By Colin Packham
CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian court ordered mining magnate Clive Palmer to pay A$1.5 million ($1.2 million) in damages to Universal Music on Friday for breaching the copyright of Twisted Sister's 1984 hit song "We're Not Gonna Take It" in political advertising.
The Federal Court heard that Palmer had refused to pay Universal to licence the song but had used it anyway, with modified lyrics, in advertising for his political outfit, United Australia Party (UAP), ahead of a 2019 general election.
Palmer argued the tune in the advertisements was based on the Christian hymn "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" and that his lyrics - "Australia ain’t gonna cop it, no Australia’s not gonna cop it, Aussies not gonna cop it anymore" - had nothing to do with the U.S. glam rockers' hit song.
Federal Court Justice Anna Katzmann said Palmer's defence was "fanciful".
"In the face of the evidence it is, with respect, ludicrous to suggest that the UAP recording was created independently of (We're Not Gonna Take It)," she wrote in a ruling published.
Palmer had been "high-handed and contemptuous" and "gave false evidence, including concocting a story to exculpate himself," she added.
As well as the damages, Palmer was ordered to pay costs and to remove all copies of his song.
Twisted Sister lead singer Dee Snider responded to the ruling on Twitter: "It's over baby! WE WON BIG!!"
"We're not gonna take copyright infringement any more!!" he wrote after the verdict.
A spokesman for Palmer said the businessman would examine the ruling and consider an appeal.
Palmer made a fortune from real estate and mining before entering federal politics in 2013 on a populist platform.
His party won a handful of seats before imploding in acrimony and in-fighting, and failed to win a single seat in 2019 despite spending A$83 million on advertising.
($1 = 1.2855 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Stephen Coates)
The stampede that killed 44 people at an Israeli religious festival is a "national catastrophe," a spokesman for Israel's emergency rescue service Zaka said ON Friday.
"It is an unbearable incident," Motti Buckchin told Israeli news site ynet.
"44 people who wanted to experience joy and they come back in body bags," he said.
"44 families for whom the world is collapsing. We cannot simply go back to business as usual now."
Around 150 people were also injured in the crush, rescue group Magen David Adom said.
The identification of victims began on Friday morning, as local media reported people were still looking for missing relatives.
It is expected that many of the victims will be buried during the day - before the start of Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest.
At least 44 people have died in a stampede at a Jewish religious festival in northern Israel, health authorities said Friday.
Dozens more wounded people were taken to six different hospitals, the health ministry said Friday morning.
A spokesman for the Magen David Adom rescue services called it an "inconceivable catastrophe."
Thousands of worshippers had been celebrating the Jewish holiday of Lag Baomer in the town of Meron, and earlier videos on social media showed people singing, dancing and jumping.
Authorities had capped the number of people allowed at 10,000, but media reports indicated up to ten times that number may have travelled there.
Police have launched an investigation into what happened.
"It was a terrible, tragic night," police chief Shimon Lavi told reporters Friday morning.
Lavi said security forces had prepared thoroughly for the celebration. "Security came first," he said.
He said many police officers had saved lives while putting themselves in danger, and warned against misinformation on social media, adding that he was he was "ready for any test."
"I bear the overarching responsibility for better or for worse," Lavi said.
Reports suggest the stampede began when people started to slide on a sloping ramp with a metal floor and corrugated metal partitions on both sides, causing the densely packed revellers to fall over each other. Earlier reports said a stand had collapsed at the gathering.
Witnesses have accused the police of allowing people into a cordoned-off area even though it was already extremely crowded and of not opening the exits on either side quickly enough after people started panicking.
A spokesman for the Zaka rescue services said during the night that the scene was chaotic and many children had been separated from their parents, in comments to Israeli television.
Efforts are being made to reunite the families. "I have worked in the rescue service for more than 20 years, and I have never seen anything like this," he said. "These are unbelievable numbers."
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin wrote on Twitter that he was following the reports from Meron and praying for the recovery of the injured, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed dismay at the "grave disaster."
Lag Baomer is in part a commemoration of the Jewish uprising against Roman occupiers that started in the year 132 under rebel leader Bar Kokhba.
The burial place of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who was involved in the uprising, is a pilgrimage site on Mount Meron that thousands visit every year on the holiday.
