Category Archives: World News

Cassie Ventura returns to stand after testifying Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs raped her

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Former girlfriend of music mogul, key witness in sex-trafficking trial, details violence, abuse and blackmail

Singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, a former girlfriend of Sean “Diddy” Combs and a key witness in the federal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial of the music mogul, returned to the stand on Thursday for cross-examination.

One of Combs’s lawyers, Anna Estevao, opened her cross-examination of Ventura by asking: “You and Sean Combs were in love for 11 years, right?”

In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org.

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Actor banned from Cannes red carpet after accusations of rape

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Theo Navarro-Mussy has a secondary role as a police officer in the film Dossier 137 by Dominik Moll which is to premiere on Thursday

The Cannes film festival said it had banned an actor in a prominent French film from the red carpet on Thursday because of sexual assault allegations against him.

Theo Navarro-Mussy has a secondary role as a police officer in the film Dossier 137 by Dominik Moll which is to premiere on Thursday in the festival’s main competition. According to French magazine Télérama, which broke the news, Navarro-Mussy was accused of rape by three former partners in 2018, 2019, and 2020, but the case was dropped last month for lack of evidence.

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Son Heung-min tells South Korean police he is victim of blackmail attempt

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  • Spurs captain said to be target of false pregnancy claim
  • Kulusevski out of Europa League final after surgery

Son Heung-min has filed a complaint to South Korean police alleging he was the victim of a blackmail attempt, his agency said, after media reports that a woman had threatened the Tottenham captain with a false pregnancy claim.

“The police are currently investigating, so we will let you know the results as soon as they are available,” his agency, Son & Football Limited, said. “We’d like to tell you that Son Heung-min is clearly the victim of this incident.”

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Iran has ‘sort of’ agreed deal on nuclear programme, says Donald Trump

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US president rules out military action against Tehran after talks in Oman

Donald Trump says Iran has “sort of” agreed to the terms of a deal on the future terms of its nuclear programme.

On a visit to Doha, the US president said: “I want them to succeed. I want them to end up being a great country. But they cannot have a nuclear weapon. It is very simple really. It’s not like I need to give you 30 pages worth of details. It is only one sentence – they cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

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Nissan open to making cars for Chinese partner in Sunderland, says CEO

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Ivan Espinosa says UK plant will not be hit by cost cuts as Japanese firm reveals seven factories to close

Nissan’s new chief executive has said the Japanese carmaker would be open to building cars for a Chinese partner at its factory in Sunderland after he confirmed it would not be closed in a round of deep cost cuts.

This week Nissan revealed plans to close seven factories and cut 20,000 jobs after sustaining heavy losses.

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Polish election: Tusk party urged to show it is not ‘deceiving women’ on abortion

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Five years after near-total ban on abortion, campaigners say Sunday’s elections will be critical to see if promised change happens

Poland’s presidential elections are a “historic, groundbreaking” chance for Donald Tusk’s centrist party to show it was not trying to “deceive women” when it promised to change some of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws, campaigners have said.

Voters across Poland will head to the polls on Sunday in the first round of the elections to replace Andrzej Duda, the current president who is aligned with the former rightwing government and has veto power over legislation.

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Ben & Jerry’s co-founder arrested for protesting Gaza blockade at US Senate hearing

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Ben Cohen and others interrupted RFK Jr at hearing to protest Israel’s Gaza blockade and Medicaid cuts

Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream, has been charged with “crowding and obstructing” others after he was arrested while protesting against the Gaza blockade during a US Senate hearing.

Cohen – the Ben in Ben & Jerry’s – made his stand on Wednesday while Robert F Kennedy Jr was addressing a hearing of the health, education, labor and pensions committee. A group of activists heckled the health secretary over his anti-vaccine posture, yelling: “When Bobby lies, children die,” and “Anti-vax, anti-science, anti-America”.

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Diplomat makes history as first refugee to become a UK high commissioner

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Kanbar Hossein-Bor, who says his mother once feared he ‘might not be British enough’, lands Fiji post

“In her mind this was a bastion of the establishment, she was a little worried of rejection,” Kanbar Hossein-Bor said of his mother’s reaction, two decades ago, to the news he was applying to work in the UK Foreign Office.

This week, the fear that “he might not be British enough” was proved wrong, when Hossein-Bor was appointed as the UK’s high commissioner to Fiji – the first refugee to achieve the rank.

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Israeli airstrikes kill at least 80 as Trump talks of turning Gaza into ‘freedom zone’

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Violence over last 48 hours diminishes hope that US president’s visit to Middle East would pause hostilities

At least 80 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling on targets across Gaza as faltering talks on a new ceasefire continued and Donald Trump said he wanted the US to “make” the devastated territory “into a freedom zone”.

Trump’s statement recalled the plan he put forward in February for the US to take control of Gaza to reconstruct it as a luxury leisure and business hub. The scheme implied the possible permanent displacement of many or all of the territory’s 2.3 million people and triggered global outrage.

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Mike Lynch’s superyacht sank in high winds, says report

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Investigators said Bayesian, which sank in Italy killing 15 people, was destabilised by wind

The late tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s superyacht, Bayesian, sank after it was hit by winds of around 117km/h that drove the vessel past its point of stability and caused downflooding over the starboard rail, according to a preliminary safety report by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB).

The investigators said Bayesian may have been vulnerable to high winds when running on its engine and that these “vulnerabilities” were “unknown to either the owner or the crew” as they were not included in the stability information book carried on board.

