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An angry crowd riots outside Australian hospital treating suspect in 5-year-old girl’s death

By The Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An angry crowd rioted outside an Australian Outback hospital where a man accused of killing a 5-year-old girl was treated for a vigilante beating.

The suspect, Jefferson Lewis, allegedly abducted the girl at an Indigenous community near Alice Springs in the central Australia at the weekend. The body of the girl, who is now known as Kumanjayi Little Baby because of an Indigenous ban on naming the dead, was found on Thursday.

Lewis had been beaten unconscious by a mob before police arrested him at an Indigenous community later Thursday, police said.

He was taken to Alice Springs Hospital, where hundreds of people late Thursday demanded he face so-called payback under customary law, which can involve spearing or beating.

Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Several police vehicles were damaged.

The hospital discharged Lewis to police, who flew him to the Northern Territory capital Darwin, 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) to the north, for his own safety to be detained.

He is expected to be charged Friday.

Iran attacks Bahrain and Kuwait following US strikes, threatens to end talks to end the war

By The Associated Press
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched drone and missile attacks Sunday targeting Bahrain and Kuwait in response to U.S. airstrikes that hit the Islamic Republic, and threatened a “complete halt” could come to negotiations to end the war if Washington continues its attacks. Efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf that once carried a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas, without Iran's direct oversight sparked the crossfire now gripping the region. A multinational maritime body overseen by the U.S. Navy said Saturday that it would expand a route near Oman in the Strait of Hormuz to allow for both inbound and outbound traffic — setting up a new flashpoint with Tehran. Iran insists it alone must govern the strait after the war, upending decades of the world considering that the strait was international waters free for all, despite its sitting in Iran and Oman's territorial waters. Tehran has twice attacked vessels going through the Oman route, backed by a United Nations agency, in recent days. Early Sunday, the U.S. military’s Central Command said it struck Iranian military “surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities and minelayer capabilities” following an attack on a ship at sea early Saturday morning. That ship, the Panamanian-flagged tanker Kiku, carried crude oil for the state-run energy company of Qatar, a key negotiator between Iran and the United States.
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