yeah, I could totally see myself doing this in my younger years.
When I was visiting Austin, TX one time, my friend and I were headed back home in the crowds after the bars closed. We saw some dude passed out on the grass, so we woke him up to see if he was okay. Turned out, he was some Irish tourist that got drunk, lost his friends, and didn’t know where he was, so he went to sleep to sober up. We took him with us, got him some Whataburger, then took him home. I still have pictures that we took with him. People get drunk and easily confused in a foreign country. I get that the Eiffel Tower is under high scrutiny because of the bomb scares, but drunk tourist having a blast and then getting lost is normal. It’s not like he assaulted anyone. I don’t see why this has to be “world news”.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has cancelled a trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji after her government plane was forced to make a second emergency landing in two days.
In 2018 the same Airbus plane had a technical fault which forced the then Chancellor Angela Merkel to miss the opening of a G20 summit in Argentina.
Earlier that year, Olaf Scholz - Germany’s finance minister at the time and now chancellor - was stranded in Indonesia after rodents chewed through cables on that plane.
Ms Baerbock was en route to the Indo-Pacific on Sunday when the wing flaps on her plane malfunctioned, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing in the United Arab Emirates.
“We have tried everything: unfortunately it is logistically impossible to continue my Indo-Pacific journey without the defective plane,” Ms Baerbock wrote on X.
Owing to the mishap, Germany’s Luftwaffe Air Force announced that it would retire the plane early.
Van - not her real name - is posing as a buyer for a Chinese crime boss in a trade illegal in many parts of the world, the trafficking of pangolins which are eaten in Africa, while their scales are used in traditional medicine in Asia.
In 2018, Carmody noticed huge seizures of trafficked animal parts hidden in shipping containers en route from West Africa to Asia.
Over months she gained the trust of Morybinet Berete, who is from Guinea in West Africa but was based in Nigeria, the hub for the illicit trade in pangolin scales.
Carmody describes the hardest part of any global investigation as finding a "small group of dedicated law enforcement officers that can’t be bought.
In July 2021, he tipped off NCS officials, who raided Berete’s compound in Nigeria and seized 7,000 kilos of pangolin scales, with smaller amounts of claws and elephant tusks.
That shifted the focus of the investigation from Nigeria back to Vietnam, where a surveillance operation was mounted in March last year to follow the buyers.
Technical faults meant that for several hours on Tuesday, some Bank of Ireland customers could withdraw large sums from cash machines despite having little or no funds in their accounts.Pictures and videos shared on social media showed long queues at machines in the Republic of Ireland.The bank said it had been experiencing technical faults, but on Wednesday morning it said the issues had been resolved.It warned transfers and withdrawals would still be applied to customers’ accounts.A spokesperson said on Wednesday morning that the bank’s app and 365 Online banking services were now working again.The issues also affected customers in Northern Ireland, but the bank said “we didn’t have similar reports of customers using Northern Ireland ATMs late last night”.
“We are aware that the technical issue meant some customers were able to withdraw or transfer funds above their normal limits,” the spokesperson said.
"These transfers and withdrawals will be applied to customers’ accounts today.
"“We urge any customer who may find themselves in financial difficulty due to overdrawing on their account to contact us.”
On Tuesday night gardaí (Irish police) said they were aware of an “unusual volume of activity” at some cash machines and “of issues relating to certain financial institutions”.
The problems first emerged on Tuesday afternoon when customers were unable to access the services although contactless, card and cash machine services were unaffected.Reports on social media suggested that some customers had been able to transfer more money than they had in their Bank of Ireland accounts to other external accounts and then withdraw the cash.
If Javier Milei, the front-runner in the campaign for the presidency, wins the election scheduled for later this year, the country’s own currency could be abolished and replaced with the US dollar.
Anecdotal stories abound of people keeping money buried in the garden, hidden in the walls or even secreted in heating systems - occasionally with disastrous consequences if there is an unexpected cold snap and the cash isn’t retrieved before it goes up in smoke.
During that time, uncontrolled price rises eroded the value of wages and made a mockery of savings, to the point where people lost faith in their own currency.
And yet the public’s hunger for dollars continues, while everyone from taxi drivers to restaurateurs happily accepts the greenback as payment for goods and services.
