Ten suspected drug cartel gunmen and four police were killed during a daytime shootout on Saturday in a Mexican town near the border with the United States, days after US President Donald Trump raised bilateral tensions by saying he would designate the gangs as terrorists.
The government of the northern state of Coahuila said state police clashed with a group of heavily armed gunmen in pickup trucks in the small town of Villa Union, about 65 kilometres (40 miles) southwest of the border city of Piedras Negras.
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Standing outside the Villa Union mayor's bullet-ridden offices, Coahuila governor Miguel Angel Riquelme told reporters the state had acted "decisively" to tackle the gunmen, who he said had entered from the neighbouring state of Tamaulipas.
Riquelme said 10 gunmen had been killed, three of them by officers in pursuit of the gang members after the gunfight that claimed the lives of four police and wounded six more.
10 civiles armados y 4 policías muertos por enfrentamientos en Coahuila, confirma el Gobernador Miguel Riquelme; hasta el momento no se tienen detenidos en esta jornada violenta. https://t.co/NPyziSLLhDpic.twitter.com/gDB85Jaj6N
Around midday, heavy gunfire began ringing out in Villa Union, and a convoy of armed pickup trucks could be seen moving around the town, according to video clips posted by social media users. Others showed plumes of smoke rising from the town.
Reuters could not vouch for their authenticity.
An unspecified number of people were also missing, including some who were at the mayor's office, the governor said.
Riquelme said authorities had identified 14 vehicles involved in the attacks and seized more than a dozen guns.
The outbreak of violence occurred during a testing week for President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who on Friday said he would not accept any foreign intervention in Mexico to deal with violent criminal gangs after Trump's comments.
'Collaboration and cooperation'
Lopez Obrador said Mexico would handle the problem, a view echoed by Riquelme as he spoke to reporters.
"I don't think that Mexico needs intervention. I think Mexico needs collaboration and cooperation," said Riquelme, whose party is in opposition to Lopez Obrador. "We're convinced that the state has the power to overcome the criminals."
Mexico registers record number of homicides
In an interview aired on Tuesday, Trump said he planned to designate the cartels as terrorist organisations, sparking concerns the move could serve as a prelude to the US trying to intervene unilaterally in Mexico.
US Attorney General William Barr is due to visit Mexico next week to discuss cooperation over security.
Lopez Obrador took office a year ago pledging to bring peace after more than a decade of gang-fuelled violence.
A series of recent security lapses has raised questions about the left-leaning administration's strategy.
Criticism has focused on the November 4 massacre of nine women and children of US-Mexican origin from Mormon communities in northern Mexico, and the armed forces' release of a captured son of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman under pressure from cartel gunmen in the city of Culiacan.
Coahuila has a history of gang violence, although the number of killings is well below the level seven years ago. Nationally, the homicide rate reached a record in the first six months of the year.
At least 14 people died after Mexican security forces engaged in an hour-long gun battle with suspected cartel gunmen in the town of Villa Unión, in the state of Coahuila, about an hour’s drive southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas
By
The Associated Press
December 1, 2019, 5:29 AM
2 min read
Mexican security forces fought an hour-long gun gunbattle Saturday with suspected cartel gunmen in Villa Union, a town in Coahuila state about an hour’s drive southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas, leaving at least 14 people dead, officials said.
Coahuila state Gov. Miguel Angel Riquelme told local media four of the dead were police officers killed in the initial confrontation, and that several municipal workers were missing.
He said the armed group stormed the town of 3,000 residents in a convoy of trucks, attacking local government offices and prompting state and federal forces to intervene. Ten alleged members of the Cartel of the Northeast were killed in the response.
Videos of the shootout posted on social media showed burned out vehicles and the facade of Villa Union’s municipal office riddled with bullets. Rapid gunfire could be heard in videos along with frantic people telling loved ones to stay indoors. A damaged black pickup truck with the C.D.N. of the Cartel del Noreste, or Cartel of the Northeast, written in white on its door is seen on the street.
Security forces will remain in the town for several days to restore a sense of calm, the governor said.
“These groups won’t be allowed to enter state territory,” the government of Coahuila said in a statement.
Mexico’s murder rate has increased to historically high levels, inching up by 2% in the first 10 months of the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Federal officials said recently that there have been 29,414 homicides so far in 2019, compared to 28,869 in the same period of 2018.
The November slaughter by Mexican drug cartel gunmen of three women who held U.S. citizenship and six of their children focused world attention on the rising violence.
The House Intelligence Committee will vote Tuesday on Chairman Adam Schiff's impeachment report, which will make a case for the congressional removal of President Donald Trump.
The vote, likely to break along party lines, is a formality allowing the Democrat-controlled body to pass the impeachment inquiry on to the Judiciary Committee, which is scheduled to begin its proceedings Wednesday.
