List of All Articles with Tag 'son'

BERLIN Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called on Monday for the extension of a

A Christian graphic artist who the Supreme Court said can refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples pointed during her lawsuit to a request from a man named “Stewart” and his husband-to-be

Thousands of Iranian dissidents crowded the streets of a Paris neighbourhood on Saturday while western opponents of the government in Tehran gathered for a politically star-studded event aimed at poking a finger in the eye of the Ayatollah’s supporters. Despite warnings from French authorities and the US Embassy in Paris that alleged threats of a terror attack made a large outdoor event unwise, there were no incidents over the weekend as Iranian dissident activists mingled with prominent current and former officials from the US, UK and other European nations. If that threat of a terror attack was real, it was hard to spot the concern of French authorities on Saturday, given that police did not provide more than a handful of officers to patrol the area, those on the scene told The Independent. Dissidents with the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK) have long held a chequered relationship with the west, in addition to their long campaign against the Iranian government. This year is no exception to that dynamic. Formerly classified as a terrorist group by the US, the MEK now resides in Albania, where just weeks ago a massive police raid was blamed for the death of a senior MEK member while others sustained serious injuries — all, the MEK alleged, at the behest of Iran’s government. The same day, French authorities moved to cancel Saturday’s rally. Varying explanations for the raid were presented in the hours following, but over the weekend a top Iranian official tweeted that computers seized from the MEK by Albanian police had been transferred to Iranian custody, a development first reported on Monday in Iranian state media. A senior NCRI official fumed about the news in a statement to The Independent, demanding that the US State Department take a position on Albania’s collaboration with Iran’s intelligence agencies; the Biden administration had previously reacted to the raid by calling it a police action while carefully avoiding any suggestion of Iranian involvement. The Independent has reached out to the State Department for comment on the news of the computers being transferred to Iranian custody. The agency had previously issued a brief statement in the wake of the raid depicting it as a typical law enforcement action and noting that the Biden administration doesn’t view the MEK as a viable political alternative to the regime in Tehran. NCRI president-elect Maryam Rajavi also had sharp words for the State Department specifically in her address on Sunday. “As for the advocates of appeasement within the US State Department, who concurrently backed the tragedy in [Albania], it is enough to note that the mullahs waved their turbans and lavished them with commendations,” she insisted. Ms Rajavi also questioned: “Why do [Ayatollah Ali] Khameni and [Iranian President Ebrahim] Raisi demonstrate such fear over a gathering taking place 5,000 kilometres away from Tehran?” Seemingly growing efforts by Tehran to punish the MEK and the Biden State Department’s rejection of the group as a viable alternative-in-waiting to the Iranian regime made Saturday and Sunday’s events all the more of a coup for the NCRI and MEK; with increasing support from prominent members of the DC and London foreign policy establishments, the position of the current administration is looking all the more tenuous. That fact was hammered home by the virtual address of Sunday’s convention by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, characterised by The Independent’s sources as maintaining one of, if not the, friendliest relationship between the State Department and MEK during his tenure. Other VIPs at Sunday’s event were equally impressive gets for the dissident group, especially given the State Department’s coldness: former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, who appeared remotely, 2024 presidential candidate Mike Pence, former Sen Joseph Lieberman, ex-House of Commons speaker John Bercow, Trump national security adviser John Bolton and a dozen sitting members of the US Congress from both parties. Members who have attended the NCRI’s events in Washington typically skew conservative or towards the hawkish wing of foreign policy thought in the US government. Mr Pence used his remarks to lash out at Joe Biden’s White House for supposedly “working overtime” to restore the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015 under the Obama administration (and later abandoned by Donald Trump). “Now, a new administration is threatening to unravel all of the progress we made in marginalising the tyrannical regime in Tehran,” Mr Pence claimed. “They are working overtime to restore the Iran Nuclear Deal, putting Tehran back on the fast track to obtaining nuclear weapons.” He also claimed that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon in a year if sanctions were rolled back and the 2015 deal snapped back into place. Ms Truss, meanwhile, appeared to take aim at the west for “appeasement” of the Iranian regime — remarks that were timely in the wake of the Albanian police action and accusations of similar betrayals by the French. “There’s been too much appeasement. There’s been too much wishful thinking, there’s been too much hope that things would change when it was evident that things were not going to change and have not changed,” she said. Then speaking of Iran along with Russia and other authoritarian governments, she argued: “We need to be clear…we won’t treat these countries as part of the normal international system.” While Saturday’s rally went off without incident, the NCRI is no stranger to facing the threat of more serious revenge plots carried out by agents of Iran’s government. The rally and convention attended by Mr Pence and others was targeted in 2018 in a terror plot that was uncovered and halted by authorities, who arrested an Iranian diplomat and five others accused of planning a bombing. The diplomat, Assadolah Assadi, was sentenced in Belgium to 20 years in prison and the French government blamed Iran’s intelligence ministries for being behind the plans. The Iranian foreign ministry publicly condemned France over the weekend for allowing the rally to go forward, after a court battle resulted in a victory for the dissidents over authorities who had hoped to call it off. Read More A year of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians just escalated. Is this an uprising? Putin to meet Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi in first virtual summit since Wagner mutiny Sir Salman Rushdie and Prima Facie among winners of South Bank Sky Arts Awards From Starbucks to Walmart: What stores are open on July 4? Record number of 40-year-olds in the US have never been married, study reveals Canadian wildfire smoke smothers Detroit as air quality alerts issued