But showing the eternal Brazilian ability to bend the rules, they gave themselves some wiggle-room, allowing the real’s value to fluctuate, within limits, against the dollar.
And it might be easier to achieve than the idea recently mooted by the Argentine and Brazilian presidents - a common currency for the two countries, possibly to be called the “sur” or even the “gaucho”.
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has found himself at the centre of a new conflict - this time in the vitally important Amhara region that marshalled its troops to help him thwart an attempt by rival Tigrayan forces to topple him.
The conflict is the latest sign that Mr Abiy is battling to live up to his Nobel laureateship - an honour bestowed on him in 2019 for ending long-running hostilities with Eritrea and setting Ethiopia on the path of democracy after almost three-decades of iron-fist rule.
The crisis is so serious that many people say the Amhara state government - controlled by Mr Abiy’s ruling Prosperity Party (PP) - is on the brink of collapse, with key officials having fled to the federal capital, Addis Ababa, for fear of being attacked.
The agreement - brokered by the African Union (AU), with the backing of the US - was widely welcomed as an attempt to restore stability in Ethiopia - a vast country that has long been regarded as a lynchpin for security in the Horn of Africa and as the birthplace of pan-African unity.
Some analysts point out that there is also conflict in other parts of Ethiopia - including in Mr Abiy’s political heartland of Oromia, where the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) rebel group is fighting for what it calls “self-determination”.
When he took office, Mr Abiy championed his vision of Mademer, or “coming together”, and ended state repression by unbanning opposition groups, freeing political prisoners and allowing exiles to return.
Former Ukrainian captives say they were subjected to torture, including frequent beatings and electric shocks, while in custody at a detention facility in south-western Russia, in what would be serious violations of international humanitarian law.
In interviews with the BBC, a dozen ex-detainees released in prisoner exchanges alleged physical and psychological abuse by Russian officers and guards at the Pre-Trial Detention Facility Number Two, in the city of Taganrog.
The testimonies, gathered during a weeks-long investigation, describe a consistent pattern of extreme violence and ill-treatment at the facility, one of the locations where Ukrainian prisoners of war have been held in Russia.
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman and one of the officials involved in exchange negotiations with Moscow, said nine in every 10 former detainees claimed they had been tortured while in Russian captivity.
Denys Haiduk, a military surgeon, said guards forced him and the other captives to run with their heads down while under blows during their “reception”, with detainees being hit even after they were on the ground, unable to stand up.
The Media Initiative for Human Rights, a Ukrainian organisation, recorded allegations of at least three deaths at the Taganrog prison, apparently because of torture and lack of food and health care.
Under no circumstances would I assume that money I receive from an ATM is not linked to my accounts. I would also assume that the bank is gonna get theirs because generally speaking, they do.
A week ago, her Construye party’s presidential candidate in the Ecuadorean election this Sunday, Fernando Villavicencio, was shot three times in the head after a campaign rally in the capital, Quito.
Mr Villavicencio, 59, a journalist and member of Ecuador’s national assembly, was shot as he left a campaign rally in the capital last Wednesday - 11 days before the presidential election.
His death shocked a nation that has largely escaped the decades of drug-gang violence, cartel wars and corruption that has blighted many of its neighbours.
Mr Villavicencio’s campaign focused on corruption and gangs, and he was one of only a few candidates to allege links between organised crime and government officials in Ecuador.
Ms González, whose career has mainly focused on environmental issues, said that these levels of violence had become normalised in Ecuadorean politics.
Pedro Briones, a local leader of the left-wing Citizen Revolution Party in Esmeraldas, was shot dead by gunmen on a motorcycle at his home on Monday.
Two powerful militias that back Libya’s UN-supported government have clashed in the capital, Tripoli, killing 55 people and injuring 146 others, medics say.
Libya remains in political chaos after long-serving ruler Col Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed in 2011.
Fighting has left many people trapped in their homes as battles took place in several districts of the capital, including Ain Zara in the south-east.
The latest violence was between brigades that operate in Tripoli, where Prime Minster Abdul Hamid Mohammed Dbeibah heads a government.
According to Libya’s Emergency Medicine and Support Center, 234 families had to be evacuated from frontline areas with 60 ambulances deployed and three field hospitals set up to deal with the causalities.
The prime minister intervened and managed to get the commander released to a “neutral party”, the AFP news agency reports.
bbc.co.uk
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