French step up hopeful’s nepotism probe
PARIS — The French financial prosecutor’s office has opened a judicial inquiry into the reportedly fake parliamentary aide jobs that conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon gave to his wife and two of his children.
The announcement came as Fillon was holding a rally outside Paris. The conservative candidate was once the front-runner in polls, but his ratings slipped with the investigation into payments to family members that totaled more than $1.1 million over many years.
After a preliminary investigation opened Jan. 25, the financial prosecutor’s office decided to escalate and enlarge the case, turning it over to investigating judges who can file charges or throw the case out. No one was named in the judicial investigation on a list of charges, including misappropriation of public funds, abuse of public funds and influence trafficking.
It was a sign that the prosecutor’s office intends to question others, enlarging the circle of those who risk being charged and adding new investigators, an official in the prosecutor’s office said, refusing to state how many people are concerned.
$672M pledged to avert African famine
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A group of countries pledged at least $672 million at an international donor conference Friday to prevent a famine in the African countries around the Lake Chad Basin.
“We have now started an important process,” said Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende, whose country pledged $192 million over a three-year period to tackle “a serious humanitarian situation” in the region encompassing Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
“We expect more pledges in the future,” said Brende, who co-hosted the one-day conference in Oslo with Germany, Nigeria and the United Nations. “The United States have said they would come back later,” and other countries may chip in too, he added.
His German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel said Germany added $127 million.
The United Nations has started an appeal for more than $1 billion for Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, which are enduring the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa.
Other donor countries at the conference that was attended by 40 countries, civil-society groups and humanitarian organizations included Italy, Finland, Switzerland and Japan. The money would be channeled through the U.N., the International Red Cross and nongovernmental organizations.
Militants kill Christian plumber in Sinai
EL-ARISH, Egypt — Suspected Islamic militants gunned down a Christian man inside his home in northern Sinai, officials and a priest said Friday, the latest in a string of sectarian killings in Egypt.
The militants Thursday stormed the home of Kamel Youssef, a plumber, and shot him to death in front of his wife and children in the town of el-Arish, said two security officials and the priest.
No militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack. But Egypt’s Islamic State group affiliate, which is based in the Sinai Peninsula and in December carried out a suicide bombing against a Cairo church, vowed in a video earlier this week to step up attacks against the Coptic Christian minority. It described them as “infidels” empowering the West against Muslims.
U.N. office: Israeli soldier got off easy
GENEVA — The United Nations human-rights office said Friday that it’s “deeply disturbed” by the “lenient” 18-month prison sentence handed down by a Tel Aviv military court against an Israeli soldier who killed a badly wounded Palestinian assailant as he lay on the ground after he had stabbed another soldier.
Spokesman Ravina Shamdasani of the rights office condemned Friday a “chronic culture of impunity” in Israel when it comes to soldiers involved in the conflict with Palestinians.
Sgt. Elor Azaria was sentenced Tuesday for manslaughter in the March shooting of Adbelfattah al-Sharif, who was wounded after he stabbed a soldier in the volatile West Bank city of Hebron.
Israeli officials strongly rejected her remarks. “It has been proven again that with the distorted ethical compass of the human rights council one bullet that Azaria fired at a terrorist is worse than millions of bullets that murder innocent people in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen,” Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote on Facebook.
A Section on 02/25/2017