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A helicopter with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on board had to make an emergency landing in the west of the country on Sunday, state media reported. It was initially unclear whether Raisi was injured in the accident. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was also reportedly on board. Some media reported a "hard landing," others a "crash." As a result, there is no precise information about the situation on the ground. There were accounts on social media that both the president and foreign minister were injured. Raisi was sworn in as Iran's new president in August 2021.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi says the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) have "taught a lesson" to the country's arch-enemy Israel. "Punishment of the aggressor, which was the sincere promise of the powerful and wise leader of the Islamic Revolution, has come true," Raisi said in a statement from the presidential office. Raisi warned Israel's allies against counter-attacks: "We advise the supporters of the occupying regime to appreciate this responsible and proportionate action of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
Adults who have trouble nodding off could be setting themselves up for cognitive decline in later life, according to scientists writing in the journal Neurology. "People who have more disrupted sleep in their 30s and 40s may be more likely to have memory and thinking problems a decade later," they warned. "Growing evidence supports an association between sleep quality and risk of dementia," the team added. Their work covered over 500 people who were tracked for 11 years. While they conceded it did not prove sheep-counters in their 30s would end up with cognition problems when they get old, the...
As filmmakers Caroline Suh and Cara Mones began interrogating the sexual misconduct scandal that halted — at least, briefly — the career of comedian Louis C.K. at the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017, they came to a realization: Debates around C.K.'s behavior, subsequent cancellation and eventual return to comedy success were centred on the wrong person. At first, the knotty questions were a springboard for curiosity. Suh, a self-described C.K. fan, wondered in private if the comedy star really deserved to be banished from public life after allegations of sexual misconduct, which C.K. lat...
Male joggers, swimmers and cyclists could be cutting their risk of nine cancers, a new study suggests. Researchers found that men with good cardiorespiratory fitness are far less likely to go on to develop cancers of the head and neck, stomach, pancreas, liver, bowel, rectum, kidney, lung and oesophagus. Cardiorespiratory fitness refers to a person’s ability to do aerobic exercise, such as running, cycling and swimming for sustained periods, or even to climb stairs. The new study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, saw experts from Sweden track just over a million men for an ...
Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can classify four subtypes of Parkinson’s disease with up to 95% accuracy. Researchers from the Francis Crick Institute and the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology in London “trained” a computer program to recognise the subtypes of the condition using images of stem cells from patients. The team said their work, published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, could pave the way for personalised medicine and targeted drug discovery. Sonia Gandhi, assistant research director and group leader of the Neurodegeneration Bi...
At least 36 people have been confirmed dead in the wildfire on Hawaii's Maui island, Maui County said in a statement on its website late Wednesday. "As the firefighting efforts continue, 36 total fatalities have been discovered today amid the active Lahaina fire. No other details are available at this time," the brief statement said. Hours earlier, Maui Mayor Richard Bissen had put the death toll at six. It was unclear whether the death toll was expected to keep rising in the fires that were still active and raging out of control in the hard-hit coastal town of Lahaina, a picturesque destinati...
A visitor to the Louvre museum in Paris threw a piece of cake at the world-famous painting the "Mona Lisa," which is on display behind protective glass.
The painting by Leonardo da Vinci was not damaged in its protective case during the attack on Sunday, a museum spokeswoman told dpa on Monday.
The man was immediately detained by the supervisory staff and taken out of the exhibition hall, and the police arrested him.
The 24-year-old from a Paris suburb was taken to a psychiatric hospital where it will be determined whether he can be remanded in custody. He was said to have made "a confused impression." The museum filed a complaint.
The visitor had first pretended to be disabled in order to get a wheelchair and approach the work of art, the spokeswoman explained. In this way, the museum enables people with limited mobility to admire the Louvre's main work. When he was close enough he threw a cake, which had previously been kept hidden, at the display case containing the Mona Lisa, she said.
Photos and videos shared by visitors on social media showed an employee immediately wiping the cream cake off the display case.
The perpetrator appeared to be a younger man who had donned a woman's wig.
"Think of the Earth, there are people who are in the process of destroying the Earth," the man shouted, according to the newspaper Le Parisien.
A Palestinian cross-border worker receives his dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination centre opened at the checkpoint of Meitar, a town of Israel's Southern District. Ilia Yefimovich/dpa
Sore arms, fatigue and nausea: The majority of people given a third vaccination are reporting similar side effects to the second shot, according to new research in Israel.
According to an August survey by the health insurance company Clalit, 88 per cent felt similar or better in the week after the booster vaccination, while 10 per cent felt worse than after the second vaccination.
In total, 31 per cent of the respondents reported at least one vaccination reaction, most of them pain in the arm.
According to the health insurance company, more than 240,000 people have already been vaccinated for the third time - 4,500 of which participated in the survey.
Nine per cent of the respondents reported fatigue as a reaction to the third vaccination, about 6 per cent said they felt unwell. One per cent said they had sought medical help because of the vaccination reaction.
Israel has been giving booster vaccinations to 60-year-olds and older for about a week - the first country worldwide to do so. Isreali health ministry figures show that the effectiveness of the Biontech/Pfizer vaccination used in Israel has declined sharply since the beginning of June.
However, government experts also criticise that these figures on effectiveness have not been scientifically collected.
The number of new infections reported in Israel within one day has been over 3,000 for about a week. More than 58 percent of the approximately 9.4 million Israelis are fully vaccinated.
