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3 leaders at UK hospital where a nurse was convicted of murdering babies are arrested

3 leaders at UK hospital where a nurse was convicted of murdering babies are arrested
Updated 1 min 38 sec ago

3 leaders at UK hospital where a nurse was convicted of murdering babies are arrested

3 leaders at UK hospital where a nurse was convicted of murdering babies are arrested

LONDON: Three senior leaders at the English hospital where nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering babies were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, police said Tuesday.
The people under investigation for gross negligence manslaughter were arrested when a corporate manslaughter probe was expanded following Letby’s 2023 convictions for the infant deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwestern England, said Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes of the Cheshire Constabulary.
“This focuses on senior leadership and their decision-making to determine whether any criminality has taken place concerning the response to the increased levels of fatalities,” Hughes said.
Letby, 35, is serving multiple life sentences with no chance of release after being convicted of seven counts of murder and attempting to murder seven other infants between June 2015 and June 2016 while working as a neonatal nurse at the hospital.
Letby was convicted in a sensational trial two years ago, but since then support for her has grown as a panel of medical experts disputed the evidence against her and a lawyer said she was wrongly convicted.
The three suspects were not named and were released on bail.
Hughes said the arrests don’t have an impact on Letby’s convictions.


Azerbaijani men arrested by Russian police were beaten to death, Baku says

Updated 1 sec ago

Azerbaijani men arrested by Russian police were beaten to death, Baku says

Azerbaijani men arrested by Russian police were beaten to death, Baku says
BAKU: Post-mortems conducted in Baku on two Azerbaijani men who died last week after they were arrested by Russian police show that they were beaten to death, a state forensic examiner said on Tuesday.
The deaths of the men, brothers named Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, have raised diplomatic tensions between Moscow and Baku and led to the tit-for-tat arrests of Russian state media journalists working in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Russia was summoned to the foreign ministry in Moscow on Tuesday to receive an official protest against Baku’s “unfriendly actions” and the “illegal detention” of the journalists.
The rift between Russia and Azerbaijan has widened after investigators in Yekaterinburg, a Russian industrial city, conducted scores of raids last week targeting ethnic Azerbaijanis whom they suspected of complicity in historic unsolved crimes, including serial killings.
The Safarov brothers died during the raids, in which six people were arrested. Russian investigators initially said Ziyaddin had died of heart failure and did not give a cause for death for Huseyn.
The bodies of the men arrived in Baku on Monday evening for forensic examination.
Adalat Hasanov, head of forensic examination at Azerbaijan’s health ministry, said fresh post-mortems showed the brothers both died of “post-traumatic shock” due to severe beatings.
Russian examiners’ assertion that Ziyaddin, who was born in 1970, died of heart failure, is a “blatant falsehood,” Hasanov told reporters.
“During the follow-up examination, we discovered multiple fractures on Ziyaddin’s body resulting from beatings. All of his ribs were broken, and a haemorrhage was found on his head, also caused by blunt force trauma,” he said.
The other brother, Huseyn, born in 1966, also died as a result of beatings, Hasanov said. He said all of the deceased internal organs had been removed during the previous autopsy in Russia, “which may indicate an attempt to conceal the true cause of death.”
Azerbaijan and Russia have traded barbs since the men’s deaths, with Baku accusing Russian police of carrying out extrajudicial killings “on ethnic grounds,” an allegation Moscow has rejected. Russian investigators said all the six men arrested held Russian passports.
On Monday, police in Baku arrested two journalists working for Sputnik Azerbaijan, the local affiliate of Russian state outlet Rossiya Segodnya, and said it would investigate the agency for illegal funding.

Israel’s Netanyahu says he is expected to meet Trump next week

Israel’s Netanyahu says he is expected to meet Trump next week
Updated 15 min 16 sec ago

Israel’s Netanyahu says he is expected to meet Trump next week

Israel’s Netanyahu says he is expected to meet Trump next week

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he is expected to travel next week to the United States for meetings with President Donald Trump.
Last month Trump announced a ceasefire ending 12 days of hostilities between Israel and Iran.


Georgia jails another opposition figure in crackdown on dissent

Georgia jails another opposition figure in crackdown on dissent
Updated 01 July 2025

Georgia jails another opposition figure in crackdown on dissent

Georgia jails another opposition figure in crackdown on dissent
  • Protestors accuse the ruling party of veering toward authoritarian rule and steering the country closer to Moscow

TBILISI: Georgia on Tuesday jailed prominent opposition figure Nika Gvaramia for eight months, the latest in a wave of arrests targeting politicians, activists, and journalists critical of the ruling party.
The EU candidate nation has been gripped by political unrest since the disputed parliamentary elections last October, when the ruling Georgian Dream party declared victory, sparking mass protests.
Demonstrators accuse the ruling party, which shelved EU membership talks, of veering toward authoritarian rule and steering the country closer to Moscow — accusations the government rejects.
On Tuesday, a Tbilisi court sentenced Gvaramia — the co-leader of the key opposition Akhali party — to eight months in prison and barred him from holding public office for two years, his lawyer Dito Sadzaglishvili told AFP.
“The verdict is unlawful and part of the government’s attempt to crush all dissent in Georgia,” he said.
Gvaramia was sentenced for refusing to cooperate with a parliamentary commission investigating alleged abuses under imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili.
Nearly all of Georgia’s opposition leaders have been jailed this month on similar charges.
Saakashvili, a pro-Western reformer, is currently serving a 12-and-a-half-year prison term on charges widely denounced by rights groups as politically driven.
Opposition figures have rejected the commission’s legitimacy, accusing the ruling Georgian Dream party of using it as a tool to suppress dissent.
Amnesty International said last week that the “disputed” commission “has been instrumentalized to target former public officials for their principled opposition.”
Ahead of last year’s elections, Georgian Dream announced plans to outlaw all major opposition parties.
Brussels has said Georgia’s democratic backsliding derails it from its longstanding EU membership bid enshrined in the country’s constitution and supported — according to opinion polls — by some 80 percent of the population.
The United States and several European countries have imposed sanctions on some Georgian Dream officials.


