Mother of killed pregnant newlywed feels ‘stuck in nightmare’

Fawziyah Javed died after falling from Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. (Social media)
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Updated 30 December 2021
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Mother of killed pregnant newlywed feels ‘stuck in nightmare’

  • Fawziyah Javed, 31, allegedly pushed from popular tourist peak in Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Her husband, who she had recently married, has been charged with murder

LONDON: The mother of a newly married and pregnant woman who died after being allegedly pushed off a hill peak by her husband has spoken about her grief over the loss of her daughter.

Fawziyah Javed, 31, fell from Arthur’s Seat, a site popular with tourists for its views over Edinburgh, Scotland, on Sep. 2 this year.

She was pregnant and expecting a baby boy.

Her husband, Kashif Anwar, 27, has been charged with murder. He appeared in an Edinburgh court in September for a short hearing and made no plea.

Javed’s mother, Yasmin Javed, said that the death of her only child had “left a void in her and her husband’s lives.”

She added that she and her husband, Mohammed, had been “not living, just existing” over the past three months, and that she “feels like I’m stuck in a nightmare I’ll never wake up from.”

Her daughter’s death, she said, had “rocked” her West Yorkshire community and left the family “traumatized.”

Yasmin added: “All day I’ve been crying until my tears have run dry. We are devastated, our world has collapsed. She was our only child, and she was pregnant with her first child at the time.

“To lose a child under any circumstances would be painful, but when it’s your only child and your unborn first grandson too, I have no words to describe my pain. We will never, ever get over this. The light is gone from our lives … there is no quality of life for us,” she told The Times newspaper.

The young newlywed worked as a solicitor and was dedicated to her charity work, said her mother.

Fawziyah spent much of her time supporting a wide array of charities working for young people, the homeless and various other causes. Her mother said that she hopes to continue her legacy of charity work by urging the public to make charitable donations in her honor.

The family has also set up a GoFundMe page to raise charitable donations.

Yasmin said: “She was a very caring person, she cared about other people and wanted to make a difference. Helping people gave her so much fulfillment — she was so passionate about it.

“She was a selfless person who wore her heart on her sleeve. She was very kind and considerate.”


Forest fire near Athens under control, but area on high alert

Updated 5 sec ago
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Forest fire near Athens under control, but area on high alert

ATHENS: Greek firefighters said Friday that a forest blaze that had forced evacuations around Athens was under control, but warned that scorching temperatures were keeping fire risk at a highly elevated level around the capital and on northern Aegean islands.
Greece has become particularly vulnerable in recent years to fires in the summer fueled by strong winds, drought and high temperatures linked to climate change.
The fire around Athens broke on Thursday afternoon near the towns of Palaia Fokaia and Thymari, around 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Athens, and forced the evacuation of five villages popular with local and foreign tourists.
Though it was under control on Friday, a volatile combination of high temperatures and strong winds meant that a high risk of other fires breaking out remained, especially in the Attica region around the Greek capital and some islands in the north Aegean Sea, authorities said.
A spokesman for the fire service told AFP that over 100 firefighters with 37 vehicles and a helicopter were on standby near Palaia Fokaia and Thymari.
Fields, olive groves and some houses were ravaged by the blaze.
The blaze came on the heels of another fire on the island of Chios — Greece’s fifth-largest island — which had destroyed more than 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of land in four days.
Weather agencies forecast a heatwave in the coming days with temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), including in the capital Athens.

Chinese journalist hurt by Ukrainian drone attack in Russia: network

Updated 13 min 54 sec ago
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Chinese journalist hurt by Ukrainian drone attack in Russia: network

BEIJING: A Chinese TV journalist was wounded by a Ukrainian drone attack in Russia’s Kursk region while reporting near targeted facilities, his employer said Friday.
Lu Yuguang, a reporter with the state-affiliated Phoenix TV, “was wounded in the head” on Thursday afternoon and was sent to hospital for treatment, the broadcaster said.
In a video circulated by Russian state television on Friday, Lu was seen speaking to reporters with a white bandage over his head.
Lu was with a film crew in the village of Korenevo at the time of the strike, Russia’s foreign ministry said.
It accused Kyiv of “deliberately attacking” journalists and called on “responsible governments to condemn” it.
Beijing’s foreign ministry also said it was “deeply concerned” that a Chinese journalist had been wounded.
“The Chinese side calls on all parties to commit to a political resolution of the Ukraine crisis and jointly work toward easing tensions,” spokesman Guo Jiakun said.
China has portrayed itself as a neutral party in Russia’s more than three-year war with Ukraine.
But Western governments say Beijing’s close ties have given Moscow crucial economic and diplomatic support.


