PARIS (Reuters) – French businessman and art patron Pierre Berge, who co-founded the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house, has died at age 86 following a long illness, his foundation said on Friday.
Berge was the partner of the late designer Yves Saint Laurent, with whom he founded the famous fashion label in 1961.
Source: Pierre Berge, Yves Saint Laurent’s partner, dead at 86
Bangkok, Thailand (CNN)Thailand’s former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has fled the country as a court was about to deliver a verdict in a two-year trial over agricultural subsidies, a source close to her family says.
Source: Former Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra ‘flees’ ahead of verdict – CNN
Construction of the $650 million plant will start in 2018.
Mr Weatherill said the Aurora Solar Energy Project would be ready to go in 2020 and would supply 100 per cent of the State Government’s needs.
The Government will pay a maximum of $78 per megawatt hour.
Mr Weatherill said the solar thermal plant was “the biggest of its kind in the world”.
“Importantly, this project will deliver more than 700 jobs, with requirements for local workers,” he said.
In September 2016, the Government launched a tender process to procure 75 per cent of its long-term power supply.
It said it wanted to attract a new competitor onto the market and put downward pressure on electricity prices.
Furst’s sons, Nathan and Griffith, confirmed the news on Facebook, writing: “Steve has a long list of earthly accomplishments. He was known to the world as a brilliant and prolific actor and filmmaker, but to his family and many dear friends he was also a beloved husband, father and kind friend whose memory will always be a blessing.
“To truly honour him, do not cry for the loss of Stephen Furst. But rather, enjoy memories of all the times he made you snicker, laugh, or even snort to your own embarrassment. He intensely believed that laugher is the best therapy, and he would want us to practice that now.
Source: Stephen Furst dead: Animal House and Babylon 5 actor dies, aged 63 | The Independent
Sweden today announced it has decided to drop its investigation in to rape allegations made against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The dramatic decision was revealed by Sweden’s Director of Public Prosecution, Marianne Ny, who said the probe had been ‘discontinued’.
The 45-year-old Australian has been living inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for almost five years and has been granted political asylum. Moments after this morning’s decision, he tweeted a picture of himself smiling.
He denies the 2010 allegations which he feared would see him extradited to the United States and tried over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic documents.
The focus will now move to the governments of the UK and the US and whether Assange will fly to Ecuador to avoid extradition to America.
Swedish investigators had been expected to reveal today whether they would lift a Europe-wide arrest warrant against him in the seven-year-old case.
He has been holed up at the Ecuadoran embassy in London since 2012 and risks being arrested by British police if he steps out of the building.
Today was the deadline for the public prosecutor’s office to either renew or lift Assange’s arrest warrant before a Stockholm court.
Assange’s Swedish lawyer last month filed a new motion demanding that the arrest warrant be lifted after US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in April that arresting Assange would be ‘a priority’.
‘This implies that we can now demonstrate that the US has a will to take action… this is why we ask for the arrest warrant to be cancelled so that Julian Assange can fly to Ecuador and enjoy his political asylum,’ lawyer Per Samuelsson told AFP at the time.
The accusation against Assange dates from August 2010 when the alleged victim, who says she met him at a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm a few days earlier, filed a complaint.
She accuses him of having sex with her as she slept without using a condom despite repeatedly having denied him unprotected sex.
‘I am entirely innocent,’ Assange wrote in a 19-page testimony released in December 2016.
He argues that the sex was consensual and that the accusations are ‘politically motivated’.
The investigation has suffered from endless procedural complications since it began.
The statute of limitations on the rape allegation expires in August 2020.
In a letter sent to the Swedish government on May 8, Ecuador condemned ‘the obvious lack of progress’ in the investigation despite Swedish officials questioning Assange at the embassy in November 2016.
‘It is extremely worrying that six months after the hearing at the Embassy of Ecuador in the United Kingdom, the Swedish prosecutor’s office has not yet decided on the judicial situation of Julian Assange,’ the Ecuadoran Foreign Ministry said in the letter seen by AFP.
Ecuador demands that Sweden either charges Assange or drops the investigation.
Swedish judges have refused to take into account the opinion of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which in February 2016 said Assange was effectively ‘arbitrarily detained’ by Sweden and Britain and called for the warrant to be annulled.
Source: Sweden drops its prosecution against Julian Assange | Daily Mail Online
The Sun posted a story with the headline: ‘Prince Philip dead at 95, how did the Duke of Edinburgh die, etc etc.’
An obituary paying tribute was put online before Buckingham Palace announced The Duke of Edinburgh, who is 95, will no longer carry out public engagements from the autumn of this year.
The Sun story read: ‘Prince Philip, otherwise known as the Duke of Edinburgh, was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II.
‘He was married to Queen Elizabeth II. The pair had four children together – Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.’
Royal sources had said there was ‘no cause for alarm’ about the couple’s health ahead of the meeting.
While the story was swiftly removed from the website, it continued to appear in Google searches.
French media also mistakenly published stories incorrectly announcing Prince Philip had died…
MORE HERE: The Sun mistakenly reports Prince Philip is dead | Daily Mail Online
Donald Trump unleashed his Tomahawk barrage on one of al-Assad’s key bases from the sea to avoid upsetting allies and using the huge US military arsenal built up off the coast of Syria.
The US President last night fired 59 missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs overnight in retaliation for the Syrian leader’s horrific chemical weapons attack on Idlib.
They were launched from his state of the art destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter which can fire dozens of Tomahawks with pinpoint accuracy from up to 1,500 miles away from their targets.
The destroyers’ locations are always kept secret but are believed to have been off the coast of Turkey or Cyprus, around 150 to 200 miles away from al-Shayrat – and fired 30 minutes after they warned the Russians to keep away from the area.
The Tomahawk is the US military’s most advanced missile carrying an 1,000lb bomb and can carry an nuclear warhead…
MORE: How Trump unleashed missiles to reach Syria with accuracy | Daily Mail Online
The ‘Trump slump’, as it has become known, is alive and well. Since President Trump took office, the numbers show, tourists just aren’t as keen on visiting the United States.
International travel to the US dropped 6.5 per cent in the eight days following the president’s proposed travel ban on January 27 when compared to the same period in 2016, according to travel data company ForwardKeys. Online searches for flights to America also dropped by 17 per cent the same week, said flight app Hopper. And the president of Dubai-based airline Emirates, Sir Tim Clark, confirmed in March that the travel ban, which sought to stop nationals from seven mainly Muslim countries from travelling to the US, immediately triggered a drop in bookings from Dubai by over a third.
All this has resulted in an estimated loss of $185 million in business travel bookings from January 28 to February 4, as calculated by the Global Business Travel Association. The drop-off in tourism is predicted to result in 4.3 million fewer visitors this year, which adds up to a staggering loss of $7.4 billion in revenue for the US…
Source: Trump slump: Drop in American tourism is costing US billions | The Independent
The Libyan Red Crescent said the bodies of 74 migrants had washed ashore in the city of Zawiyah, which is a hub for smugglers.
Their boat is believed to have capsized after being launched towards Europe. Dinghies are routinely overloaded with around 150 people and the fate of others on board was unclear.
