PARIS, Mar 22:  Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi said security “failures” had helped facilitate the deadly attack on the country’s national museum, according to an interview with French media.
“There were failures” which meant that “the police and intelligence were not systematic enough to ensure the safety of the museum”, Essebsi told the weekly Paris Match yesterday.
Twenty-one people, all but one of them foreign tourists, were killed when two gunmen stormed the National Bardo Museum in the capital Tunis on Wednesday, in an attack claimed by Islamic State jihadists.
Essebsi however stressed that the country’s security forces “responded very effectively to quickly put an end to the attack at the Bardo, certainly preventing dozens more deaths if the terrorists had been able to set off their suicide belts”, he was quoted as saying on the Paris Match website.
A senior Tunisian politician on Friday said the guards supposed to be protecting the museum and the nearby parliament were having coffee at the time of the assault.
“I found out there were only four policemen on security duty around the parliament (compound), two of whom were at the cafe. The third was having a snack and the fourth hadn’t turned up,” deputy speaker Abdelfattah Mourou told AFP. (AGENCIES)
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HOUSTON, Mar 22:  A 62-year-old machete-wielding man, who attacked security staff at New Orleans international airport in the US before being shot multiple times by authorities has died from his wounds, police said.
Richard White was declared dead at 4:02 PM yesterday, a spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office said.
Investigators had hoped to question White to find out what set off his rampage, but he appeared to have died before law enforcement officials were able to speak to him.
Earlier yesterday, officials released new details about the attack, including the fact that they believed White was mentally ill. He had brought six Molotov cocktails, a barbecue lighter and smoke bombs into the airport, they said.
White sprayed a female Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer with a can of wasp spray after the officer challenged him in the security line on Friday. He then pulled a machete out of his pants and began swinging it and sprayed a second TSA officer, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said.
A law enforcement officer shot White after he approached the security checkpoint just before 8 PM local time, officials added. One of those bullets also struck the female TSA officer in the arm.
The officials told reporters that he had earlier left a bag of explosives inside the airport concourse.
A bomb squad found smoke bombs inside his car as well, along with tanks of acetylene, Freon and oxygen, Normand said.
The motive for the attack was unclear, Sheriff Normand said. He added that White’s wife and children had been “very cooperative” and had told the authorities that there was a “mental illness component” to his behaviour.
White was taken to a local hospital, where he underwent surgery. He is a taxi driver who recently received his chauffeur’s license.
However, the sheriff said officials had not learned of any past episodes that might have hinted at an outburst of violence like the one Friday.
He praised the actions of the officers at the scene on Friday night and expressed relief that things had not turned out far worse. (PTI)

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 22:  The UN Security Council has called for an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Yemen.
The UN spokesperson’s office in an email said the council will hold a closed session today afternoon at 3 pm (1900 GMT) for consultations on Yemen.
Yesterday, Yemen’s Shiite rebels issued a call to arms to battle forces loyal to the country’s embattled president.US troops were evacuating a southern air base crucial to America’s drone strike program after al-Qaida militants seized a nearby city.
The turmoil comes as Yemen battles al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the target of the drone program, and faces a purported affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group that claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings killing at least 137 people Friday. (AGENCIES)

BEIRUT, Mar 22:  Syria’s exiled opposition has announced that it had declined an invitation from Russia to attend peace talks in Moscow with representatives of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
A Russian foreign ministry spokesman told AFP this week Syrian government and opposition representatives would meet for peace talks in Moscow on April 6.
But the exiled Syrian National Coalition said yesterday that it had discussed the invitation during a meeting of its members in Istanbul and “decided not to take part in the Moscow 2” talks.
Despite this, a coalition source told AFP the invitation was in itself “a major development” because it indicated that key Assad ally Russia “recognises the Coalition”.
“There is no reason to attend the meeting in Moscow, especially when we see attempts on the part of the regime’s allies. Including Russia and Iran to place Assad centre-stage again,” Anas al-Abdo told AFP, reiterating rejection of “any political transition that would include Assad”.
The National Coalition is the key political representative of Syria’s opposition and is officially recognised by much of the international community.
It has participated in several rounds of failed peace talks, including two in Geneva, and insists that Assad must step down.
In January, Russia hosted talks aimed at finding a solution to the four-year-old conflict in Syria that was not attended by the National Coalition.
A domestic opposition group tolerated by Assad’s government did take part, however, alongside an official Syrian delegation, but the discussions ended with no concrete results.
Earlier this month Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said members of the National Coalition were “considering coming to Moscow” for the next meeting.
But Abdo on Saturday expressed concern at what he saw as an attempt to override what was said in Geneva.
He said the Coalition had decided to boycott the Moscow talks because of “the lack of a clear agenda, the absence a clear point of reference for anything that might be decided and the Coalition’s refusal to engage in dialogue with the regime if this is not part of a transition process”.
More than 215,000 people have been killed since the conflict began, nearly a third of them civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. (AGENCIES)

