An Austrian man was charged with terrorism and other offences over a plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in August 2024. Prosecutors said the 21-year-old suspect, identified only as Beran A, was accused of being a member of a terrorist organisation, making explosives and attempting to purchase weapons illegally. He is also said to have been disseminating propaganda for the jihadist group Islamic State. He faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted. The suspect was arrested after a tip-off from the CIA before Swift’s concert. Three sold-out gigs by the US star singer at Vienna’s…
Author: Oki Bin Oki
The Director of Public Prosecutions Renson Ingonga has reaffirmed the government’s commitment to strengthening Kenya’s anti-money laundering framework, as senior officials met to review progress on reforms tied to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) action plan. Ingonga joined top government officials in assessing milestones under the International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) process, which is key to securing Kenya’s removal from the FATF Grey List. Speaking during the high-level session convened by the National Treasury, Ingonga underscored the importance of collaboration and capacity building in tackling money laundering and terrorism financing. “We have strengthened our Anti-Money Laundering (AML) response through…
The Director of Public Prosecutions applied to conduct an age assessment and social inquiry report for the female suspect, who was arrested alongside Amir Latif for allegedly trafficking 109.17 grams of heroin valued at Sh327,510. The prosecution said this is a firm action in the narcotics case involving the young female TikToker and her co-accused, underscoring strong commitment to combating drug trafficking along the Coast region. Appearing today before Resident Magistrate Green Odera in Mombasa, Prosecution successfully sought an age assessment and social inquiry report for the girl. The court directed the Nyali Sub-County Children’s Officer to prepare a social…
The mother of the late Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny says the assessment that her son died of poisoning has validated her belief that he was murdered. On Saturday, the UK and European allies put out a statement saying Navalny, who died in 2024, was killed using a poison developed from a dart frog toxin, and that “only the Russian state had the means, motive and opportunity to deploy this lethal toxin”. “This confirms what we knew from the very beginning,” Lyudmila Navalnaya said while visiting her son’s grave in Moscow on Monday – the second anniversary of his death. “We…
France’s radical left is under pressure after the killing of a student in Lyon was blamed on “anti-fascist” militants. Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old maths student and nationalist activist, died on Saturday, two days after being beaten up on the street by a group of young men. On Thursday afternoon he had given support to a hard-right feminist collective Némésis, which staged a small protest against a left-wing politician’s visit to Lyon’s Institute of Political Studies (IEP), commonly known as Sciences-Po. Mobile phone video footage taken a few streets away from the protest’s location showed three young men being kicked and…
Three South Africans have been charged with murder following the killing of an e-hailing taxi driver, the manner of whose death, captured on dashcam footage, has shocked many people. A video shared widely on social media shows a man and a woman tussling with the driver, Isaac Satlat, who they appeared to be robbing. Satlat tries to fight back before one of the passengers appears to strangle him until he goes limp. The trio, who were arrested over the weekend, were in court in Pretoria on Monday and have since abandoned their bail applications. They were not asked to comment…
Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) experienced a widespread outage on Monday, 16 February, leaving hundreds of users unable to access the app or load feeds across several regions, according to Downdetector. The most affected regions have been the United States, and several areas in India, where a large number of users reported problems accessing the platform, including difficulties logging in, posting tweets, and refreshing timelines, with complaints spiking on outage-tracking platforms. There were more than 23,210 reports of issues in the US with X as of 8:24 am ET (1324 GMT), according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collecting…
Chinese technology giant ByteDance pledged to curb a controversial artificial intelligence (AI) video-making tool, following threats of legal action from Disney and complaints from other entertainment giants. In the last few days, videos made using the latest version of the app Seedance have proliferated online. Many have been lauded for their realism. But the trend has also sparked alarm from several Hollywood studios that have accused the AI platform’s makers of copyright infringement. On Friday, Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance accusing it of supplying Seedance with a “pirated library” of the studio’s copyrighted characters, including those from Marvel…
Nigeria’s foreign ministry has issued an urgent warning over what it describes as the increasing illegal recruitment of its citizens to fight in foreign conflicts. It comes after Ukrainian officials said they found the bodies of two Nigerians who they said were killed in combat last year. Nigeria has not confirmed those deaths but in a statement on Sunday, foreign ministry spokesperson Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa revealed that “several Nigerians who have fallen victim to such unfortunate situations were deployed to combat zones after being misled and coerced into signing military service contracts”. Kenya has issued a similar warning to its…
OpenAI hired the Austrian creator of OpenClaw, an artificial intelligence tool able to execute real-world tasks, the US startup’s head Sam Altman said on Sunday. AI agent tool OpenClaw has fascinated — and spooked — the tech world since researcher Peter Steinberger built it in November to help organise his digital life. A Reddit-like pseudo social network for OpenClaw agents called Moltbook, where chatbots converse, has also grabbed headlines and provoked soul-searching over AI. Elon Musk called Moltbook “the very early stages of the singularity” — a term for the moment when human intelligence is overwhelmed by AI forever, although…
Three police officers died following a tragic road accident along the Matuu–Mwingi highway in Kitui County. Another officer and a civilian who were onboard a police car when the accident happened were injured and admitted in hospital, police said. The accident occurred at about 2:00 p.m. on Sunday at Mwatungo area and involved a Ford Ranger belonging to Nguutani Police Station. The vehicle was being driven by Police Constable Peter Maina and had four other occupants on board. According to preliminary reports, the officers were returning from Kanyonyo where they had gone to effect an arrest. However, the suspect was…
The Democratic Party expressed grave concern over what it describes as credible reports that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has entered into a secret Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Office of the President of Kenya under the guise of a data-sharing framework. In a statement signed by Justin Bedan Muturi, the party further alleged that IEBC Acting CEO Moses Sunkuli recently held meetings with officials from the National Registration Bureau to discuss the integration of voter data systems. The discussions are also said to have involved potential collaboration with private vendors, including Smartmatic. The party argues that…
Deputy President Kithure Kindiki said he is fully focused on executing his duties as he supports President Ruto to win a second term in the coming elections. The DP said he is performing his roles as the second in command and will not let go the seat as he is working hard to ensure faster delivery of all projects carried out by the government across the country. “I am the Deputy President. This seat is going nowhere and when we are done with the second term we will progress ahead in search for the higher office,” DP stated. He spoke…
The United Opposition Sunday announced that its candidate for the Mombasa governorship race in the 2027 General Election will be Nyali Member of Parliament Mohammed Ali. This meant he had ditched UDA. He is in Parliament courtesy of UDA and is a commissioner of with the Parliamentary Service Commission. Speaking in Roysambu during a roadside rally on Sunday, Democracy for the Citizens Party (DCP) leader Rigathi Gachagua said that the faction will endorse MP Ali to contest for the position and the a decision on the party ticket he will run on will soon be decided. “As United Opposition we…
Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna has declared that he will not cower from calling out President William Ruto’s administration, noting that it has exhibited a frail leadership that is crippling the nation. Speaking during a church service in Kitengela, Kajiado County, Sifuna vowed to maintain his censures against the State and defend the citizens in honour of the late founder of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), Raila Odinga. “We will not fear anything. We will continue to speak the truth so that we protect the citizens from the corruption in this country and the abductions we have witnessed. Raila told us…