Mummified body of an Italian woman named Marinella Beretta was found sitting at a table in her house in Prestino, near Lake Como in northern Italy.
According to Italian media reports, the body of the 70-year-old woman was discovered by the Italian police.
She was said to have no living relatives.
The discovery has prompted calls for better elder care in the country.
The so-called “honour killing” of a woman at the hands of her husband has caused nationwide outrage in Iran and criticism of the judicial system.
An honour killing is the murder of an individual, either an outsider or a member of a family by someone seeking to protect what they see as the dignity and honour of themselves or their family.
The man beheaded his 17-year-old wife in Ahvaz, south-western Iran, at the weekend before walking into the street with her head in his hand.
This was captured in photos and video footage that was circulated on social media.
On Thursday, Iranian prosecutors announced that the man and his brother had been arrested in connection with the killing and would be soon be tried.
In addition, the media would no longer be allowed to publish videos and pictures of the crime.
It is unclear whether the husband and his brother of the slain woman will be tried for murder or a so-called honour killing, which is still considered legitimate by parts of the population in Iran.
Chief Public Prosecutor Mohammed Jafar Montaseri declined to comment, saying only that the internet and social media were responsible for such acts.
Critics say that all killings of this sort should be considered murder and tried as such.
The death penalty is usually imposed for murder in Iran, but different legal criteria apply to honour killings.
(dpa/NAN)
Top officials in U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration warned senators that Iran had enough capacity to produce nuclear bomb within two months, Politico reported.
According to Politico, one of the senators called the statement that was delivered in a classified briefing, “sobering and shocking.”
The politico said that U.S. lawmakers still disagree over the best solution to the Iranian problem.
It said that most Democrats urge a rebirth of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) while Republicans seek to return former U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy and impose devastating sanctions on Iran.
The JCPOA was signed in 2015 by the United Kingdom, Russia, China, Germany, U.S., France, the European Union and Iran, imposing restrictions on the advancement of the Iran nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions.
In 2018, former U.S. President, Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA and re-imposed sanctions on Iran.
The Iranian government responded with a gradual retreat from JCPOA obligations.
Since April 2021, Vienna has been hosting talks to restore the deal. The seventh round of Vienna talks on bringing Iran back to the nuclear deal and lifting U.S. sanctions ended on Dec. 17.
The parties agreed on two drafts of the deal, which included provisions covering Iranian interests.
The eighth round of the talks resumed on Tuesday in Vienna, but the meeting of the joint commission has yet to be held. (Sputnik/NAN)
French President Emmanuel Macron, the first leader of a major Western power to meet Vladimir Putin since Russia massed troops near Ukraine, said on Tuesday he believed steps can be taken to de-escalate the crisis and called on all sides to stay calm.
Macron, who in contrast to the U.S. and British leaders, has played down the likelihood that Russia may soon invade its neighbour, shuttled from Moscow to Kyiv on Tuesday in a bid to mediate a settlement and avoid war.
The French president had no breakthroughs to announce but Macron said he thought his talks had helped prevent the crisis from escalating further.
He said had never expected “for one second” that Putin would make concessions.
Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had told him they were committed to the principles of a 2014 peace agreement, he said, adding that this deal, known as the Minsk accords, offered a path to resolving their ongoing disputes.
“This shared determination is the only way allowing us to create peace, the only way to create a viable political solution,” Macron told a joint news conference with Zelenskiy.
“Calm … is essential from all parties in words and in deeds,” Macron said, praising Zelenskiy for the “sangfroid” he and the Ukrainian people were showing as Russia amasses more than 100,000 troops, tanks, and heavy weapons on Ukraine’s borders.
Zelenskiy made clear he was skeptical of any assurances Macron may have received from Putin.
“I do not really trust words, I believe that every politician can be transparent by taking concrete steps,” he said.
Moscow denies any plans to invade but is seeking sweeping concessions from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the military alliance which has underpinned security in western Europe since 1949.
