World News
Germany: police arrest two individuals suspected of planning a ricin and cyanide attack
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Steph Deschamps / January 9, 2023
German authorities announced Sunday that they had arrested a 32-year-old Iranian man following indications of a possible “Islamist” ricin and cyanide attack, following a warning from the FBI, according to press reports.
The apartment located in Castrop-Rauxel in the west of the country, in North Rhine-Westphalia, was searched during the night to verify the possible presence of these “toxic substances” intended to commit such an attack, according to a statement from the regional prosecutor and police. The investigators have not found “any evidence” on the presence of these products on site, told AFP the prosecutor of Düsseldorf, Holger Heming.
The regional Minister of the Interior, Herbert Reul, explained that the authorities had received “indications to be taken seriously” which led the police to “act during the night”.
According to the newspapers Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung, it was the American FBI that warned the German services during the Christmas season. The US federal police would have managed to infiltrate a Telegram messaging group, where the suspect would have inquired first about bombings and then about those committed with toxic substances, according to Der Spiegel.
The man, along with a second person also arrested during the night at the same location, and who according to the German media is his brother, would have considered going into action on New Year’s Eve, but they lacked elements for the preparation of ricin and cyanide poisons, adds the Spiegel.
Despite the lack of immediately discovered evidence, Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser justified the police raid. “Our security services take every indication of the danger of Islamic terrorism very seriously,” she said in a statement.
It remains to be seen whether the justice system will have enough evidence to initiate proceedings.
At this stage, the main suspect is still “suspected of having prepared a serious act of violence threatening the security of the state by obtaining cyanide and ricin with a view to committing an attack of an Islamist nature,” according to the statement issued by the local judiciary. According to Spiegel, the man is a Sunni Iranian sympathetic to the Islamic State (EI) group.
Ricin is a highly toxic agent classified by the Robert Koch Institute, responsible in Germany for medical and health monitoring, as a “biological weapon” and is extracted from the seeds of the ricin plant. It can be a deadly poison, like cyanide.
On the images of the private television channel NTV, we can see the two people arrested being taken away in their underwear by agents, dressed in special protective suits because of the biological risk.
In 2018, German police had already arrested a 31-year-old Tunisian and his wife, suspected of having wanted to prepare what would have been the first “biological” attack in the country.
At the home of the couple, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group (EI), investigators had found 84.3 mg of ricin and some 3,300 castor beans to make the poison. The man was sentenced two years later to 10 years in prison and his wife to eight years.
Germany has been targeted in recent years by several Islamist attacks, including a ram-truck attack on a Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 13 people.
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Sylvie Claire / July 21, 2024
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on the phone on Friday, with the former US president claiming to have promised the Ukrainian president to “end the war” between Ukraine and Russia should he return to the White House. “As your next president of the United States, I will bring peace to the world and end the war that has cost so many lives,” said the Republican presidential candidate.
Donald Trump frequently claims that he would be able to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine very quickly on his return to power, but never provides details of how he would achieve this. Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the phone call, during which he congratulated the billionaire on his official nomination the previous day as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.
Donald Trump’s frequent praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as his criticism of other Nato countries, is causing concern among Ukraine’s Western allies. In February, he threatened that, if he returned to the White House, he would no longer guarantee the protection of Atlantic Alliance countries against Russia if they did not pay their share, even claiming that he would “encourage” Moscow to attack them. The former American president also used his power over the Republicans to block a $61 billion military aid package for Kiev for months in Congress, which was finally adopted at the end of April.
In his posting on X on Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky said he had “agreed with President Trump to discuss, in a face-to-face meeting, the steps to be taken towards a just and lasting peace” in Ukraine.
World News
Former Ukrainian far-right MP murdered in Lviv: “All leads are being investigated, including Russia”
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Steph Deschamps / July 21, 2024
In a message on Telegram, the Ukrainian National Police said she had succumbed to her injuries in hospital after being the target of an assassination attempt.
“I always say that no place is safe in Ukraine,” lamented Lviv mayor Andriï Sadovy, denouncing a ‘heinous murder’ and offering his condolences to the victim’s relatives.
According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, the attack took place on Friday evening, at around 7.30pm, when an unidentified individual fired at Irina Farion, seriously wounding her in the head. “All surveillance cameras are being checked, witnesses are being interviewed and several districts (of Lviv) are being examined. All leads are being investigated, including the one leading to Russia”, reacted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X on Saturday.
Interior Minister Igor Klimenko told a briefing in Lviv on Friday evening that the suspected killer could have been lurking around Irina Farion’s home for several days.
According to him, investigators are currently focusing on the possibility of a murder motivated by a “personal grudge” linked to the victim’s activities, but are not ruling out a “commissioned assassination” either.
The 60-year-old language teacher and linguist was a member of parliament for the nationalist Svoboda party between 2012 and 2014.
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Sylvie Claire / July 18, 2024
At least six people died in a shopping mall fire on Wednesday in Zigong, southwest China, and thirty others were rescued, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said. “Rescue teams are continuing their search,” the media outlet added.
Images broadcast by the channel and others shared on social networks show thick black smoke rising from a building overlooking a shopping street in this city 1,600 kilometers from the capital Beijing, in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
The fire broke out in the early evening in a shopping mall at the foot of a 14-storey building, CCTV reported.
“At 8:20 pm, the fire was extinguished and 17 people were rescued. Others are still trapped, and rescue operations are continuing”, said the station in an initial report on the situation.
Fires and other fatal accidents are frequent in China, due to the sometimes lax application of safety standards. In January, at least 39 people perished in a store fire in central China. According to the authorities, the fire started in the basement of a store when workers “broke the rules” during construction work. At the time, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for lessons to be learned from the disaster to prevent further tragedies. The same month, a fire in a residential building claimed at least 15 lives.
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