Lag Baomer is also said to be the date that an epidemic that killed many Jewish religious students ended.
Bonfires are traditionally lit on the holiday.
Last year, celebrations were severely restricted due to the coronavirus pandemic.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's Zulu regent Queen Shiyiwe Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu has died at 65, officials said, just over a month after she took the role following the death of her husband, King Goodwill Zwelithini.
"It is with deepest shock and distress that the Royal Family announces the unexpected passing of her Majesty Queen Shiyiwe Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu, regent of the Zulu nation," said a statement issued by Prince Mangosutho Buthelezi, founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party and traditional prime minister to the Zulu monarch.
He did not refer to a cause of death. Some South African media have reported that she had been ill but have not released details of her medical condition.
"This has taken us by surprise and left us utterly bereft. On behalf of the royal family, I wish to assure the nation that while we are all rightly grief-stricken, there will be no leadership vacuum in the Zulu nation," Buthelezi said.
In a statement, President Cyril Ramaphosa extended his "thoughts, prayers and hearts once more to the royal family".
The Zulu are South Africa's largest ethnic group, accounting for around a fifth of the country's population, most living in the coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal. The monarch has no formal government powers but upholds Zulu tradition and controls millions of hectares of land through a trust.
The queen married Zwelithini in 1977, becoming his third wife. She is the sister of King Mswati III of eSwatini, ruler of the country formerly known as Swaziland. King Zwelithini ka Bhekuzulu, who was 72, died in hospital last month after being admitted for treatment for diabetes.
Under his will, his wife was appointed regent pending the installation of a successor.
KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala called the news "heart-wrenching" and said the Queen was a bridge between the Zulu and eSwatini nations. He called her leadership role an inspiration for women, which helped to "administer the final burial rites to the backward, patriarchal and chauvinistic tendencies that considered women as inferior beings".
(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by Peter Graff)
The Italian city of Forli is celebrating the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri with a huge show featuring 300 artworks exploring the myth surrounding the poet.
After delays due to the pandemic, the San Domenico Museum can now show off the masterpieces spanning several centuries.
Artists ranging from Michelangelo and Fra Angelico to Pablo Picasso and Tintoretto are among those featured in "Dante: La visione dell'arte," which is now set to run until July 11.
Museums in Italian regions with a moderate risk of the coronavirus have been allowed to reopen - good news as the country celebrates the poet famous for "The Divine Comedy."
Dante was born in Florence in 1265 and died in Ravenna, in the northern Emilia-Romagna region where Forli is located, in 1321.
The show is in collaboration with Florence's Uffizi Gallery.
A massive stampede at a densely packed Jewish pilgrimage site killed at least 44 people in northern Israel on Friday, with rescue workers facing chaotic crowds while trying to evacuate the injured.
The disaster occurred in Meron at the site of the reputed tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a second-century Talmudic sage, where mainly ultra-Orthodox Jews flock to mark the Lag BaOmer holiday.
Closed last year due to coronavirus restrictions, this year's pilgrimage was expected to be a celebratory event in a nation that has largely re-opened thanks to a successful vaccination effort.
The pilgrimage was largest public gathering since the pandemic began, with reports that there were three times more people there than authorised.
Initial reports indicated that the carnage began when a section of stadium seating collapsed but rescue workers later linked the casualties to a stampede.
A spokesman for the Magen David Adom, Israel's rescue service, told AFP "there were 38 dead at the scene but there were more at the hospital."
A source at the northern Ziv hospital, one of several receiving casualties, told AFP it had recorded at least six deaths.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a "heavy disaster" and said he was "praying for the injured".
The army and emergency services deployed helicopters to evacuate the wounded.
Scenes from Meron hours after the accident showed an ultra-Orthodox Jewish crowd in distress, with debris scattered across the ground.
Some survivors had lit candles for the victims while other prayed at a nearby wall.
Israeli media have published an image of a row of bodies covered in plastic bags on the ground.
'Terrible disaster'
"This is one of the worst tragedies that I have ever experienced," said Lazar Hyman of the United Hatzalah volunteer rescue service, who was at the scene.
"I have not seen anything like this since I entered into the field of emergency medicine," he added.