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Intelligence Committee members will be able to view a draft of Schiff's report beginning late Monday, NBC News has learned.
The vote is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday after Congress returns from its Thanksgiving break. If Intelligence Committee members vote to adopt the report by Schiff, D-California, it will be forwarded to the Judiciary Committee.
Nadler said in a letter that Trump "has a choice to make: he can take this opportunity to be represented in the impeachment hearings, or he can stop complaining about the process."
Trump criticized the proceedings in a Saturday night tweet and noted he would be in London on Wednesday.
"I will be representing our Country in London at NATO, while the Democrats are holding the most ridiculous Impeachment hearings in history," he tweeted. "Read the Transcripts, NOTHING was done or said wrong! The Radical Left is undercutting our Country. Hearings scheduled on same dates as NATO!"
In a subsequent letter to Trump, asking if his lawyers would attend proceedings, Nadler quoted a draft of Schiff's report as describing "a months-long effort in which President Trump again sought foreign interference in our elections for his personal and political benefit at the expense of our national interest."
Alexandra Moe
Alexandra Moe is a producer for NBC News in Washington.
Dennis Romero
Dennis Romero writes for NBC News and is based in Los Angeles.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Ten suspected cartel gunmen and four police were killed during a shootout on Saturday in a Mexican town near the U.S. border, days after U.S. President Donald Trump raised bilateral tensions by saying he would designate the gangs as terrorists.
The government of the northern state of Coahuila said state police clashed at midday with a group of heavily armed gunmen riding in pickup trucks in the small town of Villa Union, about 40 miles (65 km) southwest of the border city of Piedras Negras.
Standing outside the Villa Union mayor’s bullet-ridden offices, Coahuila Governor Miguel Angel Riquelme told reporters the state had acted “decisively” to tackle the cartel henchmen. Four police were killed and six were injured, he said.
The fighting went on for more than an hour, during which ten gunmen were killed, three of them by security forces in pursuit of the gang members, Riquelme said.
At about noon, heavy gunfire began ringing out in Villa Union, and a convoy of armed pickup trucks could be seen moving around the town, according to video clips posted by social media users. Others showed plumes of smoke rising from the town.
Reuters could not vouch for the authenticity of the images.
An unspecified number of people were also missing, including some who were at the mayor’s office, the governor said.
Riquelme said authorities had identified 14 vehicles involved in the attack and seized more than a dozen guns. The governor said he believed the gunmen were members of the Cartel of the Northeast, which is from Tamaulipas state to the east.
The outbreak of violence occurred during a testing week for President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who on Friday said he would not accept any foreign intervention in Mexico to deal with violent criminal gangs after Trump’s comments.
Lopez Obrador said Mexico would handle the problem, a view echoed by Riquelme as he spoke to reporters.
“I don’t think that Mexico needs intervention. I think Mexico needs collaboration and cooperation,” said Riquelme, whose party is in opposition to Lopez Obrador. “We’re convinced that the state has the power to overcome the criminals.”
In an interview aired on Tuesday, Trump said he planned to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations, sparking concerns the move could serve as a prelude to the United States trying to intervene unilaterally in Mexico.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr is due to visit Mexico next week to discuss cooperation over security.
Lopez Obrador took office a year ago pledging to pacify the country after more than a decade of gang-fueled violence.
A series of recent security lapses has raised questions about the left-leaning administration’s strategy.
Criticism has focused on the Nov. 4 massacre of nine women and children of U.S.-Mexican origin from Mormon communities in northern Mexico, and the armed forces’ release of a captured son of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman under pressure from cartel gunmen in the city of Culiacan.
Coahuila has a history of gang violence, although the homicide total in the state that borders Texas is well below where it was seven years ago. National homicide figures are pushing record levels.
Reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Tom Hogue
The report is a chance for Democrats to make their case against the President after weeks of testimony and document collection and is expected to serve as the basis for articles of impeachment that the House Judiciary Committee will consider.
Lawmakers are expected to able to review the report on Monday evening, according to the sources. The committee has scheduled a business meeting on Tuesday to approve the report and transmit it to the Judiciary Committee ahead of that panel's first impeachment hearing on Wednesday.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has said that his committee was expected to release the report soon after Thanksgiving that would summarize the panel's findings from its two-month investigation into Trump and Ukraine, in which a dozen witnesses testified publicly.
House Democrats' impeachment investigation is based on a whistleblower complaint from a US intelligence official about Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 candidate. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.
Impeachment investigators have deposed 17 people -- most of them professional State Department diplomats, National Security Council experts and a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army -- and conducted two weeks of public hearings with many of those same witnesses.
The White House and State Department have refused to comply with subpoenas. House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat who will oversee the next phase of the impeachment inquiry in hearings that begin next week, told the White House on Friday that it must give a definitive answer on whether it will participate by 5 p.m. on December 6.
