Moldova on Monday accused Russia’s embassy of engineering the escape of a pro-Kremlin lawmaker to the breakaway region of Transnistria just as he was about to be jailed over illegal political funding allegations.

The case of Alexander Nesterovschii, who could not be reached for comment, is the latest in which Moldova’s pro-European government has accused Russia of meddling in its political landscape. Moscow denies the allegations.

In a statement, the Russian embassy said the allegations of interference in the lawmaker’s case were unfounded and unacceptable. It said it had called on the Moldovan authorities to “refrain from provocative speculation.”

Moldova’s security service released a video which it said showed Nesterovschii entering the embassy in Chisinau on March 18, a day before a court sentenced him to 12 years in jail.

Moldova’s Foreign Ministry said earlier on Monday that three Russian Embassy employees had been declared persona non grata and been told they were obliged to leave the country “based on clear evidence on the conduct of activities contrary to their diplomatic status.” Russia’s Foreign ministry said on Monday it would hit back after Moldova expelled three of its diplomats, the RIA state news agency reported.

Nesterovschii was found guilty of illegally channeling money to a pro-Russian party associated with fugitive businessman Ilan Shor at local elections in 2023, as well as the 2024 presidential vote and a national referendum on Moldova’s EU aspirations.

Nesterovschi denied the charges, calling them politically motivated.

The security service said that on the day of his sentencing he was driven in a white car with diplomatic plates that is also visible in the video to the Russian-backed Transnistria region that broke away from Moldovan control in the early 1990s.

“This type of activity is part of the mechanism of hybrid aggression directed against the Republic of Moldova,” Alexandru Musteata, director of Moldova’s Security and Intelligence Service, told a briefing.

Moldova’s government, which is trying to lead the formerly Soviet agricultural economy into the European Union by 2030, has repeatedly accused Russia of meddling and trying to destabilize it.

Moldova holds a parliamentary election this autumn that will be a test of the popularity of the pro-EU government’s course.

On Tuesday, Moldovan authorities said they had detained Eugenia Gutul, a pro-Russian governor of Moldova’s Gagauzia region, on charges of illegal political funding as she tried to leave the country. Gutul said the charges were politically motivated.

A court ruling then ordered her to be kept in custody for at least 30 days.

Police say that another lawmaker, Irinna Lozovan, who is facing similar charges, is hiding from law enforcement. Lozovan also said the charges were politically motivated.

A court in the United Arab Emirates has sentenced three people to death for the killing of Israeli-Moldovan Zvi Kogan, state media reported Monday.

The state-run WAM news agency announced the verdicts of the three after a trial in Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeals’ State Security Chamber. It said a fourth person who aided the killing received a life sentence.

It did not identify those charged. However, three Uzbek nationals had been arrested in Turkey and brought back to the UAE over the killing in November.

“The defendants had tracked and murdered the victim,” the WAM report said. “The evidence presented by the State Security Prosecution to the court included the defendants’ detailed confessions to the crimes of murder and kidnapping, along with forensic reports, post-mortem examination findings, details of the instruments used in the crime and witness testimonies.”

Authorities in the UAE have not offered a motive for the killing, nor any details about how Kogan was kidnapped and slain. However, it came amid the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which has inflamed anger across the wider Muslim world.

Diplomatic ties between Israel and the UAE have remained intact, though strained, by the war as Israel maintains a consulate in Dubai and an embassy in Abu Dhabi.

While not directly blaming Iran, Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others have referred to an “axis of evil” being responsible for Kogan’s killing — a phrase Israel in the past has used to refer to Iran and its allies.

Iran’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi has denied Tehran was involved in the rabbi’s slaying and the UAE itself has not made the allegation. However, Western officials believe Iran runs intelligence operations in the UAE and keeps tabs on the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.

Iranian intelligence services also have carried out past kidnappings in the UAE. Iran also has used criminal gangs in the past to target dissidents and its enemies.

Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, ran a kosher grocery store in the futuristic city of Dubai, where Israelis have flocked for commerce and tourism since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords. The UAE has a burgeoning Jewish community, with synagogues and businesses catering to kosher diners.

Kogan was an emissary of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, a prominent and highly observant branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism based in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood in New York City. He was buried in Israel.

The UAE is an autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and is also home to Abu Dhabi. Capital cases are rare in the country of 9 million people, but executions typically come swiftly after defendants have their appeals exhausted. Typically, the UAE uses firing squads to execute the condemned.

Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Jeffrey Epstein accuser who alleged Prince Andrew abused her, said in an Instagram post she got into a car accident with a school bus and doctors gave her “four days to live” Sunday.

In the post, Giuffre shared a photo of herself lying in a hospital bed with her face covered in bruises.

“I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live,” she wrote.

She said a school bus “driving 110km” (68 mph) hit her car as it was slowing for a turn, but didn’t say when or where the crash had happened.

In her post, Giuffre suggested that she wanted to see her children “one last time” before she died.

“I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time, but you know what they say about wishes,” she said.

Giuffre was one of the most prominent accusers of the wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In 2019, Giuffre publicly alleged Epstein trafficked her and forced her to have sex with his friends, including Prince Andrew, when she was 17 years old. She also claimed the prince was aware she was underage in the US at the time.

The prince, also known as the Duke of York, repeatedly denied the claims.

In 2021, Giuffre filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew for alleged sexual abuse.

The following year, she reached an out-of-court settlement with the prince for an undisclosed amount.

Andrew later paid the settlement and attorneys for both parties filed a stipulation for the lawsuit to be dismissed.

“Prince Andrew intends to make a substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights. Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks,” according to a letter filed to the court announcing the settlement.

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state prostitution charges and in July 2019 was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges. Prosecutors accused him of carrying out a decades-long scheme of sexual abuse of underage girls, flying them on private planes to his properties in Florida, New York, New Mexico and the US Virgin Islands. He died by suicide in prison before he could face trial.

Britain’s second-largest city has declared a “major incident” after a sanitation worker strike left over 17,000 tons of uncollected garbage on the curbside.

“It’s regrettable that we have had to take this step, but we cannot tolerate a situation that is causing harm and distress to communities across Birmingham,” John Cotton, leader of Birmingham city council, said in a statement.

Photos taken by Reuters in Birmingham this month show mounds of uncollected trash overflowing from collection bins and dumpsters.

The dispute between the city and its garbage collectors stretches back to December 2024, when the trade group Unite the Union announced that collectors would strike in 2025 against overpay cuts, a ban on overtime, and the council’s elimination of a waste collection role.

The city said in a statement on March 28 that “all workers have been offered alternative employment at the same pay, driver training or voluntary redundancy,” and claimed that the eliminated role posed a liability for city budgets.

“Birmingham council could easily resolve this dispute but instead it seems hellbent on imposing its plan of demotions and pay cuts at all costs,” said Sharon Graham, secretary of Unite the Union, in a statement on Monday. “If that involves spending far more than it would cost to resolve the strike fairly, they don’t seem to care.”

Since the dispute began, union members have voted numerous times to escalate their strike as the city began using temporary workers to pick up the growing piles of trash throughout Birmingham. Those contractor pickups have been blocked by picketing workers.

In their statement on Monday, the city council claimed that the “daily blocking of our depots by pickets has meant that we cannot get our vehicles out to collect waste from residents.”

Declaring a major incident would allow the city to bypass the picket lines and clean the streets, the city council statement said.

The sanitation workers, meanwhile, claim that the city’s declaration amounts to “strike breaking.”

The British government is aware of the strike, Minister of Communities Jim McMahon said in a speech to Parliament on Monday.

“Well-established arrangements are in place for local areas to escalate issues where they do need support and the government is monitoring the situation closely,” McMahon said, according to British newswire service PA Media.

“If local leaders on the ground in Birmingham feel that tackling these issues goes beyond the resources available to them and they request national support,” McMahon continued, “then of course we stand ready to respond to any such request.”

An American citizen has been detained in Belarus after being accused of attempting to sneak into the country on a cargo train by Belarusian authorities.

The 27-year-old unnamed American man was traveling in the empty carriage of a train from neighbouring Lithuania when he was found by custom officers at Maladzyechna train station, Belarus’ customs authority said in a statement on Monday.

The man, identified as a “border violator,” was promptly detained by customs officials before being handed over to the border service for further investigation, the statement said.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration secured the release of two US citizens who were being held prisoner in Belarus. One American, who was not named out of a request for his privacy, was among a group of three political prisoners freed in February, while Anastassia Nuhfer was released in January.

The state department has advised Americans not to travel to Belarus, citing the Belarusian authorities’ arbitrary enforcement of local laws and the risk of detention as key factors.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s government has long been accused of a crackdown on dissidents and opposition detaining scores of them.

Europe’s longest-serving leader extended his 31-year rule in Belarus in January, with Lukashenko winning a presidential election that was widely denounced as a sham by his exiled opponents and Western countries.

