World
Pro-Palestinian protesters paralyse roads in US cities over Israel attacks
Demonstrators block highways and shut down travel in Illinois, California, New York and the Pacific Northwest.
Pro-Palestinian protesters have blocked major roads in the states of Illinois, California, New York and the Pacific Northwest, temporarily preventing travel into some of the United States’s most heavily used airports, onto the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges and along a busy West Coast highway.
In Chicago, protesters linked arms and blocked lanes of Interstate 190 leading into O’Hare International Airport at about 7am (12:00 GMT) on Monday in a demonstration they said was part of a global “economic blockade to free Palestine”, according to Rifqa Falaneh, one of the organisers.
Protesters say they chose O’Hare in part because it is one of the largest airports in the US. Dozens were arrested, according to Falaneh. Chicago police said that “multiple people” were taken into custody after a protest where people obstructed traffic but did not provide a detailed count.
In California, demonstrators blocked lanes on the northbound I-880 in Oakland by chaining themselves to barrels, while a separate group of protesters with banners disrupted traffic on the southbound lanes. On the Golden Gate Bridge, protesters impeded traffic in both directions, displaying a banner that read, “Stop the world for Gaza.”
In Eugene, Oregon, protesters blocked Interstate 5, shutting down traffic on the major highway for about 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, on the East Coast, protesters marching into Brooklyn blocked Manhattan-bound traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Antiwar protesters have held demonstrations in Chicago nearly every day since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, triggered an Israeli assault on Gaza that has killed more than 33,700 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
O’Hare warned travellers on social platform X to find alternative ways to get to the airport, with car travel “substantially delayed this morning due to protest activity”.
Some travellers stuck in standstill traffic left their cars and walked the final leg to the airport along the freeway, trailing their luggage behind them.
“This was an inconvenience,” Madeline Hannan from suburban Chicago said in a telephone interview as she was heading to Florida. “But in the grand scheme of things going on overseas, it’s a minor inconvenience.”
Inbound traffic towards O’Hare resumed at about 9am (14:00 GMT).
Arrests and calls for Gaza ceasefire
Near Seattle, the Washington State Department of Transportation said a demonstration closed the main road to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Social media posts showed people holding a banner and waving Palestinian flags while standing on the highway, which reopened about three hours later.
About 20 protesters were arrested at the Golden Gate Bridge demonstration and traffic resumed shortly after noon, according to the California Highway Patrol. The agency said officers were making arrests at two points on the highway, including one spot where roughly 300 protesters refused orders to disperse.
“Attempting to block or shut down a freeway or state highway to protest is unlawful, dangerous, and prevents motorists from safely reaching their destinations,” the agency said in a statement.
Oregon State Police said 52 protesters were arrested for disorderly conduct following the Interstate 5 protest in Eugene, Oregon, about 177km (110 miles) south of Portland. Six vehicles were towed from the scene.
New York Police made numerous arrests, saying 150 protesters were initially involved in the march at about 3:15 pm (19:15 GMT) but that the crowd grew quickly.
In San Antonio, protesters holding Palestinian flags obstructed both sides of the Valero Energy Company headquarters, causing traffic congestion on the city’s northwest side.
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Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton, who brought victims to pig farm, is dead after prison assault
Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton, who took female victims to his pig farm during a crime spree near Vancouver in the late 1990s and early 2000s, has died after being assaulted in prison, authorities said Friday. He was 74.
The Correctional Service of Canada said in statement that Pickton, an inmate of Port-Cartier Institution in the province of Quebec, died in hospital following injuries in the May 19 assault involving another inmate. He was one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers and his case made international headlines.
A CANADIAN SERIAL KILLER WHO BROUGHT VICTIMS TO A PIG FARM IS HOSPITALIZED AFTER A PRISON ASSAULT
A 51-year-old inmate was in custody for the assault on Pickton, police spokesman Hugues Beaulieu said earlier this month.
Robert “Willie” Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2007, with the maximum parole ineligibility period of 25 years, after being charged with the murders of 26 women.
Police began searching the Pickton farm in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam more than 22 years ago in what would be a years-long investigation into the disappearances of dozens of women from Vancouver’s seediest streets, sex workers and drug addicts abandoned on the margins of society.
