Peacekeepers killed in Sudan’s Darfur

Peacekeepers killed in Sudan’s Darfur

CAIRO

Gunmen ambushed a United Nations peacekeeping team Saturday in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, killing seven Tanzanians and wounding another 17 people in the deadliest single attack on the international force in the country, U.N. officials said.

The assault by a large group of gunmen included sustained heavy fire from machine guns and possibly rocket-propelled grenades, targeting the force some 15 miles west of the town of Khor Abeche, U.N. forces spokesman Chris Cycmanick said. Reinforcements later arrived to rescue the wounded, who included two female police advisers, the force said in a statement.

A statement late Saturday on behalf of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon identified the dead as all being from Tanzania. About 40 countries have contributed military personnel or police to the peacekeeping force.

Russia: Snowden has not applied for asylum yet

MOSCOW

As of Saturday, Edward Snowden had not yet formally applied for political asylum in Russia, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

“We are not in contact with Edward Snowden,” Lavrov said in televised remarks during a visit to Kyrgyzstan. “Russian legislation provides for a certain procedure, the first step in which is an official application to the Federal Migration Service.”

On Friday, Snowden, the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor who revealed Washington’s secret efforts to track international communications, summoned Russian human-rights activists and lawyers to Sheremetyevo International Airport here to give him assistance in gaining asylum in Russia.

The White House reacted strongly to the meeting, accusing the Russian government of providing Snowden with a platform to spew propaganda despite its previous declarations of neutrality.

Twitter gives data to France

PARIS

Twitter has given French authorities information that can help identify the authors of a series of racist and anti-Semitic tweets that carried French hashtags, and the social-media site also has agreed to work with a Jewish student group that sued for the data on other ways to fight hate speech.

The president of the Union of Jewish Students of France said Saturday that his organization, known as UEJF, was withdrawing a $50 million lawsuit against San Francisco-based Twitter Inc., which was originally filed as a means to pressure the company to comply and “end Twitter’s indifference.”

“We got Twitter to respect the laws of our country,” Jonathan Hayoun said in a telephone interview. Propagating racial and anti-Semitic hatred is against French law.

Associated Press