INTERNAL DIVISIONS: Faced with hostility from a governing coalition party, the president has been checkmated by the high-profile minister’s departure, an analyst said
Argentine Minister of Economy Martin Guzman, who led debt renegotiations with the IMF, announced his resignation on Saturday, sparking fresh uncertainty in Latin America’s third-largest economy. Guzman did not say why he resigned in an open statement addressed to Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, but called on the center-left leader to mend internal divisions so that “the next minister does not suffer” the same difficulties he had. “It will be essential that you work on an agreement within the ruling coalition,” he added to the statement shared on Twitter. His resignation comes two weeks after Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, a former president who has been a constant critic of the government, gave a speech attacking Fernandez’s economic management. Political analyst Carlos Fara said that Guzman’s resignation was “a checkmate for the president’s autonomy” and had given Fernandez de Kirchner the upper hand in their power struggle. “The resignation will have a very bad effect in the markets. Even if the president and vice president reach a consensus on managing the economy, from now on everything will be conditioned by Cristina Kirchner’s pressure,” Fara said. As economy minister, the 39-year-old Guzman was tasked with renegotiating a US$44 billion debt with the IMF that Argentina insisted it could not afford to repay. The original debt of US$57 billion — the last tranche of which Fernandez declined after succeeding his liberal predecessor Mauricio Macri, who had solicited the loan — was the largest ever issued by the IMF. Despite resistance from Fernandez de Kirchner, Guzman managed to conclude a deal and save Argentina from defaulting. However, Guzman was often faced with hostility from the Peronist Justicialist Party, the major force in the Frente de Todos (Everyone’s Front) ruling coalition that counts both Fernandez and Fernandez de Kirchner as high-profile members. Fernandez de Kirchner’s faction has gone after Guzman ever since Everyone’s
Iran’s top diplomat on Saturday condemned Israel’s latest airstrike on Syria, and criticized recent threats from Turkey about another planned incursion by Ankara into northern Syria. Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amirabdollahian’s remarks came at the start of his visit to Syria, where he was expected to discuss mutual relations and regional affairs with top Syrian officials. Iran has been one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s strongest backers, sending thousands of fighters from around the region to help his troops in Syria’s 11-year conflict. The war has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. Amirabdollahian’s visit came hours after Israel carried out an airstrike on a coastal Syrian village near the border with Lebanon, wounding two people, Syrian state media said. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he is planning another major military cross-border incursion into Syria to create a 30km-deep buffer zone along the border with Turkey, promising to battle US-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters for the territory. Erdogan’s attempt in 2019 to create the buffer failed, although Turkish troops are deployed inside Syria following previous incursions to prop up anti-al-Assad Syrian opposition fighters. Ankara views the US-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters as terrorists allied with Kurdish insurgents within Turkey’s borders. “We understand the concerns of our neighbor Turkey but we oppose any military measure in Syria,” Amirabdollahian said, adding that Iran is trying to resolve the “misunderstanding between Turkey and Syria through dialogue.” Amirabdollahian on Saturday met with al-Assad, who told the Iranian envoy that Turkey’s “pretexts to justify its aggression in Syria are false, misleading and have nothing to do with reality.” Al-Assad’s office also quoted the president as saying that Turkey’s military presence in Syria contravenes international law. Analysts have said Erdogan is taking advantage of the war in Ukraine to push his own goals in
Israel said yesterday it would test a bullet that killed a Palestinian-American journalist to determine whether one of its soldiers shot her, and said a US observer would be present for a procedure that could deliver a result within hours. The Palestinians, who on Saturday handed over the bullet to a US security coordinator, said they had been assured that Israel would not take part in the ballistics test. The May 11 death of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, and feuding between the sides as to the circumstances, have overshadowed an expected visit by US President Joe Biden due this month. The Palestinians accuse the Israeli military of killing the journalist deliberately. Israel denies this, saying Abu Akleh might have been hit by errant army fire or by one of the Palestinian gunmen who were clashing with its forces. “The [ballistic] test will not be American. The test will be an Israeli test, with an American presence throughout,” Israeli military spokesman Brigadier-General Ran Kochav said. “In the coming days or hours, it will be become clear whether it was even us who killed her, accidentally, or whether it was the Palestinian gunmen,” he told Army Radio. “If we killed her, we will take responsibility and feel regret for what happened.” Palestinian Authority General Prosecutor Akram al-Khatib, said the test would take place at the US Embassy in Jerusalem. “We got guarantees from the American coordinator that the examination will be conducted by them and that the Israeli side will not take part,” al-Khatib told Voice of Palestine radio, adding that the bullet was expected to be returned yesterday. Biden is expected to hold meetings with Palestinian and Israeli leaders from July 13 to July 16. The Abu Akleh case will be a diplomatic and domestic test for new
