An Iranian Grammy Award winner said on Monday he was pardoned from a three-year sentence for a song that became an anthem to the 2022 protests that rocked the country following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. Shervin Hajipour, who received the first-ever Grammy for best song for social change…
Namazi previously spoke with Amanpour by phone in March 2023 from inside Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, in what was an unprecedented interview. He was the longest-held Iranian-American prisoner, excluded from three separate deals that freed other detained Americans during the Obama and Trump administrations. ‘The smell of freedom’ On 18 September 2023,…
Michael Kovrig, one of two Canadian men detained in China for more than 1,000 days on alleged spying charges, has described being put in solitary confinement for six months and relentlessly interrogated in what he said was psychological torture. Dubbed the “Michaels,” Kovrig and fellow Canadian national Michael Spavor were at…
Hurricane John struck Mexico’s southern coast on Monday night after rapidly strengthening into a major Category 3 storm, triggering warnings of ‘life-threatening’ floods and mudslides. Packing maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (193 kph), the storm made landfall south-southwest of the city of Marquelia in Guerrero state at around 9:15…
Israel launched an intense barrage of airstrikes across swathes of Lebanon on Monday in what was the deadliest day for the country since at least the 2006 war fought between Israel and the powerful Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. Terror and despair gripped Lebanese residents as Israeli bombs killed at least…
Tokyo, Japan (AP) — Japan said its warplanes used flares to warn a Russian reconnaissance aircraft to leave northern Japanese airspace on Monday. Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara told reporters that the Russian Il-38 plane breached Japan’s airspace above Rebun Island, just off the coast of the country’s northernmost main…
Some of the country’s most notorious cold cases could be solved with the help of an artificial intelligence tool that can do 81 years of detective work in just 30 hours. Avon and Somerset Police are trialling the technology which can identify potential leads that may not have been found…
Wole Soyinka became the first Black African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, and is now one of the continent’s most revered authors. But two decades earlier, he was sent to prison without trial for speaking out about the civil war in his native Nigeria. While in…
TikTok has said it’s removed accounts associated with Russian state media for “engaging in covert influence operations”. It’s part of the site’s efforts to prevent disinformation in the run up to November’s US presidential election. Accounts affected are those from media group Rossiya Segodnya, which owns the RIA Novosti and…
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES. Saga Metals Corp. (the ‘Company’ or ‘Saga’) a North American exploration company focused on critical mineral discovery in Canada, is pleased to announce the successful closing of its initial public offering (the ‘ Offering ‘)…