Under the first Trump administration, the US had sought diplomatic rapprochement with Minsk. Those efforts were put aside after Lukashenka self-proclaimed electoral victory and massive crackdown on protesters and civil society in August 2020, which Trump administration officials condemned at the time.

The Chinese military on Tuesday said it had begun conducting joint exercises involving its army, navy, air force, and rocket force to “close in on” Taiwan from “multiple directions,” according to a statement posted on the Eastern Theater Command’s official social media account.

The drills mainly focus on sea-air combat-readiness patrols, joint seizure of comprehensive superiority, assault on maritime and ground targets, and blockade on key areas and sea lanes so as to test joint operations capabilities of its troops, the post said.

“It is a stern warning and forceful deterrence against ‘Taiwan Independence’ separatist forces, and it is a legitimate and necessary action to safeguard China’s sovereignty and national unity,” the People’s Liberation Army said in the statement.

China claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its own and has vowed to take control of the island, by force if necessary.

Its military in recent years has ramped up regular patrols as well as military exercises in the air and waters around the island.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Israel has launched a strike on Beirut for the second time in days, further testing the shaky ceasefire with Hezbollah struck four months ago.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said three people were killed, including a woman, and seven injured in the strike early Tuesday, which Israel said had targeted a Hezbollah militant.

Two missiles hit the top three floors of a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon’s national news agency NNA reported. Witnesses told Reuters that no evacuation warning was issued ahead of the strike and that families who lived there have now fled to other parts of the city.

Israel’s military said in a statement the militant had allegedly “recently directed Hamas operatives and assisted them in planning a significant and imminent terror attack against Israeli civilians.”

Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun condemned the attack. “Israel’s persistence in its aggression requires us to exert more effort to address Lebanon’s friends around the world and rally them in support of our right to full sovereignty over our land,” he said.

The US State Department said on Tuesday that Israel was defending itself from rocket attacks that came from Lebanon and that Washington blamed “terrorists” for the resumption of hostilities, Reuters reported.

“Hostilities have resumed because terrorists launched rockets into Israel from Lebanon,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email to Reuters, adding Washington supported Israel’s response.

The attack comes just days after Israel launched its first strike on the Lebanese capital since a ceasefire with Hezbollah came into effect in November. Israel accused Hezbollah of launching two rocket attacks from southern Lebanon that crossed Israel’s border, a claim the Iran-backed group denied.

“We will not allow firing on our communities, not even a drizzle … We will attack everywhere in Lebanon against any threat to the state of Israel, and we will ensure that all our residents in the north return to their homes safely,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday.

The Lebanese army called Friday’s strike on the southern Dahieh neighborhood “a blatant and repeated violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and the security of its citizens, a challenge to international law, and a flagrant breach of the ceasefire agreement.”

The US-brokered ceasefire agreement brought about a significant reduction in violence following more than a year of cross-border strikes and months of a full-scale war.

However, Israel has continued to conducted dozens of strikes – mostly in southern Lebanon – on what it calls Hezbollah targets, and maintains a military presence at multiple locations in southern Lebanon, despite having agreed to withdraw as part of the deal.

A colossal fire erupted Tuesday in a Malaysian suburb outside Kuala Lumpur due to a burst gas pipeline, prompting evacuations of nearby homes.

The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights in central Selangor state was visible for miles. National oil company Petronas said in a statement that the fire broke out at one of its gas pipeline at 8:10 a.m.

It said in a brief statement that the affected pipeline has been isolated. Three gas stations nearby the fire site were not affected but have been temporarily closed as a precautionary measure, Petronas said, adding that investigations are still underway.

The Selangor Disaster Management unit said in a statment that the blaze spread to several houses in a nearby village, and efforts were efforts being made to rescue trapped residents. It added that several people suffered burns and will be taken for treatment, but the extent of the full damage is being assessed, and said that the valve to the pipeline has been shut, and that will eventually snuff out the fire.

The Star English newspaper said that fire and rescue teams had rescued seven victims, including two elderly individuals. No casualties have been reported so far.

Dozens of Selangor firefighters have been dispatched to the scene. Selangor Chief Minister Amirudin Shari said the fire department has quickly evacuated residents from nearby homes as a safety measure. He said they will be temporarily placed in a mosque nearby until the situation is under control.

Pictures and videos of the fireball went viral on social media, with some residents saying they felt the doors and windows of their homes shaking believed to be due to the fire explosion earlier.

