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Accused scammer who claimed to be Irish heiress has been extradited to UK to face charges

Accused scammer who claimed to be Irish heiress has been extradited to UK to face charges
Marianne Smyth, accused of crisscrossing the US claiming to be an Irish heiress and scamming several victims out of tens of thousands of dollars has been extradited to the UK, a US official said on Jul. 2, 2024. (AP/File)
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Updated 02 July 2024
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Accused scammer who claimed to be Irish heiress has been extradited to UK to face charges

Accused scammer who claimed to be Irish heiress has been extradited to UK to face charges
  • Marianne Smyth faces allegations that she stole more than $170,000 from the victims
  • A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the extradition
Updated 02 July 2024
AP
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LONDON: A woman accused of traveling across the U.S. claiming to be an Irish heiress and scamming several victims out of tens of thousands of dollars has been extradited to the United Kingdom, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
Marianne Smyth faces allegations that she stole more than $170,000 from the victims from 2008 to 2010 in Northern Ireland.
A U.S. magistrate judge in Maine ruled in May that there was sufficient evidence for extradition of the American, who accusers say has also fashioned herself as a witch, a psychic and a friend to Hollywood stars.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the extradition, and referred questions to law enforcement officials in Northern Ireland. An attorney for Smyth did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
Authorities overseas have said Smyth stole money that she had promised to invest and also arranged to sell a victim a home but instead took the money. Smyth’s victims in the U.S. included Johnathan Walton, a podcaster who warned others about her grifts.
A court in Northern Ireland issued arrest warrants for her earlier this decade. She was arrested in Maine in February.
Smyth drew comparisons to Anna Sorokin, a scammer who impersonated a German heiress to pay for a glamorous lifestyle in New York City, and became subject of a Netflix series. Sorokin, whose real name is Anna Delvey, was convicted in 2019 of conning $275,000 from banks, hotels and swank New Yorkers to finance her deluxe lifestyle.

Topics: Irish Marianne Smyth US UK scamming

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In this file photo taken on May 9, 2019 Anna Sorokin is led away after being sentenced in Manhattan Supreme Court following her conviction last month on multiple counts of grand larceny and theft of services. (AFP)
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German teen held over suspected Islamist attack plot

Updated 7 sec ago
AFP
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German teen held over suspected Islamist attack plot

German teen held over suspected Islamist attack plot
  • The Bild daily reported that the suspect had planned to attack a Christmas market with a truck.
Updated 7 sec ago
AFP
Berlin: German prosecutors on Tuesday said that a 17-year-old had been arrested for plotting an Islamist terror attack, with media reports saying he wanted to target a Christmas market.
He is suspected of “preparing a serious violent attack” and “conspiracy to commit murder,” and had “extreme Islamist views,” said the prosecutors in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The suspect is a German national and was arrested on Wednesday last week in the town of Elmshorn, they said.
The Bild daily reported that the suspect had planned to attack a Christmas market with a truck.
In December 2016 a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market killed 12 people, the deadliest jihadist attack ever committed in Germany.
Alongside several other countries, Germany has been on high alert for Islamist attacks since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 assault on Israel sparked the devastating war in the Gaza Strip.
Authorities say they have foiled several planned attacks.
However, three people were killed and eight wounded in a knife attack at a street festival in the western city of Solingen in August, allegedly carried out by a Syrian asylum seeker and claimed by the Daesh group.
In June, another knife attack killed a policeman in the town of Mannheim, with an Afghan national the prime suspect.

COP 29: UK’s Starmer sets out new 2035 climate goal

COP 29: UK’s Starmer sets out new 2035 climate goal
Updated 5 min 34 sec ago
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COP 29: UK’s Starmer sets out new 2035 climate goal

COP 29: UK’s Starmer sets out new 2035 climate goal
  • Starmer said the British public would not be burdened because of the new target
Updated 5 min 34 sec ago
Reuters
BAKU: Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 81 percent by 2035 as he committed the country to a more ambitious climate goal at the United Nations COP29 climate summit.
The new goal is in line with a recommendation from a committee of climate advisers who said last month the target should exceed the current 78 percent cut to emissions, measured against 1990 levels.
“At this COP, I was pleased to announce that we’re building on our reputation as a climate leader, with the UK’s 2035 NDC (nationally determined contributions) target to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81 percent on 1990 levels,” Starmer told a press conference at the climate gathering in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Starmer said the British public would not be burdened because of the new target, which excludes international aviation and shipping emissions.
“What we’re not going to do, is start telling people how to live their lives. We’re not going to start dictating to people what they do,” he said.