Yehuda Gottleib, one of the first responders from United Hatzalah, said he saw "dozens of people fall on top of one another during the collapse".
"A large number of them were crushed and lost consciousness."
Opposition leader Yair Lapid lamented the "terrible disaster", and described it as a "sad" night for the country.
Israel has fully vaccinated more than half of its 9.3 million population against the coronavirus, but restrictions on massive public gatherings remain in place to stem the spread of the virus.
Authorities had authorised 10,000 people to gather at the site of the tomb but organisers said more than 650 buses had been chartered from across the country, bringing 30,000 pilgrims to Meron.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, known in Israel as haredim, have throughout the pandemic shown resistance towards health and safety measures mandated by the government.
Around 5,000 police had been deployed to secure the event.
After the stampede, police closed access to the area to prevent a crowd from building further, while rescue workers and security forces worked to clear the area and identify the victims.
Some of the injured have been transported by military helicopter to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, rescue workers said.
UPDATE: The Washington Post has retracted claims that the FBI warned Rudy Giuliani that he was the target of a Russian disinformation campaign.
"An earlier version of this story, published Thursday, incorrectly reported that One America News was warned by the FBI that it was the target of a Russian influence operation," the publication wrote. "That version also said the FBI had provided a similar warning to Rudolph W. Giuliani, which he has since disputed. This version has been corrected to remove assertions that OAN and Giuliani received the warnings."
The Washington Post had reported that Giuliani was warned by the FBI in 2019 that he was a target of Russian election interference plots — and even after receiving the warning, went to Ukraine in search of dirt to damage Joe Biden's family.
Giuliani recently had his home and office raided by federal officials acting on a search warrant in connection with allegations his Ukraine work was in the capacity of an unregistered foreign agent, which would be a criminal offense. A grand jury has been empaneled to review the matter.
On Thursday, TIME Magazine reported that the investigation into former President Donald Trump's longtime lawyer Rudy Giuliani began "long before" the FBI raid on his home and office, and sought interviews from his associates around the world.
"The witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described lengthy interviews with investigators in Europe, Manhattan and Washington, starting in the fall of 2019 and continuing through February," reported Simon Shuster. "The calls and meetings with investigators grew more frequent and 'intense' after Joe Biden's victory in last fall's presidential election, says one of the witnesses. Two of the witnesses say they were working with Giuliani while cooperating with federal investigators."
Giuliani reportedly faces allegations he violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a federal law that requires lobbyists for foreign governments to disclose their work to the government. He has allegedly been working on behalf of Ukrainian interests.
"A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan declined to comment on the case," continued the report. "Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment about his former associates in Ukraine assisting federal prosecutors. In a statement released Wednesday, the former Mayor of New York City and personal lawyer for President Donald Trump called the investigation against him an 'unjustified and unethical attack,' and said he 'can demonstrate that his conduct as a lawyer and a citizen was absolutely legal and ethical.'"
According to other reports, a grand jury has already been empaneled to review Giuliani's conduct.
Nearly all of the world's glaciers are losing mass at an ever increasing pace, contributing to more than a fifth of global sea level rise this century, according to unprecedented research released Wednesday.
Glaciers -- vast bodies of frozen water that sit above ground -- have been melting fast since the middle of the 20th century, but until now the full extent of ice loss had only been partially understood.
An international team of researchers has for the first time observed all of Earth's some 220,000 glaciers, excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, to properly evaluate the amount and rate of melt over the past two decades.
Analyzing images taken by NASA's Terra satellite, they found that between 2000-2019, the world's glaciers lost an average of 267 billion tonnes of ice each year.
That's enough water to submerge Switzerland under six meters (20 feet) of water -- every single year.
But the team also found that the rate of glacier melt had accelerated sharply during the same period.
Between 2000 and 2004, glaciers lost 227 billion tonnes of ice per year. But between 2015-2019, they lost an average of 298 billion tonnes each year.
This glacial melt has contributed to 21 percent of sea level rises in the study period, the researchers said -- equivalent to 0.74 millimeters a year.
The study, published in the journal Nature, found that the fastest-melting glaciers were situated in Alaska and the Alps.
The authors also expressed concern about the retreating mountain glaciers in the Pamir Mountains, the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas, which provide water for more than 1.5 billion people.
