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The County Court in Melbourne. Photo: William West / AFP A Victorian mother has cried and protested her innocence as she became the first person in Australia to be jailed for breaking forced marriage laws. Sakina Muhammad Jan will have to serve a minimum of 12 months jail after being found guilty of pressuring her daughter to marry a man who went on to murder her in 2020. After the wedding, Ruqia Haidari, 21, moved across the country to live with her new husband in Perth. Six weeks later, he had slashed her throat with a kitchen knife. A Western Australian court sentenced Mohammad Ali Halimi to life for the killing. Jan was supported by about 15 family and Hazara community members in Melbourne's County Court on Monday, some of whom wept as Judge Fran Dalziel sentenced her to three years...

Venezuelan President and presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro reacts following the presidential election results in Caracas on 29 July, 2024. Photo: AFP/ Juan Barreto Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in the country's presidential election in the early hours of Monday morning, even as the country's opposition said its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez was the victor and it had the polling to prove it. What happened with the count? The country's electoral authority (CNE) said just after midnight on Monday that Maduro had won a third six-year term with 51 percent of the vote. The authority said Gonzalez won 44 percent, but opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said opposition candidate Gonzalez had secured 70 percent of the vote and that multiple independent exit polls and q...

Telecommunications towers on the Place de la Concorde, one of the main public squares in Paris, in 2023. Photo: AFP/ Joao Luiz Bulcao - Hans Lucas Telecom installations belonging to French companies SFR and Bouygues Telecom have been vandalised, reported Le Parisien newspaper and BFM TV on Monday, citing unnamed sources. SFR and Bouygues did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. The Olympic Games are currently underway at venues across France, with most concentrated in Paris. Millions of spectators are expected to attend events during the programme, which runs until 11 August. The reports said cables in electrical cabinets had been cut in southern France, and that installations in the Meuse region near Luxembourg and the Oise area near Paris had been vandalised, affec...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be part of the meeting in August. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone The foreign and defence ministers of the United States and Australia will meet in the US on 6 August, the country's embassy in Canberra said on Monday. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will co-host their Australian counterparts, Penny Wong and Richard Marles in Annapolis, Maryland as part of the annual Australia-US Ministerial (AUSMIN) dialogue. "Secretary Blinken and Secretary Austin look forward to strengthening our cooperation on the full range of global and regional issues and deepening the US-Australia alliance with their Australian counterparts," the US Embassy said in a statement. Washington and Canberra were close allies, cooperating mo...

A Middle East Airlines plane is seen on the tarmac of Rafik Hariri international airport in the Lebanese capital Beirut, on 10 August, 2022. Photo: AFP / Roy Issa Flights at Beirut airport have been cancelled or delayed with Lebanon's Middle East Airlines (MEA) saying disruptions to its schedule were related to insurance risks, as tensions escalate between Israel and armed political group Hezbollah. Lufthansa on Monday said it had suspended five routes to and from Beirut by the group's carriers Swiss International Air Lines, Eurowings and Lufthansa up to and including 30 July "in an abundance of caution". A rocket strike that killed 12 teenagers and children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday has added to concerns that Israel and the Iran-backed group could engage in a fu...

By Hannah Ritchie, BBC News, Sydney An Instagram post shared by Kai McKenzie (second from left) with friends as he recovers after a shark attack. Photo: Instagram / @kai_mckenzie A surfer whose severed leg washed up on an Australian beach after it was bitten off by a shark has confirmed the limb has not been reattached. Kai McKenzie, was surfing near Port Macquarie in New South Wales (NSW) last Tuesday, when what he describes as "the biggest shark I've ever seen" attacked him. The 23-year-old managed to catch a wave into shore, where he was helped by an bystander who made a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding. His leg washed up a short time later and was put on ice by locals, before being taken to hospital, where a medical team had hoped surgery may save it. But on Monday, almo...