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Police in Iceland call off search at ice cave collapse that killed 1 person

London — Police in Iceland called off a search Monday for two tourists initially believed missing after the collapse of an ice cave that killed one person and seriously injured another, saying they now believe no one is missing.

Icelandic authorities said they called off the search after examining the tour operator’s records and determining that only 23 people were on the trip, not 25 as was first believed.

One person died and one person was seriously injured Sunday when the cave collapsed shortly before 3 p.m. local time. Both victims are American citizens, police said.

“A moment ago, the police field manager located at the scene announced that all the ice that was thought to have fallen on the people had been moved,‘’ police said. “It has come to light that no one (was) hidden under the ice.’’

Rescuers had worked by hand to cut through the remnants of the collapsed ice cave as they searched for those they had believed to be missing.

The search, which was suspended overnight when conditions made it too dangerous, had resumed at about 7 a.m., Icelandic broadcaster RUV reported. Video showed rescuers working inside two large craters surrounded by the sand-blackened ice of the Breidamerkurjokull glacier.

But by the end of the day, they were satisfied that a mistake had been made in record keeping and that no one else was missing.

Police said there had been “misleading information” about the number of people on the trip. Based on what initially was available, it was deemed necessary to continue the search until rescuers could be assured no one was under the ice, police said.
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France’s Macron: Arrest of head of Telegram messaging app wasn’t political

Paris — French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that the arrest in France of the CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, wasn’t a political move but part of an independent investigation.

French media reported that Durov was detained at a Paris airport on Saturday on an arrest warrant alleging his platform has been used for money laundering, drug trafficking and other offenses. Durov is a citizen of Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis.

In France’s first public comment on the arrest, Macron posted on the social media platform X that his country “is deeply committed” to freedom of expression but “freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights.”

Denouncing what he called false information circulating about the arrest, he said it “is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to rule on the matter.”

Russian government officials have expressed outrage at Durov’s arrest, with some calling it politically driven and saying it showed the West’s double standard on freedom of speech.

Telegram, which says it has nearly a billion users worldwide, was founded by Durov and his brother in the wake of the Russian government’s crackdown after mass pro-democracy protests that rocked Moscow at the end of 2011 and 2012.

The demonstrations prompted Russian authorities to clamp down on the digital space, and Telegram and its pro-privacy rhetoric offered a convenient way for Russians to communicate and share news.

Telegram also continues to be a popular source of news in Ukraine, where both media outlets and officials use it to share information on the war, and deliver missile and air raid alerts.

In a statement posted on its platform after his arrest, Telegram said it abides by EU laws, and its moderation is “within industry standards and constantly improving.”

“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” Telegram’s post said. “Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of communication and as a source of vital information. We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation. Telegram is with you all.”

A French investigative judge extended Durov’s detention order on Sunday night, French media reported on Monday. Under French law, Durov can remain in custody for questioning for up to four days. After that, judges must decide to either charge him or release him.

The Russian Embassy in Paris said consular officials were denied access to Durov because French authorities view his French citizenship as his primary one. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, “We still don’t know what exactly Durov is being accused of. … Let’s wait until the charges are announced – if they are announced.”

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X who has in the past called himself a ” free speech absolutist,” posted “#freePavel” in support of Durov following the arrest.

Western governments have often criticized Telegram for a lack of content moderation, which experts say opens up the messaging platform for potential use in money laundering, drug trafficking and the sharing of material linked to the sexual exploitation of minors.

In 2022, Germany issued fines of $5 million against Telegram’s operators for failing to establish a lawful way to reporting illegal content or to name an entity in Germany to receive official communication. Both are required under German laws that regulate large online platforms.

Last year, Brazil temporarily suspended Telegram over its failure to surrender data on neo-Nazi activity related to a police inquiry into school shootings in November.
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Russia skips UN meeting pledging respect for humanitarian law

Geneva — Switzerland hosted United Nations Security Council members at a meeting in Geneva on Monday to recommit to international humanitarian law, describing an “alarming” global context characterized by over 120 armed conflicts, with Russia the only member absent.

Switzerland, which is one of the 15 members, organized the informal meeting to commemorate the Geneva Conventions, signed 75 years ago after World War II in the Swiss city to limit the barbarity of war.  