The demands include a promise of no missile deployments near Russia’s borders, a scaling back of NATO infrastructure, and a ban on Ukraine ever joining the alliance.
Russia’s military build-up gained momentum on Tuesday with the arrival of three warships in the Black Sea, according to a Reuters witness.
Turkish sources said another three were expected to pass through the Bosporus on Wednesday, in what Russia’s Interfax news agency reported as a pre-planned exercise.
Macron flew later to Berlin for meetings with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
In a statement alongside Macron before the talks began, Scholz told reporters: “Our common goal is to prevent a war in Europe.”
“Our appraisal of the situation is united, as is our position on this: any further attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine is unacceptable and will draw wide-reaching consequences for Russia – politically, economically, and geo-strategically,” he added.
Macron and Scholz also met in Berlin with Polish President Andrzej Duda.
The French presidency said after the talks the three leaders expressed their joint support for Ukrainian sovereignty.
The meeting further illustrated the European convergence on a “committed and demanding approach” toward Russia, the French presidency added.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, asked in an interview with CNN about the likelihood of a Russian invasion, said: “There’s no certainty but what we see is a continued military buildup with more and more forces… The warning time is going down and the risk of an attack is going up.”
(Reuters/NAN)
British TV presenter and author Bamber Gascoigne has died at the age of 87 following a short illness.
A statement by the opera said Gascoigne, best known as the original host of BBC’s University Challenge, died at his home in Richmond, the Grange Park Opera.
The 87-year-old famous host had been married to his wife Christina, a potter, for five years.
Gascoigne became a household name, presenting the show for 25 years as part of the everyday British lexicon.
He was famously parodied by Griff Rhys-Jones in alternative BBC two comedy “The Young Ones’’ in an episode entitled Bambi.
Upon leaving University Challenge, which has been hosted by Jeremy Paxman on the BBC since 1994, Gascoigne wrote several successful books, produced documentaries, and established an online history encyclopaedia called HistoryWorld.
In 2014, he inherited an estate in Surrey from his aunt and it is now used as the filming location for the hit BBC One comedy Ghosts.
(dpa/PA Media/NAN)
After a brief interruption, negotiations to save the nuclear deal with Iran are set to continue in Vienna on Tuesday.
The coming weeks are considered crucial for the possible restoration of the arms control agreement from 2015.
Western diplomats say Iran is making great strides towards the capability to produce a nuclear bomb and that it is therefore increasingly urgent to reach an effective agreement that would again limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities to purely civilian applications.
Germany, France and Britain, together with Russia and China, have been mediating between Iran and the United States for months.
The aim is to lift U.S. economic sanctions and, in return, to restrict Iran’s nuclear programme again.
Under former president Donald Trump, the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the agreement. Tehran then violated the conditions of the agreement, including by enriching uranium to a level that is no longer far from a weapons capability.
(Reuters/NAN)
The Pakistani opposition in the Senate on Monday slammed the government for what it called “a policy of appeasement” towards terrorist outfits.
It noted that talks with those who challenged the writ of the State had emboldened and encouraged such actors.
Speaking on an adjournment motion on the rising tide of terrorism, opposition senators also voiced concerns over talks with the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which were being held through a government that was not recognised by any country of the world.
They said the recently unveiled National Security Policy be discussed in parliament and that an internal security policy, as well as the Afghan strategy, should be framed in light of that discussion.
Senators claimed the government was devoting all its energies to stifling dissent and cornering its political opponents while ignoring its responsibility to protect the lives of the people.
However, the Interior Minister claimed that negotiations with the banned group had stalled because their demands were unreasonable, warning the opposition of a potential terror threat if it went ahead with its proposed long march and asked them to consider rescheduling it.
Opening debate on the topic, Pakistan Peoples Party leader Sherry Rehman sought an explanation on how a sitting prime minister can decide who is the leader of the opposition or who is not — a reference to PM Khan’s recent statement where he said that he had no respect for Shehbaz Sharif and didn’t consider him an opposition leader.