A start-up entrepreneur from South Africa wants to change the way edible caterpillars, popularly known as “mopane worms,” are viewed and eaten. For many people, particularly from western European backgrounds, the idea of eating insects is riddled with fear and inhibition. However, insects can be a valuable source of nutrition, and farming them is not detrimental to the environment. South African chemical engineer Wendy Vesela has found ways of turning the spiky green and black caterpillars — which are packed with protein and iron — into a flour that can be used in savory biscuits, sweet chocolate protein bars, cereals or smoothies. When steamed and sliced, mopane pieces can also be used as pizza toppings. Vesela said that she has found domestic and international customers for her organic products. Edible insects and worms might be gaining popularity in Western cultures, but food anthropologist Anna Trapido said that the trend should not be seen as just another dietary fad, a “kind of adventure tourism, where you get a badge” for eating them. “Mopane need to be treated with respect because they are part of people’s emotional, spiritual, culinary genres,” she said. In Vesela’s home province of Limpopo, where she grew up in a town not far from the world-famous Kruger National Park, mopane is a staple food, cooked in a sauce of onions and tomatoes. The caterpillars are “a healthier option of protein,” she said, adding that it is “not a worm. So people have just to get over that fear.” Vesela tried to woo reluctant customers with biscuits and protein bars at a food fair in Johannesburg’s upmarket Sandton area. “I won’t eat a worm. I’m sorry, it’s disgusting, but if you give it to me in the form of a chocolate ... it’s really delicious,” said Gail Odendaal, 38. Mopanes are environmentally friendly, too, requiring no extra water or land,
‘THE CITY IS ON FIRE’: Moscow said its forces have encircled the city of Lysychansk, but Kyiv denied the claim, saying Russian forces were digging in one of its districts
Fighting raged as Russian troops intensified their offensive in parts of the hard-fought Ukrainian city of Lysychansk yesterday, after Belarus announced its military had intercepted missiles fired by Kyiv’s forces. “The Russians are entrenching themselves in a district of Lysychansk, the city is on fire,” Lugansk Governor Sergei Gaidai said on Telegram. “They attacked the city with inexplicably brutal tactics,” he added. Lysychansk is the last major city in the Lugansk area of the eastern Donbas region still in Kyiv’s hands. Located across the river from neighboring Severodonetsk, which Russian forces seized last week, its capture would signal a deeper push into the Donbas, which has become Moscow’s focus since failing to capture Ukraine’s capital. Gaidai’s update came hours after Ukraine denied claims by Moscow-backed separatists that they had encircled Lysychansk. “The city has not been encircled and is under control of the Ukrainian army,” Ruslan Muzytchuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian National Guard, said on Ukrainian television on Saturday. Earlier in the day, Andrei Marochko, a spokesman for the separatist forces, told the TASS news agency that Lysychansk was “completely encircled.” The intense fighting came as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko accused Kyiv of “provoking” his country and said his army intercepted missiles fired at his country by Ukrainian forces “around three days ago.” The claim came one week after Ukraine said missiles struck a border region from Belarus, a long-term Russian ally that supported the Feb. 24 invasion. However, Lukashenko denied any involvement, which would represent an escalation of the conflict. “As I said more than a year ago, we do not intend to fight in Ukraine,” he was quoted as saying by state news agency Belta on Saturday. The violence also spilled into Russia yesterday, with at least three people killed and four injured in “strong explosions” in Belgorod, which borders Ukraine. Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said 11 residential buildings