"During the dry season, glacial meltwater is an important source that feeds major waterways such as the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Indus rivers," said Romain Hugonnet, lead study author and researcher at ETH Zurich university and the University of Toulouse.
"Right now, this increased melting acts as a buffer for people living in the region, but if Himalayan glacier shrinkage keeps accelerating, populous countries like India and Bangladesh could face water or food shortages in a few decades."
Greater certainty
The authors also found areas where melt rates actually slowed between 2000-2019, on Greenland's east coast and in Iceland and Scandinavia, for instance.
They attribute this to weather in the North Atlantic that caused higher precipitation and lower temperatures in the region, thereby slowing ice loss.
The findings will be included in the forthcoming assessment report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Hugonnet told AFP that the research had reduced uncertainties in glacier melt surveillance by a factor of 10.
"We know with a lot more certainty what the contribution to sea level rise is, about we must also look beyond a global scale," he said.
"Glaciers, like the ice caps, contribute to sea level rise but they are also far closer to populations, so they affect the water cycle and natural disasters much more."
(AFP)
A Swedish orienteering enthusiast working on a map earlier in April stumbled across a stash of some 50 Bronze Age relics dating back over 2,500 years, authorities said Thursday.
Mainly consisting of ancient jewelry, the find outside the small town of Alingsas in western Sweden represents one of "the most spectacular and largest cache finds" from the Bronze Age ever in the Nordic country, the County Administrative Board said in a statement.
Among the relics, believed to be from the period between 750 and 500 BC, are some "very well preserved necklaces, chains and needles" made out of bronze.
The objects were lying out in the open in front of some boulders out in the forest.
"Presumably animals have dug them out of a crevice between the boulders, where you can assume that they had been lying before," the government agency said.
Tomas Karlsson, the cartographer who made the discovery when he was out updating a map, at first thought it was just junk.
"It looked like metal garbage. Is that a lamp lying here, I thought at first," Karlsson told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.
He told the paper he then hunched over and saw a spiral and a necklace.
"But it all looked so new. I thought they were fake," he continued.
He reported the find to local authorities who sent out a team of archaeologists to examine the site.
"Most of the finds are made up of bronze items that can be associated with a women of high status from the Bronze Age," Johan Ling, professor of archeology at the University of Gothenburg, said in the statement.
"They have been used to adorn different body parts, such as necklaces, bracelets and ankle bracelets, but there were also large needles and eyelets used to decorate and hold up different pieces of clothing, probably made of wool," Ling added.
© 2021 AFP
Looking gaunt and drained, jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny appeared in a Russian court via video link on Thursday as his team said he faced new criminal charges as well as the disbanding of his network of regional campaign offices.
In his first appearance since declaring an end to a three-week hunger strike last week, Navalny, his head shaven, remained defiant, though the blurry video link from jail showed he had lost weight.
The opposition leader rejected accusations he defamed a World War Two veteran, saying: "I demand that people who signed signatures [against Navalny], and the prosecutors be brought to criminal justice."
Navalny's court appearance came as his allies announced they were disbanding his network of campaign offices across Russia while a court considers whether to declare them "extremist".
If the network is declared extremist, authorities will gain the legal power to hand down jail terms to activists and freeze bank accounts. The court said on Thursday it would hold its next hearing in the case on May 17.
"Maintaining the work of Navalny's network of headquarters in its current form is impossible: it would immediately ... lead to criminal sentences for those who work in the headquarters, who collaborate with them and for those who help them," Leonid Volkov, one of Navalny's close allies, said in a YouTube video.
He said many of the offices would try to function as entirely independent regional structures led by their own leaders.
Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has already been partially barred from accessing its bank accounts and from organising protests and publishing media articles.
Navalny's allies also said a new criminal case had been opened against him for allegedly setting up a non-profit organisation that infringed on the rights of citizens.
Nerve agent attack
The 44-year-old Kremlin critic is serving a 2-1/2 year jail sentence for parole violations on an earlier conviction that he says was politically motivated.
He declared his hunger strike in prison on March 31 to demand proper medical care for leg and back pain, but said on April 23 that he would start gradually ending it after getting medical care.
Pressure has been mounting on him and his campaigning against political and business corruption for months. Last year, Navalny accused President Vladimir Putin of being behind an attack on him with a nerve agent that he survived.