“I call for us to raise respect of the Geneva Conventions to the level of a top political priority,” Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis told the meeting attended by envoys from a range of countries, including 14 of the 15 U.N. Security Council members.

Asked about Russia’s absence, he said that all members were invited to think about international humanitarian law collectively but said attendance was not compulsory.

A Russian envoy in New York described the meeting as a “waste of time.”

“We believe that the Security Council should be focusing on more important matters than traveling around Europe,” said Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative in New York Dmitry Polyanski in a message sent by the diplomatic mission in Geneva.

Russia is a ‘P5’ member which holds a permanent seat within the broader Security Council alongside the United States, France, Britain and China.  

At the same meeting the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric described the Geneva Conventions as “under strain,” referring to the Gaza conflict as well as Ukraine. Russia launched more than 100 missiles and around 100 attack drones at Ukraine on Monday, killing at least five people and striking energy facilities.
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Russia hits Ukraine with widespread drone, missile attacks

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China opposes US sanctions on firms with alleged ties to Russia’s war efforts

Beijing — China on Sunday expressed its opposition to the latest U.S. sanctions on Chinese companies over their alleged ties to Russia’s war in Ukraine, saying it will adopt necessary measures to safeguard the rights and interests of the country’s businesses.

The U.S. announced Friday sweeping sanctions on hundreds of firms in Russia and across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, accusing them of providing products and services that enable Russia’s war effort and aiding its ability to evade sanctions. The U.S. Department of State said it was concerned by “the magnitude of dual-use goods exports” from China to Russia.

The Ministry of Commerce in China in its statement firmly opposed the U.S. putting multiple Chinese companies on its export control list. The move bars such companies from trading with U.S. firms without gaining a nearly unobtainable special license.

The ministry said the U.S. action was “typical unilateral sanctions,” saying they would disrupt global trade orders and rules, as well as affect the stability of the global industrial and supply chains.

“China urges the U.S. to immediately stop its wrong practices and will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interest of Chinese companies,” it said.

The U.S. action is the latest in a series of thousands of U.S. sanctions that have been imposed on Russian firms and their suppliers in other nations since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The effectiveness of the sanctions has been questioned, especially as Russia has continued to support its economy by selling oil and gas on international markets.

According to the U.S. State Department, some China-based companies supplied machine tools and components to Russia companies.

China has tried to position itself as neutral in the Ukraine conflict, but it shares with Russia high animosity toward the West.

After Western countries imposed heavy sanctions on Russian oil in response to Russia sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, China strongly stepped up its purchase of Russian oil, increasing its influence in Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin also underlined the importance of China by meeting in Beijing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping soon after being inaugurated for a fifth term in the Kremlin.
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Reuters journalist missing after strike on hotel in Ukraine

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Ukrainian shelling kills 5 in border area; Russian missile hits hotel with reporters

Kyiv — Five people died in Ukrainian shelling in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, officials said Sunday, while Russian forces struck a hotel in eastern Ukraine, leaving one journalist missing and two others injured.

Twelve other people were wounded in the Russian village of Rakitone, 38 kilometers (23 miles) from the Ukrainian border, including a 16-year-old girl reported to be in critical condition, said regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov. Another man also died in a separate drone attack on the border village of Solovevka, he wrote later on social media.

Russian forces struck a hotel overnight in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk in the country’s eastern Donetsk region, injuring two people and leaving one trapped under the rubble, regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin said. They were reported to be journalists from Ukraine, the U.S. and the U.K.

Reuters news agency said Sunday that its journalist covering the war in Ukraine was missing and two other team members were hospitalized after Hotel Sapphire, where a six-person crew was staying, was hit “by an apparent missile strike” Saturday. “One of our colleagues is unaccounted for, while another two have been taken to hospital for treatment,” the agency said.

The rest of the team has been accounted for, the news agency said.

Local officials said that the hotel had been struck with an Iskander Russian ballistic missile, leaving the reporters with blast injuries, concussions, and cuts on the body.

Associated Press reporters at the scene described the former hotel as “rubble,” with excavators still being used to clear debris hours after the attack.

In addition to the hotel, a nearby multistory building was also destroyed, Filashkin said, and rescuers were busy clearing the debris at the site.

Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region also came under Russian fire, resulting in multiple civilian injuries, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

In Kharkiv’s Chuhuiv region, five people were injured, including a 4-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl, after two houses were struck by Russian fire. In Kharkiv city, eight people were wounded when a two-story house was set on fire by a Russian attack.

In Balakliia, a Russian strike destroyed six houses and damaged others. A 55-year-old man was injured. In the Kupiansk area, a house was set on fire by a Russian attack, wounding four women.
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Russian attacks on Ukraine injure at least 29, local authorities say

KYIV — Russia launched several missiles and drones overnight targeting northern and eastern Ukraine, injuring at least 29 people, Ukrainian military and local authorities said on Sunday.

The attack targeted Ukraine’s frontline regions of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Donetsk, Ukraine’s air force said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia has been pummeling Ukrainian border regions with strikes, and Kyiv said its surprise incursion earlier this month into Russia’s Kursk region aimed to hinder Moscow’s ability to stage such attacks.

“Most of the missiles did not reach their targets,” the air force said, adding that Russia launched an Iskander-M ballistic missile, an Iskander-K cruise missile and six guided air missiles. It did not specify how many missiles were destroyed.

A missile attack on the northern region of Sumy killed one person, injuring at least 16 more, including three children, local authorities said on Telegram.

Oleh Sinehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region in the east, posted on Telegram that at least 13 people were injured in the Russian attacks, including a 4-year-old child.

Ihor Terekhov, mayor of Kharkiv city, said a gas pipeline was damaged in the city and at least two houses were destroyed and 10 damaged.

The air force said Russia launched nine attack drones, with Ukraine’s air defense systems destroying eight of them over the Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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Sunflower oil dethrones olive oil in Spain’s kitchens as prices soar

madrid — Sunflower oil has dethroned olive oil as king of the kitchen in Spain, the world´s largest olive oil producer, as rising prices force consumers to switch to cheaper options. 

Spaniards bought 107 million liters (28.3 million gallons) of all types of olive oil in the first half of 2024 compared with 179 million liters of sunflower oil, according to Spain’s biggest olive oil bottling association, Anierac.  

Until this year, olive oil has been the most popular cooking oil in Spanish households, accounting for 62% of sales by volume in 2023 while sunflower oil represented almost 34%, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. 

“It is clear that olive oil consumption is falling in Spain,” said Primitivo Fernandez, spokesman for Anierac. “There are households that used to buy only olive oil and for the first time are now buying sunflower oil and olive oil,” he said. 

Olive oil sales by volume fell 18% from the first half of 2023, Anierac said. Sunflower oil sales increased by 25% in volume last year, according to official data. 

A bottle of sunflower oil cost an average of 1.86 euros ($2.07) a liter last year, while pricier olive oil types cost upwards of 6 euros a liter, 50% more than in 2022, official data showed. 

Weather’s effects

Spain usually supplies around 40% of the world’s olive oil, but heat waves in the spring and a prolonged drought reduced olive harvests over the past two years, doubling olive oil prices to record levels. 

That has pushed the staple of the Mediterranean diet beyond the reach of poor households in Spain, which are switching to cheaper sunflower oil, according to a Ministry of Agriculture report on food consumption trends in 2023. 

At the end of last year, olive oil was mainly consumed in middle-class and upper-middle-class households, the report said. 

One-liter bottles of extra-virgin olive oil were selling for as much as 14.5 euros ($15.77) in some supermarkets last year, putting them in the category of products retailers fit with security tags. 

In June, the Spanish government cut the value added tax on olive oil to make it more affordable even as prices have eased a little this year. 

Spain’s largest supermarket chain, Mercadona, has cut the price of olive oil by 25% this year and this week was offering 1 liter bottles below 7 euros to try to woo back customers, a company source said.
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German stabbing suspect is 26-year-old Syrian man who admitted to the crime

FRANKFURT, Germany — The suspect in custody for a stabbing rampage in the western German city of Solingen that killed three people and injured eight is a 26-year-old Syrian man, authorities said early Sunday.

The suspect turned himself in and admitted to the crime, Duesseldorf police and prosecutors said in a joint statement.

“The involvement of this person is currently under intensive investigation,” they said.

