Kenya cult death toll rises to 200; more than 600 reported missing
CBSN
The death toll linked to a doomsday cult in Kenya hit 201 Saturday after police exhumed 22 more bodies, most of them bearing signs of starvation, according to the coast regional commissioner. The bodies are believed to be those of followers of a pastor based in coastal Kenya, Paul Mackenzie. He's alleged to have ordered congregants to starve to death in order to meet Jesus.
More than 600 people are still missing.
Mackenzie, who was arrested last month, remains in custody. Police plan to charge him with terrorism-related offenses. Hundreds of bodies have been dug up from dozens of mass graves spread across his 800-acre property, located in the coastal county of Kilifi. Mackenzie insists that he closed his church in 2019 and moved to his property in a forested area to farm.
Collville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France — The word "hero" is overused. But if not for the courage of the few remaining D-Day survivors and their friends who fell as they launched the fight to oust Adolf Hitler's Nazi German forces from France 80 years ago, there would have been no celebrations this week in Normandy.
France's domestic intelligence agency has detained a 26-year-old Russian-Ukrainian man on suspicion of planning a violent act after he injured himself in an explosion, prosecutors said on Wednesday. The news came hours before world leaders gathered in the nation to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy.
A British-Mexican man who says he was targeted for being gay and arrested on false drug charges in Qatar has been given a suspended six-month jail sentence, a fine amounting to about $2,700, and a deportation order by a court in the Arab nation, which is a vital U.S. ally in the Middle East, according to his family and Mexican officials.
An Israeli strike early Thursday on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed more than 30 people, including 23 women and children, according to local health officials in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory. The hospital treating victims said it had received the bodies of at least "37 martyrs" from the strike, according to Agence France-Presse. But a U.N. official tells the Reuters news agency the death toll is between 35 and 45, though it still can't confirm any numbers.
Jerusalem — Thousands of Israeli nationalists marched Wednesday through east Jerusalem as authorities deployed police with tensions sky-high nearly eight months into the Gaza war. That war appeared to be intensifying in Gaza and the far-right nationalists staged their annual march – long deemed a provocation by Palestinians – in Jerusalem.
The world has now marked one full year of back-to-back monthly heat records, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced on Wednesday. It said last month was the hottest May in recorded history — the 12th consecutive month in which the monthly high temperature record was broken.