Business owners at the centre of a scandal that led to former president Jacob Zuma’s resignation
Two wealthy Indian-born business brothers who were allegedly at the centre of a massive web of state corruption in South Africa have been arrested in Dubai, Pretoria announced on Monday.
The arrests came as an investigation was concluded into massive plundering of state institutions during former president Jacob Zuma’s era.
Continue reading...Canadian planes enforcing UN North Korea sanctions had to avoid colliding with Chinese jets in encounter in international airspace
Justin Trudeau has denounced Beijing’s “irresponsible and provocative” actions after a recent encounter in international airspace over Asia.
The incident, in which Canadian aircraft deployed in Japan encountered, and in some cases had to avoid colliding with, Chinese jets, has again raised tensions between Beijing and Ottawa, just as the crisis over Canada’s 2018 arrest of the Huawei CFO, Meng Wanzhou, began to subside.
Continue reading...Officials say Orlando Jorge Mera, founder member of Modern Revolutionary party, shot and killed by close friend
The Dominican Republic’s minister of the environment and natural resources has been shot and killed in his officeby a close friend, the office of the president said in a statement on Monday.
Authorities said Orlando Jorge Mera was shot by Miguel Cruz, who has been detained. No further details were immediately available.
Continue reading...Li Jiaqi, a blogger with millions of fans, had his livestream abruptly cut on Friday, and has posted nothing since
One of China’s top bloggers has gone silent after livestreaming footage of a cake apparently shaped like a tank just before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, prompting debate over the highly sensitive event among tens of millions of young fans.
Discussion of the crackdown on 4 June 1989, when China set troops and tanks on peaceful protesters, is all but forbidden on the mainland.
Continue reading...While jury deliberated in Toronto, news broke that the Canadian rock musician had been charged with another sexual assault
The Canadian rock musician Jacob Hoggard has been found guilty of violently raping a young woman, but acquitted of sexually assaulting a second – all while facing a new, third charge of sexual assault.
After a month-long trial and six days of deliberation, a Toronto jury handed down its verdict on Sunday evening in a court case that heard testimony from both victims recounting their alleged violent encounters with Hoggard, the former frontman of the Canadian rock band Hedley.
Continue reading...UK and US have so far promised a handful; official says with 60 they can stop Russians ‘dead in their tracks’
Ukraine needs 60 multiple rocket launchers – many more than the handful promised so far by the UK and US – to have a chance of defeating Russia, according to an aide to the country’s presidency.
Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to the president’s chief of staff, told the Guardian that while he believed the rocket launchers were “a gamechanger weapon”, not enough had been committed to turn the tide in the war.
Continue reading...Jim Fitton, 66, hoped for short suspended sentence after collecting fragments during archaeology tour
Lawyers for a British geologist handed a 15-year sentence by an Iraqi judge after being convicted of smuggling antiquities will immediately appeal against the shock verdict, which has left his family “stunned”.
Jim Fitton, 66, arrived at court in Baghdad hoping for a short suspended sentence after being charged with collecting fragments from a site in southern Iraq during an organised archaeology tour. Instead, he was found guilty under a Saddam-era law that legal experts should not have applied to the case.
Continue reading...Dom Phillips disappeared on a trip to one of the remotest corners of the Amazon days after receiving threats
Fears are growing over the safety of a British journalist and a Brazilian Indigenous expert who have disappeared in one of the remotest corners of the Amazon just days after receiving threats.
Dom Phillips, a longtime contributor to the Guardian in Brazil, was last seen over the weekend in the Javari region of Amazonas state – a vast region of rivers and rainforests near the border with Peru.
Continue reading...Kaja Kallas warns pain of sanctions will test relations, and also criticises Macron’s stance on Putin
European unity over the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is proving difficult to maintain in the face of the war’s impact on inflation and living standards across the continent, Estonia’s prime minister has said.
Kaja Kallas also criticised the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for trying to provide Vladimir Putin with a diplomatic way out of the conflict, saying the only effect was to give the Russian leader the belief that he will not be isolated or face justice for his army’s war crimes.
Continue reading...Defendants are accused of participation in supply of horsemeat unfit for human consumption across Europe
When Aline Oudin was forced to find a new home for her beloved 28-year-old chestnut horse Ténor du Pluvinage, she placed an advert asking if anyone could offer him a new field to see out his final days.
A man in his 60s responded saying he was looking for a calm companion for the young mare he had bought his daughter, so Oudin let him take the horse away with the promise she could visit him regularly.
