Month: April 2019

The suspected ringleader of the terrorist group accused of carrying out the Easter Sunday bombings died in the blast at the Shangri La hotel, the Sri Lankan authorities claimed on Friday.  Mohamed Zahran, the leader of the local jihadi group National Thawheed Jamath, known for his incendiary speeches on social media, was one of the suicide…

Kim Jong-un has asked Vladimir Putin to serve as an intermediary with the United States after his nuclear disarmament talks with Donald Trump collapsed in February, the Russian president has said.  Thursday’s first-ever meeting between the Russian and North Korean leaders in Vladivostok has allowed Moscow to reinsert itself into the dialogue around denuclearisation as…

Emmanuel Macron promised “significant” tax cuts for France’s middle classes while cutting public spending but told the French they must work like their “neighbours”, in a much-awaited response to five-months of “yellow vest” protests. In what the French media dubbed his “moment of truth”, the 41-year old centrist promised citizens a “new act in our…

A successful female lawyer has vowed to take the Spanish state to court after losing custody of her children for allegedly working too much. Elena del Pilar Ramallo Miñán, a solicitor formerly of Santander Bank, was ruled to have “spent too much time away from the conjugal home” when she had child-sharing responsibilities for her…

The Siberian village of Oymyakon is regarded as the coldest permanently-inhabited place on earth.  Though it is only a few degrees of latitude further north than Aberdeen, the village of 500 residents is in a mountain valley where cool air pools, isolated from warmer currents by the “Siberian high” pressure system and the Chersky range.…

The first white man in Texas to be convicted of the murder of a black man was executed on Wednesday night, after 20 years on death row. John William King, a 44-year-old white supremacist, was put to death in the Texas death chamber in Huntsville with a dose of pentobarbital. He declined to give any…

Iran’s foreign minister has offered a prisoner exchange of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and an Iranian woman held in Australia on “phony charges”. Mohammed Javad Zarif, speaking at an event held by the Asia Society in New York on Wednesday, said the proposal was made to the US six months ago but he was now making it…

Brigitte Macron, France’s first lady, is to return to the classroom to teach French to adults who left school without qualifications. Mrs Macron, 66, was a French and drama teacher before stepping down in 2015 when her husband, Emmanuel, 41, hit the political high life as minister then president. Indeed, she even directed his stage…

Two former executives of a major US pharmaceutical company have been charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances in an unprecedented case. The prosecution came as Donald Trump vowed to crack down on abuses by “Big Pharma" that have fuelled America’s opioid epidemic, which claims the lives of nearly 50,000 people a year. It was…