Thursday, Aug 17th
Last update05:20:13 AM GMT
International Glance
Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz and acting Bezeq CEO David Granot were among five individuals detained by police Monday morning in an international money laundering investigation centering around Steinmetz, a diamond and real estate magnate.
Tal Zilberstein, an Israeli political consultant to the Austrian government, attorney Doron Levy, and Asher Avidan, a former senior executive of Steinmetz’s in Guinea and president of BSGR corporation mining division, were also detained.
At least 200 people died in a mudslide in Sierra Leone early Monday, local authorities said.
The local Red Cross put the death toll at 18, but Sierra Leone Vice President Victor Foh said, "hundreds have probably died."
A night of heavy rain in the mountain town of Regent, near Freetown, caused widespread flooding and mudslides, and survivors could be seen walking through muddy, waist-deep water in the Freetown vicinity, the BBC reported. Many houses in the town were completely covered in mud
Israel Kristal, the world’s oldest man who lived through both world wars and survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, has passed away just a month short of his 114th birthday, his family have said.
Oren Kristal, a grandson, said he died on Friday. “He managed to accomplish a lot. Every year he lived was like a few years for somebody else,” Oren told the Associated Press.
Last year Guinness World Records awarded Kristal a certificate as the world’s oldest man.
Unknown gunmen in Syria have killed seven members of the Syrian Civil Defense volunteer rescue organization, known as the White Helmets.
The rescue organization shared a brief statement on Twitter, confirming the deaths of the volunteers at the group's operations center in the city of Sarmin on Saturday morning.
"7 SCD volunteers were killed by unknown armed men in Sarmin SCD center, Idlib, in the morning," the White Helmets said.
Two passenger trains collided head-on in Alexandria, Egypt, on Friday -- killing dozens of people and injuring scores more, government officials said.
Authorities said one of the trains had departed from Cairo and the other was from Port Said. A spokesman for Egypt's health ministry, Khaled Megahed told al-Ahram the death toll was 36 with more than 100 people injured.
The nation's top prosecutor said it was not immediately clear how the accident happened or what caused the two trains to run on the same set of tracks. He ordered an immediate investigation.
More refugees and migrants have been "deliberately drowned" by human smugglers for the second time in 24 hours off the coast of Yemen, according to the United Nations migration agency.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement late on Thursday that its staff found six bodies on the beach - two male and four female - and 13 people are still missing.
North Korea has defied threats of “fire and fury” from Donald Trump, deriding his warning as a “load of nonsense” and announcing a detailed plan to launch missiles aimed at the waters off the coast of the US Pacific territory of Guam.
A statement attributed to General Kim Rak Gyom, the head of the country’s strategic forces, declared: “Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him”. The general outlined a plan to carry out a demonstration launch of four intermediate-range missiles that would fly over Japan and then land in the sea around Guam, “enveloping” the island.
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