“This is not his decision, nor is it his prerogative. It is the sovereign right of the people to elect their representatives, not his own prerogative as a manifestation of his own hubris and bizarre conceptualisation of the political and constitutional reality of the country,” she remarked.
She also criticised the Prime Minister for constantly blaming either previous governments, external factors, or anyone but his own government for all the ills that plagued the country.
She said the people of Pakistan no longer knew where to turn in their hour of unprecedented misery as crisis after crisis was unleashed on citizens.
“He is making a laughing stock of Pakistan by threatening his own country, but also sending a message to his selectors, who are now clearly fed up with this amateurish show. Too much is at stake, given Pakistan’s national security challenges and economic distress. You can’t have a rule by tantrum. Pakistan will not be sacrificed to anyone’s ego,” she concluded.
But defending his party chief, Leader of the House in the Senate, Dr Shahzad Wasim, said that the Prime Minister was merely holding up a mirror to the opposition.
Asking sarcastically who could possibly threaten “such an incompetent opposition”, he said after disqualification by the courts, they first distributed sweets and then started asking ‘mujhe kyon nikala’ (why was I removed). This prompted a token walkout by the opposition.
Former Senate chairman Raza Rabbani said the state had been patronising extremist right-wing forces and religious groups, adding that TTP was said to be reorganising in Afghanistan.
He said that the TTP kept on violating a ceasefire agreement, but the government still says its doors are open for talks.
Senator Tahir Bizenjo of the National Party said that over the last 10 days, eight terrorist attacks had taken place across the country, while Nawabzada Umar Farooq Kasi said that negotiating with terrorists only encouraged them.
Jamaat-i-Islami Senator Mushtaq Ahmad regretted that terrorists and target killers ruled the roost and demanded that former military ruler Pervez Musharraf be brought to Pakistan and tried for his surrender before the US and the murder of Nawab Akbar Bugti.
He asked who was it that actually negotiated with the TTP, and what were the terms of these talks. He also sought an explanation from the interior minister over his statement about the presence of terrorists’ sleeper cells in Islamabad.
Responding to the opposition, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said no talks were currently being held with the TTP since their demands were considered to be against the country’s security interests.
He claimed India does not want good relations between the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan, adding that evidence suggested RAW was behind many terror attacks in the country, which were carried out by local criminals hired by the Indian agency.
He also disclosed that the opposition’s protest march on the capital, scheduled for March this year, was also under threat of terrorist attack and called on its leadership to reconsider its decision.
An Egyptian man has shot his wife, three other family members and himself during a reconciliation session to save their marriage in Cairo just weeks after they got married.
According to Al Jazeera Arabic, on Friday night the husband, 22-year-old Shams Sharif, concealed a gun in a bag and took it to the meeting between the two families in the il neighbourhood of the capital.
As the discussion heated up and the families tried to resolve a dispute, he became angry and shot his wife, Nour Ghazal, 20, and her mother, 58-year-old Mona Mohamed.
Local newspapers have reported that the husband’s sister, Sherine, 42, and her husband Khaled Mohamed, 53, were also shot before Shams shot himself.
The neighbours heard the gunshots and called the police. None of the five people survived.
The husband, who was a scrap dealer, was reportedly admitted to a psychiatric clinic several months before the murder.
Xi’s call for solidarity elevates Olympic spirit to new height, senior diplomat says
President Xi Jinping elevated the Olympic spirit to a new height and pointed the way for humanity to respond to various risks and challenges as he welcomed global dignitaries at a banquet on Saturday, according to a senior Chinese diplomat.
Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, hosted 25 dignitaries who attended the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games at a banquet at the Great Hall of the People, where the State guests were offered a carefully choreographed showpiece of traditional Chinese culture and Winter Olympics.
While toasting the banquet’s participants, the president made a three-point proposal to amplify the Olympic spirit, calling for greater solidarity in the international community to respond to various global challenges.
Ma Zhaoxu, vice-minister of foreign affairs, said in an interview after the banquet that the speech made by Xi was significant in that it raised the Olympic spirit to a new level.
