HAITI: A top official who served as general security co-ordinator when president Jovenel Moise was assassinated has been arrested, his attorney said on Monday.

Jean Laguel Civil joins more than two dozen suspects arrested by the Haiti National Police as the investigation continues into the July 7 attack at Mr Moise’s home.

Elsewhere over 1,000 people gathered to commemorate Mr Moise with Jimmy Cherizier, a former cop who now leads the G9 gang, which officials have blamed for a spike in violence and kidnappings in recent months.

AUSTRALIA: Melbourne ended its fifth lockdown today with the Victoria state government declaring it had beaten an outbreak of the highly contagious Covid-19 delta variant for a second time.

Schools, pubs and restaurants were allowed to reopen but people will not be allowed to have visitors in their homes for another two weeks.

“This lockdown … sends a very clear message that we have seen off two delta outbreaks,” Premier Dan Andrews said.

“I don’t think there’s a jurisdiction in the world that has been able to achieve that, and every Victorian should be proud of that.”

ETHIOPIA: The United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) warned today that the agency will run out of food in the conflict-hit Tigray region on Friday, while hundreds of thousands of people there face the world’s worst famine crisis in a decade.

Some 170 trucks with food and other supplies are stuck in the neighbouring Afar region and must be allowed to move now, UNWFP boss David Beasley tweeted today, noting that 100 such trucks are needed per day in Tigray. “People are starving,” he said.

HONG KONG: The High Court found the first person to be tried under the region’s new national security law guilty today.

Tong Ying-kit, 24, faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment after the court found him guilty of secessionism and terrorism.

Reading the verdict, Justice Esther Toh said Mr Tong had “committed terrorist activities causing or intended to cause grave harm to the society” in pursuit of a political agenda.” 

Amnesty International called it “the beginning of the end for freedom of expression in Hong Kong.”