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been warned there is “no legal or political justification” for his plans to override the Brexit agreement on Northern Ireland, in an extraordinary joint denunciation by the Irish and German governments. With senior figures already warning Johnson that he risks the breakup of the UK by ploughing ahead with the plan, German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock and Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney make a rare joint statement condemning the UK for “unilaterally breaking an international agreement.” Writing in the Observer, the two ministers suggested that Johnson’s determination to effectively override the so-called Northern Ireland protocol, which he agreed two years ago, risks undermining the “rules-based international order” just as the continent is attempting to confront Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. The two ministers said that recent elections to Northern Ireland’s assembly, which delivered a majority of members who back the protocol, showed support for the current arrangements. They added that the EU had been and would continue to be “flexible and creative” to deal with issues that have hampered trade between the region and the UK. “Unfortunately, the British government chose not to engage in good faith with these proposals,” they wrote. “Instead of the path of partnership and dialogue, the British government has chosen unilateralism. There is no legal or political justification for unilaterally breaking an international agreement entered into only two years ago.” “The tabling of legislation this month will not fix the challenges around the protocol. Instead, it will create a new set of uncertainties and make it more challenging to find durable solutions,” they wrote. “In these difficult times, as Russia is leading a ruthless war in Ukraine, breaking with our European peace order, the EU and UK must stand together as partners with shared values and a commitment to uphold
‘COMPLICATED’: Fabricated news reports casting doubt on COVID-19 vaccines have given way to those seeking to undermine the nation’s electoral system
Three months out from the Brazilian presidential election, disinformation about the two main candidates, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is having a major impact. The sheer volume of fabricated news reports, creation of new social media platforms and ever more complex content has made it even more difficult to verify information. The amount of content fact-checked by Agence France-Presse (AFP) increased by more than fourfold between January and last month. Those fabricating news about the election first cut their teeth on a very different subject: the COVID-19 pandemic. “The election content has taken over the space” previously dominated by the pandemic, said Sergio Ludtke, the coordinator of the Comprova information verification collective made up of 42 media outlets, including AFP. “The pandemic was probably a period of testing for these groups” producing fake news, he said, adding that it subsequently became “a political event.” As October’s election approaches, verification is becoming “much more complicated” than it was four years ago. COVID-19 disinformation took on “a new form that permeated politics, the economy, science,” said Joyce Souza, a specialist in digital communication at the University of Sao Paulo. From posts casting doubt on the safety of vaccines, the main form of viral disinformation now revolves around distrust in the electoral system, whether that be opinion polls or electronic voting. Electronic voting was originally implemented throughout the country in the 2000 elections to combat fraud, but Bolsonaro is not a fan and has cast doubt over the method, calling for paper votes and public counting. The last elections in 2018 featured large amounts of false and misleading information, especially on WhatsApp, but they were easier to identify. “What we see now is content that is not necessarily false in itself, but which leads to misleading interpretations,” Ludtke said. It is what happened in May in a
Minerva Rodriguez has worked at McDonald’s in Houston, Texas, for more than 23 years. She is paid US$12 an hour and says she is doing the work of two to three people because the restaurant is chronically understaffed. Now she, like many Americans, is facing another crisis: runaway inflation. While she has noticed the food prices at her store have increased, pay has not. “The wages are incredibly low and not sufficient for the work we do,” said Rodriguez, who joined the Fight for US$15 and a union movement to push for higher wages and better working conditions. “They don’t want to lose that extra money. If they can have their present workers do double the job and not have to pay another worker it’s a benefit for them, but what happens with us? With food costs rising and gas prices rising, how are we supposed to live?” Inflation is hitting Americans hard. US consumer prices increased 8.6 percent from May last year to May, the highest increase since 1981, outpacing overall annual wage growth at 5.2 percent. Food prices have increased more than 10 percent over the year. A gallon (3.8 liters) of gasoline is more than 50 percent more expensive than a year ago. The median monthly rent in the US hit an all-time high of US$2,002 a month. Among those bearing the heaviest brunt of the rising costs of basic necessities are fast-food workers, the majority of whom are paid less than US$15 an hour with few or no benefits. Many of these workers are not seeing any pay increases to correlate with the rising prices they are facing for food, shelter, clothing and transportation. While workers in the fast-food industry are struggling with low pay and understaffing, corporate fast-food chains have reported immense profits. McDonald’s last year reported record sales growth at
