Syrian government and rebels trade gas attack accusations
BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian rebels accused government forces of launching toxic gas attacks on civilians in a town southwest of Aleppo on Tuesday. The government rejected the claim and accused the rebels of using chemical weapons themselves.
Rebel sources provided video of people receiving treatment who they say were among the victims of a gas attack, but the images were not conclusive and neither of the gas attack claims by the rebels or the government could be independently verified.
The accusations on both sides came amid heightened fighting around the contested northern city that killed at least 20 people, activists and government media reported.
Rescuers and doctors in rebel-held Saraqib, a town in the northwestern Idlib province, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Aleppo, reported dozens of cases of severe breathing difficulties, saying the symptoms pointed to a chlorine gas attack.
A neurologist, Dr. Ibrahim al-Assad, said he treated 16 of the 29 cases brought to his hospital on Monday night, most of whom were women and children. One elderly man needed critical care but most of the casualties were suffering from breathing difficulties, red eyes and wheezing, al-Assad said.
Zika-spreading mosquito puts up tough fight
MIAMI (AP) — The mosquitoes spreading Zika in Miami are proving harder to eradicate than expected, the nation’s top disease-fighter said Tuesday as authorities sprayed clouds of insecticide in the ground-zero neighborhood, emptied kiddie pools and handed out cans of insect repellent to the homeless.
Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the mosquito-control efforts in the bustling urban neighborhood aren’t achieving the hoped-for results, suggesting the pests are resistant to the insecticides or are still finding standing water in which to breed.
“We’re not seeing the number of mosquitoes come down as rapidly as we would have liked,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Mosquito control experts said that’s no surprise to them, describing the Aedes aegypti mosquito as a “little ninja” capable of hiding in tiny crevices, sneaking up on people’s ankles, and breeding in just a bottle cap of standing water.
Fifteen people have become infected with Zika in Miami’s Wynwood arts district, officials said Tuesday. These are believed to be the first mosquito-transmitted cases in the mainland U.S., which has been girding for months against the epidemic coursing through Latin America and the Caribbean.
Deadly weather system strengthens, now Tropical Storm Earl
MIAMI (AP) — A weather system that already has caused at least six deaths in the Dominican Republic has been designated as Tropical Storm Earl.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Tuesday that Earl was threatening to bring heavy rains, flooding and high winds to Mexico, Belize and Honduras. All three of those countries issued Tropical Storm warnings for some areas, and a hurricane watch was issued for part of the Mexican coast.
On Sunday, Earl was still a weaker tropical wave but knocked down power lines and started a fire that killed six passengers on a bus filled with people returning from a beach excursion.
On Tuesday, the storm was centered about 200 miles (325 kilometers) south of Grand Cayman in the Caribbean. It had top sustained winds of 50 mph (85 kph) and was speeding west at 22 mph (35 kph).
NYC’s top cop stepping down after challenging tenure
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton is leaving the nation’s largest police force, after getting credit for keeping crime down but grappling with tension between officers and minority communities.
Bratton, whose departure was announced Tuesday, will leave next month to become a risk and security adviser at Teneo, a consulting firm. James O’Neill, the department’s top chief, will succeed him as commissioner.
During five years spanning two stints as the city’s top cop, Bratton has had an outsized impact on the New York Police Department. He noted that he was leaving at “a challenging time for police in America and New York, even though all indicators are pointing in the right direction.”
He said no department is better prepared to confront “the crises of race in America, crime in America, the threat of terrorism” and the divisiveness of the presidential election.
The announcement by Mayor Bill de Blasio took New Yorkers by surprise. Bratton, 68, said last week he would leave by the end of 2017 “when I find the right time,” though the mayor said Tuesday that Bratton had actually disclosed his plans more than three weeks ago.
Snapping up cheap spy tools, nations ‘monitoring everyone’
LIMA, Peru (AP) — It was a national scandal. Peru’s then-vice president accused two domestic intelligence agents of staking her out. Then, a top congressman blamed the spy agency for a break-in at his office. News stories showed the agency had collected data on hundreds of influential Peruvians.
Yet after last year’s outrage, which forced out the prime minister and froze its intelligence-gathering, the spy service went ahead with a $22 million program capable of snooping on thousands of Peruvians at a time. Peru — a top cocaine-producing nation — joined the ranks of world governments that have added commercial spyware to their arsenals.
The purchase from Israeli-American company Verint Systems, chronicled in documents obtained by The Associated Press, offers a rare, behind-the-scenes look into how easy it is for a country to purchase and install off-the-shelf surveillance equipment. The software allows governments to intercept voice calls, text messages and emails.
Except for blacklisted nations like Syria and North Korea, there is little to stop governments that routinely violate basic rights from obtaining the same so-called “lawful intercept” tools that have been sold to Western police and spy agencies. People tracked by the technology have been beaten, jailed and tortured, according to human rights groups.
Targets identified by the AP include a blogger in the repressive Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan, opposition activists in the war-ravaged African nation of South Sudan, and politicians and reporters in oil-rich Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.