Continue reading...Airline accused of discrimination after it introduces test due to ‘high prevalence of fraudulent passports’
Ryanair is facing accusations of racial discrimination after forcing South Africans to take a test in Afrikaans before boarding flights home from the UK and Europe.
The budget airline, which claimed the “simple questionnaire” was part of efforts to tackle fraudulent South African passport holders, is facing criticism for conducting the general knowledge test in a language that is the third most used in the country and had a controversial role in the oppression of black citizens during apartheid.
Continue reading...Analysis: the conflict in Europe has entrenched the differences between Beijing and the US and its allies
More than 100 days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s strategic assessment of the conflict is becoming clearer: it does not wish to be cast in the same light as Russia, but the war has deepened Beijing’s mistrust of the west.
In Beijing’s view, the pessimism has been exacerbated by the US and its allies’ recent efforts, for example, to help Taiwan increase its international recognition. On Monday last week, Beijing made the second-largest incursion into Taiwan’s air defence zone this year with Taipei reporting 30 jets entering the area, including more than 20 fighters.
Continue reading...‘Insulting’ comments by spokespeople for ruling Bharatiya Janata party met with anger in Middle East
The Indian government has become embroiled in a diplomatic row with Gulf states after two ruling party spokespeople were accused of making Islamophobic and derogatory comments insulting the prophet Muhammad.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) suspended its national spokesperson, Nupur Sharma, and expelled its Delhi media head, Naveen Kumar Jindal, after their comments went viral in the Middle East, where they were met with a chorus of diplomatic anger.
Continue reading...‘Unprecedented’ displacement of millions of Ukrainians; Russian warships pushed back more than 100km, Ukraine says
Russian forces continue to storm the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk and fired missiles at the nearby cities of Sloviansk, Lysychansk and Orikhove, Ukraine’s military has said.
Russian troops fired at Ukrainian units defending Sievierodonetsk with mortars and artillery fire, damaging infrastructure in the towns of Metolkino, Borivske, Ustynivka and Toshkivka, according to the latest operational report released by Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces.
Continue reading...American alligators usually live in and around rivers, swamps, marshes and lakes – not the desert
Finding alligators in swampy states like Florida and Louisiana is no big deal, but it’s much different when you’re talking about the west Texas desert.
And that’s exactly where one of the large reptiles turned up last week, when Midland county sheriff’s office deputies spotted a gator at a trailer park.
Continue reading...Committee intends to reveal previously secret White House records, photos and videos to prove how Trump broke the law
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack will unveil new evidence at Watergate-style public hearings next week showing Donald Trump and top aides acted with corrupt intent to stop Joe Biden’s certification, according to sources close to the inquiry.
The panel intends to use the hearings as its principal method of revealing potential crimes by Trump as he sought to overturn the 2020 election results, the sources said, in what could be a treacherous legal and political moment for the former president.
Continue reading...Controversial asphyxiation method used in 73% of culls this year despite vets urging its use to be limited
The US poultry industry has increasingly switched to “the most inhumane method available” to cull tens of millions of birds during the latest outbreak of avian influenza, according to government data.
Outbreaks of the disease, also known as bird flu, have wreaked havoc across Europe and the US this year, with 38 million birds killed in the US so far.
But how these birds are killed has generated controversy, with veterinarians and animal welfare campaigners urging an end to the use of the ventilation shutdown method, which kills animals by sealing off the airflow to the poultry sheds and increasing temperatures to lethal levels.
Workers have described the method as like “roasting animals alive”. European officials have said it should not be used in the European Union.
Sellers could pass off elephant products as derivatives from unprotected mammals, Born Free Foundation says
Ivory peddlers may continue to sell elephant tusks after a new ban by disguising their products as walrus or narwhal derivatives, campaigners have warned.
From Monday, trade in elephant teeth and tusks is illegal in the UK, punishable by fines of up to £250,000 or up to five years in prison under the Ivory Act. Pre-1975 musical instruments and antique items of “outstanding importance” are exempted from the act, as well as ivory from non-elephant species.
Continue reading...President makes rare publicised visit outside Kyiv to Lysychansk
The Ukrainian president has visited the frontline close to the fiercest fighting between his country’s troops and Russian forces in the east, where a regional official said the situation had worsened for Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the beleaguered city of Lysychansk on Sunday, just a few kilometres south from Sievierodonetsk, the main battlefield in the east where Russia has concentrated its forces.
Continue reading...Putin warns that Moscow will hit new targets if west supplies Ukraine with long-range missiles as Kyiv reels from first attack in more than a month
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