Virginia fraternity announces legal action against Rolling Stone
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A fraternity at the University of Virginia announced Monday that it will “pursue all available legal action” against Rolling Stone, saying a Columbia Journalism School review shows the magazine acted recklessly and defamed its members by publishing an article that falsely accused them of gang rape.
Cuba-US hopes
of opening
embassy held up
HAVANA — American hopes of opening an embassy in Havana before presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro meet at a regional summit this week have been snarled in disputes about Cuba’s presence on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror and U.S. diplomats’ freedom to travel and talk to ordinary Cubans without restriction, officials say.
The Summit of the Americas will be the scene of the presidents’ first face-to-face meeting since they announced Dec. 17 that they will re-establish diplomatic relations after a half-century of hostility. The Obama administration wanted the embassies reopened before the summit starts in Panama on Friday, boosting a new American policy motivated partly by a sense that isolating Cuba was causing friction with other countries in the region.
Kenya unleashes airstrikes against Islamic extremists
NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyan warplanes bombed militant camps in Somalia, officials said Monday, following a vow by President Uhuru Kenyatta to respond “in the fiercest way possible” to a massacre of college students by al-Shabab extremists.
The airstrikes Sunday and Monday targeted the Gedo region of western Somalia, directly across the border from Kenya, said Col. David Obonyo of the Kenyan military.
The al-Shabab camps, which were used to store arms and for logistical support, were destroyed, but it was not possible to determine the number of casualties because of poor visibility, he said.
The Somalia-based militant group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack at Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya in which militants killed 148 people, most of them students.
Hawa Yusuf, who lives in a village near the town of Beledhawa that is close to the Kenyan-Somali border, said the warplanes “were hovering around for a few minutes, then started bombing.” She didn’t know if there were any casualties, she said by phone.
Clinton expected to launch campaign in next 2 weeks
WASHINGTON — After months of anticipation, Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to launch her presidential campaign sometime in the next two weeks with an initial focus on intimate events putting her in close contact with voters.
Clinton wants to avoid soaring speeches delivered to big rallies, and the risk they’ll convey the same cloak of inevitability that contributed to her loss in the 2008 Democratic primaries to Barack Obama.
The goal, according to people close to the Clinton organization, is to make her second run for the White House more about voters and less about herself, regardless of her place atop a field of candidates that currently looks far weaker this time around.
Fighting intensifies on the ground in Yemen’s Aden
SANAA, Yemen — Pitched fighting intensified Monday in Yemen’s second-largest city, Aden, leaving streets littered with bodies, as Shiite rebels and their allies waged their strongest push yet to seize control of the main bastion of supporters of their rival, the country’s embattled president.
The fierce fighting in the southern port city on the Arabian Sea raises doubts over the possibility of landing ground forces from a Saudi-led coalition backing President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to try to carve out an enclave to which Hadi, who fled the country two weeks ago, could return.
Saudi Arabia has asked Pakistan to contribute soldiers to the military campaign, as well as air and naval assets, Pakistan’s defense minister said Monday. Pakistan’s parliament is debating the request and is expected to vote in coming days.
Closing arguments heard in Boston Marathon bomb case
BOSTON — As he planted a backpack containing a bomb near a group of children, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev made a coldblooded decision aimed at punishing America for its wars in Muslim countries, a federal prosecutor told the jury during closing arguments Monday at Tsarnaev’s death penalty trial.
Defense attorney Judy Clarke countered by arguing, as she did at the trial’s outset, that Tsarnaev took part in the attack but did so under the malevolent influence of his now-dead older brother, Tamerlan. Clarke repeatedly referred to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — then 19 — as a “kid” and a “teenager.”
“If not for Tamerlan, it would not have happened,” Clarke said.
The jury is expected to begin deliberating Tuesday morning in the case against Tsarnaev, 21, almost two years after the twin bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed three people and wounded more than 260.