Moldova protests to Russian envoy over election meddling denied by Moscow

Moldova protests to Russian envoy over election meddling denied by Moscow
Updated 13 min 9 sec ago
Reuters
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Moldova protests to Russian envoy over election meddling denied by Moscow

Moldova protests to Russian envoy over election meddling denied by Moscow
  • Foreign ministry hands protest note to Russian envoy
  • Moldova accuses Russia of election meddling
Updated 13 min 9 sec ago
Reuters

CHISINAU: Moldova handed Russia’s ambassador to Chisinau a protest note on Tuesday over alleged interference by Moscow in a presidential election and a referendum on joining the European Union.
The Moldovan foreign ministry said in a statement that Russia had sought to delegitimize the democratic process of the country’s presidential election, won by pro-Western President Maia Sandu, and an Oct. 20 referendum on inserting a clause in the constitution defining EU membership as a goal.
Moscow has denied the allegations.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented today to the Ambassador ... a note of protest in connection with the illegal and deliberate interference of the Russian Federation in the electoral process of the Republic of Moldova,” Moldova’s foreign ministry said.
Russian ambassador Oleg Ozerov said of the meeting: “The conversation made it possible to clarify issues related to our acute and complex bilateral relations.”
Moldova has accused Moscow and fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor of meddling throughout the run-up to voting, saying a scheme he ran sought to buy the votes of 300,000 people.
Shor, who lives in Russia, denies wrongdoing. Russia has said the election, in which there were two rounds of voting on Oct. 20 and Nov. 3, was unfair and that it does not see Sandu as the legitimate president.
Ties between Russia and Moldova, which was formerly part of the Soviet Union, have deteriorated as the Moldovan government accelerated the push to integrate with the EU. Last month’s referendum narrowly backed enshrining the wish to join the EU in Moldova’s constitution.

Violation of airspace
Moldova’s foreign ministry also used Tuesday’s meeting with Russia’s ambassador to condemn a violation of its airspace by two drones which it said crashed on its territory on Sunday.
Ozerov said there was no evidence the drones were Russian and that Moscow did not fly drones through countries neighboring Ukraine.
Russia has regularly attacked Ukraine with drones and missiles since its full-scale invasion of Moldova’s neighbor in 2022. Moldova has on several occasions recovered weapons debris on its territory.
It said on Sunday that two Russian “decoy” drones had been found in the northern village of Borosenii Noi and the southern village of Firladeni, after a Russian drone attack on Ukraine. No one was reported hurt.

Topics: Moldova Russia Moscow

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China, Russia must fight US ‘containment’: security chief
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China, Russia must fight US ‘containment’: security chief

China, Russia must fight US ‘containment’: security chief

China, Russia must fight US ‘containment’: security chief
Updated 12 November 2024
AFP
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China, Russia must fight US ‘containment’: security chief

China, Russia must fight US ‘containment’: security chief
  • Moscow and Beijing have expanded military and defense ties since Russia ordered troops into Ukraine nearly three years ago
Updated 12 November 2024
AFP

Beijing: Senior Russian official Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday told China’s foreign minister Wang Yi their two countries’ most urgent task should be countering “containment” by the United States, as they met for security talks in Beijing.
Moscow and Beijing have expanded military and defense ties since Russia ordered troops into Ukraine nearly three years ago, with Chinese President Xi Jinping one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most important allies on the world stage.
But Beijing has also found itself increasingly stuck between a burgeoning alliance of Russia and North Korea, which has sent soldiers to Ukraine and this week ratified a landmark defense pact with Moscow.
Speaking to Wang in Beijing, Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, stressed the need for China and Russia to “counter the ‘dual containment’ policy directed against Russia and China by the United States and its satellites.”
“The comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation (between China and Russia) represent a model of collaboration between two powers in today’s world,” Shoigu told China’s top diplomat.
“Although it is not a military-political alliance like those formed during the Cold War, the relations between our countries surpass this form of interstate relations,” he said, quoted in Russian news agencies.
Ahead of the talks, Beijing said the two officials would hold “strategic security consultations” this week and would discuss “major issues involving the two countries’ strategic security interests and enhancing mutual trust.”
Shoigu was Russia’s defense minister for the first two years of its offensive on Ukraine, before being moved to the Security Council by Putin after a string of military setbacks and criticism from the country’s influential military correspondents.
Shoigu is also expected to attend this week’s Airshow China, which showcases Beijing’s civil and military aerospace sector every two years in the southern city of Zhuhai.
Russia’s most advanced jet, the Su-57 stealth fighter, will make a display flight at the show.
China presents itself as a neutral party in the Ukraine war and says it is not sending lethal assistance to either side, unlike the United States and other Western nations.
But it remains a close political and economic ally of Russia and NATO members have branded Beijing a “decisive enabler” of the war, which it has never condemned.
Last month, the two countries’ defense ministers pledged to deepen bilateral military cooperation.