Members of the House Intelligence Committee on Monday will review a report on the panel’s investigation into whether President Trump committed an impeachable act, specifically by allegedly withholding military aid to Ukraine until the country investigated former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Fox News has confirmed.
Lawmakers will then approve the report before sending it – along with minority views – to the House Judiciary Committee, which will draft and consider articles of impeachment in the weeks ahead.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., right, shown with committee staffer Daniel Noble at left, speaks at the conclusion of public impeachment hearings last month. (Associated Press)
Intelligence panel Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., sent a letter to his colleagues last week that report would be coming “soon” from his committee but did not provide a specific time frame.
He has also said the report would summarize the panel’s two-month investigation into President Trump and Ukraine and list the likely articles of impeachment.
This week's first impeachment hearing is scheduled for Wednesday and will feature a panel of constitutional experts who will offer what constitutes an impeachable offense.
VALLETTA, Malta — More than two years after a car bomb killed Malta’s best-known investigative journalist, prosecutors in the Mediterranean island nation on Saturday charged a wealthy Maltese businessman with complicity in her murder and other crimes.
The arraignment of the businessman, Yorgen Fenech, a member of one of Malta’s most prominent and richest families, capped a tumultuous week in which a long-stalled investigation into the murder of the journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, suddenly picked up pace, ensnaring senior members of the government and Malta’s business elite.
Mr. Fenech, 38, who is suspected of paying three contract killers to carry out the murder, pleaded not guilty. He was arrested on Nov. 19 while trying to flee Malta aboard his yacht. Maltese military personnel halted the vessel as it set out to sea from a marina built by Mr. Fenech’s family conglomerate, Tumus Group, and forced it to return to port.
The killing in October 2017 caused outrage across Europe, putting a harsh spotlight on Malta, the smallest member of the European Union and a country denounced as a “mafia state” by Matthew Caruana Galizia, the journalist’s oldest son.
Speaking after Mr. Fenech’s arraignment on Saturday evening, Mr. Caruana Galizia said it was “surreal and horrifying” to sit in court just a few feet from a man suspected of ordering and paying for the murder of his mother, who was 53 when she died.
In a statement read outside the courthouse in Malta’s capital, Valletta, family members demanded the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, saying that only his departure would allow a “free and full investigation.”
Maltese news media outlets reported on Friday that Mr. Muscat planned to announce his resignation “imminently,” but by late Saturday night he had not done so despite widespread suspicions that some of his close associates in government may have been involved in the murder plot.
Earlier on Saturday, protesters gathered in the capital for the latest in a series of small but noisy demonstrations demanding that the prime minister step down. They chanted, “Out, out, out!” and waved signs reading “Enough corruption” and “Blood is on your hands.”
No evidence has come to light linking the prime minister to the plot against Ms. Caruana Galizia, who was a fierce critic of Mr. Muscat and his associates in the governing Labour Party. But police investigators have in recent days questioned his chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and other associates regarding the case. Earlier this week, Mr. Fenech had offered to supply information linking them to the murder if he was pardoned.
Mr. Schembri resigned on Tuesday, along with two ministers who are also suspected of possible involvement in, or knowledge, of the plot. None have been charged.
At a hearing attended by Ms. Caruana Galizia’s parents, her three sons and her three sisters, Mr. Fenech stood impassively in a charcoal gray business suit as the charges were read: complicity in murder, membership of a criminal organization and a charge related to an illegal explosion. They carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
As recently as a few weeks ago, it appeared that the murder inquiry would never proceed beyond three professional criminals who were arrested in December 2017. They were accused of planting a bomb in the journalist’s car and then detonating it by cellphone as she drove away from her family’s home on a country road.
The three men had no obvious reason to want Ms. Caruana Galizia dead, and answers to why she had been killed and who ordered the attack remained stubbornly elusive.
All of that began to change recently when the police stumbled on a suspected middleman in the plot who was arrested in November in connection with a separate case. Fearing for his life, he gave information about Ms. Caruana Galizia’s murder in return for immunity and protection. He named Mr. Fenech as the paymaster and mastermind of the murder plot.
Mr. Fenech is part owner of companies that received a 450 million euro concession — almost $500 million — to build a controversial power plant that Ms. Caruana Galizia had written about extensively. She also wrote about a mysterious company called 17 Black that she believed was a conduit for kickbacks. After her death, Mr. Fenech was revealed to be the company’s owner.
North Korea called Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe an "idiot" and "political dwarf" Saturday in a row over Pyongyang's latest rocket tests, warning that he "may see what a real ballistic missile is in the not distant future."
The statement from the North Korean foreign ministry followed Pyongyang's launch of two short-range projectiles into the ocean on Thursday.
