Student held over racist killing threat

UNITED STATES: A student at Missouri University was arrested yesterday following online threats to “shoot every black person I see.”

While a search suggested that 19-year-old Hunter Park did not have any weapons, the arrest highlights racial tensions at the university. Its president Tim Wolfe quit on Monday after protests over his attitude to “appropriation,” where cultural or racial identities are adopted by others.

Bank announces 18,000 job losses

ITALY: The country’s richest bank UniCredit announced yesterday that it would cut 18,000 jobs by 2018 after making “only” €507 million (£357m) in third-quarter profits.

The profits are down 30 per cent on the same period last year, mostly due to non-recurring charges incurred abroad.

Almost 7,000 jobs will go in Italy, 6,000 at a Ukrainian firm UniCredit intends to sell and the rest in Germany and Austria.

Journalist seized by group of gunmen

LIBYA: The Libyan Centre for Press Freedom (LCPF) said yesterday a journalist has been kidnapped outside his home.

Motaz Kraif worked for Libya al-Ahrar TV and the al-Wasat newspaper, known for its hostility to Islamist politics.

The LCPF said witnesses had seen four gunmen force Mr Kraif into a vehicle on Tuesday night and drive off.

In the past three months, three journalists have received death threats, three have been assaulted and eight have been kidnapped, it said.

Satellite tracking of planes agreed

AIR SAFETY: The World Radiocommunication Conference agreed yesterday to set aside a radio frequency for satellite tracking of aircraft.

The decision was a response to the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jet last year.

Plane movements are currently monitored from the ground, leaving around 70 per cent of the world’s surface uncovered.

Aircraft will be able to send automatic signals to satellites from 2017.

Belgrade in bid to atone for massacre

SERBIA: Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said yesterday the government would send €5 million (£3.5m) to rejuvenate Srebrenica in Bosnia.

“No-one can return the brothers to their sisters, the children to their mothers, but what we can do is to look into the future, make it different,” he said, referring to the most notorious massacre of the 1990s Balkan wars when Bosnian Serbs expelled the Muslim population and killed 8,000 men and boys in cold blood.

Neonazi killer is sentenced to die

UNITED STATES: Racist killer Frazier Glenn Cross was sentenced to death in Kansas on Tuesday.

Mr Cross murdered three people, the youngest just 14, in two attacks on Jewish community centres. He intended to kill Jews, but none of his victims were Jewish. During the trial, he said: “I wanted to kill Jews, not Christians, and I regret it.”

After sentencing he performed a nazi salute and yelled: “Heil Hitler.”

Starving millions to receive food rations

ETHIOPIA: The government started distributing food rations to starving people in the north of the country yesterday.

Disaster Prevention Committee secretary Miyiku Kassa said all adults in the afflicted areas would receive 33lb of wheat and half a litre of cooking oil.

The rains failed in spring, ruining the harvest and leaving some eight million people needing aid.