Month: January 2023

Ovidio Guzmán-López, 32, alleged to be a leader of his father’s former cartel, was captured in Culiacán and flown to Mexico City on Thursday.

But during and after the arrest, 10 soldiers and 19 suspects were killed.

Furious gang members set up road blocks, set fire to dozens of vehicles and attacked planes at a local airport.

A further 35 military personnel were injured and 21 gunmen were arrested, Defence Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval said on Friday.

Mr Guzmán-López – nicknamed “The Mouse” – was extracted by helicopter and flown to the capital before being taken to a maximum security federal prison.

He is accused of leading a faction of his father’s notorious Sinaloa cartel – one of the largest drug-trafficking organisations in the world.

His father, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, is serving a life sentence in the US after being found guilty in 2019 of drug trafficking and money laundering. His trial revealed some of the brutal details of how Mexico’s drug cartels operate.

The six-month surveillance operation to capture Mr Guzmán-López had the support of United States officials, Mr Sandoval said.

The US had put out a reward of up to $5m (£4.2m) for information leading to his arrest or conviction, as well as that of three of his brothers who are also thought to have kept their positions of command in the group.

But a federal judge in Mexico has now suspended any extradition process against him, according to local media.

The operation, which began at dawn in Culiacán, in Sinaloa state, north-west Mexico, sparked a wave of violence from armed cartel members.

Dozens of vehicles were set alight and at least two planes at Sinaloa airports were hit by gunfire, in attacks blamed on the Sinaloa cartel. More than 100 flights were cancelled at local airports as a result.

Two Mexican Air Force aircraft were forced to make emergency landings after they were hit by gunfire from the cartel, Defence Minister Sandoval said.

Helicopter gunships were deployed from the authorities to support the ground operation.

Mexican President Andrés López Obrador said Mexican forces had acted responsibly to look after the civilian population and avoid innocent victims. No civilian deaths have yet been reported.

A further 1,000 troops are being sent to Sinaloa to help with ongoing security measures.

Videos on social media have shown burning buses blocking roads in Culiacán.

Justine Goldbas, 32, was travelling on a bus through Sinaloa on her way back home to Los Angeles with her husband and eight-year-old son – just before the riots began on Thursday.

They were then told the bus was “at risk” and the driver was informed he needed to “stop and hide”. The vehicle was parked off the main road for 16 hours in Caborca, in the neighbouring state of Sonora, before being allowed to move again.

“There was a lot of fear, people were scared,” Ms Goldbas said.

“Our bus had just passed a spot where it happened – literally, if we had waited another 30 minutes before passing, we would have been in the cross of it.

“We’ve also seen security guards, some in cars and some in big tanks going south. We may have been far from it but we were close enough to see many people driving pretty fast in the opposite direction.”

The fuselage of a plane scheduled to fly from Culiacán to Mexico City was hit by gunfire during the operation on Thursday morning as it was preparing for take-off, Mexican airline Aeromexico said.

No customers or employees were harmed, it said. A video posted on social media appears to show passengers crouching and cowering in their seats.

“As we were accelerating for take-off, we heard gunshots very close to the plane, and that’s when we all threw ourselves to the floor,” one of the passengers, David Tellez, told Reuters news agency.

Culiacan Airport resumed operations on Friday.

US President Joe Biden is due to visit Mexico for a North American leaders’ summit next week. He will now arrive on Sunday, a day earlier than previously expected, according to a tweet by Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. No reason was given for why he was arriving early.

There were blockades in different parts of the city and residents were urged to stay at home. Many shops were also looted and gunfire exchanges took place between security forces and gang members.

All schools across the whole state of Sinaloa were closed on Friday, the local government body overseeing education said.

Mexican security forces had previously arrested Mr Guzmán-López in 2019 but released him to avoid the threat of violence from his supporters.

The US State Department says he and his brother Joaquín are currently overseeing approximately 11 methamphetamine labs in the state of Sinaloa, producing an estimated 1,300- 2,200kg (3,000-5,000lb) of the drug per month.

They have also said that information indicates Mr Guzmán-López ordered the murders of informants, a drug trafficker and a popular Mexican singer who refused to sing at his wedding.

Reports have emerged of patients spending days on trolleys because of shortages of beds in some hospitals.

