World

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of failed blood-testing startup Theranos, has asked US President Donald Trump to release her from prison early, according to a request filed last year with the Department of Justice, news outlets reported Thursday. She has six years left in her 11-year sentence for fraud and conspiracy that came after she made false claims about Theranos's blood-testing technology. Holmes reported to federal prison in May 2023 in Bryan, Texas.  What to know about Theranos fraud Holmes, now 41, was convicted on four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy in 2022. She claimed her startup Theranos —  which she founded at the age of 19 — had new technology to test patients for various diseases with only a few drops of blood. With revolutionary blood tests at the hea...

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of failed blood-testing startup Theranos, has asked US President Donald Trump to release her from prison early, according to a request filed last year with the Department of Justice, news outlets reported Thursday. She has six years left in her 11-year sentence for fraud and conspiracy that came after she made false claims about Theranos's blood-testing technology. Holmes reported to federal prison in May 2023 in Bryan, Texas.  What to know about Theranos fraud Holmes, now 41, was convicted on four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy in 2022. She claimed her startup Theranos —  which she founded at the age of 19 — had new technology to test patients for various diseases with only a few drops of blood. With revolutionary blood tests at the hea...

At least one person was killed and dozens were injured after a commuter train crashed near Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday night. The train collided head on with retaining wall that had fallen onto the tracks near the town of Gelida, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) outside of Barcelona. Local media reported that the train driver was killed in the accident. In an update posted on social media, emergency services in Catalonia said 37 people were injured, five of them seriously. Some 20 ambulances had been sent to the site of the crash, and the injured were taken to three hospitals in the area, they said. Catalonia's fire service said "no one was left inside" the train, but it was sweeping the underside of the train and the area to rule out more victims. The retaining wall likely fell becaus...

Thousands of people joined pro-Kurdish demonstrations in a number of German cities, including Dortmund, Frankfurt and Bremen on Tuesday evening, amid renewed clashes between Kurdish forces Syria and the country's military. The central German city of Frankfurt drew the biggest numbers, with police saying around 5,000 people took part.  Dortmund, in Germany's west, attracted some 4,000 people, police there said. Most of the protesters in Dortmund were peaceful, police said, but clashes were recorded on the fringes and pyrotechnics were set off.Police said most of the protesters in Dortmund were peacefulImage: Alex Talash/dpa/picture alliance Police broke up a demonstration in Stuttgart attended by some 2,000 people after protesters threw bottles and pyrotechnics at police. Officers respon...

US tech mogul Elon Musk has hinted at buying Ryanair amid a public quarrel with the low-cost airline's boss Michael O'Leary. Musk on late Monday launched a poll on social media platform X — which he owns — asking his followers whether he should buy Ryanair and "restore Ryan as their rightful ruler." The vote saw over 900,000 participants, with a majority clicking "Yes". There was no immediate response from Ryanair regarding the poll. Ryanair declines to use Starlink Musk has floated the idea of buying Europe's largest airline Ryanair for a few days now. The billionaire's suggestion comes after he locked horns with the Irish airline's chief executive O'Leary over the use of wifi on flights. In an interview with Irish radio Newstalk, O'Leary refused to use Musk's Starlink satellite in...

At least eight people were killed in a series of avalanches across the Austrian Alps on Saturday, police and mountain rescue services said. Authorities have warned that conditions remained dangerous after fresh snowfall. Meanwhile, rescue services deployed more than 200 personnel and several helicopters. Where did the accidents happen? The avalanches occurred in the Grossarl Valley and Bad Hofgastein of the Salzburg region, as well as in Pusterwald of the Styria region. Four skiers died when an avalanche struck a group of seven off-piste skiers, on the 2,150-meter (7,000-foot) Finsterkopf peak in the Grossarl Valley in the Salzburg state, rescuers said. The others were seriously injured, they added. Earlier, a woman was killed in an avalanche in the Bad Hofgastein area. Later in the...

The Syrian army continues to dislodge the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from areas in northern and northeastern Syria that the SDF have controlled for over a decade. On Sunday, the government announced the capture of the strategic town of Tabqa, located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) west of the key city of Raqqa, held by the SDF. According to the official SANA news agency, Information Minister Hamza Almustafa said, "The Syrian army controls the strategic city of Tabqa in the Raqqa countryside, including the Euphrates Dam, which is the largest dam in Syria." Later on Sunday, government officials and security sources reported that Syrian government troops had entered the outskirts of Raqqa.The Syrian government has effectively seized control of the areas that the Kurdish-led...

Over 200 strike drones were launched overnight against Ukraine, killing at least two people and wounding dozens more, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday. He wrote on X that the Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Khmelnytskyi, and Odesa regions were under attack. Zelenskyy offered condolences to the families of those killed and again called on allies to increase support. "This week alone has seen more than 1,300 attack drones, around 1,050 guided aerial bombs and 29 missiles of various types in total. That is why Ukraine still needs more protection — above all, more missiles for air defense systems," he said. Zelenskyy accused Russia of deliberately dragging out diplomatic efforts to end the nearly four-year-old war while pounding Ukraine. The Russian attack comes...

Donald Trump appears increasingly set on taking Greenland. As the US president put it in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, this can be done "the easy way," by Denmark setting a price for its territory, or "the hard way," by which he is thought to mean adversarial tactics. With Greenland's people and politicians resisting the easy way, Trump has now turned his attention to threatening eight European nations who have sent troops or other representatives to the frozen island. A 10% import tariff on goods from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland will be in place from February 1 until a "deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday. The US president added that, s...

Mitigation hearings for Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon, Jimmy Lai, concluded on Tuesday, in the final step before the court hands down a sentence in the landmark national security case. In December, the 78-year-old was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign forces and one count of conspiracy to distribute seditious publications. Lai, who had pleaded not guilty to all charges, faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. The sentencing date has not been scheduled.  Lai's conviction of collusion and sedition offenses marks the highest-profile example of the clampdown on media freedoms in Hong Kong, once known as a haven for free press in Asia, since Beijing imposed the national security law in 2020. The prosecution of Lai, a prominent critic of the Chi...