The test had prompted Abe to convene a National Security cabinet meeting in Tokyo to call the move a "grave challenge to the international community," according to the Kyodo news service.
North Korea responded with a blistering statement from an unnamed deputy foreign minister in charge of Japanese affairs, saying Abe didn't know what he was talking about when it comes to military hardware.
"Abe is the only one idiot in the world and the most stupid man ever known in history as he fails to distinguish a missile from multiple launch rocket system," said the statement, which was carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
Prosecutors: Noted American coder taught North Korea how to evade sanctions with cryptocurrency
"The wretched sight of Abe makes us regard him as a dog seized with fear or a puppy fawning over its master like the U.S.," the statement continued, adding, "Abe is none other than a perfect imbecile and a political dwarf without parallel in the world."
It concluded with a blunt warning that the Japanese leader "may see what a real ballistic missile is in the not distant future and under his nose."
North Korea's test on Thursday was the 13th time since May that it has launched projectiles of any type, including likely ballistic missiles, according to Yonhap, the South Korean News Agency.
North Korea leader Kim Jong Un expressed "great satisfaction" over what it said was the fourth test of the "super-large multiple-rocker launcher," according to KCNA.
U.N. Security Council resolutions ban Pyongyang from developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. In 2017, the North fired two ballistic missiles over Japan.
North Korea's latest military moves follow stalled nuclear talks between the United States and North Korea and the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Kim and President Donald Trump in February.
The last two working-level talks between the two countries in Stockholm ended in October with little progress. North Korea has demanded that Washington drop its "hostile policy" toward Pyongyang before it will resume denuclearization talks.
North Korea: Test of ‘super-large’ rocket launcher was final review
More: Joe Biden campaign fires back after North Korean media calls him a 'rabid dog'
An urgent review of the licence conditions of terrorists freed from prison has been launched by the Ministry of Justice following Friday's London Bridge attack.
Two people were killed and three were injured by Usman Khan, 28, a convicted terrorist who served half of his time.
PM Boris Johnson claimed scrapping early release would have stopped him.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will blame budget cuts for "missed chances to intervene" in a speech on Sunday.
As many as 70 convicted terrorists released from prison could be the focus of the government review.
He was sentenced to indeterminate detention for "public protection" with a minimum jail term of eight years.
This sentence would have allowed him to be kept in prison beyond the minimum term.
But in 2013, the Court of Appeal quashed the sentence, replacing it with a 16-year-fixed term of which Khan should serve half in prison. He was released on licence in December 2018 - subject to an "extensive list of licence conditions", Met Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said.
"To the best of my knowledge, he was complying with those conditions," he added.
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As part of his release conditions, Khan was obliged to take part in the government's desistance and disengagement programme, which aims to rehabilitate people who have been involved in terrorism.
Khan was living in Stafford and wearing a GPS police tag when he launched his attack inside Fishmongers' Hall, where he was attending a conference hosted by Learning Together, a prisoners' rehabilitation programme.
Khan had taken part in the Learning Together scheme while in prison and was one of dozens of people - including students and offenders - at the event.
He appeared as a "case study" in a report by the initiative. Identified only as "Usman", Khan was said to have given a speech at a fundraising dinner after being released from prison.
He was also given a "secure" laptop that complied with his licence conditions, to allow him to continue the writing and studying he began while in jail.
Khan contributed a poem to a separate brochure, in which he expressed gratitude for the laptop, adding: "I cannot send enough thanks to the entire Learning Together team and all those who continue to support this wonderful community."
NHS chief executive Simon Stevens said three victims remained in hospital following the attack - two in a stable condition and one with less serious injuries.
Mr Basu said officers had been working "flat out" to try to establish the "full circumstances" of the stabbing.
On a visit to the attack site, the prime minister said the practice of cutting jail sentences in half and letting violent offenders out early "simply isn't working".
Mr Johnson vowed to "toughen up sentences" if the Conservatives win the general election on 12 December.
"If you are convicted of a serious terrorist offence, there should be a mandatory minimum sentence of 14 years - and some should never be released," he said.
"Further, for all terrorism and extremist offences, the sentence announced by the judge must be the time actually served - these criminals must serve every day of their sentence, with no exceptions."
In a speech in York on Sunday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is expected to say that budget cuts over the past ten years have left "gaps" that can result in "missed chances to intervene in the lives of people who go on to commit inexcusable acts".
He will also say that, under a Labour government, police will be able to use "whatever force is necessary" to protect and save lives.
"If police believe an attacker is wearing a suicide vest and innocent lives are at risk, then it is right they are able to use lethal force," he will say.
How the law on early release changed?
Rachel Schraer, BBC Reality Check
2003 - The Criminal Justice Act meant most offenders would be automatically released halfway through sentences, but the most "dangerous" would have their cases looked at by a Parole Board. Sentences with no fixed end point, called Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP), were also introduced.
