Iranians turn out in large numbers for presidential election
Iranians turn out in large numbers for presidential election
TEHRAN, Iran
Millions of Iranians voted late into the night Friday to decide whether incumbent President Hassan Rouhani deserves another four years in office after securing a landmark nuclear deal, or if the sluggish economy demands a new hard-line leader who could return the country to a more confrontational path with the West.
The Islamic Republic’s first presidential election since the 2015 nuclear accord drew surprisingly large numbers of voters to polling stations, with some reporting waiting in line for hours to cast their votes. Election officials extended voting hours at least three times to accommodate the crowds.
Four candidates remain in the race. But for most voters only two mattered, both of them clerics with very different views for the country’s future: Rouhani and hard-line law professor and former prosecutor Ebrahim Raisi.
Police seek gun used in child killing as 3 teens charged
JACKSON, Miss.
Authorities on Friday sought the gun used in the killing of a 6-year-old Mississippi boy, as three jailed teenagers faced murder charges that could bring the death penalty.
Madison County District Attorney Michael Guest said Friday that authorities are looking for the weapon but are confident they have enough evidence against the three teen suspects to proceed without it.
Officials say the teens killed Kingston Frazier after stealing his mother’s car from a supermarket parking lot after 1 a.m. Thursday.
Charged with capital murder were 19-year-old Byron McBride of Pickens, 17-year old D’Allen Washington of Ridgeland and 17-year-old Dwan Wakefield of Ridgeland. Each is set for an initial court appearance Monday morning and until then is jailed without bail in Madison County.
In New Orleans, last Confederate monument gone
NEW ORLEANS
They were among the city’s oldest landmarks, as cemented to the landscape of New Orleans as the Superdome and St. Louis Cathedral: a stone obelisk heralding white supremacy and three statues of Confederate stalwarts.
But after decades standing sentinel over this Southern city, the Confederate monuments are gone, amid a controversy that at times hearkened back to the divisiveness of the Civil War they commemorated.
The last of the monuments – a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee facing defiantly north with his arms crossed – was lifted by a crane from its pedestal late Friday.
N. Korea vows to strengthen nukes
UNITED NATIONS
The U.S. defense chief warned Friday that a military solution to the standoff with North Korea would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale,” while the North vowed to rapidly strengthen its nuclear-strike capability as long as it faces a “hostile” U.S. policy.
North Korea tested a longer-range missile last weekend, which experts say was a significant advance for a weapons program that aims at having a nuclear-tipped missile that can strike America. The test triggered a new U.S.-backed push for a fresh round of U.N. sanctions against the North.
At the United Nations, North Korea’s deputy ambassador, Kim In Ryong, was defiant. He said North Korea would never abandon its “nuclear deterrence for self-defense and pre-emptive strike capability” even if the U.S. ratchets up sanctions and pressure “to the utmost.”
Associated Press