UNITED STATES Shooting rocks Dallas A gunman killed two people and wounded four, including three police officers, before taking his own life on Saturday evening in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, police said. Haltom City Police Detective Matt Spillane yesterday said that all of those wounded in the residential neighborhood shooting had non-life threatening injuries and were expected to recover. Officers returned fire after being shot at while responding to a report of gunshots at a home around 6:45pm, he said. One officer was hit in both legs, and the other two officers were shot in their arms. The suspect died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Texas Rangers — the state’s elite police force — are taking over the investigation, Spillane said. A motive for the shooting was not immediately clear. “The main focus is on how and why this happened,” Spillane said. A woman was found dead inside a house and a man was found dead outside, Sergeant Rick Alexander said at a news conference on Saturday. The older adult woman who had initially called 911 was wounded, he said. JAPAN Power failure raises fears A fire caused Japan’s largest power generator, JERA, to shut down a 500 megawatt unit at its Chiba thermal power station near Tokyo on Saturday, raising fears of an electricity crunch as a prolonged heatwave keeps demand at high levels. The fire broke out at about noon on Saturday near the steam valve of one of the turbines of the gas-fired combined-cycle power station, JERA said on Saturday, adding that the fire was extinguished about an hour later. JERA, a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power, was checking all equipment at the unit where the fire occurred, and did not know when a restart would be possible, JERA said. The government expects energy supplies
RUBBLE AND RUIN: Nearly half of the village of Sayeh Khosh, near the epicenter, was destroyed and plunged into darkness due to a power outage, an official said
A series of strong earthquakes yesterday rocked southern Iran, killing at least five people and damaging dozens of buildings, state media reported. The quakes, including two of magnitude 6, struck west of the major port city of Bandar Abbas in Hormozgan Province, the US Geological Survey said. The first rattled an area north of the town of Dezhgan shortly after 2am, before a magnitude 5.7 tremor hit two hours later, followed quickly by the second magnitude 6 quake, the agency said. Hormozgan Governor Mehdi Dousti said that five people were killed, as cited by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Dousti said that most of the damage occurred in the village of Sayeh Khosh, close to the epicenter. Forty-nine people were injured, said state television, which showed video footage of residential buildings reduced to rubble in Sayeh Khosh, which was plunged into darkness in a power outage. Ambulances and other vehicles tried to navigate roads covered in debris as residents took to the streets or tried to recover items from their flattened homes. People also spent the night outdoors in the provincial capital, Bandar Abbas, with a population of more than 500,000 about 100km east of the epicenters of the quakes, where long lines formed in front of fuel stations, state media reported. The Iranian Red Crescent Society said in the morning that search and rescue operations were nearly over. “We are concentrating on housing the victims of the earthquake,” Dousti told television, adding that half of Sayeh Khosh was destroyed. Iran sits astride the boundaries of several major tectonic plates and experiences frequent seismic activity. The Islamic republic’s deadliest quake was a magnitude 7.4 tremor in 1990 that killed 40,000 people in the north, injured 300,000 and left 500,000 homeless. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 quake in southeastern Iran leveled the ancient mud-brick city of Bam and killed at least 31,000
Protesters on Friday stormed the Libyan House of Representatives building in the eastern city of Tobruk, demonstrating against deteriorating living conditions and political deadlock, Libyan media reported. Several television channels said that protesters managed to penetrate the building and committed acts of vandalism, while media outlets showed images of thick columns of black smoke coming from its perimeter, as angry young demonstrators burned tires. Other media reports said that part of the building had been burned. The building was empty, as Friday is on the weekend in Libya. The House of Representatives has been based in Tobruk, hundreds of kilometers east of the capital, Tripoli, since an east-west schism in 2014 following a revolt that toppled former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi three years earlier. A rival body known as the High Council of State is based in Tripoli. Images on Friday showed that a protester driving a bulldozer had smashed through part of a gate, allowing other demonstrators to enter more easily, while vehicles of officials were set on fire. Later, protesters began to break through the building’s walls with construction equipment. Others, some brandishing the green flags of the Qaddafi regime, threw office documents into the air. While recognizing “the right of citizens to demonstrate peacefully,” the legislature condemned “acts of vandalism and the burning” of its headquarters. Interim Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah wrote on Twitter that he would add his voice to those of the protesters and call for elections. Libya has endured several days of power cuts, worsened by the blockade of several oil facilities against the backdrop of political rivalries. “We want the lights to work,” protesters chanted. Two governments have been vying for power for months: One based in Tripoli, led by Dbeibah, and another headed by former minister of the interior Fathi Bashagha, appointed by the legislature and supported by eastern-based Libyan Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. “I