COLOMBO, Mar 22:  As many as 54 Indian fishermen have been arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy for allegedly poaching in island’s waters off the coast of Kankesanturai and Talaimannar in the north.
Sri Lankan Naval spokesman Commander Indika Silva said that 21 fishermen were arrested and five boats were seized at Kankesanturai while the rest of them on another five boats were arrested at Talaimannar last night.
They were being brought to respective fisheries inspection offices for further action, Silva said.
The arrests came ahead of announcement of the dates for the direct fisher community talks between India and Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka had released some 86 Indian fishermen last week as a goodwill gesture towards the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the first Indian leader to visit Sri Lanka since 1987. (PTI)

WASHINGTON, Mar 22:  The United States said it will evacuate its staff from Yemen for security reasons, one day after several suicide bombings claimed by the Islamic State group killed 142 people in Sanaa.
“Due to the deteriorating security situation in Yemen, the US government has temporarily relocated its remaining personnel out of Yemen,” State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement.
Violence-wracked Yemen is teetering on the brink of civil war, with Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels controlling the north and the south is dominated by allies of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled house arrest in Sanaa to Aden in February.
The United Nation Security Council said it would hold an emergency meeting Sunday on the Yemen crisis, while US troops were earlier evacuated from a key airbase in the south.
The United States said Hadi was informed of its decision and that Washington “will continue to engage the Yemeni people and the international community to strongly support Yemen’s political transition.”
“We also continue to actively monitor terrorist threats emanating from Yemen and have capabilities postured in the area to address them,” Rathke said.
Yemen has been torn by unrest since ex-strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down in early 2012 after a year-long popular uprising against him, with powerful armed groups sidelining the government since. (AGENCIES)

SEOUL, Mar 22:  North Korea’s military today threatened to blow up balloons that South Korean activists plan to send over the heavily-militarised border carrying 10,000 DVDs of the satirical Hollywood film “The Interview”.
Activists plan to launch copies of the film — a comedy about a fictional CIA plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un — as well as 500,000 propaganda leaflets across the border on or around March 26.
Pyongyang has long condemned such balloon launches and threatened retaliation, and local residents have complained the activists are putting their lives at risk by making them potential targets.
“All the firepower strike means of the frontline units of the (Korean People’s Army) will launch without prior warning… To blow up balloons,” the North’s frontline military units said in a notice to the South.
It said the launch would constitute “the gravest politically-motivated provocation” against North Korea and “a de facto declaration of a war”, according to Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The move is aimed at “deliberately escalating tension on the Korean peninsula where the situation has reached the brink of a war due to… Joint war rehearsals” by South Korea and the United States, it said.
The South’s military said it would retaliate if the North opens fire on its territory.
But the North’s notice warned that any challenge to its “just physical countermeasures” will trigger “merciless retaliatory strikes”.
South Koreans living near the border are “recommended to evacuate in advance for their safety” if the balloons are launched, it said.
The launch will mark the five-year anniversary of the sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010, with the loss of 46 sailors. The South pinned the blame on the North and effectively froze trade and investment ties.
The warning came even after South Korea’s Unification Ministry on Friday vowed to take steps preventing the launch in order to protect local residents, saying there is a “limit” to freedom of expression.
Seoul insists the activists have a democratic right to carry out such launches, but has appealed for restraint to avoid overly provoking the North
South Korean police have occasionally prevented the launches at times of high cross-border tensions, citing the possible dangers posed to local residents.
The activists remained tight-lipped about the exact location and time for the launch. (AGENCIES)