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The prime ministers of the Netherlands and Luxembourg on Monday urged Serbia and Kosovo to act to defuse recent tensions that have threatened to push the Balkan region into instability as Europe faces Russia's aggression in Ukraine. Dutch PM Mark Rutte and Xavier Bettel, the Luxembourg PM, spoke after meeting Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade. Rutte and Bettel travel to Kosovo on Tuesday for meetings with top officials there. “We cannot, both of us, emphasize enough how important it is that both Serbia and Kosovo take steps toward de-escalation and ultimately normalization of their relations through the EU-led dialogue,” said Rutte. “This is crucial for the two countries themselves, first and foremost, but also for the entire region and Europe as a whole,” he added. “With a war raging between Russia and Ukraine on our continent, it's more important than ever that we act together.” Serbia and its former province Kosovo have been at odds for decades, with Belgrade refusing to recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence. Western efforts to resolve the crisis have increased recently, to avert possible instability in the Balkans as war ravages Ukraine. Tensions between the two countries flared anew in May after Kosovo police seized local municipal buildings in Serb-majority northern Kosovo to install ethnic Albanian mayors who were elected in an April election that Serbs overwhelmingly boycotted. Violent clashes injured 30 international peacekeepers and more than 50 ethnic Serbs, stirring fears of a renewal of the 1998-99 conflict that left more than 10,000 people dead, mostly Kosovar Albanians. The U.S and the EU have pressed Serbia and Kosovo to take steps to lower tensions. Normalization of relations is the key condition for the two countries to move forward in their efforts to join the EU. Bettel, too, called on the two sides to act. “Words are good, actions are better,” he said. “And we need to advance on these topics and to show also that there is a wish of de-escalation.” Vucic expressed hope that the two prime ministers' visit to Serbia and Kosovo would help. “I promised that Serbia will do all it can to preserve peace and stability,” he said. Washington and most EU nations have recognized Kosovo’s independence, while Russia and China have backed Serbia’s claim on the territory. The 1998-99 war erupted when separatist ethnic Albanians rebelled against Serbia's rule and Belgrade responded with a brutal crackdown. NATO bombing in 1999 forced Serbia to relinquish control but Belgrade has maintained Kosovo remains part of the country. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Opponents of Serbia's populist leader block main highway to keep up pressure after weeks of protests Kosovo's prime minister offers to hold new elections in tense Serb-majority municipalities Novak Djokovic’s bid for Wimbledon title No. 8 and Grand Slam trophy No. 24 starts next week

Churchill Downs is extending trainer Bob Baffert's suspension through 2024

Over the weekend, Elon Musk appeared in a Twitter post to endorse the idea of taking the right to vote away from people without children. The billionaire Tesla co-founder replied “Yup,” to a series of posts from Twitter user @fentasyl, which argued “democracy is probably unworkable long term without limiting suffrage to parents.” The exchange came as Mr Musk continued his recent run of interacting with right-wing figures on the social network. The posts from fentasyl themselves were a response to a previous post from Mr Musk. On Saturday, in the comments under an Islamophobic nonprofit’s video, where commenters insinuated that single white women were turning France into a majority-Muslim country, Mr Musk claimed, “The childless have little stake in the future.” The Independent has contacted Mr Musk for comment. These opinions are hardly surprising for Mr Musk, who has long expressed concerns about declining birth rates in the US and the lack of “smart” people having enough children, views which critics have argued are verging on eugenicist. In 2022, Musk, who has fathered nine children, wrote on Twitter that, “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far. Earlier this year, he elaborated, telling former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson that society hasn’t “evolved” to respond to abortions and contraception, which the billionaire incorrectly claimed were invented in the last 50 years. “I’m sort of worried that hey, civilisation, if we don’t make enough people to at least sustain our numbers, perhaps increase a little bit, then civilisation’s going to crumble,” Musk said. “The old question of, will civilisation end with a bang or a whimper?” (In fact, the world population has doubled in the last 50 years to more than 8 billion, according to the UN, though the birth rate has slowed in some places.) Observer argue that such so-called “natalist” views are often entangled with eugenicist ideas about intentionally manipulating future births to privilege and center certain groups of people. Mr Musk has previously lamented that “smart” people aren’t having enough children. “If each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that’s probably bad,” he once told a biographer. The tech billionaire has touted a prototype robot as a solution to a hypothetical world where declining numbers of workers are available to toil in Tesla factories. For someone concerned with human civilization’s long-term longevity, Mr Musk lives a fabulously carbon intensive life. The carbon footprint from his 2022 private jet flights alone was 132 times greater than the average US resident’s total footprint, a doubly astounding figure given people in the US consume far more resources than less wealthy nations. Read More Twitter rival Bluesky halts sign-ups after huge surge in demand following Musk’s rate limits Tweetdeck down: Major Twitter client not working amid chaos on site Thousands of Twitter users complain of issues with social media website and app Twitter users run into service issues after Elon Musk imposes daily limits on reading tweets Threatened by shortages, electric car makers race for supplies of lithium for batteries