Israel's vaccination campaign was among the world's fastest and most successful, especially at the onset, progressing quickly and causing a sensation internationally.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer wants to resume currently suspended deportations to Afghanistan "as soon as the situation allows." But he defended the decision to not carry out any deportations to the country until further notice due to the military advance of the Taliban in that country. "Those who have no right of residence must leave Germany again," Seehofer explained. "But a constitutional state also bears responsibility for ensuring that deportations do not become a danger for those involved." The security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated dramatically since the decision t...
An employee of the British embassy in Berlin is under arrest for allegedly providing documents to Russian intelligence in exchange for money, German and British law enforcement said on Wednesday. An investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe was to decide later in the day on whether the Briton should be remanded in custody, German federal prosecutors said in a statement. In London, the Home Office confirmed the arrest, to which joint investigations by German and British authorities contributed. The Foreign Office in Berlin stressed that it was taking the case very serious...
Washington (dpa) — Some 52 people were arrested as masses of angry pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol, Washington DC police chief Robert Contee said. Four people were arrested on weapons charges and 47 were arrested for violating the nighttime curfew which went into place at 6pm Wednesday. Contee went on to say that at least 14 police officers were injured in the clashes, two of them seriously. One of those officers was pulled into the crowd by protesters, where he was attacked and the second suffered significant facial injuries when he was hit by a projectile, he said. The protests bega...
Everything that works in writer-director Scott Frank's highly bingeworthy adaptation of "The Queen's Gambit," which is most everything about it, comes from treating Walter Tevis' 1983 novel just seriously enough.Set in the 1950s and 1960s, the show has been streaming for a week now, and it's the sort of sleek, classy escapism that makes the recently announced Netflix price hike seem like no big pandemic deal. No less so than "Enola Holmes" or the dreaded "Holidate," to name two other Netflix diversions, this one offers a wealth of angles and entry points for a broad audience, teenaged girls am...
Three people were killed on Thursday inside a church in Nice, southern France, in what President Emmanuel Macron said was "a terrorist, Islamist attack."The attack, which was quickly condemned in France and around the world, came only two weeks after a schoolteacher who had used caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in a lesson was beheaded in a Paris suburb by a suspected Islamist.Macron, who had promised to intensify a planned crackdown on all forms of Islamism after the teacher's killing, said that France was "being attacked" and vowed to protect places of worship.Church bells rang out across...
The Paris-based production company, whose employees were injured in a knife attack, had helped produce a documentary about the attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo editorial team."Three Days Of Terror: The Charlie Hebdo Attacks" is the name of the documentary that was produced for the US broadcaster HBO, the BBC and French broadcaster France 2.Witnesses, police officers and survivors speak in the film about the series of terrorist attacks in January 2015, in which a total of 17 people were killed over several days, according to the website of the company Premieres Lignes.The ...
The European Parliament on Thursday awarded its top human rights prize to the opposition movement in Belarus who are demanding the ouster of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko after 26 years in power.The award for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought cites the democratic opposition in Belarus as well as civil society activists, and includes exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who visited the European Parliament in September.Tikhanovskaya became a top opposition candidate after her husband, who had intended to run, was jailed ahead of the presidential election on Aug...
When Donald Trump first won the US presidential election four years ago, many around the world were left shaken up for days. A medical journal is now asking whether news of that political event had any immediate health impacts.The answer is yes, there was a noticeable increase in the number of people hospitalized in southern California due to cardiovascular diseases, say researchers from Harvard University and Kaiser Permanente, a health care company in the US.The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on October 12, found that such stress poses a gre...
Among the first instruments you hear in "Losing My Religion," the 1991 smash hit by R.E.M., is a mandolin. Played by guitarist Peter Buck, the minimalist melody moves through the song virtually unimpeded. Take it away and the song collapses. Opt instead for a piano, saxophone or a distorted electric guitar and it's a different thing altogether.But why? And how did that mandolin riff, combined with bassist Mike Mills' fluid undercurrent, Bill Berry's disco-informed drumming and singer Michael Stipe's disorienting confession - "Oh no I've said too much / I haven't said enough" - come to propel a...
Substance abusers are at greater risk of contracting Covid-19, according to recent studies, a worrying fact as use of synthetic opioids gradually increases in Europe.Users of opioids or tobacco face a greater risk of catching the coronavirus and are more likely to suffer a more serious case of Covid-19 and to die, says a recent study by the National Institutes of Health in the US.The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, a trade journal, assessed more than 73 million patients and found that people with opioid use disorder are at a particularly high risk.Nora Volkow, who heads the National ...
Their days are numbered: the beaming parrot on infant cereal, the pastry chef bear, the cartoon chocolate drops.These cartoons, which have accompanied generations of Mexican consumers and promoted sales, will have to disappear from packaging, accused of being accomplices in the country's obesity epidemic.New regulations oblige the Mexican food industry, including the big international brands, to put warning labels on packaged food and sugary drinks, and to change the presentation of unhealthy products.Mexico, the world's largest consumer of soft drinks, is the country with the largest share of...
The SARS-CoV-2 virus has shown little respect for authority as it has spread around the world this year, infecting people from all walks of life.US President Donald Trump's early Friday announcement that he has also been infected adds to the list of world leaders who have had to suffer through a disease that is still spreading and whose long-term effects remain largely unclear.Here is a list of some of the world leaders who have so far come down with the novel coronavirus, which can lead to the deadly disease Covid-19.PRINCE ALBERT II of Monaco, 62, tested positive for the virus in March and q...
