Foreign News
Police to pay $1.9m to black family held at gunpoint in Colorado
A black mother and four children, who were held at gunpoint by police in Colorado, have been awarded $1.9m (£1.5m) in a settlement.
Brittney Gilliam was wrongfully stopped in 2020 at a parking lot, along with her six-year-old daughter, nieces aged 14 and 17, and sister, 12.
The incident, which was caught on camera, drew outrage at the time. Ms Gilliam later sued the officers accusing them of “profound and systemic” racism.
Police in Aurora, Colorado, said they mistakenly believed Ms Gilliam’s car had been stolen and had been trained to perform a “high-risk stop”.
They also apologised for the incident and offered to cover therapy services for the children..
On the day of the arrest, Ms Gilliam and the young girls went to a nail salon and returned to their car after finding out the salon was closed. Officers then approached the vehicle with guns drawn as the family got into the car.
In footage posted by witnesses on social media, Ms Gilliam and all four girls lie face down in the parking lot. Ms Gilliam, her 12-year-old sister and her 17-year-old niece were handcuffed. The children can be heard crying and calling for the mother as witnesses question police about the situation.
“Would your kids be okay after that? Having a gun pulled on them and laid on the ground. Especially a six-year-old,” Ms Gilliam told CBS soon after.
Police said the car’s licence plate had matched the number of a stolen vehicle but from a different state.
Officers immediately uncuffed everyone involved when they realised their mistake, according to Aurora’s police chief at the time, Vanessa Wilson.
On Monday, David Lane, a lawyer for the family, confirmed that a settlement has been reached with the city of Aurora. “All parties are very satisfied with this settlement,” he said in a statement.
The incident occurred amid a wider reckoning with the policing of black Americans in the US, and at a time when the Aurora police department was being criticised for the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old black man who died in police custody.
In 2023, a white former police officer was sentenced to 14 months in prison for the killing of McClain.
(BBC)
United States President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to demand control of the Panama Canal after accusing Panama of charging excessive rates on US ships passing through one of the busiest waterways in the world.
“Our Navy and Commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
He later doubled down during a speech in Arizona on Sunday, saying the US was “being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else”.
The US largely built the canal in 1914 and administrated territory surrounding the passage for decades. But Washington fully handed control of the canal to Panama in 1999 after a period of joint administration.
Trump also hinted at China’s growing influence around the canal, which connects the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.
“It was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” he said in the original post. “We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!”
“It was not given for the benefit of others, but merely as a token of cooperation with us and Panama. If the moral and legal principles of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” Trump said.
Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino firmly responded to Trump on Sunday.
“Every square meter of the Panama canal and the surrounding area belongs to Panama and will continue belonging so,” Mulino said in a recorded message posted on social media.
He further denied that China or any other country has direct or indirect influence over the canal. He added that fees were not decided on a “whim”.
The canal is key to Panama’s economy and generates about one-fifth of the government’s annual revenue.
[Aljazeera]
At least 13 people, including four children, have been killed in two incidents in Nigeria as large crowds gathered to collect food and clothing distributed at annual Christmas events, police say.
In the capital, Abuja, at least 10 people died on Saturday and many more were injured in a scramble to receive gifts of charity being distributed by the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Maitama district.
“This unfortunate event, which took place around 6:30am [05:30 GMT], resulted in a stampede that claimed the lives of 10 individuals, including four children, and left eight others with varying degrees of injuries,” said Josephine Adeh, a police spokesperson.
In a separate incident in Okija in Anambra State in southern Nigeria, three people were killed in a crush at a charity event organised by a philanthropist, state police said.
“The event had not even started when the rush began,” police spokesman Tochukwu Ikenga said. There could be more deaths recorded as officers investigate, he said.
In both incidents, the victims were mostly women and children who were trampled as crowds tried to reach the provisions being offered.
[Aljazeera]
A nine-year-old child and four adults have been killed, and more than 200 injured after a car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, officials say.
At least 41 people were critically injured after the incident which lasted around three minutes, police said.
The arrested suspect has been named in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had worked as a doctor.
Reiner Haseloff, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt state, said a preliminary investigation suggested the alleged attacker was acting alone.
He added that he could not rule out more deaths due to the number of injured.
The suspect is currently being questioned and prosecutors expect to charge him with murder and attempted murder in due course, the head of the local prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.
Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens added that the investigation was ongoing but suggested the background to the crime “could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.
The suspected attacker has no known links to Islamist extremism – social media and posts online appear to suggest he had been critical of Islam.
Footage from the scene showed numerous emergency services vehicles attending while people lay on the ground.
Further footage then emerged of armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground by a stationary vehicle.
Unverified video on social media purports to show a car ploughing into the crowd at the market.
City officials said around 100 police, medics and firefighters, as well as 50 rescue service personnel rushed to the scene.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who travelled to the city on Saturday, described the attack as a “dreadful tragedy” as “so many people were injured and killed with such brutality” in a place that is supposed to be “joyful”.
He told reporters that there were serious concerns for those who had been critically injured – which German media reports is in the dozens – and that “all resources” will be allocated to investigating the suspect behind the attack.
There would be a memorial service for the victims at the Magdeburg Cathedral later on Saturday, he added.
[BBC]
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