Cyprus court frees five Israelis accused of Briton’s gang rape

Cyprus court frees five Israelis accused of Briton’s gang rape
A couple stand on the rocks at the natural rock bridge that is named "Love Bridge", during sunset at Ayia Napa resort in the southeast Mediterranean island of Cyprus, on March 30, 2025. (AP Photo)
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Updated 01 April 2025
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Cyprus court frees five Israelis accused of Briton’s gang rape

Cyprus court frees five Israelis accused of Briton’s gang rape
  • In 2019, Cyprus police arrested 12 Israelis after a British teenager reported being gang-raped. The complainant ended up being convicted, but the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the conviction

NICOSIA: A Cyprus court on Monday dismissed as unreliable the evidence against five Israeli tourists accused of gang-raping a British woman in the holiday resort of Ayia Napa and ordered them freed.
The five, then aged 19 to 20, were from the Arab-Israeli town of Majd Al-Krum. They had pleaded not guilty to several rape-related charges dating back to September 2023.
A similar case six years ago in Ayia Napa, the Mediterranean island’s premier party spot, caused an uproar after the alleged victim was herself convicted of causing public mischief.
The five men in the more recent case were accused of rape, sexual assault by penetration, sexual intercourse through violence, rape by compelling sexual penetration, indecent assault against a woman, sexual harassment, and abduction.
The Famagusta Criminal Court acquitted them on all counts, ruling that the complainant’s version of events “contained multiple significant contradictions.”
A court announcement said the woman’s testimony had “inherent weaknesses” regarding the identification and attribution of actions to specific individuals.
According to the court, her account was an “unsafe basis for drawing conclusions on disputed issues, such as the question of consent regarding what happened inside the disputed room.”
“Given these substantial credibility issues in her testimony, as stated in the court’s decision, the complainant was deemed unreliable,” it added.
The then 20-year-old woman told police she was forcibly taken from a swimming pool party to a hotel room where the rape occurred.

Judges ruled that claim “unconvincing,” while she also changed her statement about how many people were in the room and attributed the same sexual act to different people.
Her claim that she shouted for help was contradicted by witnesses in an adjacent room who did not hear any shouting, the court statement said.
Additionally, it was taken into account that the complainant was under the influence of a significant amount of alcohol and drugs, although “this was not to such an extent that it rendered her incapable of giving consent,” the court said.
The court concluded that injuries on her body “could not be determined to have occurred during the incident and could also appear during consensual intercourse.”
Justice Abroad, a group which said it is “supporting” the complainant, said in a statement that she is “completely distraught” by the acquittal. Her family is raising funds to challenge the verdict, it said.
In the earlier case, Cyprus police arrested 12 Israelis in 2019 after a British teenager reported being gang-raped.
The Israelis were released after she retracted her statement, although she claimed the police had pressured her into doing so.
The 19-year-old received a four-month suspended jail term, but the Supreme Court in 2022 quashed her conviction.
On Thursday the European Court of Human Rights condemned Cyprus for “various failures” and “prejudicial gender stereotypes” in its handling of that case.
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Trump team tries to project confidence and calm after his tariff moves rattled markets

Trump team tries to project confidence and calm after his tariff moves rattled markets
Updated 20 sec ago
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Trump team tries to project confidence and calm after his tariff moves rattled markets

Trump team tries to project confidence and calm after his tariff moves rattled markets
  • White House advisers and Cabinet members tried to project confidence and calm amid Trump’s on-again, off-again approach to tariffs on imported goods from around the world

ATLANTA: Trump administration officials were out in force across the television networks Sunday defending President Donald Trump’s economic policies after another week of reeling markets that saw the Republican administration reverse course on some of its steepest tariffs.
Trump, meanwhile, said on his social media platform that there ultimately will be no exemptions for his sweeping tariff agenda, disputing characterizations that he has granted tariff exceptions for certain electronics, including smart phones, whose production is concentrated in China. Rather, Trump said, “those products are subject to the existing 20 percent Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”
White House advisers and Cabinet members tried to project confidence and calm amid Trump’s on-again, off-again approach to tariffs on imported goods from around the world. But their explanations about the overall agenda, coupled with Trump’s latest statements, also reflected shifting narratives from a president who, as a candidate in 2024, promised an immediate economic boost and lower prices but now asks American businesses and consumers for patience.
A week ago, Trump’s team stood by his promise to leave the impending tariffs in place without exceptions. They used their latest news show appearances to defend his move to ratchet back to a 10 percent universal tariff for most nations except China (145 percent), while seeming to grant exemptions for certain electronics like smartphones, laptops, hard drives, flat-panel monitors and semiconductor chips.
Here are the highlights of what Trump lieutenants said last week vs. Sunday:
There are varying answers on the purpose of the tariffs
Long before launching his first presidential campaign in 2015, Trump bemoaned the offshoring of US manufacturing. His promise is to reindustrialize the United States and eliminate trade deficits with other countries.
LAST WEEK
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, interviewed on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” played up national security. “You’ve got to realize this is a national security issue,” he said, raising the worst-case scenarios of what could happen if the US were involved in a war.
“We don’t make medicine in this country anymore. We don’t make ships. We don’t have enough steel and aluminum to fight a battle, right?” he said.
SUNDAY
Lutnick stuck to that national security framing, but White House trade adviser Peter Navarro focused more on the import taxes being leverage in the bigger economic puzzle.
“The world cheats us. They’ve been cheating us for decades,” Navarro said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He cited practices such as dumping products at unfairly low prices, currency manipulation and barriers to US auto and agricultural products entering foreign markets.
Navarro insisted the tariffs would yield broader bilateral trade deals to address all those issues. But he also relied on a separate justification when discussing China: the illicit drug trade.
“China has killed over a million people with their fentanyl,” he said.
Speaking before Trump’s Truth Social post disputing the notion of exemptions, Lutnick alluded to that coming policy. “They’re going to have a special focus-type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”
The status of negotiations with other nations, including China, remains fuzzy
LAST WEEK