IN A ‘DROUGHT’: Only seven women have ever won seats in the parliament, and none in 2017, an imbalance people are finally starting to recognize, a female candidate said
Women are fighting to win at least one seat in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) male-dominated parliament when voting opens tomorrow in a mountainous, forest-clad land scarred by gender-based violence. Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape is fending off a challenge from his predecessor Peter O’Neill to lead the resource-rich, but poverty-struck, Pacific Island for the next five years. Whoever wins, the new leader will need to cobble together a coalition government, analysts say. Women are hoping to have a voice in the 118-seat parliament. In the nearly 50 years since Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia, only seven women have ever secured a seat, and not one in the last election in 2017. “A lot of us really feel like we stand a great chance,” said Sylvia Pascoe, one of 142 women among the almost 3,500 candidates in this election. “Not just because the timing is right, but because we’ve spent our lives building up to this moment.” Statistics on women’s experiences in the country are alarming: 63 percent have been subject to physical, sexual or emotional violence at the hands of their spouses, a national survey completed four years ago showed. At least 70 percent of men and women agreed that a man would be justified in beating his wife in at least one of these circumstances: if she burnt food, argued, went out without telling her husband, refused sex or neglected her children. Pascoe said that women were increasingly taking leadership roles in churches, sports and youth groups, and the “drought” in female representation in politics was sparking a change in sentiment ahead of the election. “At the last elections, nobody was really out there rooting for women,” she said, but women are expressing a desire to vote for fellow women, and youth groups are singing songs in support of their runs for office. “People only
Starting in January, Venice is to oblige day-trippers to make reservations and pay a fee to visit the historic lagoon city, in a bid to better manage visitors who often far outnumber residents in the historic center, clogging narrow streets and heavily-used foot bridges crossing the canals. Venice officials on Friday unveiled new rules for day-trippers, which go into effect on Jan. 16. Tourists who choose not to stay overnight in hotels or other lodgings would have to sign up online for the day they plan to come and pay a fee. These range from 3 to 10 euros (US$3.13 to US$10.43) per person, depending on advance booking and whether it is peak season, or the city is very crowded. Transgressors risk fines as high as 300 euros if stopped and unable to show proof they booked and paid with a QR code. About four-fifths of all tourists come to Venice just for the day. In 2019, the last full year of tourism before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 19 million day-trippers visited Venice and provided just a fraction of the revenue from those staying for at least one night. Venice’s tourism commissioner brushed off any suggestion that the measure would seek to limit the number of out-of-towners coming to Italy’s most-visited city. “We won’t talk about number cutoffs. We’re talking about incentives and disincentives,” Venice Deputy Mayor for Social Welfare, Tourism, Health and Economic Development Simone Venturini told a news conference in the city. The reservation-and-fee approach had been discussed a few years ago, but was put on hold during the pandemic. Tourism in Venice nearly vanished amid COVID-19 travel restrictions — leaving Venetians with their city practically to themselves, for the first time in decades. Mass tourism began in the mid-1960s. Visitor numbers kept climbing, while the number of Venetians living in the city steadily dwindled, overwhelmed
Germany and Nigeria on Friday signed an agreement paving the way for the return of hundreds of artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes that were taken from Africa more than 120 years ago — an accord that Nigerian officials hope will prompt other countries to follow suit. Governments and museums in Europe and North America have increasingly sought to resolve ownership disputes over objects that were looted during colonial times. A British colonial expedition looted vast quantities of treasures in 1897 from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now southwestern Nigeria, including numerous bas-reliefs and sculptures. The artifacts ended up spread far and wide. Hundreds were sold to collections such as the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, which has one of the world’s largest collections of historical objects from the Kingdom of Benin, estimated to include about 530 items, including 440 bronzes. Many of them date from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Two