World

Racing's reputation suffered another blow on Tuesday as jockey Rob James apologised for a video circulating of him jumping on to a dead horse and pretending to ride it.

James's apology comes hot on the heels of three-time Grand National winning trainer and fellow Irishman Gordon Elliott also apologising for sitting on a dead horse whilst on the phone.

Japan has asked China to avoid using anal swabs to test its citizens for coronavirus, saying the method prompted complaints of "psychological distress".

Tokyo's intervention comes after reports that US diplomatic personnel in China had complained of being subjected to the intrusive tests -- a claim Beijing denied.

A judge in Peru opened proceedings on Monday against disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori and other officials accused of the "forced sterilizations" of thousands of poor, mostly indigenous, women.

An estimated 270,000 Peruvians were subjected to surgery to have their fallopian tubes tied as part of a family planning program instigated during Fujimori's final four years in power.

A painting of Marrakesh by Britain's famed wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, owned by Hollywood star Angelina Jolie, smashed expectations to sell for £7 million ($9.75 million) at auction in London on Monday.

Churchill, a keen artist, took inspiration from the Moroccan city and painted "The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque" oil work during a World War II visit in 1943.

The Turkish fiancee of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a UN rapporteur both called on Washington on Monday to punish Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman over the murder.

The United States on Friday declassified a report that publicly accused the crown prince of approving Khashoggi's murder in the Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate in 2018.

A French court found former president Nicolas Sarkozy guilty on Monday of trying to bribe a judge and of influence peddling, making him the second head of state in modern-day France to be convicted of corruption.

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was found guilty of offering a plum job in Monaco to a judge in exchange for inside information on an inquiry into his campaign finances.

Until last week, the provincial town of Pokrov outside Moscow, lined with Soviet-era residential blocks and teetering wooden homes, had only one claim to fame: a monument to chocolate.

That changed on Sunday when it emerged that the Kremlin's most outspoken critic, Alexei Navalny, who survived a Novichok poisoning attack last year and was imprisoned last month, would be serving out his sentence in a notorious penal colony here.

Queen Elizabeth II's 99-year-old husband Prince Philip on Monday left the private London hospital where he had spent nearly two weeks to have heart tests and treatment at another hospital, Buckingham Palace said.

Royal officials said the Duke of Edinburgh, as he is formally known, was taken from King Edward VII's hospital to the state-run St Bartholomew's Hospital in the City of London.

Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo on Monday became the first recipient of a coronavirus vaccine under the global Covax scheme, as US health workers prepared to distribute nearly four million doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson jab.

Covax, a scheme designed to ensure that poorer countries do not miss out on Covid-19 vaccines that have so far been largely hoovered up by rich nations, is aiming to deliver at least two billion doses by the end of the year.

Three names were mysteriously removed from a U.S. intelligence report blaming the Saudi crown prince for the grisly murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

The long-awaited report was published Friday afternoon identifying the Saudis responsible for Khashoggi's assassination, but it was soon taken down without explanation and replaced with another version that had removed the names of three individuals previously identified as complicit in the Oct. 2, 2018, murder, reported CNN.

Hollywood's Angelina Jolie and Britain's iconic wartime prime minister Sir Winston Churchill, a keen artist who took inspiration from the Moroccan city of Marrakesh, are combining for a March 1 date at Christie's auction house in London.

"The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque", an oil painting Churchill produced during a World War II visit, is tipped to fetch between £1.5 million and £2.5 million ($2 million and $3.5 million), according to a Christie's estimate.