With the higher rates set to be collected beginning April 9, administration officials argued that other countries would rush to the negotiating table.
“I’ve heard that there are negotiations ongoing and that there are a number of offers,” Kevin Hassett, director of the White House Economic Council, told ABC. He claimed that “more than 50 countries (were) reaching out,” though he did not name any.
SUNDAY
Navarro named the United Kingdom, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Israel as among the nations in active negotiations with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Lutnick and other officials.
Greer said on CBS that his goal was “to get meaningful deals before 90 days” –- the duration of Trump’s pause -– “and I think we’re going to be there with several countries in the next few weeks.”
Talks with China have not begun, he said. “We expect to have a conversation with them,” he said, emphasizing it would be between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump took an aggressive tone himself Sunday in his social media post, saying “we will not be held hostage by other Countries, especially hostile trading Nations like China, which will do everything within its power to disrespect the American People.”
Navarro was not as specific about Beijing. “We have opened up our invitation to them,” he said. Lutnick characterized the outreach as “soft entrees … through intermediaries.”
Pressed on whether there is any meaningful back and forth, Navarro said, “The president has a very good relationship with President Xi.”
Then he proceeded to criticize several China’s polices and trade practices.
The pitches are different, but confidence is constant
LAST WEEK

Navarro was bullish even after US and global trading markets suffered trillions of dollars in losses.
“The first rule, particularly for the smaller investors out there, you can’t lose money unless you sell. And, right now, the smart strategy is not to panic,” he said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
SUNDAY
Navarro’s optimism did not waver despite another net-loss week for securities markets and rocky bond markets. “So, this is unfolding exactly like we thought it would in a dominant scenario,” he said.
Others confronted some of the more complex realities of trying to achieve Trump’s goal of restoring a bygone era of US manufacturing.
Lutnick suggested the focus is on returning high-tech jobs, while sidestepping questions about lower-skilled manufacturing of goods such as shoes that could mean higher prices because of higher wages for US workers. But some of that high-tech production is what Trump has, for now, exempted from the tariffs that he and his advisers frame as leverage for forcing companies to open US facilities.
Hassett did acknowledge widespread angst.
“The survey data has been showing that people are anxious about the changes a little bit,” he said, before steering his answer to employment rates. “The hard data,” he said, “has been really, really strong.”


Australian political leaders launch election campaigns focused on first-time homeowners

Australian political leaders launch election campaigns focused on first-time homeowners
Updated 13 April 2025
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Australian political leaders launch election campaigns focused on first-time homeowners

Australian political leaders launch election campaigns focused on first-time homeowners

MELBOURNE: Australia’s rival political leaders offered Sunday competing policies to help Australians buy a home ahead of the nation’s first federal election in which younger voters will outnumber the long-dominant baby boomer generation.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and opposition leader Peter Dutton officially launched their parties’ campaigns ahead of the May 3 elections.

Helping aspiring homeowners buy into a national real estate market in which prices are high and supply is constrained due to inflation, builders going broke, shortages of materials and a growing population was central to both campaigns.

“Buying a first home has never been easy, but for this generation, it’s never felt further out of reach,” Albanese told his supporters in the west coast city of Perth.

“In Australia, home ownership should not be a privilege you inherit if you’re lucky. It should be an aspiration that Australians everywhere can achieve,” he added.

The governing center-left Labor Party promised Sunday 10 billion Australian dollars ($6.3 billion) in grants and loans to build 100,000 new homes over eight years exclusively for first-homebuyers, who would only have to pay a 5 percent deposit instead of the current minimum 20 percent, with the government paying the remainder.

Opposition promises to reduce housing demand

Dutton’s conservative Liberal Party promised to ease demand for housing by banning foreign investors and temporary residents from buying existing homes for two years while reducing immigration and foreign student numbers.


Spain busts ring bringing Moroccans in via Romania

Spain busts ring bringing Moroccans in via Romania
Updated 13 April 2025
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Spain busts ring bringing Moroccans in via Romania

Spain busts ring bringing Moroccans in via Romania

MADRID: Spanish police said on Sunday they had broken a ring that had brought in up to 2,500 Moroccan irregular immigrants via Romania, arresting four suspects.

