Month: November 2019

Golf history was made in South Africa on Thursday as male competitors at the Alfred Dunhill Championship on the European Tour were for the first time allowed to wear shorts. Organisers said they were thinking primarily about the competitors’ health when they made their radical concession – one which broke more than a century and a half…

New Zealand has launched the world’s first HIV positive sperm bank in an effort to reduce the stigma around the virus.  Online sperm bank ‘Sperm Positive’ has begun with three HIV positive male donors, who all have an undetectable viral load, meaning the virus cannot be passed on even through unprotected sex.  While the amount of the virus in their blood is so low it…

A 19-year-old volunteer fire fighter in Australia has been charged with arson and accused of lighting seven fires in the Bega Valley area, New South Wales. New South Wales has suffered from a horrific bush fire crisis in recent weeks, with six people killed, 600 homes destroyed and almost 1.7 million hectares of land burnt through. Click…

Lawyers for a British teenager at the centre of a gang rape trial in Cyprus expressed deep disappointment on Thursday after the judge in the case ruled that a contentious retraction statement is admissible as evidence. The 19-year-old woman claimed in July that she had been raped in a hotel room in the party town…

The three alleged murderers of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia were allegedly paid €150,000 to kill her with a car bomb, according to new claims. The alleged assassins initially planned to murder the anti-corruption crusader by shooting her with a rifle, but in the end opted for a bomb which they planted inside her car.…

It was an innocent, even bland, promotion for grocery savings at the Lidl supermarket chain featuring a mixed-race couple and their baby son, which was why no one in Ireland was prepared for the vicious backlash that resulted. It was immediate and virulent, forcing Fiona Ryan and Jon Mathis and their son, Jonah, to flee…

French celebrity chef Marc Veyrat became on Wednesday the first cook to take Michelin to court for docking him his third star in a case the revered restaurant guide warned could open a “Pandora’s box” regarding food critic freedoms. Mr Veyrat, 69, who accused Michelin of wrongly claiming he put English cheddar in his Gallic…

Spanish police have intercepted what is believed to be the first submarine used to smuggle drugs into Europe and seized a reported three tonnes of Colombian cocaine. Police sources say that the 20-metre-long submarine, thought to be similar to those used by drug traffickers to transport cocaine from Colombia to Mexico and the US, was detected…

Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with ties to the Kremlin, has had his Cypriot citizenship revoked as the island nation clamps down on abuse of its passport-for-investment programme, according to local media.  Cyprus has stripped 26 wealthy people of their citizenship rights as part of a review of the 2013 policy that granted a passport…

Hungary has pulled out of next year’s Eurovision song contest amid speculation the decision was triggered by a backlash to the competition’s LGBT-positive messaging. While no official reason has been given for the withdrawal, sources within Hungary’s public broadcaster reportedly believe it is due to a rise in homophobic rhetoric within the country around the…