2008 - Criminal Justice and Immigration Act removed review process by Parole Boards, meaning more offenders were released automatically halfway through sentences. Judges could still hand down life sentences or IPPs for dangerous offenders.
2012 - Usman Khan was handed a sentence with no fixed end date because of the risk he posed to the public. In the same year, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act scrapped IPPs and reintroduced the role of the Parole Board for extended sentences of 10 years or more - this time after two-thirds of the sentence has passed. But that did not mean those already serving IPPs would have them lifted.
2013 - During an appeal, Lord Justice Leveson ruled that Khan's indeterminate sentence should be substituted for an extended sentence with automatic release at the halfway point.
A row erupted on Saturday between Home Secretary Priti Patel and former Labour government minister Yvette Cooper over Khan's early release.
Ms Cooper said the government was "warned about the risks" of ending Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) - which was introduced by Labour to protect the public from dangerous prisoners, but was scrapped by the coalition government in 2012.
But Ms Patel blamed the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act brought in by Labour in 2008, and said the law was changed "to end Labour's automatic release policy".
The young man in black climbed down the manhole’s footholds and flicked on a penlight. The tunnel offered enough space for his narrow shoulders and slim backpack, but he could not stand. He would have to duck walk, feet wide, body hunched. Soon, the squalid sea water that runs beneath Hong Kong’s streets sloshed around his knees. Mud encircled his ankles. When his hand brushed the concrete wall, a carpet of cockroaches rustled.
Alone in that dark filth he put his faith in a few things: That a sewer was better than a campus filled with bombs. That two people would remember to lift the heavy iron cover at his journey’s end. That the escape planned by dozens of strangers would not end in a prison cell.
Three months before he climbed into that culvert, I met Lee at a sleepy protest in Tai Po, a district in Hong Kong’s vast northern stretch called the New Territories. He asked that I not disclose his full name for this article. We chatted about the standoff with police, and then followed the protesters to another district. I lost him in the crowd, just before the police doused everyone in tear gas; we stayed in touch since.
A nervous nerd in his 20s, Lee built spreadsheets during the week and roadblocks on the weekend, as he tried to live his radical ideas while living with a sickly parent in a working-class home. For years, he had chafed under his parents’ beliefs. His father is a patriot whose mobile phone ringtone blares “March of the Volunteers,” China’s national anthem. Over the nearly six months that the Hong Kong government rebuffed its citizens’ demands—first over a bill that would have weakened Hong Kong’s judicial independence, then for democratic freedoms—Lee became convinced that this was his hometown’s last chance to stand up to Beijing. A proper revolution would ensure Hong Kong’s autonomy and rights.
Those ideals convinced him to guard the bridge at the entrance to the Chinese University of Hong Kong, or CUHK, on Nov. 12, where dozens of people fought rubber bullets with petrol bombs to push police back. It’s why he joined thousands of people at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, or Poly, to fight police there, too. Neither was his alma mater. “If you don’t stand up” for others, he said, “no one will stand for you.”
He arrived before police sealed off Poly on Nov. 17 and started hammering protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets, and stinging blue dye from a water cannon. Young people lobbed back liquid petroleum gas canisters strapped to Molotovs, creating huge fireballs. Officials warned that anyone who stayed on campus would be arrested and charged with rioting. Inside, teenagers began to cry. First-aid volunteers began to pack up. Police made hundreds of arrests, but Lee remained adamant he wouldn’t surrender.
“Many people feel this is a war,” said another protester who was there, “In a war, you don’t surrender to your enemy.”
“Enemies of the people”
After Hong Kong’s last mass protests, the Umbrella Movement in 2014, the government prosecuted many people who had encouraged the street occupation that demanded Beijing allow democratic elections for the city’s leader; several were sent to prison. The government also imprisoned other democracy figures such as Edward Leung, whose 2016 campaign slogan—Reclaim Hong Kong! Revolution of our Times!—became the rallying cry of this year’s protests. People were already angry with Beijing for failing to deliver on its promise of a democratic vote; the prosecutions further embittered many. Protesters also learned from their setbacks. This time around, no visible leaders have surfaced for the government to target. To protect themselves, protesters wear masks to hide from police and cameras.
On protest days, young people pack as if going on vacation. There are outfits for protest and outfits for escape. The latter are in light shades, which might let the wearer slip past police. Shoes must be switched. Water cannon dye leaves skin blue, and soles, too. Protesters frequently change their phone numbers and identities on social media. They do not ask the names of the people who stand beside them. When a teammate is arrested, many squads delete message channels and cut ties with the unfortunate. An arrest is an opening into which the police can creep.