Rishi Sunak has promised to cut long waiting times for routine operations within two years.

But Labour says patients deserve “more than a talking shop” and the Lib Dems say it is “too little too late”.

“Health experts have been sounding the alarm for months about the crisis the NHS is facing, so why has it taken so long for Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay to decide to listen to them?” said shadow health secretary Wes Streeting..

Senior doctors say the NHS is on a knife-edge, with long waits for emergency care, routine operations, GP appointments and care for patients when they are discharged from hospital.

High levels of flu and Covid, a wave of strike action and a cost-of-living crisis are also putting huge pressure on the health service.

On Monday, health unions have been invited to meet Health Secretary Steve Barclay to discuss pay for 2023-24 from April – but union leaders say the government must act on the current pay dispute for this year, and Monday’s talks will not stop planned strikes in January.

The all-day NHS Recovery Forum has been organised by the government and will focus on how to “share knowledge and practical solutions” across different regions of England.

Downing Street said the aim was to tackle “the most crucial challenges” faced by the health service, such as delayed discharge and emergency care.

“We want to correct the unwarranted variation in NHS performance between local areas, because no matter where you live you should be able to access quality healthcare,” No 10 said.

Representatives from the public and private sectors will attend, as well as chief executives and clinical leaders of NHS organisations, local areas and councils from across the country, plus medical and social care experts.

Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, will also take part in the forum.

The government in England has already announced plans to roll out virtual ward beds so that more people can be treated at home, a new service to save thousands of ambulance call-outs to people who have fallen, and more funding to improve emergency care and adult social care.

More than 90 diagnostic hubs have also been opened to reduce the queues for tests, checks and scans.

Although two-year waits for routine treatment have shrunk since the pandemic, experts say there is still a mountain to climb before the numbers of patients waiting longer than a year start coming down.

More than seven million people are currently on a hospital waiting list for a non-urgent operation or treatment in England – one in eight of the population.

Sammed Shikharji is located in an environmentally sensitive area atop Jharkhand state’s highest mountain.

The government has asked the state to ban activities that “defile the site”, like consumption of alcohol and non-vegetarian food.

The Jain community is a religious minority comprising around 4.5 million believers.

Devout Jains follow the tenets of their religion under the spiritual guidance of monks. These include detailed prescriptions for daily life, especially what to eat, what not to eat and when to eat.

The community fears that tourism to the pilgrimage site in Jharkhand will harm the sanctity of the area.

Members have been protesting against the state government’s move to turn the site into a tourist spot for some weeks.

In 2019, the environment ministry had approved tourism activities at Parasnath Hill – where the site is located – following the state government’s proposal.

On Thursday, it sent a letter to the state government stating that the site was important not just for the community but the entire nation.

It asked the state to immediately stop all “tourism and eco-tourism” activities at the site and to enforce all rules applicable to eco-sensitive zones.

This includes banning “loud music, the sale and consumption of intoxicants, defiling sites of religious and cultural significance” and activities that can harm the ecology of the area.

Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav tweeted that the federal government was committed to “preserving and protecting the rights of the Jain community over all their religious sites, including Sammed Shikhar”.

It would be first major energy extraction agreement with a foreign firm since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021.

The 25-year deal underscores China’s economic involvement in the region.

On Thursday Taliban officials said security forces had targeted Islamic State group militants who attacked a hotel used by Chinese businessmen.

Eight IS militants were killed and several more arrested, the Taliban said.

December’s attack on the Longan Hotel in Kabul saw at least three people killed and 18 more injured, including five Chinese citizens.

The oil extraction agreement would see Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company (CAPEIC) drilling for oil in the Amu Darya basin, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said.

“The Amu Darya oil contract is an important project between China and Afghanistan,” China’s ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu told a news conference in the capital Kabul.

A Chinese state-owned company is also in talks over the operation of a copper mine in the east of the country.

Afghanistan is estimated to be sitting on natural resources – including natural gas, copper and rare earths – worth more than $1tn.

However, much of those reserves remain untapped due to decades of turmoil in the country.

Beijing has not formally recognised Afghanistan’s Taliban administration but it has significant interests in the country, which is at the centre of a region important to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Launched by Xi Jinping in 2013, the BRI provides financing for emerging countries to build infrastructure like ports, roads and bridges.

