No: 17264 Friday, June 23, 2017

13

I n t e r n a t i o n a l

FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 2017

LONDON:  Around 600 tower blocks in England have similar

cladding to the burnt-out Grenfell Tower, Downing Street said yes-

terday, while combustible cladding has been found on at least

three public housing blocks. Prime Minister Theresa May said the

government had arranged to test cladding on “all relevant tower

blocks” following the deadly June 14 inferno, with some failing the

tests. Meanwhile English local authorities estimate that 600 high-

rise buildings have used similar cladding to the Grenfell Tower in

west London.

The panels have been widely blamed for the rapid spread of the

fire which consumed the 24-storey public housing block, leaving 79

people presumed dead. Downing Street declined to specify whether

the cladding on the tower block was combustible or not, citing an

ongoing investigation. “We cannot and will not ask people to live in

unsafe homes,” May said in a statement to parliament. —AFP

Cladding fears spread after London fire disaster

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14

I n t e r n a t i o n a l

FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 2017

CHICAGO:  Otto Warmbier, the US col-

lege student imprisoned for more than

a year by North Korea and sent back

home in a coma that proved fatal,

buried yesterday in his home state of

Ohio. Sentenced to hard labor for steal-

ing a political poster from a North

Korean hotel, the 22-year-old Warmbier

was medically evacuated in a coma last

week after nearly 18 months in captivi-

ty. Suffering from severe brain damage,

he died Monday in his hometown of

Cincinnati, Ohio. President Donald

Trump slammed Warmbier’s detention

and eventual death as “a total disgrace.”

Warmbier’s funeral will be held at

Wyoming High School-located in the

city of Wyoming, a suburb of

Cincinnati-from which he graduated in

2013. He will then be buried in

Cincinnati’s Oak Hill Cemetery. Blue

and white ribbons, the colors of the

high school, were still tied to trees in

the city of about 8,000 to show of sup-

port for Warmbier’s family after Otto’s

recent return. Warmbier’s father Fred

earlier told reporters that his son was

lured to North Korea, as other US

tourists have been, by tour groups run

out of China.

“Otto’s a young, thrill-seeking, great

kid who was going to be in that part of

the world for a college experience and

said, ‘Hey, I’ve heard some friends who

have done this. I would like to do this.’

So, we agreed to let him do that,” Fred

Warmbier said. “They lure Americans,

and then they take them hostage and

then they do things to them, and that’s

what happened to my son,” he added.

Warmbier was arrested as he was about

to leave North Korea and sentenced in

March 2016 to 15 years of hard labor.

Soon after his family heard nothing

more about his fate. Then, just before

he was to be medically evacuated, the

North Korean regime revealed that

Warmbier had been in a coma for much

of his imprisonment. 

Warm, engaging, brilliant

Warmbier died Monday of severe

brain damage, which doctors said was

likely due to cardiopulmonary arrest.

Medical tests did not show what pre-

cipitated his injuries, but also found no

evidence of the botulism infection that

North Korea claimed was the cause of

his coma. The Hamilton County

Coroner’s office did not perform an

autopsy at the request of the Warmbier

family. Warmbier’s friends and relatives

described him as a bright young man

beloved in his community.

“He just lived life with such a zest

and a passion that I haven’t really ever

experienced in somebody before,”

Warmbier’s childhood friend Chris

Colloton told the Cincinnati Inquirer

newspaper. “He was the best guy I

knew. I still know him - I’m just going to

miss him so much,” the 22-year-old

said. In a statement announcing his

death, Warmbier’s family described him

as “a warm, engaging, brilliant young

man whose curiosity and enthusiasm

for life knew no bounds.”

“You can tell from the outpouring of

emotion from the communities that he

touched-Wyoming, Ohio and the

University of Virginia to name just two-

that the love for Otto went well beyond

his immediate family,” the statement

said.  Following Warmbier’s death, the

tour group that arranged his trip said it

would no longer take Americans to

North Korea. “Now, the assessment of

risk for Americans visiting North Korea

has become too high,” said the China-

based Young Pioneer Tours. —AFP

Funeral to be held for US college

student imprisoned by N Korea

Trump slams Warmbier’s detention as ‘total disgrace’

WYOMING: Mourners are seen arriving at Wyoming High School in Wyoming, Ohio to attend the funeral for

Otto Warmbier. —AFP

CHICAGO: A knife attack on a Michigan airport police officer on

Wednesday by a man yelling “Allahu Akbar” is being investigated as

an act of terrorism, the FBI said. The stabbing at Bishop International

Airport, in the city of Flint, comes amid a wave of jihadist-inspired

attacks in Europe, most recently a foiled bomb assault at a train sta-

tion in Belgium. US officials identified the suspected assailant, who

is in custody and cooperating with investigators, as a 49-year-old

Canadian resident from Quebec named Amor Ftouhi.

