LONDON: Britain has made a formal protest to Madrid after Spanish officials opened British diplomatic bags on the border with Gibraltar in a “serious infringement” of diplomatic protocol, the Foreign Office said yesterday.
The incident on Friday is the latest flare-up between Britain and Spain over the British-held territory in recent months.
A Foreign office spokesman said: “As far as we are concerned there is no justification for this infringement of the UK’s rights under the Vienna Convention,” a 1961 protocol agreement that protects diplomatic communications.
Britain responded with a formal diplomatic note of protest yesterday.
Policeman charged in ‘plebgate’
LONDON: A British policeman was charged yesterday with lying and seven others face disciplinary proceedings over the so-called “plebgate” scandal which brought down a government minister.
Former Conservative chief whip Andrew Mitchell was involved in an altercation with police as he tried to push his bicycle through the gates at Prime Minister David Cameron’s Downing Street residence.
Prosecutors said they had charged a police officer, Keith Wallis, with lying about witnessing the row in September 2012.
The ex-international development minister hit back after the decision, accusing the policeman with whom he had the argument of falsely claiming that the minister had called police “plebs”, a derogatory word used to describe commoners.
30 Haitians dead as ship capsizes
WASHINGTON: About 30 Haitian migrants died after an overloaded freighter capsized in the Bahamas and 110 others were rescued in rough seas, the US Coast Guard said yesterday.
“The migrants were clinging to the hull of the grounded 40-foot sail freighter when rescue crews arrived,” the Coast Guard said.
All those on the hull were safely rescued but it was unclear how many passengers were still stranded in the water.
Rescuers faced stormy weather yesterday, with winds of about 48 kilometres an hour.
The vessel ran aground and then capsized off the coast of Staniel Clay in the central Bahamas on Monday evening.
Mexico frees former teen hitman
MEXICO CITY: Mexican authorities yesterday released a US-born teenager who was convicted at age 14 for working as a hitman in a case that highlighted the recruitment of children by drug cartels.
Now 17, the boy known as “El Ponchis” served three years in a juvenile detention centre in the central state of Morelos for slitting the throats of four people and hanging them from a bridge.
Edgar was released before dawn and taken to Mexico City’s international airport awaiting a flight to San Antonio, Texas, where his mother lives, said the government secretary of Morelos.
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