeo will travel in January to Ukraine, the country at the heart of the ongoing impeachment process against President Donald Trump, the State Department said Monday.

Pompeo, who will also visit Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Cyprus, will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

The trip will make Pompeo the most senior U.S. official to visit Ukraine since the scandal over a controversial phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy erupted earlier this year.

Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress Dec. 18 and faces trial in the Senate.

Pompeo, a staunch Trump defender, was personally implicated by several witnesses during the impeachment inquiry.

Trump is accused of having withheld nearly $400 million in assistance to Ukraine and a White House meeting with Zelenskiy to push Kyiv to investigate his political rival Joe Biden.

Despite testimony from 17 officials that Trump leveraged his office for political gain, the president has maintained his innocence throughout the impeachment inquiry — denouncing it as an “attempted coup” and an “assault on America.”

The statement does not mention corruption in Ukraine, although the White House has insisted this was the main reason Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who was then serving on the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company.

Ortagus only suggested that this issue could be discussed by referring to talks on “the investment climate, and the government’s reform agenda.”

The visit comes after Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists battling the government’s forces exchanged 200 prisoners on Sunday, a further sign of the fragile detente that has begun since Zelenskiy was elected in April.

Pompeo’s trip aims to “reaffirm U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Ortagus said.

 

A bad harvest and the U.S. China trade war have pushed U.S. farm debt to a record 416 billion dollars this year. But not all farmers are going through hard times – as VOA’s Calla Yu reports.

Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east have completed an exchange of about 200 prisoners. Ukrainian officials say Ukraine received 76 captives while the separatists say they took 124 of theirs. The swap carried out on Sunday was brokered earlier this month at a summit of the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France in Paris.  VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports. 

Wheelchair basketball is growing in popularity in South Sudan, offering hope for athletes with disabilities, some of whom lost legs from unexploded ordnance left from decades of conflict. U.S. professional wheelchair basketball players, including Sudanese American Malat Wei, this month helped eighty South Sudanese players take part in a week-long training program and tournament, as Sheila Ponnie reports from Juba.

“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” stayed on a strong glide path in North American theaters, taking in an estimated $73.6 million for the three-day weekend, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported Sunday.

The Disney film, marketed as a grand finale of the nine-film “Skywalker Saga,” has had mixed reviews and was down considerably from last weekend’s lofty $177.4 million opening.

But it has compiled a strong domestic total of $364.5 million.

It again maintained a big lead over the No. 2 film, Sony’s “Jumanji: The Next Level,” an action sequel starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kevin Hart, which had $34.4 million in North American ticket sales for the Friday-through-Sunday period.

In third for the second straight week was Disney’s “Frozen II,” at $17 million. The animated musical film has Broadway star Idina Menzel voicing Queen Elsa in her latest adventures.

Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel “Little Women” has been brought to the screen many times — no fewer than seven, by Variety’s count — but the new version from director Greta Gerwig has drawn strong reviews and netted $16.2 million to place fourth in its debut this weekend.

The film stars Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Timothee Chalamet, Emma Watson and Laura Dern, in the story of the joys and struggles of four sisters during the US Civil War.

In fifth was new Fox/Disney release “Spies in Disguise,” at $13.4 million. The animated children’s film features the voices of Will Smith and Tom Holland.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

“Knives Out” ($9.9 million)

“Uncut Gems” ($9.4 million)

“Bombshell” ($4.8 million)

“Cats” ($4.8 million)

“Richard Jewell” ($3 million)
 

Amid sudden changes in the upper echelons of Algeria’s government, the new President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is looking to establish stability and put his stamp on the country’s future.

On Saturday, Tebboune appointed Abdelaziz Djerad as the country’s prime minister,

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday said airstrikes against a pro-Iran militant group in Iraq and Syria succeeded, and he did not rule out additional action “as necessary.”

“The strikes were successful. The pilots and aircraft returned back to base safely,” Esper told reporters after F-15 jet fighters hit five targets associated with Kata’ib Hezbollah in western Iraq and eastern Syria.

The targets were either command and control facilities or weapons caches for the Shi’ite militia group, he said, hours after the Pentagon announced the strikes.

The U.S. action followed a barrage of 30 or more rockets fired on Friday at the K1 Iraqi military base in Kirkuk, an oil-rich region north of Baghdad. That salvo killed a U.S. civilian contractor and wounded four U.S. service members as well as Iraqi security forces.

Esper said that he and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had traveled to Florida, where President Donald Trump has been spending the Christmas holidays, to brief him on the latest Middle East events.

“We discussed with him other options that are available,” Esper said. “And I would note also that we will take additional actions as necessary to ensure that we act in our own self-defense and we deter further bad behavior from militia groups or from Iran.”

 

The U.S. carried out military strikes in Iraq and Syria targeting a militia blamed for an attack that killed an American contractor, a Defense Department spokesman said Sunday.

U.S. forces conducted “precision defensive strikes” against five sites of Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.

The U.S. blames the militia for a rocket barrage Friday that killed a U.S. defense contractor at a military compound near Kirkuk, in northern Iraq.

Officials said attackers fired as many as 30 rockets in Friday’s assault.

The Defense Department gave no details immediately on how the strikes were conducted. It said the U.S. hit three of the militia’s sites in Iraq and two in Syria, including weapon caches and the militia’s command and control bases.

