Foreign News
Australian childcare worker charged with sex abuse of 91 children
A former Australian childcare worker has been charged with more than 1,600 offences after allegedly sexually abusing 91 children, filming it, then distributing the content online.
Police allege the man preyed on young girls over a 15-year period at a dozen centres in Australia and abroad.
He was arrested in August 2022, but it has taken police a year to investigate and identify alleged victims.
Authorities say it is one of the most “horrific” cases they have ever seen.
The 45-year-old man is facing 246 counts of rape and 673 counts of indecent assault against children – many of them in aggravated circumstances. The most serious charges carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. He also faces hundreds of charges for filming and distributing child abuse material. Police allege he recorded all of his abuse, and say they found 4000 images and videos on his electronic devices.
The offending allegedly occurred in 10 childcare centres in Queensland, and one each in New South Wales and an unnamed overseas country. The man worked at other childcare centres, but the Australian Federal Police (AFP) says it is “highly confident” he did not offend at those centres.
Speaking to media on Tuesday, AFP Assistant Commissioner Justine Gough said the case would be “deeply distressing” for the community. “It’s beyond the realms of anyone’s imagination, what this person did to these children. You try not to be shocked after a long period of time in the police but this is a horrific case,” she said.
The 87 Australian children who were allegedly abused – some of whom are now adults – have been identified and their families contacted. Australian authorities are now working with their international counterparts to contact the other four alleged victims.
Investigators say they caught the man after they were able to identify the background appearing in child abuse material as one of the childcare centres he worked at. The AFP executed a search warrant at the Brisbane centre on 20 August 2022, before also searching the man’s Gold Coast home and seizing electronic devices allegedly containing child abuse material he had created.
He had been reported to police in Queensland twice before, in 2021 and 2022, but investigators had found insufficient evidence to act, police say.
The man – who is yet to be named – is next due to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court on 21 August.
(BBC)
More than a thousand people have been left with respiratory problems after a sandstorm swept across Iraq’s central and southern parts of the country, health officials said.
One official in Muthanna province reported to the AFP news agency at least 700 cases of what they said was suffocation.
Footage shared online showed areas cloaked in a thick orange haze, with local media reporting power cuts and the suspension of flights in a number of regions.
Dust storms are common in Iraq, but some experts believe they are becoming more frequent due to climate change.
Pedestrians and police wore face masks to protect themselves from the dust and paramedics were on site to assist people with difficulty breathing, according to AFP.
Hospitals in Muthanna province in southern Iraq received at least “700 cases of suffocation”, a local health official said.
More than 250 people were taken to hospital in Najaf province, and at least 322 patients including children were sent to hospitals in Diwaniyah province.
A further 530 people reported breathing issues in Dhi Qar and Basra provinces.
The sandstorm blanketed Iraq’s southern provinces in an orange cloud that reduced visibility to less than one kilometre (0.62 mile).
The authorities were forced to shut down airports in the provinces of Najaf and Basra.
Conditions are expected to gradually improve by Tuesday morning, according to local weather services.
Iraq is listed by the UN as one of the five countries most vulnerable to climate change as it encounters regular sandstorms, sweltering heat and water scarcity.
A severe sandstorm in 2022 left one person dead and more than 5,000 needing treatment for respiratory illnesses.
Iraq will be experiencing more “dust days” in the future, according to its environment ministry.
[BBC]
Indian businessman Mehul Choksi has been arrested in Belgium following India’s request for his extradition.
Choksi, who left India in 2018, was arrested on Saturday, his lawyer Vijay Aggarwal told the BBC on Monday.
The diamond merchant is wanted by India for allegedly defrauding one of the country’s largest banks of nearly $1.8bn (£1.3bn).
Choksi has not commented publicly on the case, but his lawyer said they would appeal against his detention and also oppose his extradition to India.
“These are the obvious grounds on which we will argue the case, that he is not a flight risk and secondly, that he is extremely sick. He is undergoing cancer treatment,” Mr Agarwal said. He added that they would “contest the extradition on grounds that there isn’t enough evidence against him and the extradition request is politically motivated and the trial in India may not be fair”.
The BBC has reached out to India’s foreign ministry and financial crimes agency – the Enforcement Directorate (ED) – for comment.
According to a Times of India report, Choksi was arrested on the basis of two non-bailable warrants issued by an Indian court in 2018 and 2021 – although it’s not clear why the action came now.
Mehul Choksi and his nephew, Nirav Modi, are wanted by Indian authorities in connection with a $1.8bn fraud case at Punjab National Bank (PNB).
Niray Modi, who’s also been living abroad since 2018, is lodged in a prison in London and is awaiting extradition to India.
Both were high-profile diamond traders. Modi’s jewellery was worn by several Hollywood celebrities such as Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet. One of the biggest Bollywood stars, Priyanka Chopra, was his company’s brand ambassador. Choksi, meanwhile, was the owner of Gitanjali Gems, an Indian jewellery retailer which once had about 4,000 stores across India.
The ED has accused Choksi and Modi of colluding with some employees of PNB’s Brady House branch in Mumbai city to get fraudulent advances for payments to overseas suppliers of jewels.
These funds were then allegedly diverted and laundered.
Choksi and Modi have denied the allegations against them.
After leaving India, Choksi reportedly travelled to the US and later to Antigua – where he has citizenship. In 2021, he was reportedly arrested in Dominica and deported back to Antigua.
Hariprasad SV, a Bengaluru-based entrepreneur who had in 2016 alerted authorities about the alleged scam at PNB, said Choksi’s arrest was “great news”. “Apart from bringing him back, the most important thing is to get back all those billions of dollars he looted from India,” he told ANI news agency.
[BBC]
US President Donald Trump’s administration has exempted smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices from “reciprocal” tariffs, including the 125% levies imposed on Chinese imports.
US Customs and Border Patrol published a notice late on Friday explaining the goods would be excluded from Trump’s 10% global tariff on most countries and the much larger Chinese import tax.
The move comes after concerns from US tech companies that the price of gadgets could skyrocket, as many of them are made in China.
This is the first significant reprieve of any kind in Trump’s tariffs on China, with one trade analyst describing it as a “game-changer scenario”.
[BBC]
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