The four were detained in the southeastern Murcia province on charges of belonging to a criminal organization and facilitating irregular migration, the Guardia Civil said in a statement.

The Moroccans entered Europe by plane to Romania, from where they were transported to Spain, with each one charged 3,000 euros ($3,400) for the voyage, it said. The suspects were alleged to be the ringleaders of the organization. Their nationalities were not specified.

Spanish authorities believe the ring organized 50 such trips over the past two years, each one composed of between 20 and 50 Moroccans, making for a total of between 1,000 and 2,500 irregular immigrants.

The outfit was alleged to have a “logistics center” in Romania where it hid the migrants while they awaited their transport to Spain.

The Guardia Civil said the operation to bust the ring was conducted with the help of Europol and the European Union’s border patrol agency Frontex.


Dozens reported killed in east Congo as government, rebels trade blame

Dozens reported killed in east Congo as government, rebels trade blame
Updated 13 April 2025
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Dozens reported killed in east Congo as government, rebels trade blame

Dozens reported killed in east Congo as government, rebels trade blame
  • Renewed fighting has killed some 3,000 people and worsened one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises

GOMA: At least 50 people were killed in weekend attacks in Congo’s conflict-battered east, authorities said Saturday. The government traded blame with Rwanda-backed rebels over who was responsible for the violence that quickly escalated the conflict in the region.

The renewed violence that residents reported in and around the region’s largest city of Goma — which the M23 rebels control — was the biggest threat yet to ongoing peace efforts by both the Gulf Arab state of Qatar and African nations in the conflict that has raised fears of regional warfare.

Goma resident Amboma Safari recounted how his family of four spent the night under their bed as they heard gunfire and bomb blasts through Friday night. “We saw corpses of soldiers, but we don’t know which group they are from,” Safari said.

The decades-long conflict between Congo and the M23 rebels escalated in January, when the rebels made an unprecedented advance and seized the strategic eastern Congolese city of Goma, followed by the town of Bukavu in February. 

The latest fighting has killed some 3,000 people and worsened what was already one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with around 7 million people displaced.

At least 52 people were killed between Friday and Saturday, including a person shot dead at Goma’s Kyeshero Hospital, Congo’s Ministry of Interior said in a statement that blamed the attack on M23.

M23 spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka issued a statement blaming Congolese forces and their allies for the attacks. Kanyuka said Congo’s joint operations with local militias and southern African troops “directly threaten the stability and security of civilians” in the region.

The group said it has been compelled to “reconsider its position to prioritize the security” of the people in the area, suggesting the crisis could worsen. Christian Kalamo, a civil society leader in the North Kivu province that includes Goma, said at least one body was seen on the streets on Saturday.

“It is difficult to know if it is the Wazalendo, the FARDC (Congolese forces) or the M23” that carried out the attacks, Kalamo said. “Now, we don’t know what will happen, and we live with fear in our stomachs, thinking that the war will resume.”


Tanzania opposition party barred from upcoming elections

Tanzania opposition party barred from upcoming elections
Updated 13 April 2025
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Tanzania opposition party barred from upcoming elections

Tanzania opposition party barred from upcoming elections

DAR ES SALAAM: Tanzania’s main opposition party has been disqualified from upcoming general elections, the country’s election chief said, after it refused to sign an electoral code of conduct.

The east African nation has increasingly cracked down on its opposition ahead of a general election due in October.

The opposition Chadema party has accused President Samia Suluhu Hassan of returning to the repressive tactics of her predecessor, John Magufuli.

Chadema leader Tundu Lissu, who was arrested and charged with treason earlier in the week, previously said that his party would not participate in the polls without electoral reform.

On Saturday, Chadema said the party’s secretary-general John Mnyika would not attend an Independent National Elections Commission meeting to sign the government’s electoral code of conduct.

The decision was “informed by the lack of a written response” to the party’s “proposal and demands for essential electoral reforms,” it said in a statement.

INEC Director of Elections Ramadhani Kailima said following the meeting that “any party that hasn’t signed today will not be allowed to take part in the general election or any other elections for the next five years.” “There will be no second chance,” he told reporters.

He did not mention Chadema by name, and the party has not commented on the INEC’s decision.

Tanzania is scheduled to hold presidential and national assembly elections in October.

President Hassan’s party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi swept to victory in local elections last year.

Chadema said those elections had been manipulated, and that it would petition the high court to demand reforms ahead of the upcoming polls.

Lissu last year warned that Chadema would “block the elections through confrontation” unless the electoral system was reformed.

The opposition’s demands have been long ignored by the ruling party.

Hassan was initially feted for easing restrictions imposed by Magufuli on the opposition and the media in the country of 67 million people.

But rights groups and Western governments have criticized what they see as renewed repression, with the arrests of Chadema politicians as well as abductions and murders of opposition figures.