Russian authorities denied any involvement and questioned whether he was even poisoned but Western countries have imposed sanctions on Moscow over its treatment of Navalny.
Navalny recovered in Germany from the nerve agent attack, but was arrested on his return to Russia in January and sentenced the following month. He has also been convicted of defamation in a separate case against him, which he denies.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)
"I couldn't have survived if I was in America."
That's what one woman concluded in a video published Wednesday by the New York Times' opinion section, after recounting the weeks she spent in the hospital as a child being treated for a brain virus.
She was just one of several people from around the world who participated in the Times project. Throughout the video, residents of Canada, Finland, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom respond to the high costs of healthcare in the for-profit U.S. system.
The United States is the only industrialized country in the world without universal health coverage. While the stars of the Times video were shocked and outraged upon learning how much care costs in the so-called "land of the free," progressives in the U.S. responded with calls for Medicare for All.
"No one in America should vote for politicians who choose to subject us to this," Briahna Joy Gray tweeted in response to the video. The Bad Faith podcast co-host and Current Affairs contributing editor served as press secretary to the 2020 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime champion of Medicare for All.
In the video, residents of various countries reviewed some private health insurance options for U.S. residents and tried to make sense of terms like copay, deductible, and OOP max, which stands for out-of-pocket maximum, or the highest amount of money enrollees have to pay annually for healthcare services covered by their plan.
People for Bernie, which grew out of Sanders' 2016 run for president, also shared the video and asserted that the "acceptable OOP max is $0."
Some people in the U.S. praised the video as "so, so good" and "very well done." Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats called it an "excellent video about the cruelty and inefficiency of our healthcare system."
Others echoed the outrage of video participants. As NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue put it: "The definition of insanity is this."
In the video, a man in Sweden contrasts the healthcare system in his country with that of the United States. "To know that I can get sick, I can get injured, but I will still be taken care of, that is freedom," he says. "This is not freedom."
Despite conclusions from policymakers and medical experts—including a Lancet panel in February—that "single-payer, Medicare for All reform is the only way forward," President Joe Biden has made clear he opposes that path to universal coverage.
Biden unveiled his American Families Plan early Wednesday. Despite pressure from progressives in the House and Senate as well as dozens of advocacy groups, he declined to include an expansion of Medicare and drug pricing reforms in the plan.
Ahead of Biden's Wednesday night address to Congress, Sanders declared in a video from his Senate office that "we've got to deal with healthcare."
"We remain the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right," he said. "We pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We have got to summon up the courage to take on the healthcare industry, the pharmaceutical industry."
"My own view, as you know, is that we need a Medicare for All, single-payer system," the Senate Budget Committee chair added, expressing hope that lawmakers can begin that process by expanding the program—by both lowering the eligibility age from 65 and including dental, hearing, and vision benefits.
"We pay for that by demanding that Medicare start negotiating prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry," Sanders explained, citing estimates that the reform would raise $450 billion over a decade.
The roof over the most important Aztec temple in Mexico City has partially collapsed in a hailstorm, officials said, just one day after the capital's archaeological zone reopened from pandemic closures.
The modern roof, made of metal and acrylic panels, was installed to protect the ancient ruins underneath.
The extent of damage on Wednesday to the famed Templo Mayor in the city's historic zone was not immediately clear, though archaeologists said it was not severe.
"Despite the spectacular nature of the accident, the damage to the archaeological heritage is not great," said Leonardo Lopez Lujan, director of the Templo Mayor Project.
One person was injured but did not need hospitalization after the structure's partial collapse in the torrential storm, according to a local administrative office.
Images circulating on social media showed soldiers guarding the taped-off area where the roof, along with a part of the site's fence, had been damaged.
Built and rebuilt throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, Templo Mayor was the sacred heart of the Aztec capital and believed to be the site of many human sacrifices.
The vast religious building was destroyed when the Spanish conquistadors razed Tenochtitlan in 1521 and rebuilt a colonial city on top of it.
Archaeologists first uncovered the temple in 1914, but the ruins were not excavated in earnest until the 1970s.
The historic center of Mexico City was named a UNESCO heritage site in 1987.
© 2021 AFP
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