A cohort of right-wingers in his party derailed an 11th attempt to elect him on the third day of voting.

Republicans took over the House in November’s midterm elections, but the impasse has left the chamber unable to swear in members or pass bills.

The House has adjourned until Friday.

Not since 1860, when the United States’ union was fraying over the issue of slavery, has the lower chamber of Congress voted so many times to pick a Speaker. Back then it took 44 rounds of ballots.

A group of 20 hard-line Republican lawmakers are refusing to give Mr McCarthy the necessary 218 votes.

The rebels are sceptical of the California congressman’s conservative bona fides, despite his endorsement from former President Donald Trump.

One of the dissidents, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, told the BBC he simply does not trust Mr McCarthy.

The congressman said Mr McCarthy’s team had threatened political retaliation against them if they did not fall in line, in the weeks leading up this deadlock.

“We were going to be thrown off committees,” Mr Norman said. “We’re going to lose every privilege we had.

“And we’d basically told them, ‘If we can’t ask questions, if we can’t vet out the most powerful person that we’re getting ready to put in office, then we’re out.'”

Meanwhile, the minority Democrats continued to vote in unison for their leader, New York’s Hakeem Jeffries, the first black person ever to lead a party in Congress. But it seems unlikely that he could win over six Republican defectors to become Speaker.

Lawmakers in the sharply divided chamber will reconvene at noon (17:00 GMT) on Friday, the second anniversary of a riot by Trump supporters at the US Capitol.

Despite the holdouts, Mr McCarthy – who has served as the top House Republican since 2019 – has won support from more than 200 Republicans, over 90% of his caucus. They are growing restless as their agenda stalls.

“I’m very worried about it and I’m on the intelligence committee,” said Pennsylvania Republican Brian Fitzpatrick. He added that he and the other committee members are not able to received classified briefings until lawmakers are sworn in.

Rules do not require the speaker to be a member of the House, and on Thursday, Florida Republican rebel Matt Gaetz cast a protest ballot for Mr Trump to serve in the role.

“This ends in one of two ways: either Kevin McCarthy withdraws from the race or we construct a straitjacket that he is unwilling to evade,” he said.

Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert nominated a lawmaker from Oklahoma, telling her colleagues to move past Mr McCarthy.

“It is not happening,” she said, adding that Republicans “need to get to a point where we start evaluating what life after Kevin McCarthy looks like”.

Mr McCarthy has offered a number of concessions to the rebels, including a seat on the influential rules committee, which sets the terms for debate on legislation in the chamber. He also agreed to lower the threshold for triggering a vote on whether to unseat the Speaker, to only one House member.

During Thursday’s eight-hour session, he was seen huddling with aides and having animated one-on-one talks with colleagues.

The Speaker of the House is the second in line to the presidency, after Vice-President Kamala Harris. They set the agenda in the House, and no legislative business can be conducted there without them.

In November, Republicans won the House by a slender margin of 222 to 212 in the 435-seat chamber. Democrats retained control of the Senate.

The book outlines grievances and bitterness in the Royal Family, such as a claim he and Prince William urged their father not to marry Camilla.

But one of the most striking claims from Harry, first reported by the Guardian newspaper, was how he was physically attacked by his brother.

Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace have both said they will not comment.

BBC News has obtained a copy of Spare in Spain and is translating it.

The Guardian obtained a copy of the book and published an extract in the early hours of Thursday.

The Sun newspaper and others also obtained a Spanish version after it was published in Spain ahead of its official release date – which is on 10 January.

Further allegations from the book have been made public since the Guardian’s first article.

Among them are Harry’s claim that William and Catherine, now the Prince and Princess of Wales, laughed after seeing him dressed in a Nazi uniform for a party.

There are also accounts of Harry’s drug-taking and experiences as an Army helicopter pilot in the Afghanistan conflict.

Reconciliation and compromise are not on the agenda, at least according to the leaked extracts. So far there is a tone of unresolved grief, grievance and accusation in Harry’s claims.

It is intensely personal too, about his closest family, brother, step-mother, sister-in-law, father. There is an angry cloud hanging over these claims and it is going to be impossible for that to be ignored the next time Harry is seen with the Royal Family.

