WORLD - The African Mirror

Oct

24

2023

Spain seizes ancient gold jewellery stolen from Ukraine worth $64 million

WORLD

SPAIN has seized ancient gold artefacts valued at 60 million euros ($63.6 million) stolen from Ukraine after thieves were caught trying to sell them in Madrid, Spanish police said. The 11 pieces, primarily jewellery including intricate necklaces, bracelets and earrings, are dated from the Greco-Scythian period between the 8th and 4th centuries BC, police said. The items were exhibited in a Kyiv museum between 2009-2013, and were smuggled out of Ukraine in 2016, Madrid National Police said in a statement, without identifying the museum. The artefacts had forged documents to make it look as if they belonged to the Ukrainian…

Oct

24

2023

By The African Mirror

How Donald Trump’s trial dates overlap with his 2024 election campaign

WORLD

FORMER U.S. President Donald Trump faces a tangled calendar in the year ahead as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination while trying to fend off four criminal and three civil trials, some related to his attempts to overturn his 2020 loss. Here are key dates in Trump's legal and political schedule: WEEK OF OCTOBER 23, 2023 Testimony continues in a civil fraud trial in Manhattan that threatens Trump's business empire. New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking to impose a penalty of at least $250 million and prevent Trump and his adult sons from running businesses in the state. A judge…

Oct

23

2023

By NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI and EMILY ROSE

Israel pummels Gaza as US sees significant risk of attacks on Mideast interests

WORLD

FEARS that the Israel-Hamas war could mushroom into a wider Middle East conflict rose with Washington warning of a significant risk to U.S. interests in the region as ally Israel pounded Gaza and clashes on its border with Lebanon intensified. Gaza's Health Ministry said 266 Palestinians, including 117 children, had been killed by Israeli air strikes in the past 24 hours in the enclave, to which Israel laid "total siege" after a deadly mass infiltration into Israel by Hamas gunmen on Oct. 7. In neighbouring Syria, where Hamas' main regional backer Iran has a military presence, Israeli missiles hit Damascus and Aleppo international airports…

Oct

23

2023

By The African Mirror

Iranian teenager Armita Geravand is ‘brain dead’: state media

WORLD

A teenage Iranian girl, who fell into a coma earlier this month following an alleged encounter with officers over violating the country's hijab law, is said to be "brain dead", Iranian state media reported. Right groups such as Kurdish-Iranian Hengaw were the first to make Armita Geravand's hospitalisation public, publishing photos of the 16-year-old girl on social media that showed her unconscious with a respiratory tube and bandage over her head, visibly on life support. Reuters could not verify the pictures. "Follow-ups on the latest health condition of Geravand indicate that her condition of being brain dead seems certain despite the efforts…

Oct

23

2023

By The African Mirror

China says it uncovered another spying case in US

WORLD

CHINA'S top spy agency said that a Chinese citizen who worked for a defence institute had been accused of spying for the United States and his case had been transferred to a court in the southwestern city of Chengdu for trial. The case is the latest to underscore Beijing's heightened commitment to national security, its expanded anti-spying laws and crackdown on domestic corruption. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said in a television report that a man surnamed Hou who worked at an undisclosed defence institute was sent in 2013 as a visiting scholar to a U.S. university, where he was coerced…

Oct

22

2023

By The African Mirror

Funerals in Israel and Gaza as deaths climb on both sides

WORLD

ISRAELI air strikes hammer Gaza, razing entire districts and filling morgues with dead Palestinians as Israel took revenge for the Hamas assaults that have triggered some of the worst blood-letting in 75 years of conflict. [1/39]A woman places a flower as she mourns Danielle, 25, and Noam, 26, an Israeli couple who were killed in a deadly attack by Hamas gunmen from Gaza as they attended a music festival, as they are buried next to each other during their funeral in Kiryat Tivon, Israel, October 12. REUTERS/Shir Torem KIRYAT TIVON, ISRAEL [2/39]Mourners attend the funeral of Palestinians from the Shamalkh…

Oct

22

2023

By The African Mirror

Judge temporarily lifts Trump gag order in federal 2020 election case

WORLD

A U.S. judge temporarily lifted a partial gag order she had imposed limiting Donald Trump's public statements about the federal criminal case in which the former president is accused of illegally attempting to undo his 2020 election loss. Acting on the same day that a New York state judge fined Trump $5,000 for violating a gag order in a civil trial, U.S. District Tanya Chutkan in Washington put on hold the order she issued earlier in the week while she considers the former president's request for a longer pause while he challenges it. Lawyers for Trump on Friday asked Chutkan to lift…

Oct

22

2023

By ASIF SHAHZAD and MUBASHER BUKHARI

Former Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif vows to work toward economic recovery

WORLD

PAKISTAN'S three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif kick-started his party's campaign for next year's election after arriving home from four years of self-imposed exile in London, promising to tackle record inflation. "I want to serve this nation," said the 73-year-old veteran politician in his address to thousands of his supporters at his eastern hometown of Lahore. "My only desire is to see this nation prosper," he said after he compared today's essential goods prices with his last tenure before he was ousted in 2017. He promised to work toward economic recovery, without laying any plans, saying: "We will control inflation." Earlier, he landed…

Oct

21

2023

By NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI and EMILY ROSE

Hamas frees U.S. hostages Judith and Natalie Raanan held in Gaza

WORLD

THE Islamist group Hamas released two U.S. hostages, mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan, who were kidnapped in its attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Friday. The women, who were taken from Nahal Oz kibbutz, near the Gaza border, were on their way to a military base in central Israel, a statement from Netanyahu's office said. Media reports in the United States said they were from Evanston, an Illinois suburb of Chicago. They were the first hostages to be freed since Hamas gunmen burst into Israel nearly two weeks ago, killing…

Oct

21

2023

By The African Mirror

Russia charges Ukrainian war veteran mistakenly honoured by Canada with genocide

WORLD

RUSSIAN investigators charged 98-year-old Ukrainian war veteran Yaroslav Hunka, mistakenly honoured by Canada last month, with genocide for serving in a German Nazi division fighting the Soviet Union in World War Two. Moscow seized on the incident, for which Canada apologised, as further justification for a full-scale invasion that Russian President Vladimir Putin said was needed to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine and thwart the aggression of its Western allies. Russian state and military archives have "received documentary evidence of the places of deployment and the conduct of hostilities by the SS Galicia division, in which Hunka served", the federal Investigative…