Foreign

This was the major lesson learnt from the story of a young boy who got caught while trying to get medicine for his sick Mom in the hospital. After getting caught, a billionaire CEO offered to pay for the stolen drugs, and also gave the boy some cash to help assist the mother, alongside his business card. After some years, the Billionaire went bankrupt as he got scammed, which resulted in him selling off his properties. He eventually became sick and was on bed, as there was no money to cater for his hospital expenses. The young boy whose mum, he helped some years back, remembered him and came to pay a visit, but was shocked to hear what happened. Without hesitation, he visited the man and gave his sister money for treatment. The young man left a letter for the sick CE...

Two crew members of a Japanese-owned oil tanker have died in a suspected piracy incident off the coast of Oman, the UK office of the Israeli-owned company that manages the vessel said Friday. “With profound sadness, we understand the incident onboard the M/T Mercer Street on 29 July, 2021 has resulted in the deaths of two crew members onboard: a Romanian national and a UK national,” Zodiac Maritime wrote on its Twitter page. “We are not aware of harm to any other personnel,” it added. The vessel was in the northern Indian Ocean, travelling from Dar es Salaam to Fujairah with no cargo onboard, when the attack occurred, said the company, adding it was “a suspected piracy incident”. Britain’s military said earlier Friday that it was investigating reports that an oil tanker ma...

An Egyptian court on Thursday sentenced 24 Muslim Brotherhood members to death for the killing of police officers in two separate cases, a judicial source said. The Damanhour Criminal Court, north of the capital Cairo, convicted the group of several crimes, including the alleged bombing of a bus transporting police officers in the coastal Beheira governorate in 2015. The attack killed three policemen and wounded scores of others. The other case, also comprised of Brotherhood members and tried by the same court, was over the killing of a policeman in 2014. Eight of the 24 accused were tried in absentia. Capital punishment for civilian convicts in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, is carried out by hanging. The verdicts can be appealed, the source added. ...

Russia has fined Google over $40,000 for failing to store the data of Russian users on local servers, a court spokeswoman said Thursday, the first time the US-based tech giant has been fined for the offence. The Russian government has been seeking to tighten control over the Russian segment of the web and develop a so-called “sovereign internet” and has said foreign technology companies must store Russian users’ data in the country. Moscow’s Tagansky district court on Thursday found Google guilty of breaching data localisation laws and fined the company 3 million rubles ($41,000), a court spokeswoman told state news agency RIA Novosti. The maximum penalty is six million rubles. This is the first time the US company has been penalised for breaching the controversial law pas...

Children in Israel aged five to 11 at risk of serious health complications can be vaccinated against Covid-19 as of August 1, Israeli health officials said Wednesday. The Israeli health ministry gave the green light for the vaccinations to children who are “at significant risk of serious illness or death” from coronavirus. “This is a special authorisation, and each vaccination will be studied on a case-by-case basis,” a ministry spokesperson told AFP on Wednesday. The health ministry on Tuesday issued a list of medical problems where a vaccination was advised. They include children with brain, heart or lung problems, severe immunosuppression, sickle cell anaemia, pulmonary hypertension and severe obesity. They will be offered a Pfizer/BioNTech dose of 0.1 millilitre, th...

A jewel thief was jailed for more than five years in Britain on Wednesday for stealing millions of pounds worth of diamonds by switching them with pebbles in a daring sleight of hand. Lulu Lakatos, 60, posed as a gem expert under the alias “Anna” to gain access to the jewels worth a total of £4.2 million ($5.8 million, 5.0 million euros). She claimed she had been sent to appraise the gems by a wealthy Russian client before swapping them for the worthless stones. A jury at Southwark Crown Court in south London found her guilty of conspiracy to steal. The judge called the heist “highly sophisticated and audacious”, involving “brazen deception”. Prosecutors said the theft of the seven diamonds — including one worth £2.2 million — from a luxury family jewellers in London’s upm...

French police arrested two suspects on Wednesday after a robbery at famed Parisian jeweller Chaumet where a thief made off with up to three million euros worth of jewellery after arriving and making a getaway on an electronic scooter. The two suspects were arrested at a motorway rest area in the east of France and a “substantial quantity” of the stolen goods was found in their possession, a police source told AFP, asking not to be named. The robber stole between two million and three million euros ($2.4-$3.6 million) worth of jewellery and precious stones after bursting into the shop near the Champs-Elysees avenue early Tuesday evening, the source said. Armed but without using his revolver, he helped himself to precious jewels and stones before making his getaway on the scoot...

Leftist Pedro Castillo is to be sworn in as Peru’s president on Wednesday with a full inbox: tame the coronavirus epidemic, reactivate a flagging economy, and put paid to years of political turmoil. The rural school teacher becomes Peru’s fifth president in three years, and has vowed to upend a quarter century of neo-liberal government. He was declared the victor on July 19, more than six weeks after a runoff vote against rightwing populist rival Keiko Fujimori, whose fraud claims were then reviewed by an electoral jury. Three days of ceremony are planned, starting with Wednesday’s swearing-in on Peru’s independence day — an event that will be attended by Spanish King Felipe VI, six Latin American leaders, former Bolivian President Evo Morales, and the United States education...

A Turkish-born American linked to a messaging app used by organisers of a failed coup in 2016 has arrived in Istanbul and turned himself in to the police, state media reported Wednesday. David Keynes, also known in Turkey as Alpaslan Demir, holds the copyright to ByLock, an encrypted messaging app that has been banned in Turkey and across parts of the Middle East. The Turkish government believes the app was used by organisers of a failed coup in 2016 that claimed the lives of some 250 people and was followed by a sweeping political crackdown and mass arrests. The Anadolu state news agency said Keynes arrived in Istanbul on June 9 and turned himself in to the police under a “repentance law” that grants more lenient treatment to people who confess to crimes. It was not ...

Ukraine’s Russia-backed Orthodox Church gathered thousands of its followers on Tuesday in a show of force ahead of a historic visit by its rival and leader of the Orthodox world, Patriarch Bartholomew I. More than 20,000 believers marched through Kiev despite coronavirus restrictions to mark the 1033 anniversary of the Christianisation of Rus, a term referring to eastern Slavic lands in the Middle Ages. Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I recognised an independent Ukrainian Orthodox church in 2019 after Kiev sought to break religious ties with Russia following a conflict in the country’s east. The move was condemned by Moscow. The leading authority in Orthodox Christianity is due in Ukraine next month to mark the country’s 30th anniversary of independence. An...