The attack, for which the Islamic State group claimed responsibility, occurred Friday evening in the Fronhof, a market square where live bands were playing at a festival to celebrate Solingen’s 650-year history. Mourners have made a makeshift memorial near the scene.

The arrest of the suspect threatens to stoke fears ahead of three state elections next month in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, which the anti-immigrant far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a chance of winning.

The suspect came from a home for refugees in Solingen that was searched on Saturday, said North Rhine-Westphalia’s interior minister, Herbert Reul.

Der Spiegel, citing unidentified security sources, reported that the man moved to Germany late in 2022 and sought asylum, and that his clothes had been smeared with blood.

The police declined to comment on the Spiegel report.

Meanwhile, German federal prosecutors have taken over the case and are investigating whether the suspect was a member of Islamic State, a spokesperson for the prosecutors said.

The group described the man who carried out the attack as a “soldier of the Islamic State” in a statement on its Telegram account on Saturday: “He carried out the attack in revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere.”

It did not immediately provide any evidence for its assertion, and it was not clear how close any relationship between the attacker and Islamic State was.

Hendrik Wuest, premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, on Saturday described the attack as an act of terror.

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has counted around a dozen Islamist-motivated attacks since 2000.

One of the biggest was in 2016, when a Tunisian drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring dozens.

“The risk of jihadist-motivated acts of violence remains high. The Federal Republic of Germany remains a direct target of terrorist organizations,” the BKA said in the report earlier this year.
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EU: Maduro has not shown evidence to declare victory in Venezuela elections

MEXICO CITY — The European Union’s top diplomat on Saturday said that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has still “not provided the necessary public evidence” to prove he was the winner of July’s elections, days after the country’s Supreme Court backed the government’s disputed claims of victory.

The bloc joined a slate of other Latin American countries and the United States in rejecting the Venezuelan high court’s certification. Authorities repeated calls for Maduro to release the election’s official tally sheets, considered the one verifiable vote count in Venezuela as they are almost impossible to replicate.

“Only complete and independently verifiable results will be accepted and recognized,” Josep Borrell, the high representative of the EU, said in a statement.

Borrell’s comments came as the leaders of Brazil and Colombia also demanded the release of the tallies, saying on Saturday the “credibility of the electoral process can only be restored through the transparent publication of disaggregated and verifiable data.”

The joint statement from Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro didn’t go as far as to reject the court certification. Many had been waiting to see how the two leftist leaders would respond to the court because both are close allies of Maduro and have been working to facilitate talks with both sides.

Maduro claims that he won the presidential vote, but so far has refused to release the tallies. Meanwhile, the main opposition coalition has accused Maduro of trying to steal the vote.

Opposition volunteers managed to collect copies of voting tallies from 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide that show former opposition candidate Edmundo González won by a more than 2-to-1 margin. The Supreme Court and other government entities alleged those tallies were forged.

The Venezuelan government rejected Borrell’s statements, calling them “interventionist.” Its Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that the “continued disrespect” to Venezuela’s sovereignty by the EU could “considerably affect diplomatic, political and economic relations.”

Lula and Petro said they “take note” of the court’s ruling, but added they are still awaiting release of the tallies.

The Brazilian and Colombian leaders also called on actors in Venezuela to “avoid resorting to acts of violence and repression” as security forces arrested more than 2,000 people and cracked down on demonstrations that erupted spontaneously throughout the country protesting the results. But the two leaders didn’t directly accuse the Maduro government of carrying out the violence.

The arrests have again spread fear in a country that has seen other government crackdowns during previous times of political turmoil.

At the same time, key opposition figure Maria Corina Machado has since gone into hiding and the government said Friday it will order González to provide sworn testimony in an ongoing investigation, claiming he was part of an effort to spread panic by contesting the results of the election.

Both Lula and Petro have previously been criticized for what some say have been lenient policies toward Maduro’s government, but their tone has grown more stern in recent months, especially in the wake of the election fallout.

Their two countries are neighbors to Venezuela and their governments were to witness agreements struck between Maduro and the opposition that aimed to chart the path to free and fair elections, which the opposition and other observers accused Maduro of violating. The two leaders reiterated their willingness to facilitate dialogue between the government and the opposition.

“The political normalization of Venezuela requires the recognition that there is no lasting alternative to peaceful dialogue and democratic coexistence,” the statement read. 
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