Month: November 2023

German police raided 54 locations across the country on Thursday in an investigation of a Hamburg-based center suspected of promoting Iranian ideology and supporting the activities of Hezbollah, the government said. The Interior Ministry said the Islamic Center Hamburg, or IZH, has long been under observation by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. It said the activities of the group are aimed at spreading the “revolutionary concept” of Iran’s supreme leader. Authorities are also looking into suspicions that it supports banned activities in Germany by Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, which has repeatedly traded fire with Israel across the Israel-Lebanon border since …

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that a stalemate in his country’s war against Russia would create a “volcano that is sleeping but will definitely wake up.” “We cannot afford any stalemate,” Zelenskyy told African journalists in Kyiv on Wednesday. “If we want to end the war, we must end it. End with respect so that the whole world knows that whoever came, captured, and killed, is responsible.” According to the Ukrainian president, if the war becomes a stalemate, future generations of Ukrainians will have to fight, because Russia “will come again if it is not put in its place.” …

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How was the air breathed by Caesar, the Prophet Mohammed or Christopher Columbus? A giant freezer in Copenhagen holds the answers, storing blocks of ice with atmospheric tales thousands of years old. The Ice Core Archive, housing 25 kilometres (15 miles) of ice collected primarily from Greenland, is helping scientists understand changes in the climate. “What we have in this archive is prehistoric climate change, a record of man’s activities in the last 10,000 years,” glaciology professor Jorgen Peder Steffensen of the University of Copenhagen told AFP. Blocks of ice have been his passion for 43 years — and it …

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After living and working in Russia for the last decade, Tajik construction worker Zoir Kurbanov recently decided it was time to head home. Life for many Central Asian migrants in Russia after it invaded Ukraine was not the same: wages were falling and men faced a danger of being sent by Moscow to the front. Then, Kurbanov got an offer for jobs on building sites in Mariupol and Donetsk — cities in occupied Ukraine. “I refused,” the 39-year-old said. He decided to take a huge pay cut and return home to Tajikistan “because of the war,” taking up a construction …

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A woman went on trial Wednesday in the bombing that killed a prominent Russian military blogger who died after he was given a bust of himself that later exploded.  Darya Trepova, 26, is charged with carrying out a terrorist attack, illegal trafficking of explosive devices, and forging documents in the April 2 blast at the St. Petersburg Cafe in which Vladlen Tatarsky was killed and 52 others were injured.  Trepova was arrested shortly after the bombing and faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted, according to Russian news reports.  Tatarsky, 40, was an ardent supporter of the Kremlin’s military …

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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged on Wednesday that his government will keep seeking ways to send some undocumented immigrants on a one-way journey to Rwanda, even though the Supreme Court just ruled that policy was illegal and could imperil refugees. Five justices unanimously found that Rwanda is not a safe destination for migrants, writing in their decision that asylum-seekers redirected to the East African nation would be “at real risk of ill-treatment.” The court cited a laundry list of reasons for striking down Sunak’s plan, including Rwanda’s record of human rights abuses, political repression and policy of “refoulement,” or …

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Ukrainian troops have established a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson Oblast, according to a Ukrainian official. “Against all odds, Ukraine’s defense forces have gained a foothold on the left bank,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said during a speech to a Washington think tank on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. Ukraine had been attempting to push Russia from the strategically significant eastern bank of the river, which has served as a natural barrier, preventing Ukraine from advancing farther into the Kherson region towards the Russian-annexed Crimea.  The river also …

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