Hundreds of thousands stranded as travel agency collapses
LONDON — Families stranded, honeymoons and vacations canceled, thousands of workers laid off: The sudden collapse of British tour company Thomas Cook and its network of airlines and hotels sowed chaos for hundreds of thousands of travelers and businesses around the world Monday.
Brought down by a variety of factors, including crushing debts and online competition, the 178-year-old travel agency that helped pioneer the package tour ceased operating in the middle of the night. Its four airlines stopped carrying customers, and its 21,000 employees in 16 countries lost their jobs.
The company’s failure rippled across the tourism industry, particularly around the Mediterranean, with travelers uncertain how they would get home, hotels worried they wouldn’t get paid, guests afraid they wouldn’t be allowed to check out without settling their bills, and resorts hit with cancellations.
Overall, about 600,000 people were traveling with Thomas Cook as of Sunday, though it was unclear how many would be left stranded, as some regional subsidiaries were in talks with local authorities to continue operating.
The British government swung into action, lining up flights to bring an estimated 150,000 Britain-based customers back home from vacation spots around the globe in what was called the biggest peacetime repatriation effort in the country’s history.
UK, France Germany blame Iran for Saudi oil attacks
UNITED NATIONS — Britain, France and Germany joined the United States on Monday in blaming Iran for attacks on key oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, but the Iranian foreign minister pointed to claims of responsibility by Yemeni rebels and said: “If Iran were behind this attack, nothing would have been left of this refinery.”
Fallout from the Sept. 14 attacks is still reverberating as world leaders gather for their annual meeting at the U.N. General Assembly and international experts continue, at Saudi Arabia’s request, to investigate what happened and who was responsible.
The leaders of the U.K., France and Germany — who remain parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — said in a statement that “there is no other plausible explanation” than that “Iran bears responsibility for this attack.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said late Sunday while flying to New York that the U.K. is now “attributing responsibility with a very high degree of probability to Iran” for the attacks by drones and cruise missiles on the world’s largest oil processor and an oil field. He said the U.K. would consider taking part in a U.S.-led military effort to bolster Saudi Arabia’s defenses.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, denied any part in the attacks. He said Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who claimed responsibility, “have every reason to retaliate” for the Saudi-led coalition’s aerial attacks on their country.
US soldier arrested on charge of sharing bomb instructions
WASHINGTON — Federal authorities said Monday they arrested an Army soldier who they accused of discussing with an FBI informant a possible bomb attack within the United States as well as the targeting of left-leaning activists and a media organization.
Jarrett William Smith, a 24-year-old private first class infantry soldier from South Carolina stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, was arrested Saturday and later charged with one count of sharing bomb-making instructions online. During his first court appearance on Monday, the magistrate ordered that he remain in custody pending a detention hearing on Thursday.
His defense attorney, Thomas Bartee, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.
A criminal complaint alleges that Smith discussed his plan to kill far-left-leaning “antifa” activists and described how to build a bomb that could be triggered by calling a cellphone. They accuse him of posting on Facebook that he was interested in traveling to Ukraine to fight with a paramilitary group known as Azov Batallion.
Court papers say Smith also suggested targeting a major news network with a car bomb. The news network was not identified.
At 87, Joe Arpaio is running for his old job as sheriff
FOUNTAIN HILLS, Ariz. — In a memorabilia-packed office that could serve as a museum to his career, Joe Arpaio plots how he might, at the age of 87, get back his old job as the sheriff of metro Phoenix.
The man who became a national lightning rod for immigration, loved by some and loathed by others, spends his days at an office in a strip mall in the affluent suburb of Fountain Hills. He talks to reporters, takes calls from supporters on his flip phone and pecks out self-promotional blurbs on a Smith Corona typewriter that an assistant later transcribes and posts on social media.
He rejects suggestions that he’s running to stroke his ego, quench a thirst for publicity or lessen any boredom since getting booted from office. A criminal conviction — contempt of court for disobeying a judge’s 2011 order in a racial profiling case to stop his traffic patrols that targeted immigrants — remains stuck in his craw, though he insists he’s not out to clear his name.
Instead, he says he wants to do whatever he can to support President Donald Trump, whose pardon of the lawman hangs prominently on a wall next to Arpaio’s desk.
He also vows to bring back the things that garnered notoriety during his 24 years as Maricopa County’s top law enforcer: immigration crackdowns, a complex of jail tents and other now-discarded trademarks that courts have deemed illegal or his successor has done away with.
Israeli election rivals meet as deadlock still looms
JERUSALEM — Israel’s president summoned the leaders of the country’s two largest political parties to his official residence late Monday, hoping to break a political deadlock that threatens to push the nation into months of limbo and potentially force a third election in less than a year.
Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his challenger, former military chief Benny Gantz, commented as President Reuven Rivlin brought them together for a photo at the beginning of the meeting. The two men looked tense and uncomfortable as Rivlin forced a smile.
In a joint statement after the meeting, the sides said that negotiators would continue the talks Tuesday and that Rivlin had invited the two leaders back to meet with him on Wednesday evening.
The Israeli president is responsible for choosing a candidate for prime minister after national elections. That task is usually a formality, given to the leader who has the best chance of forming a stable majority coalition in the 120-seat parliament.
But last week’s election ended in deadlock, with neither Netanyahu, who has ruled the country for the past decade, nor Gantz able to put together a coalition with smaller allied political parties. That has greatly complicated Rivlin’s task. A unity deal between the large parties is seen as perhaps the only way out of the impasse.