التصنيف: جديد

A man has been charged with murder after an altercation in a Dublin restaurant on Christmas Eve.

Michael Andrecut, 22, from Corduff, west Dublin, appeared before a special sitting of the Criminal Courts of Justice on Saturday morning.

Tristan Sherry, 26, was killed after an assault and a man in his 40s suffered gunshot wounds during an altercation at Browne’s Steakhouse in Blanchardstown at around 8pm on 24 December.

Detective Sergeant Mark Murphy told the court Andrecut made no reply to the charge.

Andrecut, who appeared in court in a black hoodie, was remanded in custody and is due to appear before Cloverhill District Court via videolink on 2 January.

The injured man remains in a critical condition in hospital.

Irish police had increased patrols of the area after the incident.

Imran Khan has been rejected as a candidate in Pakistan’s upcoming election by officials.

Lawyers for the former prime minister have said they will appeal ahead of the vote to elect a new parliament in February.

Khan is currently serving a three-year prison sentence for corruption, making it difficult for him to run for office.

Despite his jail term, and the stack of other charges he faces, he still filed nomination papers.

In August, an appeal court decided to suspend his criminal conviction.

Election officials rejected Khan’s candidacy because of his conviction.

They said he was disqualified under the constitution and also rejected the candidacies of former members of his cabinet.

It comes as a fresh blow for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, which has been the subject of a crackdown by authorities over a number of months.

The 71-year-old was removed from office in April 2022 after a vote of no confidence in parliament.

One of Khan’s lawyers, Rai Muhammad Ali, said the decision was an injustice to Pakistan.

“We want transparent elections,” Ali said.

“These situations are being deliberately created to evade the election. They are all scared. We will not let them escape.”

It is said to be worth more than its weight in gold, diamonds or cocaine.

The rhino horn trade in Africa and Asia gave rise to criminality and profit on an industrial level, with buyers and sellers making millions.

Steve Galster has made it his life’s work to go after people who brazenly take and sell animal parts.

In 2011, museums and galleries – including some in the UK – reported thefts of rhino horn, with the practice and trade exploding.

As the artefacts dwindled in numbers, live rhinos became the targets, at any cost, in the hunt for profits.

Galster started his career in international security, focusing on wars and insurgencies, but later set up a charity looking into wildlife trafficking.

He says when he scratched the surface of how criminal groups were able to get involved in “pretty nasty insurgencies” in the 1990s, he discovered it came from poaching.

“They just had access to it and there was no real enforcement shield around these animals… it was pretty easy pickings,” Galster tells Sky News.

“Rhinos are pretty easy targets in some countries – that was $65,000 a kilo.

“(Rhino horn is) a small thing to move, you can put that in suitcases. That was super attractive to these groups.”

But why was it fetching such a big price at market?

Many people believe it has medicinal purposes, particularly when it comes to cancer, even though there is no scientific evidence to prove this. Galster says it is often sold as “really expensive aspirin”.

Others hoard it away (in case a relative falls ill) and sell it on later in life as prices rise.

Then there is the art world. Rhino horn is rare, and it’s seen as a status symbol among the wealthy.

‘The Pablo Escobar of wildlife trafficking’

A new Sky documentary focuses on the hunt for a kingpin in Laos who sent his team to take rhino horns from South Africa and smuggle them back through Thailand.

Galster was part of the team that first discovered Vixay Keosavang – dubbed the “Pablo Escobar of wildlife trafficking”.

The US state department said Keosavang was believed to be the leader of the Xaysavang Network, an international wildlife trafficking syndicate which facilitates the killing of endangered elephants, rhinos, pangolins, and other species for products such as ivory and rhino horn.

A reward of up to $1m has been offered for information that leads to the dismantling of the network.

Galster describes going into an “industrial slaughterhouse”, owned by a man known as Fatty who was killing animals such as tigers, bears, and pangolins in Thailand, before driving them to the border to hand them over to Keosavang.

“It felt like sort of a Silence Of The Lambs film,” he says.

“It was basically a farmhouse… we drove up there with all these cars, went in, and we knew there was something weird going on.

“You see these tigers and these bears, and then they’re all hauling out these buckets of body parts. There was a baby orangutan in the freezer. They had turtles, snakes, all kinds of stuff.”

The discovery was part of a chain of events that led them to Chumlong Lemtongthai, who had been hired by Keosavang to hunt for rhino horn in South Africa.

He set up pseudo-hunts, going as far as hiring sex workers for a few hundred dollars and taking them out there, having their names on the documentation and pretending they fired the shots, so the horns could be taken back to Laos.

In South Africa at the time, trophy hunting was legal, but individuals could only shoot one rhino per year – a practice that has now changed.

From there, police and security services tracked and followed Lemtongthai at airports, and were able to prove he was illegally trafficking animal parts from South Africa, back into Laos.

