Author: DW

Five people convicted of murdering presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in Ecuador have been jailed.The journalist and former legislator was shot as he left a rally in August 2023, becoming the most prominent victim of the South American country’s spiralling violence. According to the attorney general’s office, Carlos Edwin Angulo Lara, known as The Invisible, gave the order to murder Villavicencio from prison, while Laura Dayanara Castillo was in charge of logistics.Both Angulo and Castillo were sentenced to 34 years and eight months.Erick Ramirez, Victor Flores and Alexandra Chimbo were sentenced to 12 years. The ruling, read out by Judge Milton…

Prosecutors in Argentina on Friday formally charged two French international rugby players with aggravated rape. The alleged incident occurred after a night out following a match between France and Argentina last Sunday in Mendoza. The prosecutor’s office in the city in Argentina’s Cuyo region ordered the two players to remain in detention until trial. After being arrested in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires, the accused were transferred some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to Mendoza on Thursday for their first appearance in court. The pair chose not to testify in Friday’s hearing. The French Rugby Federation had previously said that the accused — Hugo Auradou, 20, and Oscar Jegou, 21 —  admitted…

Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s son got married on Friday, marking the culmination of a wedding extravaganza  that lasted nearly seven months and brought into focus the staggering wealth and influence of the richest man in Asia. Anant Ambani — the youngest son of the tycoon — got engaged to Radhika Merchant — the daughter of pharmaceutical magnate Viren Merchant — in December last year. The couple wed in a Hindu ceremony at the Ambani-owned Jio World Convention Centre in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai. Mukesh Ambani is the world’s 11th richest personImage: Reliance Industries/AP/picture alliance Among the guests attending the event were:…

Dozens of bodies have been found in Gaza City, Palestinian rescue workers have said, after Israeli forces reportedly pulled out of parts of two districts following days of bombardment and fighting there.Israel’s military launched an incursion into the Tal al Hawa and Sinaah neighbourhoods earlier this week to fight what it said were Hamas militants who had regrouped.About 60 bodies have been recovered, including entire families who appeared to have been killed by artillery fire and aerial bombardment, Gaza’s civil defence director Mahmoud Basal said.”There are homes that we cannot reach, and there are those who were burned inside their…

Alec Baldwin’s trial for involuntary manslaughter was dismissed Friday. The development came after a judge ruled that key evidence relating to the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rust” had been withheld from the defense. The ruling came on the trial’s fourth day, bringing an abrupt end to a case that had already been dropped once. The judge’s ruling means Baldwin cannot be tried again. The defense accused prosecutors of hiding evidence from them about the ammunition that may be related to the shooting on the set of the Western film in 2021. The defense said they should have been allowed to determine its…

A 10ft-tall statue of the Greek god of the sea erected in Mexico has been “closed” and could be removed altogether because it offends the beliefs of local indigenous groups.The statue depicts a trident-wielding Poseidon appearing to rise from the sea metres from the beach near the town of Progreso, Yucatan. But Mexico’s environmental protection agency said the statue lacked permits and it was symbolically “closed” on Thursday after a group of activist lawyers filed a legal complaint saying the statue of the Greek god offended the beliefs of local Maya indigenous groups who have their own god of water,…

The European Union has come under criticism for continuing to engage in human rights dialogues with authoritarian governments in Southeast Asia.  Several campaign groups are calling on Brussels to stop the “box-ticking” talks with Vietnam’s Communist government, the latest round of which took place last week. Officials from the European Commission and European Parliament told DW that, though they are concerned about the deterioration of human rights in Vietnam, they believe the formal dialogues remain an important avenue for improving the situation. The European Union and Vietnam have engaged in human rights discussions since the 1990s and have held at…

Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter case has been dismissed by the judge.The actor cried as the judge made the shock ruling on day three in his trial over the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. The dismissal was made following a motion submitted by his defence team accusing the prosecution of concealing ammunition evidence.Baldwin, 66, had denied the charge of involuntary manslaughter, maintaining he did not pull the gun’s trigger and that others on the set of the western film Rust, in New Mexico, were responsible for safety checks on the weapon.According to the prosecution, he had behaved recklessly while rehearsing,…

07/11/2024July 11, 2024NATO and Ukraine: ‘The stronger the signal these days, the better,” foreign relations expert tells DWGustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told DW that Russia’s summer offensive in Ukraine was still in full swing and that Ukraine’s military ranks were stretched thin. “Ukraine has battled the Russian offensive quite well so far,” Gressel said. “By autumn, of course, the tide could stall, but Western assistance is good for the end of the year, or into the spring.” There was a question of where things could stand in terms of future international assistance…

Seventy-seven long-finned pilot whales washed ashore on Thursday on Sanday island, a part of the Orkney archipelago off Scotland.  Sixty-five of them were already dead, the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) service said, and the 12 still alive were in too poor a condition to recover.  “Sadly the remaining 12 pilot whales have been euthanized due to their condition deteriorating from the many hours they have spent stranded on the beach,” the BDMLR said in an update. It said lying on the beach for a long time likely led to “crush injury from their own weight and the high likelihood…