During the banquet, Xi urged efforts to promote the spirit of the Olympic Movement and meet the common challenges facing the international community, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and terrorism, through solidarity.
“The only way for all countries to address the various challenges effectively is to strengthen solidarity and cooperation and work together for a shared future,” Xi said.
He made an appeal for the global community to keep in mind the original aspiration of the Olympic Movement and jointly uphold world peace, saying that the movement was born for the sake of peace and has thrived thanks to peace.
It is important to act on the purpose of the Olympic Movement, continuously pursue human progress and stay true to humanity’s common values of peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, Xi said.
The president’s message was echoed by International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, both of whom also spoke at the banquet.
The global community should use the Beijing Winter Olympics as an opportunity to go beyond their differences and work together for a better shared future, they said.
The banquet, held as Chinese were still celebrating Spring Festival, marked a grand reunion of the Olympic family and the international community, said Ma, the vice-minister of foreign affairs.
It also embodied Xi’s strong emphasis on ties of friendship as the leader of a major country and China’s strong emphasis on diplomatic courtesy, Ma said.
The Beijing Winter Olympics are the first comprehensive global sporting event to be held as scheduled since the onset of the pandemic, and the Games have brought hope and confidence to the world amid COVID-19, he said.
“I believe the Beijing Winter Olympics will go down in history as a milestone for the development of the Olympic Movement and humanity overcoming crisis through solidarity,” he added.
The Golden Hall, where the banquet was held, was dotted with elements of Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, and the Winter Olympics, including red lanterns and a thematic flower bed of the Beijing Games.
The foreign dignitaries were welcomed with a corridor showcasing China’s intangible cultural heritage, including folk customs, music and handicraft, before joining Xi and his wife for a group photo.
Thirty-one foreign heads of state, government and international organizations and members of royal families attended the opening ceremony of the Games on Friday night, making them part of about 170 official representatives from about 70 countries and international organizations taking part in the event.
Ma said the attendance by foreign dignitaries in spite of the pandemic fully demonstrated the support of the international community for China, the Beijing Games and the global Olympic cause.
It also fully displayed the charm and charisma of Xi as a leader, he said.
He noted that China’s winning of support from various countries in hosting the Winter Olympics showed that different nations harbored sincere and strong aspirations to further friendship and cooperation with China, adding that China’s friends are all over the world.
The Beijing Winter Olympics are of special significance to China’s sports and the development of international Olympic Movement, Ma said, adding that Xi set out a vision of engaging 300 million Chinese people in winter sports－a goal that China has already reached.
In a meeting in late January, Bach, the IOC president, called China “a new winter sport country”, saying that “the 300 million people who have now been made familiar with winter sport will in the end be the great legacy of these Olympic Winter Games”.
Beijing Winter Olympics organizers will increase the product offerings for the mascot Bing Dwen Dwen, a spokesman said on Sunday in response to the rising popularity of the mascot and a recent shortage of stock.
The chubby panda wearing an ice crystal shell suit has won hearts of millions after the Winter Olympics opened on Friday, becoming a favorite of international athletes, media and members of the public.
The mascot-themed merchandise such as keychains and dolls is already out of stock at officially licensed online retailers and many physical shops and “Bing Dwen Dwen being sold out” has become a trending topic on Sina Weibo, with many netizens expressed the wish to own at least one Bing Dwen Dwen.
Zhao Weidong, spokesman for the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, said at a news conference on Sunday that the shortage of supply was partly because many workers and factories were on the Chinese New Year holiday and could not cope with the sudden burst of demand in time.
“We’re coordinating with relevant departments to increase the supply of Bing Dwen Dwen,” he said, adding that it also reflected the great attention the ongoing Beijing Winter Olympics are attracting.
Christophe Dubi, Olympic Games executive director of the International Olympic Committee, said Bing Dwen Dwen is a lively, fun and witty mascot “full of positive energy”. “She has to be part of my collection and for kids all over the globe,” he added.