Many protesters have been cautious, and yet, police have arrested about 5,800 people since June, some just for being on the wrong patch of road at the wrong time. As violence surged over more than five months, with protesters meeting rubber bullets with weapons of their own, the government came to see many of Hong Kong’s youngest as a threat. At a press briefing this month, Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam called demonstrators “enemies of the people.”
Protesters say they are defending themselves against a police force that routinely uses excessive force against them. Lee hurled his first Molotov on Oct. 1, the birthday of Communist-ruled China, when the city erupted in a “day of mourning,” and one teenage protester was shot. Lee was throwing rocks that day in the working-class district of Wong Tai Sin when a young man collapsed near him during a hail of rubber bullets. With others, Lee helped carry the man to medical help, and then took aim with a flaming bottle.
Arrests have picked up pace since October. The young have been rounded up on street corners, searched at their housing estates, and chased on college running tracks and in shopping malls. Many are released after officers record their details, but the protesters don’t know if or when they will be charged. There is no deadline to prosecute for many offenses in Hong Kong. Since June, police have charged more than 920 people with a host of offenses; the most contentious, rioting, carries a sentence up to 10 years.
Reuters/Thomas Peter
Riot police detained a protester in August.
The government has said protesters at Poly staged a riot, bombarding police with petrol bombs, bricks, even arrows. More than 1,300 people were arrested there by the time the siege finally ended on Friday (Nov. 29). In the final days, college staff searched for holdouts, and were followed by officers who collected bottles filled with kerosene and dusted surfaces for fingerprints. Officials have reserved the right to take legal action later against people whom police didn’t immediately arrest.
Yu, a college undergraduate, decided to leave Poly last Thursday (Nov. 21), fearing that a burn from a tear gas shell was infected. Before she climbed into the ambulance, police snapped a photo of her holding her ID. “Like we are criminals,” she messaged.
An escape planned by strangers
HK01/Handout via Reuters
Nov. 18: Protesters tried to escape Poly by shimmying down to a highway, but some were caught.
After the battle ended at CUHK, protesters flocked to Poly, fearful that police would go after it next. Protesters had blocked a pedestrian bridge and entrances to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, a vital link between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. Many Poly students and graduates disagreed strongly with occupying the campus, but they were overruled.
With police blocking the barricaded exits, and grabbing those who tried to sneak out, Lee waited for an opportunity to leave.
Poly turned into a guerrilla war college. Crews excavated paving stones and practiced flinging them in slingshots rigged from helmets, rubber cords and weight room benches. On a plaza, dozens of people mixed explosive formulas of kerosene, flour, and sugar. One young woman devised her own concoction using red oil-based paint and lighter fluid filled to the necks of Coke bottles. “Don’t share the recipe,” she warned sternly before tossing a flaming sample into the drained 50-meter pool. Her Jackson Pollock splash burned for more than 100 seconds.
When police moved in on Nov. 17, Lee carried Molotovs to the front line and threw some himself. When officers drove an armored van toward the first barricade, the protesters fire-bombed it. Lee remembers that as the siege’s last glorious moment. The time after was a long, painful defeat, but the depleted frontline kept at it for hours. “Even a pig, before it is slaughtered, will scream,” he said days later.
Lee joined a large group that tried to break out the next morning. Police snagged dozens of people, as he and others fled back. Their brick fortress was now a prison stocked with explosives. Molotovs littered the canteen, perched on ledges, cluttered the gym where people curled up on yoga mats.
Reuters/Leah Millis
Nov. 23: A protester who called himself “Riot Chef,” and who said he was a volunteer cook for protesters at Poly, smoked out of the side of his gas mask.
Lee had arrived without friends and was nervous about trusting strangers who remained. Word went around that undercover police were in their midst. He scrounged for a sleeping bag and bedded down in a windowless tutoring office. At night, he foraged for food. The campus 7-11 had been ransacked and he kept his stash of crackers, Oreos, and cups of dried noodle soup in a small cardboard box. Friends kept checking on him. He’d awake to find 20 missed calls. “They care for me more than I care for myself,” he said.
That’s when protesters began to pull manhole covers from over the drainage tunnels. Poly was lined with underground passages. Lee made a practice run, stepping into the hole and checking the water level. His friends guided him to Telegram groups where people shared images of city drainage maps. Strangers reviewed routes, and advised Lee that it would be safest to leave around noon, when the tide would sweep out and water would be lowest.
The strangers arranged escapees in groups. His would leave Nov. 22 from W Core, a building on the northern side of campus. At the last moment someone texted Lee: pull out. That tunnel would take him to a wide, open street, and undercover police were guarding that exit hole. His correspondents directed him to a tunnel in the campus center instead. Inside, there were two choices: turning left would lead toward the residential district called Whampoa. He chose to go right, to a Hung Hom road along the harbor.