“We’re investigating this incident today as an act of terrorism,”

FBI special agent David Gelios told a news conference, detailing

Ftouhi’s actions on Wednesday morning based on security camera

footage. Ftouhi was seen lingering with luggage around the air-

port’s non-secured public areas, including at a second-floor restau-

rant and a bathroom, before pulling out a 12-inch serrated-blade

knife, yelling “Allahu Akbar”-”God is greatest” in Arabic —  and

stabbing an officer in the neck, police said. 

During the attack, Ftouhi “referenced killings in Syria, Iraq, and

Afghanistan,” according to a press release from the US Attorney’s

Office for the Eastern District of Michigan. He also expressed

“hatred for the United States” during questioning in custody,

Gelios said. “He was cooperative and has talked to us about what

his motivations were,” he added.  The injured officer was identi-

fied as Jeff Neville, a 16-year airport police force veteran. Neville

wrestled Ftouhi to the ground during the assault until others

could arrest him, police said. He was hospitalized and is in a stable

condition. —AFP

FBI probing Michigan airport 

stabbing as ‘act of terrorism’

Illegal drugs 

market 

thriving: UN

VIENNA:  The global narcotics market is “thriving”, with pro-

duction of cocaine and opium soaring and opioids wreaking

havoc, the UN crime and drugs agency said yesterday in a

gloomy annual assessment. “As the report... clearly shows,

there is much work to be done to confront the many harms

inflicted by drugs, to health, development, peace and security,

in all regions of the world,” said Yury Fedotov, head of the

Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which is based in Vienna.

He said that while “the international community is

equipped to respond swiftly... there remains an enormous

need for capacity-building and technical assistance, and fund-

ing continues to fall short of political commitments.” About

29.5 million people worldwide, or 0.6 percent of the adult

population, suffered from drug use disorders in 2015, with at

least 190,000 mostly avoidable deaths annually, mainly from

opioids. In 2016, global production of opium-extracted from

poppy resin and refined to make heroin-rocketed by a third,

mostly because of bumper harvests in Afghanistan, the report

said, helping fund Taliban insurgents. This rise, aided by bet-

ter weather, came despite a decade of international efforts to

stabilize the country and billions of dollars to persuade

Afghan farmers to grow other crops. But the UNODC said

global opium production was 20 percent lower than at its

peak in 2014, and close to the average of the past five years.

Regarding cocaine, data on production, trafficking-a

record volume was seized in 2015 — and use, including in

Europe and North America, point to overall growth in the

global market, the agency said. Quantities intercepted in

Asia leapt 40 percent in 2015. It pointed to the haul of 500

kilograms in Djibouti this year, the biggest in East Africa

since 2004, probably en route to Asia. Following a long-term

decline, cultivation of coca, the raw material for cocaine,

shot up 30 percent over 2013-15, mainly due to Colombia,

the world’s biggest producer.

Opioid epidemic 

But opioids, which include heroin as well as prescription

painkillers like fentanyl and illegal counterfeits, remain by far

the “most harmful” drugs in health terms, the UNODC said. In

the United States, overdose deaths, most of them from opi-

oids, more than tripled to 52,404 in 2015 from 16,849 in 1999,

the report said. The report also found a “major geographical

shift” in the methamphetamine market over the last five years.

The amount seized in 2015 saw East and Southeast Asia

leapfrog North America into first place for the first time. “Of

particular note is the large increase in methamphetamine

seizures in China,” it said.  The agency also noted that an alter-

native branch of the “Balkan route” for heroin and morphine,

which accounts for 40 percent of seizures, appears to be open-

ing up through the Caucasus. This may reflect efforts to stop

the flow of migrants through the Balkans, with the amount of

drugs seized falling in Greece and Turkey but rising sharply in

Armenia and Azerbaijan. In addition, it said that the business

models of organized crime gangs are constantly changing and

that they are using new technologies such as the “darknet” to

sell drugs. The darknet, where anonymity software and encryp-

tion hide activities and allow transactions in crypto-currencies

like Bitcoin, accounts for a “small percentage” of drug sales but

it is “growing rapidly,” the report said. —AFP

MONTREAL: Montreal Police guard the front of the

four storeys building in Montreal where Amor

Ftouhi, who is suspected of stabbing a Michigan air-

port police officer, lived before traveling to the US

earlier this month. —AFP

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