Sub builder denies killing reporter
STOCKHOLM • An eccentric Danish inventor who is being held over the grisly death of a Swedish reporter - whose headless torso was found at sea - has denied killing her and mutilating her body, police said yesterday.
Peter Madsen, 46, who is being held on suspicion of killing 30-year-old Kim Wall, is in formal custody on suspicion of "negligent manslaughter". He claimed Ms Wall died in an accident on board a submarine he built and he subsequently dumped her body in the sea south of Copenhagen.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
1st Florida execution since court override
MIAMI • Florida has performed its first execution since the US Supreme Court struck down its death penalty more than 18 months ago, using a drug never before used for a lethal injection.
Despite the court's override, a law was signed earlier this year, requiring a unanimous jury decision to impose a death sentence.
Mark Asay, 53, is believed to be the first white person Florida has executed for killing a black person in the modern era. The lethal injection on Thursday came three decades after a double killing that Asay committed out of racial hatred.
WASHINGTON POST
'No info to tie imam to Barcelona van attack'
MADRID • A Belgian policeman told a Catalan colleague last year that an imam thought to have instigated last week's Barcelona attack was a suspicious person but no information was found then to tie him to Islamist militancy, a Catalan government source said.
Police in the north-east Spanish region of Catalonia are coming under growing criticism over the van attack that killed 13 people. Two others were killed during the van driver's getaway and in a separate attack farther down the coast.
Some Spanish media accused the Catalan police on Thursday of failing to properly investigate the Moroccan imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty.
REUTERS
UN calls for pause in fighting in Raqqa
GENEVA • The United Nations called on Thursday for a pause in fighting against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Syrian city of Raqqa to help civilians escape increasingly deadly battles.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters backed by US-led coalition warplanes, has retaken 60 per cent of Raqqa from the extremists, but up to 25,000 civilians remain trapped in ISIS areas, according to UN estimates.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