Embattled South Korean superstar Kim Soo Hyun has personally addressed a growing scandal about the nature of his relationship with late actress Kim Sae-ron for the first time, in a closely watched saga that has roiled the country’s entertainment industry.

Speaking at a press conference Monday, a tearful Kim Soo Hyun, 37, said accusations made by a YouTube channel in March that he had entered into a relationship with his fellow performer when she was still a minor were untrue. He has repeatedly denied the allegations.

“I did not date her when she was a minor,” Kim said at the emotional news conference, where he declined to take questions. “Apart from the fact that we were both actors, we were just an ordinary couple like anyone else. We had feelings for each other, and as time passed, we eventually parted ways. After that, we rarely kept in touch.”

Kim Sae-ron was found dead at home in February at 24 years old, nearly two years after she retreated from public view following a drunk-driving conviction that prompted heavy public backlash and reputational damage.

The allegations made by the YouTube channel, known for covering political news, started an online firestorm against Kim Soo Hyun despite his denials. His talent agency previously said that while the two actors had been in a relationship, it took place when both were adults, according to the Chosun Ilbo, one of South Korea’s newspapers of record.

The fallout for the actor has been swift, with luxury fashion house Prada and popular Korean cosmetics brand Dinto both ending their collaborations with Kim Soo Hyun in the weeks after the scandal broke. A star at home and across Asia, Kim Soo Hyun is best known for the award-winning series “It’s Okay to Not be Okay” and “My Love from the Star.”

On Monday, he also apologized for staying quiet for the first few days after the allegations emerged last month, saying he was worried about the consequences for his recently aired Netflix series “Queen of Tears.”

“If you want to criticize me for being cowardly or selfish, I will accept that,” he said.

Kim Sae-ron was a prolific actor who shot to stardom as a child, but her career stalled after she crashed her car in the South Korean capital in 2022. In April 2023, a Seoul court found her guilty of driving under the influence. She avoided jail but was fined about $14,000.

Kim Soo Hyun also claimed that many text messages that had been distributed online, purportedly between him and Kim Sae-ron, were false.

With the pedigree of a person who has seen his share of bust-ups in the boardroom and on the ice, Canadian American businessman Graeme Roustan is blunt about the looming trade war and what it will mean for the two countries he calls home.

“It’s totally ridiculous,” says Roustan, a prolific entrepreneur and owner of Roustan Hockey in Brantford, Ontario. “This business here has been in place for 178 years and it’s been selling product and trading product with the United States since before Canada was a country. It’s just ridiculous to insult your neighbor, and as a dual citizen, Canadian American, I don’t understand it from the American point of view either, why would we insult Canadians?”

His wooden hockey stick company is one of the last manufacturers of its kind in North America, based in the proud hometown of the man widely seen as hockey’s G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time), Wayne Gretzky, known here as simply, “The Great One.”

Roustan’s business, the city, and even the hockey legend himself have all been caught in the crossfire of the trade war declared by US President Donald Trump that from April 2 will see the US impose widespread tariffs against Canada and other once-friendly trading nations.

For Roustan, what the president is calling “liberation day,” feels more like “disaster day.” Business has already been impacted and customers are jittery, he says.

“All these are going to the Miracle on Ice Team USA 45th Anniversary Fantasy Camp,” Roustan says, while holding a red, star-spangled hockey stick in his hand. The stick, he says, needs to be shipped to the US in a hurry to avoid tariffs. “The customer wants this to cross the border as soon as possible because they don’t want to get a 25% tax on their invoice.”

While similar concerns are being voiced by many in Brantford’s business community, the looming disaster for the town’s arguably most famous export is about reputation rather than the bottom line.

From ‘Great One’ to hated one

Hockey legend Gretzky, who has nurtured a long-standing and very public relationship with Trump and has lived in the US for decades, has been taking flak from his fellow Canadians since Trump first announced he wanted America’s northern neighbor to be reduced to the 51st state.

Now, with the looming tariffs deepening the sense of betrayal felt across Canada, many of Gretzky’s countrymen are directing and distilling their anger toward their once-untouchable hockey hero.

Roustan calls Gretzky a friend, and he is astounded that some would think he would ever be a traitor to his Canadian roots.

“To drop Wayne Gretzky’s name into the middle of this,” says Roustan, clearly incredulous, “It’s a drive-by assassination of a name, a good quality Canadian name, it’s just been just completely ridiculous.”