Online memorial for children dead in Hiroshima, Nagasaki

Online memorial for children dead in Hiroshima, Nagasaki
Updated 01 July 2025

Online memorial for children dead in Hiroshima, Nagasaki

Online memorial for children dead in Hiroshima, Nagasaki
  • The United States dropped an atomic bomb on each Japanese city on August 6 and 9, 1945
  • Out of around 210,000 victims, around 38,000 were children

TOKYO: A Nobel Prize-winning anti-nuclear group launched an online memorial Tuesday for the 38,000 children who died in the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ahead of the 80th anniversary next month.
It features more than 400 profiles with details of the children’s lives, “their agonizing deaths and the grief of surviving family members,” said the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in a statement.
“By sharing their heart-wrenching stories, we hope to honor their memories and spur action for the total abolition of nuclear weapons — an increasingly urgent task given rising global tensions,” it said.
The United States dropped an atomic bomb on each Japanese city on August 6 and 9, 1945 — the only times nuclear weapons have been used in warfare. Japan surrendered days later.
Around 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and around 74,000 others in Nagasaki, including many who survived the explosions but died later from radiation exposure.
Out of around 210,000 victims, around 38,000 were children, said the ICAN, citing Hiroshima and Nagasaki officials.
Washington has never apologized for the bombings.
Clicking a crane icon, visitors to the online platform can read the children’s profiles, with photos of 132 children out of 426, ranging in age from infants to teenagers.
Among them is Tadako Tameno, who died in agony aged 13 in the arms of her mother two days after the Hiroshima atomic bombing.
Six children in the Mizumachi family were killed in the Nagasaki atomic bombing. Only one girl, Sachiko, 14, survived.
The initiative comes after US President Donald Trump last week likened Washington’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
“Actually, if you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, you know that ended a war too,” Trump said in The Hague.
This prompted anger from survivors and a small demonstration in Hiroshima. The city’s assembly passed a motion condemning remarks that justify the use of atomic bombs.
Israel’s ambassador to Japan, Gilad Cohen, will attend this year’s ceremony in Nagasaki, local media reported.
Cohen, together with the envoys of several Western nations including the United States, boycotted last year’s event after comments by the city’s mayor about Gaza.
Russia’s ambassador will attend the Nagasaki ceremony, the first time its representative has been invited since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NHK reported.
However, Nikolay Nozdrev will not attend the 80th anniversary event in Hiroshima three days earlier on August 6, the broadcaster said, citing the Russian embassy.
ICAN won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. Last year, it was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.
Data from the Japanese health ministry released Tuesday meanwhile showed that the number of survivors from the bombings had fallen below 100,000 for the first time.
The number stood at 99,130 as of March 2025, with the average age at 86.13 years, according to the ministry.


India’s Sigachi factory fire death toll rises to 39; cause still unknown

India’s Sigachi factory fire death toll rises to 39; cause still unknown
Updated 01 July 2025

India’s Sigachi factory fire death toll rises to 39; cause still unknown

India’s Sigachi factory fire death toll rises to 39; cause still unknown
  • Police say more than 140 people were working in the plant when the incident occurred
  • The government of Telangana state has formed a committee to investigate the incident

HYDERABAD, India: The death toll from the explosion and fire at Sigachi Industries’ chemical factory in southern India has risen to at least 39, officials said on Tuesday, forcing the supplier of pharma products to shut operations for 90 days.

The government of Telangana state, where the facility is located, has formed a five-member committee to probe the incident, the cause of which is yet to be disclosed by the company. The explosion on Monday also injured 34, according to officials.

“We are still clearing the debris,” GV Narayana Rao, director of the Telangana fire disaster response service, told Reuters, adding that the building had completely collapsed.

“Once we are all done with the clearing, only then we will be able to assess if any other body is still remaining under the debris or if it is all clear,” Rao said.

Police officials said more than 140 people were working in the plant when the incident occurred. Twenty-five of the deceased were yet to be identified, district administrative official P. Pravinya said.

“I came out (of the plant) to use the restroom and heard a loud blast. It sounded like a bomb blast. I came out and saw fire. A part of the fire also spread toward me. I jumped the wall and escaped,” Chandan Gound, 32, who has been working at the factory for six months, told Reuters by phone.

“Many of them (those inside) managed to escape, but a large number were trapped and could not come out,” Gound added.

Sigachi, which makes microcrystalline cellulose (MCC), caters to clients in the pharma, food, cosmetic and specialty chemicals sectors in countries ranging from the US to Australia.

MCC’s compressibility, binding properties, and ability to boost drug release make it a vital ingredient in pharmaceutical manufacturing. It is also used to prevent the formation of lumps in food products, to maintain texture of cosmetic products, and as a fat substitute in low-calorie foods.

Sigachi’s Telangana plant contributes a little over a fourth of its total capacity of 21,700 million metric tons per annum.

Its shares dropped about 8 percent on Tuesday and were headed for their sharpest two-day drop on record.

Sigachi halted operations at the plant for 90 days from Monday citing damage to equipment and structures. The plant is fully insured and the company is initiating claims.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, five people were killed and four others injured in a massive fire at a crackers factory in the Sivakasi manufacturing cluster in the southern Tamil Nadu state, a fire department official said. The incident is the latest in a series of fire accidents in the area.