Topics: China Russia

Climate crisis worsening already ‘hellish’ refugee situation: UN

Climate crisis worsening already ‘hellish’ refugee situation: UN
Updated 12 November 2024
AFP
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Climate crisis worsening already ‘hellish’ refugee situation: UN

Climate crisis worsening already ‘hellish’ refugee situation: UN
  • In a fresh report, UNHCR pointed to how climate shocks in places like Sudan, Somalia and Myanmar were interacting with conflict to push those already in danger into even more dire situations
Updated 12 November 2024
AFP

GENEVA: Climate change is contributing to record numbers of people being uprooted from their homes globally, while worsening the often already “hellish” conditions of displacement, the United Nations said Tuesday.
With international climate talks under way in Baku, the UN refugee agency highlighted how soaring global temperatures and extreme weather events are impacting displacement numbers and conditions, as it called for more and better investment in mitigating the risks.
In a fresh report, UNHCR pointed to how climate shocks in places like Sudan, Somalia and Myanmar were interacting with conflict to push those already in danger into even more dire situations.
“Across our warming world, drought, floods, life-threatening heat and other extreme weather events are creating emergencies with alarming frequency,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said in the foreword to the report.
“People forced to flee their homes are on the front lines of this crisis,” he said, pointing out that 75 percent of displaced people live in countries with high-to-extreme exposure to climate-related hazards.
“As the speed and scale of climate change increase, this figure will only continue to rise.”
A record 120 million people already live forcibly displaced by war, violence and persecution — most of them inside their own countries, UNHCR figures from June showed.
“Globally, the number of people that have been displaced by conflict has doubled over the last 10 years,” Andrew Harper, UNHCR’s special adviser on climate action, pointed out to AFP.
At the same time, UNHCR pointed to recent data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center indicating that weather-related disasters have displaced some 220 million people inside their countries over the past decade alone — equivalent to approximately 60,000 displacements per day.
“We’re just seeing more and more and more people being displaced,” Harper said, lamenting a dire lack of the funds needed to support those who flee and the communities that host them.
“We are seeing across the board, a hellish situation become even tougher.”
Most refugee settlement areas, he pointed out, are found in lower-income countries, frequently “in the desert, in areas which are prone to flooding, in places without necessary infrastructure to deal with the increasing impacts of climate change.”
This is set to get worse. By 2040, the number of countries in the world facing extreme climate-related hazards is expected to rise from three to 65, UNHCR said, with the vast majority of them hosting displaced populations.


And by 2050, most refugee settlements and camps are projected to experience twice as many days of dangerous heat as they do today, the report cautioned.
That could not only be uncomfortable and a health hazard to the people living there, but could also lead to crop failures and livestock dying off, Harper warned.
“We’re seeing increasing loss of arable land in places exposed to climate extremes, like Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Afghanistan, but at the same time we’ve got the massive increase in populations,” he said.
UNHCR is urging decision-makers gathered for the COP29 in Baku to ensure that far more of international climate financing reaches refugees and host communities most in need.
Currently, UNHCR pointed out, extremely fragile states receive only around $2 per person in annual adaptation funding, compared to $161 per person in non-fragile states.
Without more investment in building climate resilience and adaptation in such communities, more displacement toward countries less impacted by climate change will be inevitable, Harper said.
“If we don’t invest in peace, if we don’t invest in climate adaptation in these areas, then people will move,” he said.
“It’s illogical to expect them to do anything different.”

Topics: COP 29

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