For his journey, Lee dressed like an action figure, the hood of his black windbreaker pulled tight. He wore his gas mask. Inside, the roaches were extremely large, like nothing he’d seen on sidewalks. He told himself this was a good sign. If there was gas, he thought, they’d be dead. When he touched the wall to steady himself, he’d kill a few.
The mud slowed him, and he stopped often to rest. Voices from the street trickled through the open manholes, and he crossed under them cautiously. There was no signal down there. Mostly, he tried not to think. “The tunnel can’t hear you,” he said.
Lee kept walking, toward a crack of light that signaled his exit. He had once tried to push open a manhole cover from inside the hole, but his scrawny arms couldn’t shoulder the weight. Two strangers were supposed to be on the other end to help. Light streamed into the tunnel, and he smelled the harbor breeze. Someone had opened the manhole cover. Someone stood watch. Someone drove him home. It was an operation of someones. Finding all of them to thank would be, he said, dangerous.
Reuters/Thomas Peter
Nov. 28: Police officers gathered evidence at the campus of the Polytechnic University on Thursday.
The London Bridge stabber masqueraded as a reformed jihadist, claiming his terrorist days were behind him and begging to be de-radicalized.
Yet less than a year after convicted bomb plotter Usman Khan was released from prison, having served only half of a 16-year sentence for his part in an al Qaeda scheme to blow up London landmarks, he killed two people, including a young coordinator of the rehab program he so wanted to join.
Another staff member of the program, called Learning Together, was killed, and three others were wounded.
Khan, 28, who was wielding two kitchen knives and wearing a fake suicide vest, would have wreaked more havoc if heroic civilians hadn’t taken him down before he was shot dead by police.
Khan, wearing an electronic monitor from his 2018 release, acted alone, London police said.
On Saturday, as Britain mourned the victims, many expressed outrage that Khan had been walking the streets at all.
“We’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives, letting convicted, known, radicalized jihadi criminals walk about our streets,” said Chris Phillips, the former head of Britain’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office.
The plot that sent Khan to prison “was described as one of the most significant terrorist plots in British history,” according to the Sunday Times of London. Khan, just 19 at the time, “was considered by the judge to be a ‘more serious jihadi’ than many of his fellow gang members when he was jailed indefinitely for public protection.”
Khan admitted to a charge of engaging in conduct for the preparation of acts of terrorism. He had been secretly taped plotting and talking about martyrdom.
But once behind bars, the high school dropout, who was known to follow radical cleric Anjem Choudary and suspected of planning to create a terror training camp on family land in Kashmir, wrote a letter claiming he was reformed, and requested a de-radicalization class.
“I would like to do such a course so I can prove to the authorities, my family and soicity [sic] in general that I don’t carry the views I had before my arrest and also I can prove that at the time I was immature,” he wrote in October 2012. “And now I am much more mature and want to live my life as a good Muslim and also a good citizen of Britain.”
Khan hoodwinked authorities again in 2013, The Times of London wrote, when he won an appeal of his indeterminate sentence and was granted a 16-year term, allowing his early parole.
And Khan is not unique. As many as 70 terrorists have been released from Britain’s jails, the Telegraph reported.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who visited the scene at London Bridge Saturday, said he had “long argued” that it was a “mistake to allow serious and violent criminals to come out of prison early.”
The Conservative Party leader, who is in the midst of an election campaign, said the criminal justice system “simply isn’t working.”
Johnson’s rival, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who also visited the scene Saturday, said the nation’s Probation Office and Parole Board should have had a role in the decision to release Khan.
“We have to ensure that the public are safe,” he said. “That means supervision of prisoners in prison but it also means supervision of ex-prisoners when they are released ahead of the completion of their sentence, to have tough supervision of them to make sure this kind of danger is not played out on the public in the future.”
But David Merritt, the father of victim Jack Merritt, said his son would not have supported the backlash. He described him as a “champion for underdogs everywhere” and especially for the incarcerated.
The second victim has not yet been identified. The three wounded remained in the hospital, including a man in a medically induced coma.
Queen Elizabeth II said in a statement that she and her husband, Prince Philip, were sending their thoughts to everyone affected by the “terrible violence.”
Security officials earlier this month had downgraded Britain’s terrorism threat level from “severe” to “substantial.”
Before the talks collapsed, the U.S. and Taliban were poised to sign a draft agreement saying that a possible cease-fire would be determined by later negotiations with Afghanistan's government, according to The Washington Post.
The Taliban told the Post in a statement that this has not changed.
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"We are ready to talk, but we have the same stance to resume the talks from where it was suspended," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.
A spokesperson for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani told the newspaper that Trump's trip to Afghanistan this week was “important” but that “we will have to see” whether it changed anything.
“It is too early to comment on any changes or any perceived changes,” said spokesman Sediq Seddiqi.
A senior administration official told The Post that they are "restarting talks" with the Taliban.
