First lady in Liberia on ‘Girls Learn’ trip
First lady Michelle Obama visited a leadership camp for girls in Liberia to begin her latest Africa visit Monday, urging the teens in one of the world’s poorest countries to keep fighting to stay in school.
With her own teenage daughters by her side, Obama told the girls that she was “just so thrilled to be here with you.”
Education for girls is the central theme of the first lady’s trip, which also includes stops in Morocco and Spain. She was welcomed on her arrival in Liberia with a red carpet and traditional dancers.
In connection with the first lady’s visit, USAID announced up to $27 million in funding in Liberia programming for Let Girls Learn, an initiative launched by the first lady and President Barack Obama last year.
Michelle Obama is traveling with her mother and daughters Malia, 17, who recently graduated from high school, and Sasha, 15.
France probes EgyptAir crash as accident
PARIS — French authorities opened a manslaughter inquiry Monday into the May crash of an EgyptAir plane that killed 66 people, saying there is no evidence so far to link it to terrorism.
Prosecutor’s office spokesman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said the inquiry was initiated as an accident investigation, not a terrorism investigation. She said French authorities are “not at all” favoring the theory that the plane was downed deliberately, though the status of the inquiry could eventually change if evidence emerges to that effect.
Investigators decided to start the probe, before waiting to analyze the plane’s flight-data and voice recorders, on the basis evidence gathered so far, she said, without elaborating.
EgyptAir Flight 804, an Airbus A320 en route from Paris to Cairo, crashed into the Mediterranean on May 19.
In a statement issued late Monday, the Egyptian investigation committee said that the flight-data recorder has been repaired, after the two recorders were found damaged in the sea. The recorders’ memory cards arrived Monday in Paris, Egyptian investigators said.
U.N., Red Cross aid enters Syria suburb
BEIRUT — The U.N. and the International Committee of the Red Cross delivered aid Monday for 30,000 people in a besieged rebel-held Damascus suburb.
The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the convoy entered Qudsaya on Monday and that the Red Cross committee and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are taking part in the delivery.
Red Cross committee spokesman Ingy Sedky said the delivery includes 6,000 canned food parcels, including beans, peas, tuna, dates and olive oil, as well as primary-care medicine. Sedky added that the supplies should sustain 30,000 people, including 5,000 patients, for three months.
Elsewhere in Damascus, the Islamic State militant group battled rival militants in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, breaking weeks of relative calm.
Bombings by Yemen’s ISIS said to kill 43
SANAA, Yemen — An Islamic State affiliate carried out a series of attacks in Yemen’s southern port city of Mukalla on Monday, killing at least 43 people and wounding several others, officials said.
The attacks came as the government and Shiite Houthi rebels planned to suspend talks on ending the conflict in Yemen after failing to reach a breakthrough in two months of negotiations held in Kuwait.
The officials said two suicide bombers and other militants carried out at least seven simultaneous attacks in Mukalla targeting intelligence offices, army barracks and checkpoints. In one of the attacks, a bomb was concealed in a box of food delivered to soldiers at a checkpoint to break their dawn-to-dusk Ramadan fast. In another, a group of militants stormed a police station, officials said.
The Islamic State affiliate said in an online statement that it launched four suicide bombings against counterterrorism forces.
Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters, said 10 people were wounded in the attacks.
A Section on 06/28/2016