IRAN
Journalist’s death ordered
A journalist whose online work helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017 was yesterday sentenced to death. Ruhollah Zam had run a Web site called AmadNews that posted embarrassing videos and information about Iranian officials. “The court has considered 13 counts of charges together as instances of ‘corruption on earth’ and therefore passed the death sentence,” judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced the arrest of Zam in October last year, describing him as a “counter-revolutionary” who was “directed by France’s intelligence service.” “Corruption on earth” is one of the most serious offenses under Iranian law.
GERMANY
Pedophile ring may be huge
Authorities on Monday said that they have evidence that tens of thousands of people might have been involved with an online child sex abuse network uncovered last year. Allegations against members of the pedophile ring include possession and distribution of child sex abuse images, and serious abuse, said Peter Biesenbach, minister of justice of North Rhine-Westphalia state. “I didn’t expect, not in the slightest, the extent of child abuse on the net,” Biesenbach told reporters, adding that specialist investigators have so far counted “more than — and I hope you’re sitting down — 30,000 unknown suspected perpetrators.” Officials later added that members of the network might have used several pseudonyms, reducing the actual number of suspects. Seventy-two suspects from across Germany have been identified. Ten people have been arrested and eight people have been indicted.
FRANCE
Ex-PM and wife sentenced
Former prime minister Francois Fillon and his wife, Penelope Fillon, were on Monday found guilty of embezzling more than 1 million euros (US$1.12 million) in a scandal over a fake advisory job that left his ambitions of becoming president in tatters. Francois Fillon was given a five-year jail term, of which three are suspended. His wife got a three-year suspended prison sentence. Francois Fillon “contributed to erosion of the trust that citizens place in those they elect,” presiding judge Nathalie Gavarino said. Investigators have said that Penelope Fillon never set foot in the National Assembly despite being paid as a full-time aide. She had no timetable, no work computer, mobile phone or e-mail address linked to the job, but her salary averaged US$140,000 a year for a time.
UNITED KINGDOM
Leicester in lockdown
A stringent lockdown has been imposed on the city of Leicester after a local flare-up of COVID-19 just as Prime Minister Boris Johnson attempts to nudge the country back to normality. The UK has been one of the world’s worst-hit areas, with more than 54,000 suspected deaths, although infections have been waning in the past few weeks. However, in Leicester, in the eastern Midlands of England, the seven-day infection rate was 135 cases per 100,000 people, three times higher than the next highest city. Leicester accounted for 10 percent of all positive cases in England in the past week, the government said. “We will be bringing forward a legal change very shortly, in the next couple of days, because some of the measures that we’ve unfortunately had to take in Leicester will require a legal underpinning,” British Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock told Sky.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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