HAMILTON: Michael Dunkley was sworn in as acting premier of Bermuda yesterday following the surprise resignation of Premier Craig Cannonier over allegations that he accepted $300,000 in campaign funds from a US real estate developer.
“Nothing illegal was done, but I accept there was a failure over time to be completely transparent,” Cannonier said on Monday night.
Dunkley, the former deputy premier and national security minister of the British Overseas Territory was sworn in by Governor George Fergusson.
Vaz wins Guinea-Bissau vote
BISSAU: Former Finance Minister Jose Mario Vaz won a high-stakes presidential run-off election in Guinea-Bissau meant to draw a line under a 2012 coup, the elections commission said yesterday, but the losing candidate rejected the result.
Vaz, the candidate of the dominant African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, took 61.9 percent of votes, according to results announced by elections commission president Augusto Mendes. He defeated Nuno Gomes Nabiam, an independent candidate from the Balanta ethnic group — the country’s largest — and is seen as close to the army. He garnered 38.1 percent of ballots.
Five convicted of killing journalist
MOSCOW: A Moscow jury convicted five men yesterday in the 2006 murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Russian news agencies reported, including three defendants who had been acquitted in a previous trial.
The defendants included three Chechen brothers, one of whom was accused of shooting Politkovskaya in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006, as well as their uncle and a former police officer. Politkovskaya’s killing drew attention to the risks faced by Russians who challenge the authorities and deepened Western concerns for the rule of law under President Vladimir Putin.
War crimes suspects escape
PRISTINA: Police in Kosovo launched a manhunt yesterday for three high-profile war crimes suspects who appeared to have fled a hospital where they were each being treated under guard while standing trial. They include Sami Lushtaku, a close ally of Kosovo’s prime minister and former guerrilla commander, Hashim Thaci.
“The Kosovo Correctional Services have informed the presiding judge that they cannot locate three out of seven defendants in the so-called Drenica case,” said a spokesman for the European Union’s police and justice mission.
REUTERS