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RFK Jr orders mifepristone review as anti-abortion groups push for ban

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Health secretary cites ‘new data’ that emerged from flawed study conservatives are using to pressure US government

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Wednesday that he had directed the FDA to review the regulations around the abortion pill mifepristone.

The review, he said, was necessary due to “new data” – data that emerged from a flawed analysis that top US anti-abortion groups are now using to pressure the Trump administration to reimpose restrictions on the abortion pill, if not pull it from the market entirely.

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RFK Jr tells Congress ‘people shouldn’t take medical advice from me’

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Health secretary demurs on questions about vaccine stance and defends Republican plans to cut healthcare

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, refused to say whether he would vaccinate his children if he had to choose today, and defended Republicans’ proposal to cut healthcare to fund tax cut extensions.

Kennedy’s back-to-back testimonies before House and Senate committees were his first appearances before lawmakers since his confirmation in February. The secretary was called to discuss Donald Trump’s proposed budget, which would impose disproportionately large cuts to scientific enterprises at the health department.

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Elon Musk shows he still has the White House’s ear on Trump’s Middle East trip

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Although Musk has pivoted from Doge, the Saudi summit shows how he’s retaining proximity to the US president

Over the course of an eight-minute interview, Elon Musk touted his numerous businesses and vision of a “Star Trek future” while telling the crowd that his Tesla Optimus robots had performed a dance for Donald Trump and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, to the tune of YMCA. He also announced that Starlink, his satellite internet company, had struck a deal for use in Saudi Arabia for maritime and aviation usage; looking to the near future, he expressed his desire to bring Tesla’s self-driving robotaxis to the country.

“We could not be more appreciative of having a lifetime partner and a friend like you, Elon, to the Kingdom,” Saudi Arabia’s minister of communications and IT, Abdullah Alswaha, told Musk.

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Canadian PM criticises UK invitation to Trump for second state visit

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Mark Carney says Canadians ‘not very impressed’ after Keir Starmer delivered invitation to US president in February

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has criticised Britain’s invitation to Donald Trump for a second state visit, saying it undermined his government’s effort to project a united front against the US president’s talk of annexing Canada.

Since taking office in January, Trump has repeatedly said he wants Canada to become the 51st US state, a suggestion that has angered Canadians and left Britain trying to tread a fine line between the two North American countries.

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Israel’s ‘no hunger in Gaza’ narrative flies in face of obvious evidence

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Justification for Israel’s blockade is hard to sustain amid photos of malnourished children and critical famine warnings

For many decades, Israel was proud of its officials’ ability to defend and argue and convince around the world. The war in Gaza has seen the country’s public diplomacy face its greatest test – as was made clear on Wednesday morning with a robust exchange between David Mencer, a spokesperson for the Israeli government, and Nick Robinson, a presenter of the BBC’s flagship Today programme.

Mencer stressed that he was speaking on behalf of the prime minister and made an uncompromising statement of Israel’s arguments, including the accusation that Hamas – described as a “genocidal death cult” – uses civilians as human shields.

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Sperm donor who claims he fathered more than 180 children loses custody battle

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UK judge rejects Robert Albon’s application for parental right of three-year-old girl he had with woman in Durham

An unregistered sperm donor who says he has fathered more than 180 children has failed to gain custody of a three-year-old child he had with a Durham woman, who said she was left “broken” and “suicidal” by their encounter.

Robert Albon, who goes by the pseudonym “Joe Donor” and has appeared on This Morning and in a Channel 4 documentary, applied to have the girl live with him after a court deemed her mother was unable to look after her.

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Mexican beauty influencer shot dead during TikTok live stream

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Death of Valeria Márquez, 23, being investigated as femicide, says Jalisco state prosecutor

A young Mexican social media influencer, known for her videos about beauty and makeup, was brazenly shot to death during a TikTok live stream, in an incident that sent shock waves through a country that faces high levels of gender-based violence.

The death of Valeria Márquez, 23, is being investigated as a femicide – the killing of a woman or girl for reasons of gender – the Jalisco state prosecutor said in a statement released on Tuesday evening.

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Trump cabinet member’s links to El Salvador crypto firm under scrutiny

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Commerce chief Howard Lutnick’s firm backed controversial crypto giant Tether as Bukele ties deepened

Trump administration’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and his family have had extensive business interests linked to El Salvador, whose authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has grown close to the White House and who has courted controversy by imprisoning people deported from the US in an immigration crackdown.

El Salvador also plays host to a booming cryptocurrency and new media industry, which has numerous ties to Donald Trump allies who are seeking to make money from various ventures which have sometimes drawn the attention of authorities or ethics watchdogs.

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‘We couldn’t tell if he was conscious’: Tom Cruise got stuck on top of biplane shooting Mission: Impossible sequel

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The star, who at 62 performed his own stunts for the forthcoming Final Reckoning, tells Cannes press conference ‘I don’t mind encountering the unknown’

Tom Cruise got stuck on the wing of a biplane shortly before it ran out fuel during the filming of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the director of the eighth instalment of the action franchise has revealed.

Speaking to an audience at the Cannes film festival hours before the film’s premiere, director Christopher McQuarrie recounted the filming of a stunt sequence in which Cruise, in his long-running role as the field agent Ethan Hunt, walked between between the two wings of a biplane as the aircraft was mid-air over South Africa.

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Middle East crisis live: More than 60 killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza

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Dead include those killed in a strike on the European hospital complex near Khan Younis

Associated Press, citing local hospitals, reports that at least 22 children were killed in Gaza overnight Tuesday and early Wednesday by Israeli airstrikes.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met online with US president Donald Trump, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa, Reuters reports, citing Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu news agency.

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