pieces held by the museum — a commemorative head of a king and a relief slab depicting a king with four attendants — were handed over as German and Nigerian officials signed their “joint political declaration” at the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. “This is just the beginning of more than 1,000 pieces from the Kingdom of Benin that are still in German museums, and they all belong to the people of Nigeria,” German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock said. “It was wrong to take the bronzes; it was wrong to keep them for 120 years.” The bronzes “are some of Africa’s greatest treasures, but they are also telling the story of colonial violence,” Baerbock said. The Nigerian government, which in the past few years has stepped up its demands for the return of the Benin Bronzes, said the accord would pave the way for the return
CHAOS: Women seeking abortions in other states might face prosecution, while the White House is trying to reinstate access to abortion pills on a legal technicality
The Texas Supreme Court late on Friday night blocked a lower court order that said clinics could continue performing abortions, just days after some doctors had resumed seeing patients after the fall of Roe v Wade. It was not immediately clear whether Texas clinics that had resumed seeing patients this week would halt services again. A hearing is scheduled for later this month. The whiplash of Texas clinics turning away patients, rescheduling them and now potentially canceling appointments again — all in the span of a week — illustrated the confusion and scrambling taking place across the US since Roe was overturned. Abortion providers and patients across the country have been struggling to navigate the evolving legal landscape around abortion laws and access. In Florida, a law banning abortions after 15 weeks went into effect on Friday, the day after a judge called it a violation of the state constitution and said he would sign an order temporarily blocking the law next week. The ban could have broader implications in southern US, where Florida has wider access to the procedure than its neighbors. Abortion rights have been lost and regained in the span of a few days in Kentucky. A so-called trigger law imposing a near-total ban on the procedure took effect on June 24, but a judge blocked the law on Thursday, meaning the state’s only two abortion providers can resume seeing patients — for now. The legal wrangling is almost certain to continue to cause chaos for Americans seeking abortions in the near future, with court rulings able to upend access at a moment’s notice and an influx of new patients from out of state overwhelming providers. Even when women travel outside states with abortion bans in place, they might have fewer options to end their pregnancies as the prospect of prosecution follows them. Planned Parenthood
‘DRANK TOO MUCH’: Boris Johnson suspended Chris Pincher’s party membership only after facing mounting criticism from the opposition as well as his own party
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government is dealing with another boozy scandal after the deputy chief whip resigned from his post and was then suspended by the Conservative Party over a drunken incident in which he reportedly groped two men at an event. Chris Pincher, whose role was to maintain discipline among Conservative members of Parliament, submitted a letter of resignation to Johnson on Thursday. “I drank far too much” on Wednesday night, Pincher said in the letter. “I’ve embarrassed myself and other people, which is the last thing I want to do, and for that I apologize to you and to those concerned.” However, he said in his letter that he would remain as a Conservative lawmaker and continue to support Johnson from the back benches of Parliament. That prompted fury from the opposition and even among some Conservative Party lawmakers. Johnson at first resisted calls to suspend Pincher from the party before bowing to the pressure by Friday evening after a formal complaint was made to an independent investigative body. A Conservative Party spokeswoman said Johnson had agreed that Pincher should be suspended — meaning he cannot sit in Parliament among the Conservative benches. The scandal added to the prime minister’s mounting troubles, with the main opposition Labour Party criticizing Johnson for not suspending Pincher right away. “Boris Johnson has been dragged kicking and screaming into taking any action at all,” Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said. “He just can’t be trusted to do the right thing. This whole scandal is yet more evidence of his appalling judgement.” Johnson last month survived a no-confidence vote triggered by lawmakers from his own party, but emerged weakened as more than 40 percent of Conservatives voted against him. Most of the discontent with Johnson’s leadership centered around investigations into boozy parties held in government buildings when COVID-19 lockdowns prohibited group
