Month: December 2018

British police have released a man and a women they arrested Friday in connection with the drone incursions that hampered operations at Gatwick Airport for three days. A statement from Sussex police Sunday said the two were released “without charge” and both “fully co-operated with our enquiries and are no longer suspects.” The police said Saturday the investigation is “still on-going and our activities at the airport continue to build resilience to detect and mitigate further incursions from drones, by deploying a range of tactics.” The closing down of the runway at Britain’s second largest airport because of the drones, …

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Simcha Rotem, an Israeli Holocaust survivor who was among the last known Jewish fighters from the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis, has died. He was 94. Rotem, who went by the underground nickname “Kazik,” took part in the single greatest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Though guaranteed to fail, the Warsaw ghetto uprising symbolized a refusal to succumb to Nazi atrocities and inspired other resistance campaigns by Jews and non-Jews alike. Rotem, who passed away Saturday after a long illness, helped save the last survivors of the uprising by smuggling them out of the burning ghetto …

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  More than 300 migrants were rescued Friday off the coast of Libya by the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms. But now they are facing Christmas at sea after Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Italian ports are closed and they will not be allowed to disembark. The rescue was carried out by the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, which said it had saved the migrants aboard three vessels that were in distress from certain death at sea off the Libyan coastline. This included men, women, children and babies suffering from the cold winter temperature. The NGO said Malta refused to …

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U.N. rights experts called on British authorities Friday to allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to leave the Ecuador embassy in London without fear of arrest or extradition. The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention reiterated its finding published in February 2016 that Assange had been de facto unlawfully held without charge in the embassy, where he has now been holed up for more than six years. He initially took asylum to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where authorities wanted to question him as part of a sexual assault investigation. That investigation was dropped. Bail violation Assange, whose website published thousands …

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British police have made two arrests in connection with their investigation into the drone incursions that have hampered operations at Gatwick Airport for three days. Sussex police said in a statement early Saturday that the arrests were made late Friday, but the statement did not reveal the names or ages of the detainees. The statement said the investigation is “still ongoing and our activities at the airport continue to build resilience to detect and mitigate further incursions from drones, by deploying a range of tactics.” The closing down of the runway at Britain’s second largest airport because of the sightings …

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Voters who went to the polls last month in the United States’ midterm elections can rest assured that their votes were registered and counted properly. However, a new report by the U.S. intelligence community concluded Americans were subjected to ongoing influence operations and disinformation campaigns by several countries, a finding that could trigger automatic sanctions. “The activity we did see was consistent with what we shared in the weeks leading up to the election,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a statement late Friday. “Russia, and other foreign countries, including China and Iran, conducted influence activities and messaging …

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British forces stormed an Italian cargo ship on Friday and regained control after stowaways threatened crew members as it sailed close to the coast of southeast England.  Police said no one was injured in the operation.  The Sun newspaper said the rescue was led by members of the navy’s elite Special Boat Service. Four stowaways had threatened crew on the ship, the Grande Tema, a spokesman for the boat’s operator, Grimaldi Lines, said.   Four men were detained under Britain’s immigration laws and  the vessel was being taken safely to the port of Tilbury, police said in a statement.  Sky News said the …

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For two years, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has been urging nervous NATO counterparts to judge the Trump administration by its actions and not by the president’s tweets or off-the-cuff remarks. But on Thursday, President Donald Trump posted a tweet the Europeans couldn’t ignore: an announcement that the four-star general would soon be leaving the Pentagon.   The tweet wasn’t altogether a surprise, coming a day after Trump ordered U.S. ground troops out of northern Syria, but it has shocked America’s traditional allies, who like Mattis are eager to preserve the U.S.-European alliance. In the Marine general they had a partner they trusted and …

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