The coronation is only a few months away and the run-up could become a will-he, won’t-he come story about Harry.

These are some of the key claims and revelations from the book:

Harry writes that he and William begged their father not to marry Camilla, now Queen Consort, over fears she would be their wicked stepmother, the Sun has reported.

The Sun reports that Harry claims he and his brother had separate meetings with Camilla before she officially joined the family.

Harry alleges that he pondered whether she would one day be his “wicked stepmother”, but that he and his brother were willing to forgive her in “their hearts” if she could make King Charles happy.

There is no detail given on when the meeting took place or how old Harry was at the time.

Harry describes how his sadness over the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, led to him seeking help from a woman who “claimed to have ‘powers”.

“Your mother says that you are living the life that she couldn’t live,” Harry says the woman told him. “You’re living the life she wanted for you.”

Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 when Harry was 12.

Harry’s account of a conversation he says he had with his late mother is short, the Guardian says. There is also no detail on where or when the meeting with the woman took place.

Harry claims his brother grabbed his collar, ripped his necklace and knocked him to the floor at his London cottage.

The book sets out an argument between the pair, which Harry claims was sparked by comments made by William about Meghan.

Harry writes that his brother was critical of Meghan with William describing her as “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.

The Duke of Sussex said that his brother was “parrot[ing] the press narrative” as the confrontation escalated, according to the Guardian.

Harry is said to describe what happened next, including an alleged physical altercation.

“He set down [a glass of] water, called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast.

“He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor.

“I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.”

The memoir also claims William and Catherine laughed when Harry returned home dressed in a Nazi uniform before a fancy dress party in 2005.

Harry says he was debating costumes for the event and called on the pair to ask their opinions, he had a pilot’s uniform and a Nazi outfit to choose from. He details it in his memoir:

“I called Will and Kate and asked them what they thought.”

“Nazi uniform, they said.”

“I rented it, along with a ridiculous moustache, and returned home.”

“Willy and Kate were laughing. It was even worst that Willy’s leopard [cat] costume. Much more ridiculous.”

Harry was 20 when the Sun published a front page photo of him dressed in the uniform at a costume party with a “Native and Colonial” theme.

Harry says he was offered a line of cocaine at someone’s house when he was 17 and admits taking the drug on several other occasions, although he did not enjoy it.

He writes: “It wasn’t much fun and it did not make me feel especially happy as it seemed to do to everyone else, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective.

“I was a 17-year-old boy ready to try anything that altered the pre-established order.”

He also recounts smoking cannabis in a bathroom at Eton College while a pupil, as the Thames Valley Police officers serving as his bodyguards patrolled the exterior of the building.

“You don’t know me Harold. And I don’t know you,” is what Harry claims William said to him as he was about to start school at Eton College.

Harry says his brother explained to him “that during his first two years there, Eton had been a sanctuary,”.

“That was without the burden of a little brother who would bother him with questions or stick his nose in his social circle,” Harry says.

He says he told William “not to worry”. “I will forget I know you”, is what he claims to have said to his brother.

While serving as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan in 2012-13, Harry says he participated in six missions, all of which involved deaths, but saw them as justifiable.

“It wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it leave me ashamed,” he writes. “When I found myself plunged in the heat and confusion of combat I didn’t think of those 25 as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Bad people eliminated before they could kill good people.”

Harry claims the royal household dragged its feet over the date and venue for his wedding with Meghan.

He says when he consulted his brother about the possibility of marrying in Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s Cathedral, William said it was not possible because they had been the venues for the weddings of Charles and Diana and William and Catherine, respectively.

William instead suggested a village chapel near their father’s Highgrove House home in the Cotswolds, says Harry.

Harry and Meghan tied the knot at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in May 2018.

“By the end of the summer of 2013, I was going through a bad moment, alternating between periods of debilitating lethargy and terrifying panic attacks,” Harry writes in his memoir.

Describing his duties at the time, from giving speeches to doing interviews, Harry says he found himself “incapable of performing these basic functions”.

Shortly before speeches, his body would be covered in sweat and putting on his suit was the trigger, when the panic began, he says.

“By the time I put on my blazer and tied my shoes, sweat would be running on my cheeks and back”.