It started with Gretzky attending an election night party with Trump, a social media post of him wearing a MAGA hat, capped with a happy snap of him and his wife, Janet, attending Trump’s inauguration in January. Trump, for his part, boasted he counseled Gretzky to run for Prime Minister of Canada, and then quipped he’d rather see Gretzky as “governor” of Canada as America’s “51st state.”

Since then, the Gretzky reckoning has been chronicled in Canada with social media riffs, memes and newspaper editorials.

The pages of Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper has weighed in on much of it, starting weeks ago with opinion columnist Cathal Kelly writing, “He’ll show up for any gala dinner, but when his best buddy the president is threatening to annex the country? Oh, you wouldn’t believe how busy he is then.”

Kelly wrote again last week, wondering why Canadians are so obsessed with Gretzky, concluding, “What most of these people feel is betrayal. Many countries have a great turncoat in their history. Gretzky has become ours.”

As parents and players headed in the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre on a recent weekend here in Brantford, passing a triumphant statue of the hockey prodigy lifting the Stanley Cup, the anger and contempt does not square with the devotion and donations Gretzky and his family have made to this community over the years.

Rick Mannen took his seat aside the rink to watch the local Brantford Titans take to the ice. He says he wishes the hockey legend he still admires would say something to his friend, President Trump.

“He’s kind of a voice of Canada, he has been that way in the past and he is now if he chose to do that. So I really would like to see Wayne do that, but I still don’t feel any ill against Wayne just because he’s a friend of Donald Trump.”

When asked what Mannen wishes Gretzky might tell the president: “I wish he would say to Donald ‘back off and treat Canada as a partner instead of trying to take over.’”

Junior hockey coach Terry Corbin has a different take, saying Gretzky hasn’t really been a part of Brantford for a long time.

“He hasn’t lived here for how many years. I mean, I almost see him as kind of somebody with dual citizenship, but who has chosen United States of America,” says Corbin.

A city in the crosshairs

The highway leading to this gritty, working-class city bears the name of its hockey icon, but the Wayne Gretzky Parkway might as well be a free-trade expressway.

Hundreds of warehouses and manufacturing facilities dot the landscape. The city is a little more than an hour’s drive from both Toronto and Buffalo and has become a convenient crossroad for Canadian companies and US subsidiaries.

For Brantford, the recessions of the 1980s and 90s gave way to a thriving business and commuter corridor that led to substantial growth in both employment and income.

A recent Canadian Chamber of Commerce analysis found that Brantford is one of the top five cities vulnerable to American tariffs.

The city’s mayor, Kevin Davis, says some businesses here sell up to 80% of what they make in the US, but they also buy many of their raw materials from American factories. He describes Brantford as tough and resilient but he says there is no doubt tariffs will affect livelihoods.

“Our local economy is very intertwined and integrated with that in the US and not just in the auto parts industry. We have a lot of food processing here, plastics, pharmaceuticals, that is the essence of the economy here in Brantford. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States,” he says, adding that it would take the city four to 10 years to reimagine its industrial strategy if tariffs are punishing and long-lasting.

“There’ll be industries in Brantford that may shut down, they may reduce production, they may have to retool, and – for a year or two – not be producing much and employing less,” warns Davis. “That’ll happen and there will be people in our community that will suffer.”

But, he promises, the city will fight back and bounce back.

“You know, we’re nice until we’re not. And yeah, if you want a war, then it’s a war. But it’s a, it’s a totally meaningless war from my perspective. I really, frankly don’t understand it.”

Many bewildered workers and consumers in this city are already preparing by cutting back on spending and cutting out most American products.

Buying American now seems like an act of treason here. Restaurants are scratching Caesar salads from their menus – they won’t buy American romaine lettuce – and alcohol from the US, no wines from California.

“Even in our store, we get asked all the time, you know, are these products local? Have they been made in Canada?” says Ines Kowas of family-owned and operated Uniqpol, a grocery, deli and food processer in Brantford.

Before learning of the tariff threat, Uniqpol invested in a significant expansion that is set to come online in a few months.

Kowas says they’re already seeing cautious consumers cut back even on staples like groceries, afraid of the impact tariffs will have on the family budget.

“Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to absorb all these kinds of costs, so that will have to eventually be reflected in some of our prices as well,” she says.

Back rinkside at Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre, Karen Robb is in her son’s game. She wishes Gretzky would say something to the president but acknowledges, like many here, how much he and his family have already done for the Brantford community.

“I think it’s just about, you know, we don’t want anybody to get hurt,” says Robb adding that some good has come of this. “The upside is we’re thinking more Canadian. We’re starting to think a little bit more about Canada, you know, supporting our businesses.”