World news

This took guts. A charity campaigner confronts worshippers at a Hindu temple in an effort to stop thousands of animals being hacked to death as sacrifices in the world's biggest ritual animal slaughter event. The “festival” that takes place every five years at the Gadhimai Temple in Nepal is a dreadful day in the animal welfare calendar. When held in 2014 it was estimated that 200,000 buffalo, goats and poultry were butchered as sacrifices to a goddess in scenes straight out of the dark ages. After that bloodbath the Temple Trust declared that sacrifices would be scrapped in 2019, with the event becoming a “momentous celebration of life”. If only. Numerous travellers from India still reached the temple with animals they hoped to slaughter. The good news is that many were saved, thanks to groups including the charity Humane Society International helping Indian police prevent animals crossing the border into Nepal. But the HSI India director Alokparna Sengupta … [Read more...] about Butchery on a unimaginable scale at the world’s largest ritual animal slaughter festival

A Paris court yesterday sentenced in absentia Alois Brunner - Adolf Eichmann's right-hand man and the world's highest-ranking Nazi fugitive believed still alive - to life imprisonment for sending hundreds of Jewish children to their deaths at Auschwitz. "Life imprisonment is too good for him," said Henri Zajdenwerger, 73, who lost 14 members of his family to Brunner's SS henchmen during the war and was among dozens of protesters outside the courthouse yesterday. "But in reality he has never paid for his crimes, and he never will." In all, Brunner, who fled to Syria after the war and is now 88 if he is still alive, is held responsible for sending some 140,000 European Jews to the gas chambers. Nearly 24,000 of them were deported from the notorious Drancy transit camp outside Paris, where Brunner was commandant from June 1943 to August 1944. The former Gestapo officer was sentenced to death twice in his absence in the 1950s, but had never been charged with the specific crime addressed … [Read more...] about French court strikes blow against fugitive Nazi

FILE PHOTO: Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a town hall meeting, during his "No Malarkey!" campaign bus tour at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, U.S., December 4, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is attacking President Donald Trump as a laughingstock among world leaders in a new video that has gone viral. The minute-long video here plays off a clip taken at a NATO summit in Britain this week that appeared to show Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joking about Trump's press appearances during a chat with other world leaders. “The world is laughing,” reads the text over that clip and others of Trump’s trips abroad. “We need a leader the world respects.” The video, posted Wednesday night on Twitter, had already been viewed 6.7 million times by Thursday morning. “As the President has said, Joe Biden claims … [Read more...] about Biden video says world leaders are laughing at Trump

The wreck of a First World War German battlecruiser sunk by the Royal Navy in 1914 has been found off the coast of the Falkland Islands. The SMS Scharnhorst has lain undiscovered in the South Atlantic for almost 105 years, since its sinking in one of the most important early naval battles of the First World War. It was the flagship of Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee’s East Asia Squadron, the Imperial German Navy’s only permanent overseas formation, which was wiped out at the Battle of the Falklands in 1914. The date of the battle, December 8, is still commemorated as a public holiday in the islands. “It is with mixed emotions that we announce the discovery of SMS Scharnhorst,” said Mensun Bound, the leader of the search that located the wreck. “After a search that began five years ago, on the centenary of the battle, we are very proud to be able to shed further light on what was a defining point in the First World War, and therefore a landmark moment in … [Read more...] about Wreck of First World War German flagship found off the Falkland Islands

New evidence of crimes committed during the rule of Augusto Pinochet, including the dumping of 120 bodies from helicopters into the Pacific, lakes and rivers, has hardened the mood in Chile and made it unlikely that the former dictatorcan secure the amnesty he has been seeking for human rights violations by the armed forces. At the same time he has lost another attempt to get today’s interrogation by the investigating magistrate Judge Juan Guzman delayed. The appeal court rejected it by two to one. If General Pinochet fails to attend and answer Judge Guzman’s questions he can be declared “in rebellion” - similar to contempt of court - and thus liable to arrest. Gen Pinochet, 85, was last seen on Sunday afternoon, hobbling with a cane from his beach home to prayers in his private chapel. Police officers and security guards blocked public access to nearby roads to shield the former commander-in-chief and president from television cameras and passersby. For months … [Read more...] about Chilean army admits 120 thrown into sea