Nasir Al-Wahishi, al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader and head of its Yemen branch, killed in US strike
Nasir Al-Wahishi, al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader and head of its Yemen branch, killed in US strike
CAIRO (AP) — A U.S. airstrike has killed al-Qaida’s second-most-powerful figure, the head of its Yemeni branch, dealing the terror network its biggest blow since the killing of Osama bin Laden at a time when it is vying with the Islamic State group for the mantle of global jihad.
Nasir al-Wahishi was the latest in a series of senior figures from al-Qaida’s powerful Yemeni branch eliminated by U.S. drone attacks over the past five months, including its top ideologue and a senior military commander. The U.S. has intensified its campaign, trying to push back the group as it has captured new territory in Yemen by taking advantage of the southern Arabian nation’s chronic chaos.
In confirming the killing of al-Wahishi in a June 9 drone attack, the White House said Tuesday that his death “removes from the battlefield an experienced terrorist leader and brings us closer to degrading and ultimately defeating these groups.”
The U.S. activity against al-Qaida has not been limited to Yemen. Over the weekend, a U.S. airstrike in Libya targeted an al-Qaida-linked militant commander, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who led a 2013 attack on an Algerian gas complex that killed 35 hostages, including several Americans. U.S. officials are still trying to confirm whether he was killed in the raid.
Al-Wahishi was a former aide to bin Laden who, after the al-Qaida affiliate in Saudi Arabia was crushed in the mid-2000s, rebuilt it in his Yemeni homeland and turned it into the terror network’s most dangerous branch. He also served as deputy to Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded bin Laden in 2011 as the network’s leader. The U.S. had put a bounty of up to $10 million on al-Wahishi.
6 killed in California balcony collapse; victims mostly college students from Ireland
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — A 21st-birthday party thrown by a group of visiting Irish college students turned tragic early Tuesday when the fifth-floor balcony they were crowded on collapsed with a sharp crack, spilling 13 people about 50 feet onto the pavement. Six people were killed and seven seriously injured.
Police and fire and building officials were working to figure out why the roughly 5-by-10-foot concrete-floor balcony broke loose from the side of the stucco apartment building, situated a couple of blocks from the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
High school student Jason Biswas’ family nearby was awakened by the noise.
“They thought there was an earthquake, but then we looked out the window and saw seven or eight people on the ground,” the 16-year-old said. “There were piles of blood everywhere.”
Five of the dead were 21-year-olds from Ireland who were in the country on so-called J-1 visas that enable young people to work and travel in the U.S. over the summer, while the sixth victim was from California, authorities said.
Years of ‘neglected’ security left door open to hack of millions of fed workers’ info
WASHINGTON (AP) — The agency that allowed hackers linked to China to steal private information about nearly every federal employee — and detailed personal histories of millions with security clearances — failed for years to take basic steps to secure its computer networks, officials acknowledged to Congress on Tuesday.
Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee spoke in unison to describe their outrage over what they called gross negligence by the Office of Personnel Management. The agency’s data was breached last year in two massive cyberattacks only recently revealed.
The criticism came from within, as well. Michael Esser, the agency’s assistant inspector general for audit, detailed a yearslong failure by OPM to adhere to reasonable cybersecurity practices, and he said that that for a long time, the people running the agency’s information technology had no expertise.
Last year, he said, an inspector general’s audit recommended that the agency shut down some of its networks because they were so vulnerable. The director, Katherine Archuleta, declined, saying it would interfere with the agency’s mission.
The hackers were already inside her networks, she later acknowledged.
Trump elbows his way into 2016 Republic presidential race and not all are pleased
NEW YORK (AP) — The Donald is running for president — for real this time.
Real-estate mogul and reality-television star Donald Trump, who has brazenly flirted with running for office before but never followed through, announced Tuesday that he will seek the Republican nomination for president. Trump entered the race in a bombastic spectacle befitting a man whose businesses successes are matched by his penchant for self-promotion.
“All of my life, I have heard, a truly successful person, a really successful person, and even a modestly successful person, cannot run for public office — just can’t happen,” Trump said. “Yet that’s the kind of mindset you need to make this country great again.”
Trump, the 12th high-profile Republican to enter the 2016 race, announced his candidacy in a free-ranging 40-minute speech in which he boasted about his ability to fortify the border with Mexico to prevent “rapists” from entering the U.S. (“Nobody builds walls better than me”) and invited President Barack Obama to play golf at one of his courses.
“Sadly, the American dream is dead,” Trump said. “But if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and we will make America great again.”