Yemen city calm as truce takes hold
SANAA, Yemen -- Yemen's key port city of Hodeida was calm Tuesday morning, hours after a U.N.-mediated cease-fire went into effect between government-allied forces and the country's rebels, Yemeni officials said.
Fighting subsided as the cease-fire took effect, with only the sporadic sound of automatic-weapons fire heard in the city, where the port handles about 70 percent of Yemen's imports.
Yemen's four-year conflict pits the internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against Shiite rebels known as Houthis.
The government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi called for its forces to "cease fire in both Hodeida city and the province" also named Hodeida, according to a statement from Hadi's Defense Ministry. The rebels also welcomed the cease-fire in the key port city.
The agreement came during U.N.-sponsored talks in Sweden last week. A joint committee led by U.N. officers will oversee the cease-fire and the redeployment of the warring parties' forces out of Hodeida, which is currently controlled by the Houthis. Local authorities and police will run the city and its three port facilities under U.N. supervision, and the two sides are barred from getting reinforcements.
Journalist deaths put at 63 so far in '18
PARIS -- Media freedom group Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday that it has recorded an increase in the number of journalists killed and imprisoned worldwide so far this year.
The Paris-based group said 63 journalists died in relation to their jobs from Jan. 1 to Dec. 1, 2018, compared with 55 in 2017, as well as four media workers. Another 13 people it described as "non-professional journalists" -- people who didn't have official media cards but who were involved in the production of news and information -- also died, while 348 were held in detention around the world.
Of the 80 people listed as killed, the group determined 49 were deliberately targeted "because their reporting threatened the interests of certain people in positions of political, economic, or religious power or organized crime." The other 31 died in the field while reporting, the group said.
The deadliest country for reporters in 2018 was Afghanistan, where 15 died in violent attacks such as bombings. The U.S. made it into the top five deadliest countries for journalists this year for the first time, with six dying, including four who were among five people killed by a gunman who opened fire in the offices of Maryland newspaper Capital Gazette. Another two died while covering extreme weather.
Ruling a blow to Malaysia case defense
SHAH ALAM, Malaysia -- An Indonesian woman set to begin her defense next month in her trial in the slaying in Malaysia of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's half brother suffered a setback Tuesday when a judge rejected her bid to secure statements given to police by seven witnesses.
Siti Aisyah's lawyer, Gooi Soon Seng, said he will appeal the High Court's ruling that the statements were privileged. He said the statements were crucial because most of the witnesses were unreachable.
In August, a High Court judge found there was enough evidence to infer that Aisyah and her Vietnamese co-defendant, Doan Thi Huong, along with four missing North Korean suspects, had engaged in a "well-planned conspiracy" to kill Kim Jong Nam.
The two women are accused of smearing VX nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam's face in an airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 13, 2017. They have said they thought they were taking part in a prank for a TV show.
In his ruling, the judge agreed with prosecutors' contention that the statements shouldn't be made public because there is a risk of tampering with witnesses. The judge said, however, that prosecutors are required to ensure that the witnesses turn up for the trial.
Terror charges filed in French attack
PARIS -- A man suspected of supplying the gun used in the Christmas market shooting attack that killed five people in Strasbourg has been handed preliminary terror charges, according to a French judicial official close to the investigation.
The official, who could not be named with the case ongoing, said the man appeared Monday before a judge and was charged with criminal association with terrorists, as well as possessing and supplying arms in connection with a terrorist enterprise.
The man is suspected of furnishing the weapon that gunman Cherif Chekatt used in the Dec. 11 attack, the judicial official said. He was remanded into custody.
Chekatt, 29, died in a shootout Thursday with police in Strasbourg.
Two other people were arrested and detained Monday as part of the terror investigation the Paris prosecutor's office is conducting into the attack. They also were suspected of "playing a role in supplying the firearm," said the official.
Their arrests bring the number of suspects in custody since the attack to three; Chekatt's parents and two of his brothers were questioned by police last week and released.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 12/19/2018