The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
NATION / WORLD
Suspected poison gas kills at least 40 in Syria
Suspected poison gas was used to attack the last remaining foothold for the Syrian opposition in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, killing at least 40 people, including families found in their homes and shelters, opposition activists and local rescuers said Sunday.
The attack on the besieged town of Douma came almost exactly a year after a chemical attack in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun killed dozens of people. That attack prompted the U.S. to launch several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base.
President Donald Trump blamed Syrian government forces for what he called a “mindless CHEMICAL attack” and warned there would be a “big price to pay.” He did not elaborate. In a series of tweets, Trump held Russia and Iran, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s chief sponsors, responsible.
The Syrian government denied the allegations, calling them fabrications.
First responders entering apartments in Douma late Saturday said they found bodies collapsed on floors, some foaming at the mouth. The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense rescue organization said the victims appeared to have suffocated.
Orban wins re-election as prime minister
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban easily won a third consecutive term Sunday and his Fidesz party was poised to regain its super majority in parliament, according to preliminary results from the country’s election.
With 84.7 percent of the votes counted, Fidesz and its small ally, the Christian Democrat party, had secured 133 of the 199 seats in the legislature, the minimum needed for a twothirds majority. The rightwing nationalist Jobbik party placed second with 26 seats, while a Socialist-led, left-wing coalition ran third with 20.
Only two other parties, former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s Democratic Coalition and the green Politics Can Be Different party were expected to surpass the 5 percent threshold needed to form a parliamentary faction.
Orban won his fourth term overall on a platform that openly demonizes migrants to Europe.
Opposition parties feared another super-majority would allow the autocratic leader to more easily push through constitutional changes, continue his crackdown on civic groups that he claims work against Hungarian interests and further strengthen his grasp on the highly centralized state power structure.
Cambridge Analytica data-use notices
Get ready to find out if your Facebook data has been swept up in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Starting Monday, the 87 million users who might have had their data shared with Cambridge Analytica will get a detailed message on their news feeds. Facebook said most of the affected users (more than 70 million) are in the U.S., though there are over a million each in the Philippines, Indonesia and the U.K.
In addition, all 2.2 billion Facebook users will receive a notice titled “Protecting Your Information” with a link to see what apps they use and what information they have shared with those apps. If they want, they can shut off apps individually or turn off third-party access to their apps completely.
Reeling from its worst privacy crisis in history — allegations that this Trump-affiliated data mining firm may have used ill-gotten user data to try to influence elections — Facebook is in full damage-control mode. CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged he made a “huge mistake” in failing to take a broad enough view of what Facebook’s responsibility is in the world. He is set to testify before Congress next week.
Van driver had run-ins with police
MUENSTER, Germany — The 48-year-old German man who drove a van into a crowd in Muenster was well-known to police, had a history of run-ins with the law and had expressed suicidal thoughts to a neighbor last month, German prosecutors said Sunday.
The man, whose name was not released, killed two people and injured 20 others Saturday afternoon by crashing into those drinking outside a popular bar in the western German city’s Old Town. He then shot himself to death inside the van.
The impact of the crash was so violent the van did not stop until it hit the pub’s stone wall.
Police said Sunday they believed he acted alone, but did not explain why they thought that.
The picture painted by police showed the suspect as a Muenster resident who was apparently financially well off but was frequently at odds with authorities and in court often. Local media reported he is an industrial designer who once threatened his father with an ax.
6 detained amid indications of attack at race
Six people were detained in connection with what police and prosecutors allege was a plan to carry out an attack on Berlin’s half-marathon Sunday, German authorities said. A police spokesman later said no athletes or spectators had been in danger.
“There were isolated indications that those arrested, aged between 18 and 21 years, were participating in the preparation of a crime in connection with this event,” prosecutors and police wrote in a joint statement.
Berlin police tweeted that six people were detained in cooperation with the city’s prosecutor’s office. The German daily Die Welt first reported police foiled a plot to attack race spectators and participants with knives.
The main suspect allegedly knew Anis Amri, a Tunisian who killed 12 people and injured dozens more when he drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin in December 2016, Die Welt reported.