I am SHOCKED. This is such weird timing. Shortly after staging a revolt against their fearless leader that made him look weak. I’m sure that is completely unrelated.
Although I’m a bit late, it is worth mentioning, that the Tu-22M3 is not just a variant of the Tu-22. The Tu-22 was a completely different aircraft, and the Tu-22M retained the name only for political reasons. The Tu-22M3, though, is actually a development of the Tu-22M, most notably with different air intakes.
Singapore police have seized about S$1bn ($735m; £578m) - including luxury homes, cars and watches - in one of its biggest anti-money laundering probes.
Gold bars, designer handbags, wine and S$23m in cash were among the items seized in the raids.
It added that 94 properties, including houses in some of the country’s most sought after areas, were seized, along with 50 vehicles.
Ten people, aged between 31 and 44, were arrested for alleged money laundering and forgery offences.
“We have zero tolerance for the use of Singapore as a safe haven for criminals,” said David Chew, director of the police’s Commercial Affairs Department, which investigates white-collar crime.
It added that it would take “firm action” against institutions which did not meet official anti-money laundering requirements.
Syria’s government has doubled public sector pay while at the same time cut fuel subsidies, as it tries to boost the war-torn country’s economy.
Syria has been devastated and more than half a million people have been killed by the civil war that erupted after President Bashar al-Assad cracked down violently on peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011.
Presidential decrees issued early on Wednesday ordered a 100% increase in the salaries and pensions of civil servants, military personnel and government contractors - the first such rise since December 2021.
Prime Minister Hussein Arnous said last year that cutting fuel subsidies would ensure the poorest families benefited, reduce the budget deficit and help stabilise the Syrian pound.
They have also warned that the public sector pay rise is likely to further increase inflation and the Syrian pound’s depreciation, meaning that the economic benefit could be all but wiped out within months.
Officials have blamed the economic crisis and the hardship among its ordinary Syrians on strict US sanctions imposed in 2019, which targeted any foreign person or entity knowingly providing support to Mr Assad’s government.
Its members were allowed to move to Belarus as part of a deal to end a mutiny in Russia in June, in which its forces sought to march on Moscow.
According to the Single State Registry of Companies and Individual Entrepreneurs of Belarus, Wagner registered for “educational activities” at the village of Tsel in Osipovichi district, the same location as their new base.
Media reports say a real estate company, Concord Management and Consulting, was registered at the same address last month.
Concord is said to be 100% owned by a Russian company of the same name, whose director general is Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Last month the BBC verified the location of the camp at Tsel and the arrival of Wagner troops there, who were welcomed by Prigozhin.
The mutiny in June saw Wagner mercenaries seize military facilities in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don following tensions between its leadership and the Russian general staff over the conduct of the war in Ukraine.
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.
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.
bbc.co.uk
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