Author: DW

Hundreds of people in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province attacked a Christian community over blasphemy allegations, officials said. The mob attack occurred in the Mujahid Colony area of the city of Sargodha. What else do we know about the attacks? The mob alleged that a Christian had desecrated Islam’s holy book, the Quran. Police said that the man’s small shoemaking factory was burned down in the violence. Officers rescued at least five people from the violence, Sargodha police chief Sariq Khan was cited by the Reuters news agency as saying. He said that all five had been taken to the hospital.…

The G7 group of wealthy democracies will look at ways of using the future interest from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine as it continues to battle invading Russian forces, finance ministers from the group said on Saturday. The meeting of the G7 ministers in the northern Italian city of Stresa has been focused mainly on the question of how to find more funds for Ukraine as Russia presses on with a new offensive in the Kharkiv region in the third year of its unprovoked invasion. The G7 and its allies froze some $300 billion (€276 billion) of Russian assets shortly after Moscow launched…

Highway thieves have stolen 40 tonnes of avocados in Mexico, prosecutors have said.Armed men stopped freight trucks in two separate robberies in the western state of Michoacan, Mexico’s main producer of avocados, the attorney general’s office said. Approximately 20 tonnes of avocados were taken in both cases, with the robbers transferring crates containing the fruit into a van and fleeing the scene.Avocado farmers have long been targeted by drug cartel extortion demands in Michoacan, and thefts of fruit straight from trees in avocado orchards are known to happen.Read more from Sky News:Court orders Israel to halt Rafah offensiveBritish man missing…

A Haitian gang killed three missionaries, including a married couple from the United States,  in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Missions in Haiti, an Oklahoma-based nonprofit founded in 2000, said Davy and Natalie Lloyd and the local director of the mission group, Jude Montis, were killed by armed men on Thursday evening. Missouri State Senator’s children among the dead Natalie’s father is Missouri State Senator Ben Baker , and Davy is the son of David and Alicia Lloyd, who started the organization Missions in Haiti in 2000. “My heart is broken in a thousand pieces. I’ve never felt this kind of pain,” Baker said in a Facebook post.…

China said late on Friday that it had completed two days of military drills around Taiwan that have been widely seen as a further bid to intimidate the democratically governed island and its allies. Beijing, which sees Taiwan as part of its territory, said the drills were a “punishment” for the recent inauguration speech by the island’s new president, Lai Ching-te, an address denounced by China as a “confession of independence.” Taipei has slammed the military exercises, calling them a “unilateral provocation.”  What happened during the war games? Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said that 111 Chinese aircraft and dozens of naval vessels participated…

05/25/2024May 25, 2024Germany delivers another IRIS-T air defense system to UkraineGermany’s Defense Ministry on Friday confirmed that another IRIS-T air defense system had been delivered to Ukraine. “We have once again delivered a combined IRIS-T SLM and IRIS-T SLS fire unit to Ukraine,” said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. Pistorius spoke of a “highly modern and well-proven medium and short-range air defense system, manufactured directly by German industry.” Together with the recently delivered Patriot system, Germany is thus “strengthening Ukraine’s air defense in its defensive battle against Russia’s brutal war of aggression, which violates international law,” Pistorius said.  Each IRIS-T…

Russia has detained the deputy head of the army’s general staff for allegedly accepting bribes, local media reported on Thursday. The Interfax news agency said that Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin was being held in pretrial detention on charges of large-scale bribe taking, amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. The charge carries up to 15 years in prison. Newspaper Kommersant reported that authorities searched Shamarin’s home. Russia’s military shake-up Shamarin is the latest high-ranking military official to be detained in Russia in recent months. Among those who were arrested include Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, the Defense Ministry’s deputy head of personnel Lieutenant General…

The alliance of populist right-wing parties at the European Parliament, called Identity and Democracy (ID), on Thursday removed the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party from its ranks.  “The Bureau of the Identity and Democracy Group in the European Parliament has decided today to exclude the German delegation, AfD, with immediate effect,” it said in a statement.  The development follows a pair of scandals this month centered around the AfD’s lead candidate for next month’s European Parliament elections, Maximilian Krah. First, he suspended a senior staff member, amid news they were being charged with spying for China. Krah’s own ties to both China…

Not many people predicted the big defection of footballers from Europe to the Saudi Pro League last summer – except maybe the Saudis themselves and a handful of key agents.In all, 23 players swapped the Premier League for the heat of Arabia and massive tax-free pay rises. Aleksandar Mitrovic and Ruben Neves left Fulham and Wolves respectively to join Al Hilal with no regrets.Mitrovic, originally from Serbia, said: “After seven years in England I think the first thing was the sun. I never had summer sun in my life.”It’s been different you know, different culture, different football, the mentality of…

The European Union has issued a €337.5 million ($366 million) fine to Mondelez, the US confectionary giant behind like likes of Toblerone, Oreo, Cadbury, and Milka, for anticompetitive behavior. The EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, accused Mondelez of “restricting the cross-border trade of chocolate, biscuits and coffee products within the European Union.” “This harmed consumers, who ended up paying more for chocolate, biscuits and coffee,” she told reporters in Brussels. “This case is about the price of groceries. It’s a key concern to European citizens and even more obvious in times of very high inflation, where many are in a cost-of-living crisis.” Mondelez,…