WORLD - The African Mirror

Jun

08

2023

Prince Harry tells court: ‘Nobody wants to be phone hacked’

WORLD

PRINCE Harry finished giving evidence at the High Court in London during a second day of grilling over his allegations that British tabloids targeted him with phone hacking and other unlawful behaviour. Harry and others are suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), publisher of the Daily Mirror and other tabloids, accusing them of widespread unlawful activities. MGN is contesting the claims and denies senior figures were aware of wrongdoing. Below are quotes and highlights from the courtroom where Harry faced hours of cross-examination in the witness box over two days: 'IT'S A LOT' At the conclusion of Harry's evidence, his lawyer David Sherborne…

Jun

08

2023

By VIKTORIIA LAKEZINA and MAX HUNDER

Ukrainians face homelessness, disease risk as floods crest from breached dam

WORLD

UKRAINIANS abandoned inundated homes as floodwaters crested across a swathe of the south after the destruction of a vast hydroelectric dam on the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces that each blamed on the other. Residents waded through flooded streets carrying children on their shoulders, dogs in their arms and belongings in plastic bags while rescuers used rubber boats to search areas where the waters reached above head height. Ukraine said the flood would leave hundreds of thousands of people without access to drinking water, swamp tens of thousands of hectares of agricultural land and turn at least 500,000…

Jun

08

2023

By DANIEL TROTTA and STEVE GORMAN

Gunman shoots two dead, wounds five others at Virginia high school graduation

WORLD

A man armed with four handguns killed two people and wounded five others when he fired into a crowd outside a high school graduation ceremony in Richmond, Virginia, police said. Police said they arrested one suspect, a 19-year-old man who knew one of the victims and shot at him amid the crowd that had just emerged from the Huguenot High School's commencement ceremony inside a theatre on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. The suspect was likely to be charged with two counts of second-degree murder in addition to other offences, interim Richmond Police Chief Rick Edwards told a press…

Jun

07

2023

By MICHAEL HOLDEN and SAM TOBIN

Prince Harry tells London court ‘vile’ press has blood on its hands

WORLD

PRINCE Harry launched a fierce attack on the "vile" press, blaming tabloids for destroying his adolescence and later relationships, as he gave evidence against a tabloid publisher whose titles he accuses of unlawful activities. Harry, the fifth-in-line to the throne, became the first senior royal to appear in a witness box in more than a century in a lawsuit he and 100 others have brought against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN). They accuse the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, of widespread phone-hacking and unlawful information gathering between 1991 and 2011. The younger son of King Charles…

Jun

07

2023

By VIKTORIIA LAKEZINA

Villagers flee after Kakhovka dam destroyed, flooding Ukraine war zone

WORLD

A torrent of water burst through a massive dam on the Dnipro River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine, flooding a swathe of the war zone and forcing villagers to flee. Ukraine and its Western allies accused Russia of blowing up the dam in a deliberate war crime. The Kremlin said it was Ukraine that had sabotaged the dam, to distract attention from a counteroffensive Moscow claims is faltering. Some Russian-installed officials said the dam had burst on its own. Neither side offered immediate public evidence of who was to blame. The Geneva Conventions explicitly ban targeting dams in…

Jun

07

2023

By TED HESSON and KRISTINA COOKE

Second flight arrives in Sacramento carrying migrants with Florida documents

WORLD

A flight carrying about 20 migrants landed in Sacramento, California, as state authorities investigated the role Florida had played in transporting them from Texas via New Mexico, according to the California attorney general's office and news reports. The migrants carried documents that indicated their transportation involved the state of Florida, the California attorney general's office said. More than a dozen migrants who arrived on Friday carried similar documentation, the office said. The administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican seeking his party's presidential nomination in 2024, last year orchestrated a flight carrying dozens of migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, a…

Jun

06

2023

By DAVID SHEPARDSON and PHIL STEWART

Fighter jets chase small plane in Washington area before it crashes in Virginia

WORLD

THE United States scrambled F-16 fighter jets in a supersonic chase of a light aircraft with an unresponsive pilot that violated airspace around Washington D.C. and later crashed into the mountains of Virginia, officials said. No survivors were found at the crash site, Virginia state police said. The jet fighters created a sonic boom over the U.S. capital as they pursued the errant Cessna Citation, officials said, causing consternation among people in the Washington area. Four people were onboard the Cessna, a source familiar with the matter said. A Cessna Citation can carry seven to 12 passengers. After several hours…

Jun

06

2023

By GUY FAULCONBRIDGE

Russia says it thwarted major Ukrainian offensive, Kyiv says Moscow spreads lies

WORLD

RUSSIA said its forces had thwarted a major Ukrainian offensive at five points along the front in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk and killed hundreds of troops while Ukraine accused Moscow of spreading lies. It was not immediately clear whether or not the attack represented the start of a Ukrainian counteroffensive which Kyiv has been promising for months to drive out Russian forces after the invasion of February 2022. Russia's defence ministry said Ukraine had attacked on Sunday morning with six mechanised and two tank battalions in southern Donetsk, where Moscow has long suspected Ukraine would seek to drive a…

Jun

06

2023

By JATINDRA DASH

India investigates rail disaster as trains crawl through crash site

WORLD

THE official investigation into India's deadliest rail crash in over two decades began after preliminary findings pointed to signal failure as the likely cause for a collision that killed at least 275 people and injured 1,200. The disaster struck on Friday, when a passenger train hit a stationary freight train, jumped the tracks and hit another passenger train passing in the opposite direction near the district of Balasore, in the eastern state of Odisha. Following non-stop efforts to rescue survivors and clear and repair the track, trains resumed running over that section of the line on Sunday night. Trains were passing slowly…

Jun

05

2023

By LISA RICHWINE and MARIA CASPANI

Hollywood directors reach labour pact, writers remain on strike

WORLD

HOLLYWOOD'S major studios reached a tentative labour agreement with the union representing film and television directors, likely averting a work stoppage that would have piled pressure on media companies to settle with striking writers. The Directors Guild of America (DGA) will ask its 19,000 members to approve the three-year contract, which was announced late on Saturday after three weeks of talks. The agreement includes gains in wages and residuals plus guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence, according to the DGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Netflix, Walt Disney Co and other major studios. The Writers…