He was given 40 years in South African prison – but was out in six.

‘We’re getting our butts kicked’ by poachers

The practice of wildlife smuggling still carries on.

Galster believes the legal trade is the biggest cause of the illegal trade, saying criminals rely on aspects allowed by law to carry out their own activities and launder the body parts successfully.

“The biggest thing we can learn from this is – let’s halt commercial trade in wild animals,” he says.

“It’s benefiting a tiny percentage of people in the world.

“We can link this trade in some cases to zoonotic outbreaks, so it’s potentially harming a lot of people as well.

“We’re trying to do that – but we’ve run up against some very strong opposition.”

Galster says the poachers have global links beyond the likes of South East Asia and Africa, believing the main players have roots in Europe and the US too.

“We’re really behind in this game,” he adds.

“We’re getting our butts kicked. And one of the ways to catch up is to at least pause, if not ban, commercial trade and wild animals, because there’s no way that the current law, wildlife protectors out there can stop this.”

The Great Rhino Robbery will be available on Sky Documentaries and streaming service NOW from 3 January at 9pm.

غزة – وكالات:

قتل 165 فلسطينياً على الأقل وجرح 160، خلال الساعات 24 الماضية، في القصف الإسرائيلي المستمر على مخيمات البريج والنصيرات والمغازي وسط قطاع غزة. وأفادت مصادر طبية فلسطينية بأن طائرات ومدفعية الاحتلال قصفت بشكل مكثف منازل الفلسطينيين في النصيرات والمغازي والبريج. وقالت مصادر طبية: إن العشرات منهم تحت أنقاض المنازل والبنايات المدمرة، كما تواصل الدبابات الإسرائيلية اقتحام ومحاصرة الأحياء السكنية في مخيم البريج، وتمنع سيارات الإسعاف من الوصول للقتلى والجرحى. وأعلنت وزارة الصحة في قطاع غزة أن إجمالي عدد القتلى الفلسطينيين جراء القصف الإسرائيلي منذ السابع من أكتوبر (تشرين الأول)، ارتفع إلى 21672 قتيلاً، فيما بلغ عدد المصابين 65165. من جانبها، أعلنت «حركة حماس» أن مقاتليها أوقعوا أكثر من 20 جندياً إسرائيلياً بين قتيل وجريح خلال اشتباكات مع قوات متوغلة في حي الشيخ رضوان بمدينة غزة، وفق ما أفادت به «وكالة أنباء العالم العربي».

وذكرت أن مقاتليها تمكنوا من تفجير دبابة «ميركافا» إسرائيلية شمال مخيم البريج في وسط قطاع غزة، ودمروا أيضاً ناقلة جند إسرائيلية بقذيفة «الياسين 105» في المخيم نفسه.

ومع تواصل القصف الإسرائيلي بقطاع غزة، سقط قتلى وجرحى قرب المستشفى الأوروبي جنوب شرقي خان يونس، وفق تلفزيون فلسطين. من جانبها، حذرت وزارة الصحة الفلسطينية من خطورة الوضع الصحي لنحو 50 ألف امرأة حامل، نزحن لمراكز الإيواء التابعة لوكالة غوث وتشغيل اللاجئين الفلسطينيين الأونروا في قطاع غزة، نتيجة القصف الإسرائيلي الذي دمر مدناً ومخيمات وقرى بأكملها منذ بدء العدوان على القطاع، والمستمر منذ السابع من أكتوبر الماضي.

وأكدت وزارة الصحة الفلسطينية أن النساء الحوامل في غزة لا يتوافر لهن الطعام والغذاء، ويعشن ظروفاً معيشية قاهرة، لافتة أن هناك خشية على حياة الأجنة، في ظل عدم تلقي النساء الحوامل للرعاية الصحية، وحالة الازدحام الشديدة في 155 مركز إيواء تابع للأونروا، والذي لجأ إليه نحو 1.9 مليون نازح من مناطق متعددة في قطاع غزة وفي الصفة الغربية، اعتقلت قوات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي نحو 4860 فلسطينياً منذ السابع من أكتوبر الماضي، وذلك خلال عمليات اقتحام واسعة لمدن وقرى ومخيمات الضفة الغربية، بالإضافة إلى التنكيل بالفلسطينيين على الحواجز العسكرية، والتي تقطع أوصال الضفة الغربية. وأوضح نادي الأسير الفلسطيني أن قوات الاحتلال اعتقلت اليوم 14 فلسطينياً، خلال عمليات اقتحام لعدة مناطق في الضفة الغربية، لافتاً الانتباه أن الاحتلال اعتقل مئات الفلسطينيين، في قطاع غزة منذ بدء العدوان المستمر لليوم 85 على التوالي.