Report: France's Sarkozy detained
PARIS -- Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was placed in custody Tuesday as part of an investigation into accusations that he received millions of dollars in illegal campaign financing from the regime of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
A judicial source with direct knowledge of the case said Sarkozy, 63, was being held at the Nanterre police station, northwest of Paris. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Sarkozy has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the case, which involves funding for his winning 2007 presidential campaign.
Though an investigation has been underway since 2013, the case gained traction about three years later when French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told the online investigative site Mediapart that he delivered suitcases from Libya containing $6.2 million in cash to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff, Claude Gueant.
Such a sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit at the time of the 2007 campaign. In addition, the alleged payments would violate French rules against foreign financing and declaring the source of campaign funds.
U.S. allots $2.5M to aid Venezuelans
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is providing $2.5 million for emergency food and medicine assistance to Venezuelan migrants in Colombia in an effort to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the region.
Most of the aid will be directed toward the border city of Cucuta, which has been overwhelmed in recent months by hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing hunger and economic turmoil.
The U.S. Agency for International Development said in a statement Tuesday that it will channel the funding through the Pan-American Health Organization and the United Nations' World Food Program.
The Trump administration is clamping down on President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government.
On Monday, it banned Americans from engaging in transactions with the government's new cryptocurrency, the petro, and repeated a threat that more-damaging oil sanctions could be in the works if the government doesn't free political prisoners and provide guarantees that an upcoming presidential election will be free and fair.
ISIS-slain Indians found, Iraq says
BAGHDAD -- Iraqi authorities have discovered a mass grave with the bodies of 38 Indian construction workers abducted when Islamic State militants overran the northern city of Mosul in 2014, officials said Tuesday.
The bodies were found buried near the village of Badush, northwest of Mosul, in an area that Iraqi forces recaptured in July.
The killing was a "heinous crime carried out by Daesh terrorist gangs," Iraqi official Najiha Abdul-Amir al-Shimari told reporters. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State extremist group.
The abducted workers, most from northern India, had been employed by a construction company operating near Mosul when militants captured wide swaths of northern Iraq in the summer of 2014.
A Section on 03/21/2018