“If an agreement can be reached, the two sides could potentially expand the talks and pave the way for signing a peace agreement," the person said.
President Trump in September called off negotiations with the Taliban and Afghanistan after the Taliban claimed an attack in Kabul that killed 11 civilians and a U.S. service member.
The family of a woman brutally murdered is furious after learning that one of the men being hailed as a hero in the Friday terrorist knife attack on London Bridge was the murderer they thought was in jail.
Amanda Champion, a disabled 21-year-old woman, was killed by James Ford in 2003. Ford ran into Amanda in the woods in Kent and proceeded to strangle her and slit her throat, according to the BBC. Amanda's body was discovered three weeks later, badly decomposed. Ford was discovered as the prime suspect after he made several calls to a charity confessing the crime and threatening to kill himself.
Ford, now 42, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime in 2004 with the judge recommending that he serve a minimum of 15 years in prison. Ford was free on prison day release on Friday when he witnessed Usman Khan violently attack pedestrians on London Bridge with a knife. Ford and several other people intervened in the attack to subdue Khan until police arrived and gunned him down. At the time of his arrest, police described Ford's actions as "motiveless crime and a senseless crime” and described him personally as a “very dangerous man."
Khan, 28, was also out of prison serving only six years of a nearly two-decade sentence after being convicted of "terror-related charges" in 2012. He and Ford attended the same prison sponsored educational event the day of the attack.
A police liaison contacted Amanda's family to inform them that Ford had been spotted on television with the other bystanders being hailed as heroes. "He is not a hero. He is a murderer out on day release, which us as a family didn’t know anything about. He murdered a disabled girl," Amanda's aunt Angela Cox said to the Daily Mail. "He is not a hero, absolutely not. I don’t care what he’s done today, he’s a murderer."
The Newsweek writer behind a story on President Trump's Thanksgiving plans has been fired but is pushing back on the perception that the published story -- initially leaving out that Trump was visiting troops in Afghanistan, but rather mistakenly saying he would be "tweeting" and "golfing" -- was her fault.
“Newsweek investigated the failures that led to the publication of the inaccurate report that President Trump spent Thanksgiving tweeting and golfing rather than visiting troops in Afghanistan," a Newsweek representative told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive piece published Saturday.
The Newsweek piece was originally published on Thursday before Trump's overseas trip -- a deliberate surprise -- became public. According to White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, only some White House officials knew about the trip, which was kept secret for security reasons.
The story was certainly was a surprise to the troops, the public and the media -- and some outlets were caught completely off-guard. Newsweek had to overhaul the article that it had earlier posted, which continued to incorrectly state that Trump would be playing golf and tweeting, even though his trip to Afghanistan had been announced.
"The story has been corrected, and the journalist responsible has been terminated," the Newsweek rep told the Examiner. "We will continue to review our processes and, if required, take further action.”
"The next day, [writer Jessica] Kwong reached out to the editor on duty and relayed the president's latest actions, after which the story was published," according to the Examiner. "When the president's trip to Afghanistan was announced, that editor then decided to assign another reporter to write a new story about it but neglected to update Kwong's original piece in a timely manner."
She initially tweeted the old headline that read: "How is Trump spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, golfing and more."
After Trump's trip became public, she tweeted a correction, saying that she made an "honest mistake" and that it was written before knowing about the trip.
Kwong later told the Examiner that she was assigned the Thanksgiving story in advance and filed it to her editor on Wednesday, a day before Trump's trip became public.
President Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr., responded to the initial story by deriding Newsweek.
"Fake news gonna fake!" Trump Jr. tweeted. His father retweeted that post, asking: "I thought Newsweek was out of business?"
Trump Jr. also responded to Kwong's follow-up tweet by suggesting she was lying and that her actions fit a broader pattern of media bias against his father.
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"It wasn’t an 'honest mistake' you tried to dunk on Trump and ended up dunking on yourself because you couldn’t resist. Notice how there’s never been a story that broke in Trump’s favor & had to be corrected the other way? These aren’t mistakes, they are a very consistent pattern," he said.
Kwong received an onslaught of criticism from others on Twitter, as well.
The old headline for Kwong's piece was eventually updated to read: “How is Trump spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, golfing -- and surprising U.S. troops in Afghanistan."
A note at the bottom of the story claimed it was updated and edited at around 6:17 p.m. ET -- hours after news of Trump's trip surfaced.
Kwong graduated from UC-Berkeley and, according to her LinkedIn profile, has received numerous awards for her work in journalism. She's held positions at the Orange County Register, San Francisco Examiner, Time Warner Cable Sports, La Opinion and the San Antonio Express-News, per her profile.
It's unclear whether the editor involved was held responsible, as Newsweek didn't respond to the Examiner's questions regarding that.
Fox News' Adam Shaw and Kristin Fisher contributed to this report.
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