Hoffman said the U.S. strikes will weaken the group’s ability to carry out future attacks on Americans and their Iraqi government allies.

Iraq’s Hezbollah Brigades, a separate force from the Lebanese group Hezbollah, operate under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Many of them are supported by Iran.

A senior member of the Popular Mobilization Forces, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said at at least 12 fighters with the Hezbollah Brigades had died in U.S. strikes along the Iraq and Syria border. His account could not immediately be independently confirmed.

 

 

White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Sunday he did not want to speculate about North Korea and its threat of “Christmas gift,” but added the U.S. would be “very disappointed” if Pyongyang tested a long-range or nuclear missile.

During an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” O’Brien said the country would take appropriate action as a leading military and economic power if North Korea went ahead with such a test.

O’Brien added Washington has many “tools in its tool kit” to respond.

“We’ll reserve judgment but the United States will take action as we do in these situations,” he said. “If Kim Jong Un takes that approach we’ll be extraordinarily disappointed and we’ll demonstrate that disappointment.”

North Korea had warned of a “Christmas gift” if the U.S. didn’t meet an end of year deadline to soften its stance on nuclear talks that have been stalled since February

U.S.  officials  have been on alert for a potential long-range missile test since the North Korean warning.  

Though Christmas holiday has passed and North Korea did not deliver the so-called “Christmas gift” to the United States,  U.S.-North Korea tensions appear far from resolved.

North Korea’s nuclear program was the “most difficult challenge in the world” when President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, O’Brien told ABC News.

He also suggested that Trump’s strategy of “face-to-face” diplomacy may have forced North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to reconsider.

Talks about North Korea’s denuclearization have been largely deadlocked since a second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi collapsed at the start of this year.

 

 

 

Two people are dead and a third critically wounded after a gunman opened fire during services at a church near Fort Worth, Texas, Sunday.

Police say two of the victims died on the way to the hospital.

It is not clear if the shooter was killed or is the wounded man. The shooter has not been identified and his motive is unknown.

Sunday’s shooting at the West Freeway Church of Christ in the Forth Worth suburb of White Settlement was seen on a live YouTube feed.

“Places of worship are meant to be sacred and I am grateful for the church members who acted quickly to take down the shooter and help prevent further loss of life,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Twitter, adding that his heart goes out to the victims and families of “the evil act of violence.”

A total of 2,231 people have died out of 3,373 declared cases of Ebola in the current epidemic in the DR Congo, according to the agency overseeing the response, health officials said Sunday.

Deadly unrest in the fragile state has hampered the fight against the disease during the latest epidemic, which broke out on August 1, 2018, with the eastern provinces of North Kivu and Ituri particularly badly hit.

Both areas, beset by violence for two decades, have seen repeated attacks on Ebola health workers by dozens of armed groups as well as on health sites set up to treat victims.

More than 200 civilians have been killed in the troubled east since November in clashes blamed on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a militia group of Ugandan origin which officials blame for a string of massacres in recent weeks.

Health authorities meanwhile said Sunday that 341 suspected Ebola cases were being investigated, a day after the Multisectoral Committee for Epidemic Response (CMRE) monitoring the disease unveiled its latest batch of data Saturday.

The current epidemic is the tenth overall and the second deadliest on record since a 2014-16 outbreak struck west Africa, killing more than 11,300.

 

 

French coastguards rescued 31 migrants trying to cross the English Channel overnight after the engine of one small boat cut out and the other dinghy began to take in water, local authorities in France said on Sunday.

Border and coast guards in Britain and France have recently intercepted several attempted crossings, including on Dec. 26 when 49 suspected migrants were escorted to British shores after a rescue and search operation.

In the early hours of Sunday, French coast guards picked up 11 migrants, including two young children, in one boat off the coast near the port city of Calais.

Another 20, including a pregnant woman, were later rescued by the same patrol boat further along the French coast near Dunkirk, the local authorities said in a statement.

Some of the people rescued suffered from hypothermia, they added.
 

 

 

A court in Saudi Arabia has ruled that a Yemeni man be executed for attacking and wounding dancers and a security guard during a performance on stage at a park in Riyadh, state media reported Sunday.

The Specialized Criminal Court found the man guilty of attacking a security guard and members of a dance troupe, the state-owned Al-Ekhbariya news channel reported. He was also found guilty of intimidating the public, creating chaos and terror, attempting to derail entertainment activities in Saudi Arabia and inciting violence.

The court also found the man guilty of acting on the orders of a senior al-Qaida leader in Yemen. The name of the alleged al-Qaida leader was not made public.

The attacker, who has not been publicly named, was identified only as a 33-year-old Yemeni resident of Saudi Arabia.

The court ruled that a second suspect, who also was not identified, be sentenced to 12.5 years in prison. He was found guilty of aiding and abetting the attacker and sending money to al-Qaida in Yemen.

The court’s rulings are preliminary and can be appealed.

The troupe, reportedly from Spain, had been performing at a park in Riyadh on the evening of Nov. 11 when a man stormed the stage and attacked them with a knife. It marked the first such incidence of violence since the kingdom began loosening restrictions on entertainment around two years ago.

State-owned news media outlets aired footage at the time of security as they ran on stage to capture the suspect. Other state-linked media outlets shared footage online of a man running on stage and apparently attacking the performers from behind as the troupe, dressed in gold ensembles, performs a dance.