Two more Britons held by Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine have been charged with fighting as mercenaries, Russian state media have reported, indicating that they could face the death penalty in a likely attempt to pressure Western countries to make a deal for their freedom. Britons Andrew Hill of Plymouth and Dylan Healy of Huntingdon were reported to have also been charged with “forcible seizure of power” and undergoing “terrorist” training, according to a state news agency in Russian-controlled Donetsk. The report was sourced to an anonymous official and has not been confirmed. Two Britons and a Moroccan man were sentenced to death on identical charges by the authorities in Russian-controlled Donetsk last month. No date has been set for the sentences to be carried out and at least two of the men are appealing against the verdict. Hill, who was identified as a father of four from Plymouth, has been paraded on Russian television in several clips, including one that aired last month with the headline: “Exclusive — before the execution.” In the clip, he appeared to have been informed that he may face criminal charges, saying that he was being “detained here as a suspected mercenary.” Hill, who is reported to have previously served in the Lancaster regiment of the British army, was first shown on Russian television after his capture in late April. In the video, the 35-year-old appeared to be severely injured, with his head bandaged, and his left arm in a cast and supported by a sling. “I want to go home, to my homeland, to my family, to my children,” he said in the recent clip, which appeared to have been filmed under duress. “I just want to go home. I will tell them the truth.” The other man, Dylan Healy, is reported to have been working in Ukraine as a
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS: Ruja Ignatova promoted her onecoin as a replacement for bitcoin, but it was not backed by blockchain and was a classic Ponzi scheme
A Bulgarian woman dubbed the “Crypto Queen” after she raised billions of dollars in a fraudulent virtual currency scheme was on Thursday placed on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. The FBI put up a US$100,000 reward for Ruja Ignatova, who disappeared in Greece in October 2017 at about the time US authorities filed a sealed indictment and warrant for her arrest. The 42-year-old, who is also a German citizen, was behind one of the most notorious scams in the frequently treacherous world of cryptocurrencies. In 2014, she launched onecoin, ostensibly aiming to replace bitcoin as the world’s leading virtual money. Tapping a global network to market the coin to friends and family in exchange for their own payouts, she and co-conspirators pulled in at least US$3.4 billion and possibly more than US$4 billion, court documents said. Officials said that onecoin was not backed by any secured, independent blockchain-type technology as other cryptocurrencies are. Instead, they said, it was a classic Ponzi scheme, in which early investors are encouraged to find others and then paid out by receipts from later investors. “Onecoin claimed to have a private blockchain,” FBI special agent Ronald Shimko said in a statement. “This is in contrast to other virtual currencies, which have a decentralized and public blockchain. In this case, investors were just asked to trust onecoin,” he said. Ignatova disappeared in 2017 as international investigators began to close in on her group. “Investigators believe Ignatova may have been tipped off that she was under investigation by US and international authorities,” the FBI said on Thursday. “She traveled from Sofia, Bulgaria, to Athens, Greece, on October 25, 2017, and has not been seen since.” On May 11, Europol announced that it had added Ignatova to its most wanted list, and offered a 5,000 euro (US$5,215) reward for information on her whereabouts. However, on Thursday she was no
UNITED STATES Stuck bear cub rescued Wildlife biologists in Connecticut had to rescue a bear cub that got its head stuck in a plastic container, state wildlife officials said. The misadventure happened on June 23 when a mother bear with three cubs knocked over a garbage can in the town of Harwinton in Litchfield County, and one of the cubs stuck its head in a clear plastic jar that had spilled out. “Given the warm weather and tight fit of the container, it was important to try and free the cub quickly,” the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s Fish and Wildlife Division wrote on Facebook. Wildlife biologists waited for the cub to come down from the tree it was perched in, and then tranquilized it and removed the container. The bear was unhurt and quickly found its mother waiting nearby, the wildlife officials said. MEXICO Four bound bodies found The bound bodies of four people were found on Friday in the burned-out wreckage of a helicopter in Gulf coast Hustaeca region, along with signs indicating they were killed by a drug gang, authorities said. The killings were the second act of grisly violence in a month in the region, once popular among tourists. Prosecutors in the northern state of San Luis Potosi said the private helicopter was normally used to transport tourists. They said the craft did not appear to have crashed, but rather had apparently been intentionally set afire. SYRIA Israel hits coastal village Israel carried out an airstrike on a coastal Syrian village near the Lebanon border yesterday morning, Syrian state media reported. Two people, including a woman, were wounded. State news agency SANA said Israeli warplanes flying over northern Lebanon fired missiles toward several chicken farms in the village of Hamidiyeh south of the coastal city of Tartus. SANA said two
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