The remains or DNA of 33 women were found on the farm. Pickton once bragged to an undercover police officer that he killed a total of 49 women.
During his trial, prosecution witness Andrew Bellwood said Pickton told him how he strangled his victims and fed their remains to his pigs. Health officials once issued a tainted meat advisory to neighbors who might have bought pork from Pickton’s farm, concerned the meat might have contained human remains.
Cynthia Cardinal, whose sister Georgina Papin was murdered by Pickton, said Pickton’s death means she can finally move on from her sister’s murder.
“This is gonna bring healing for, I won’t say all families, I’ll just say most of the families,” she said. “I’m like — wow, finally. I can actually move on and heal and I can put this behind me.”
Vancouver police were criticized for not taking the cases seriously because many of the missing were sex workers or drug users.
Canada’s correctional service said it was conducting an investigation into the attack on Pickton.
“The investigation will examine all of the facts and circumstances surrounding the assault, including whether policies and protocols were followed,” the service said in the statement. “We are mindful that this offender’s case has had a devastating impact on communities in British Columbia and across the country, including Indigenous peoples, victims and their families. Our thoughts are with them.”
Pickton’s confirmed victims were six: Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann Wolfe, Papin and Marnie Frey.
“Earlier today, I was made aware of the death of an inmate at Port-Cartier Institution,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in statement. “At this time, my thoughts are with the families of the victims of this individual’s heinous crimes.”
At the time of Pickton’s sentencing, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice James Williams said it was a “rare case that properly warrants the maximum period of parole ineligibility available to the court.”
World
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele cements power as he begins second term
After February landslide win, 42-year-old set to govern for another five years with near-total control of parliament and other state institutions.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is set to be sworn in for a second term, riding on a wave of popularity that has helped him consolidate his power and influence in the country.
The 42-year-old, who unapologetically describes himself as a “cool dictator”, was re-elected in February with 85 percent of the vote. He is set to govern for another five years with near-total control of parliament and other state institutions.
The former publicist and mayor will take the oath of office at the National Palace in the capital, San Salvador, on Saturday.
The ceremony is due to be attended by dignitaries including Spanish King Felipe VI and Argentinian President Javier Milei, with whom Bukele shares an admiration for former United States President Donald Trump, whose son and namesake is also attending the event.
On Friday, inauguration preparations were disrupted by reports that police thwarted a plot to detonate explosives at locations across the country.
Bukele enjoys sky-high approval ratings due to his brutal crackdown on criminal gangs, credited with returning a sense of normalcy to a violence-fatigued society.
The campaign has drawn criticism from rights groups but has made Bukele the most popular leader in Latin America, according to a regional poll.
Bukele’s New Ideas party scored a near-clean sweep in legislative elections, where it took 54 of 60 seats.
Yet experts warn his extended honeymoon with voters may be nearing its end as economic worries overtake safety concerns in the public discourse, amid high government debt and fast-rising prices for consumer goods in a country where more than a quarter of the six million population lives in poverty.
Food inflation, meanwhile, has outpaced salary increases while public debt has skyrocketed on his watch to more than $30bn, or 84 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Gangs as a ‘cancer’
Bukele will have even more power in his second term after the legislative assembly approved a reform that will make it easier for him to push through constitutional changes.
The president has laughed off criticism of authoritarian tendencies, but he was only able to seek re-election after a loyalist Supreme Court ruling allowed him to bypass a constitutional ban on successive terms.
“What he has demonstrated is that the law is irrelevant and that he can do whatever he wants, how he wants,” public policy expert Carlos Carcach told AFP news agency, describing Bukele as an “all-powerful” president.
With his preferred getup of jeans and a baseball cap, millennial Bukele came to power in 2019 promising to crush the country’s gangs, to which he attributes some 120,000 murders over three decades – more than the 75,000 lives lost in El Salvador’s civil war from 1980 to 1992.
During Bukele’s first term, authorities rounded up more than 80,000 presumed gangsters under a state of emergency in place since March 2022 that allows for arrest without a warrant.
His government also built the largest prison in Latin America to hold them.
The result, Bukele has boasted, has been turning “the murder capital of the world, the world’s most dangerous country, into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere”.
But it has come at a cost.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported the killing and torture of detainees, and thousands of innocent people – including minors – among those arrested.
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