NEW York City mayor Bill de Blasio has announced he will seek the Democratic nomination for US president.
He adds his name to an already long list of candidates itching for a chance to take on Donald Trump.
The mayor announced his run with a video released by his campaign. “There’s plenty of money in this world. There’s plenty of money in this country. It’s just in the wrong hands,” De Blasio says at the beginning of the video.
He concluded: “I’m running for president because it’s time we put working people first.”
In announcing his candidacy, De Blasio seeks to claim a role on the national stage that has eluded him as mayor of the biggest US city.
When he took office in 2014, De Blasio seemed briefly poised to become a leading voice for an emerging left wing of the Democratic Party. But liberal enthusiasm faded over his first term, partly because of political missteps at home and the emergence of bigger names elsewhere.
MEANWHILE, a second man has been charged in Sweden in connection with last year’s theft of royal funeral artefacts from a cathedral west of Stockholm.
Prosecutor Isabelle Bjursten said she believes the unnamed 26-year-old “is one of the people who performed the theft” of the Swedish royal treasures, dating from 1611.
In February, Johan Nicklas Backstrom was given four and a half years in prison for stealing two crowns and an orb used at the funerals of King Karl IX and Queen Kristina.
IN China, a building that was being refurbished has collapsed and at least nine people are trapped, while 11 have been pulled from the rubble.
The building in central Shanghai was being converted into a car showroom when it collapsed, and the city’s rescue service said 24 emergency vehicles and more than 150 personnel responded.
By early afternoon, 11 out of approximately 20 people had been pulled from the rubble. Their conditions were not immediately known.
The building is in the Changning district of China’s financial hub.
China has suffered a spate of industrial accidents in recent months, largely blamed on skirting of safety requirements amid a slowing economy.
FINALLY, 17 soldiers have been killed and 11 are missing after an ambush by jihadists, Niger’s defence ministry has said.
The attack took place not far from the volatile border with Mali where Islamic extremists are known to operate. A ministry statement said the soldiers came under attack by heavily armed assailants.
It was also about 27 miles from where an ambush in October 2017 killed four US soldiers and four soldiers from Niger.
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