In brief: Russia issues warning as U.S. arrives in Ukraine
MOSCOW – Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday called the arrival of U.S. military trainers in western Ukraine a “provocation” and warned Ukrainians and their leaders that they should rethink the consequences of hosting the Western forces.
“U.S.-Ukrainian military drills in the western Ukrainian Lviv region threaten Russia’s security,” ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement carried by the official Tass news agency.
The Pentagon had previously announced that as many as 300 soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Italy, would be sent to the Lviv region on Ukraine’s western border to train Ukrainian servicemen.
Lukashevich said the American forces who arrived Thursday for their seven-month mission intended to teach Ukrainian soldiers “how to use overseas military equipment.” He added that discussion continues in the United States about sending arms to the Ukrainian government as well as the instructors.
“It is evident that they are not trying to bring peace to the country,” Lukashevich said of Washington’s military aid to Ukraine, which Moscow officials and state-controlled media portray as an anti-Russian collaboration.
Teacher believed to be Liberia’s last Ebola patient
MONROVIA, Liberia – She is “one of the happiest persons on Earth today.” She’s a 58-year-old English teacher. And she could be Liberia’s last Ebola patient in a devastating West African outbreak that began more than a year ago.
Beatrice Yardolo was released from an Ebola treatment center in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on Thursday after testing negative for the disease the day before. She is believed to be the country’s last Ebola patient.
In order to be declared Ebola-free, the country now has to sit out 42 days – double the 21-day incubation period of the virus – without a case
But its neighbors, Guinea and Sierra Leone, have seen recent setbacks, as unsafe burial practices continue, according to the World Health Organization.
Since the outbreak began, Liberia has seen 4,117 deaths and 9,249 total cases believed to be due to Ebola.
Near 24,000 people across the region have been infected, and 9,807 people have died, all but a handful of them in West Africa.
Syrian rebel commander killed in attack on meeting
BEIRUT – The military commander of al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate was killed Thursday in an explosion targeting a meeting of senior militants in northern Syria which also killed and wounded a number of other fighters.
State-run news agency SANA said Abu Hommam al-Shami was killed in a military operation carried out by the Syrian army that targeted a Nusra Front meeting in the village of Habeet, in the northern Idlib province.
It did not elaborate, but the report suggested he was killed in an airstrike.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that a number of prominent leaders, including Abu Hommam, were killed when a Nusra Front leadership meeting was targeted. It said it was not clear whether the meeting was targeted by a U.S.-led coalition airstrike or a Syrian army strike.