A man has injured eight people, three seriously, in a stabbing attack in a south Swedish town which police are treating as suspected terrorism. The assailant, who is in his twenties, struck in five different locations in the centre of Vetlanda around 15:00 (14:00 GMT), police say. Within minutes he was shot and wounded by police, and is now in custody. Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said the “horrific violence” was a reminder of “how frail our safe existence is”.  Five different crime scenes, a few hundred metres apart, were identified, local police chief Jonas Lindell said. One eyewitness, florist Asa Karlqvist, told local newspaper Vetlanda-Posten: “We heard a scream from the street. Then we saw a man enter the store, shouting that he had been stabbed. “Blood was pouring from his shoulder, so we got towels and applied pressure on the wound.“(BBC)…[+]

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has opened a formal investigation into alleged war crimes in the Palestinian territories. Fatou Bensouda said the probe would cover events in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip since June 2014. Last month, the Hague-based court ruled that it could exercise its criminal jurisdiction over the territories. Israel rejected Ms Bensouda’s decision, while Palestinian officials praised it. The US expressed disappointment and opposition to the move. The ICC has the authority to prosecute those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes on the territory of states party to the Rome Statute, its founding treaty. Israel has never ratified the Rome Statute, but the court ruled that it had jurisdiction because the United Nations secretary general accepted the Palestinians’ accession to the treaty in 2015. Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians claim the territories for a future independent state.(BBC)…[+]

A Canadian man who killed 10 people by ploughing a van into pedestrians in Toronto has been found guilty on all 26 charges related to the 2018 attack. Alek Minassian had admitted the attack, but his lawyers argued he was not criminally responsible due to his autism spectrum disorder.  Justice Anne Malloy has dismissed this claim, saying the attack was the “act of a reasoning mind”. Minassian faced 10 charges of murder and 16 charges of attempted murder. Throughout the ruling, Justice Malloy refused to name the attacker, 28, referring to him instead as John Doe, and said she would not give him the notoriety “he sought from the start”. Ms Malloy accepted his diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but ruled that he was capable of understanding his actions on April 2018 were both legally and morally wrong. At trial, defence lawyer Boris Bytensky said ASD had left his client without the ability to develop empathy, saying in closing arguments the attacker had no conception of the damage his actions caused. On Wednesday, Justice Malloy rejected this line of argument. “Lack of empathy for the suffering of victims, even an incapacity to empathise for whatever reason, does not constitute a defence,” she said.(BBC)…[+]