Cambodia’s Hun Sen accuses Thai PM of ‘insulting king’

Updated 24 min 11 sec ago
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Cambodia’s Hun Sen accuses Thai PM of ‘insulting king’

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia’s influential ex-premier Hun Sen on Friday accused Thailand’s prime minister of insulting the Thai king, as tensions between the neighboring countries intensified.
He said Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s comments about her military commander — who she labelled an “opponent” — in a leaked phone call with the veteran leader over a border dispute were “an insult to the king.”
“An insult to a regional commander is an insult to the Thai king because it is only the king who issued a royal decree to appoint him,” Hun Sen said in a livestream on his official Facebook page.
The daughter of controversial ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra — who goes on trial for lese-majeste next week — faces being sacked as prime minister as the phone call scandal has triggered calls for her to step down and her government to teeter.
Hun Sen — father of Cambodia’s prime minister Hun Manet and former close ally to Thaksin — last week posted the full 17-minute recording of the private conversation on his official Facebook page.
“I just let Thailand know how the prime minister committed a dirty act to their nation,” he said on Friday.
In the recording posted online, the two leaders discussed restrictions imposed on border crossings after a military clash last month killed a Cambodian soldier.
Thailand has strict lese majeste laws, which bans criticism of King Maha Vajiralongkorn and his close family and carries sentences of up to 15 years in jail per offense.


Seoul asks Temu, AliExpress to pull children’s products over safety concerns

Updated 44 min 47 sec ago
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Seoul asks Temu, AliExpress to pull children’s products over safety concerns

  • The Seoul city government said Friday it recently inspected 35 children’s products sold on Temu and AliExpress and found that 11 failed to meet South Korea’s safety standards or contained hazardous substances above local limits

SEOUL: The Seoul city government has asked online retail giants Temu and AliExpress to suspend sales of certain children’s products over safety concerns, saying Friday that some goods far exceeded local limits for hazardous substances.
Chinese e-commerce titans like Shein, Temu and AliExpress have seen a surge in global popularity in recent years, drawing in consumers with a wide range of trendy, ultra-low-cost fashion and accessories — positioning them as major rivals to US giant Amazon.
Their rapid rise has triggered growing scrutiny over business practices and product safety, including in South Korea.
The Seoul city government said Friday it recently inspected 35 children’s products sold on Temu and AliExpress — including umbrellas, raincoats and rain boots — and found that 11 failed to meet South Korea’s safety standards or contained hazardous substances above local limits.
In six of the umbrellas, phthalate-based plasticizers — chemicals used to make plastics more flexible — were found at levels far exceeding safety standards, the city said in a statement.
Some of those products exceeded the domestic safety limit by up to 443.5 times for the chemical, while two items were found to contain lead at levels up to 27.7 times higher than the locally acceptable level.
Based on the inspection results, the Seoul government said it “has requested that online platforms suspend sales of the non-compliant products.”
It also noted that “prolonged exposure to harmful substances can affect children’s growth and health,” and highlighted the need to carefully review product information before making purchases.
The Seoul government told AFP the retailers have no legal obligations to comply with their request.
But Temu said it “immediately initiated an internal review” after receiving notice from the city government, and that it was “in the process of removing the said items.”
“We are continuously improving on our quality control system to prevent, detect, and remove non-compliant products,” a Temu spokesperson told AFP.
AliExpress did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Phthalate-based plasticizers can cause endocrine disorders, while lead exposure above safety limits can impair reproductive functions and increase the risk of cancer, according to Seoul authorities.
Last year, the city government said women’s accessories sold by Shein, AliExpress and Temu contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels.
The European Union last year added Shein to its list of digital firms that are big enough to come under stricter safety rules — including measures to protect customers from unsafe products, especially those that could be harmful to minors.


Vatican unveils last of restored Raphael Rooms after 10-year cleaning that yielded new discoveries

Updated 27 June 2025
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Vatican unveils last of restored Raphael Rooms after 10-year cleaning that yielded new discoveries

  • “With this restoration, we rewrite a part of the history of art,” Vatican Museums director Barbara Jatta said

VATICAN CITY: The Vatican Museums on Thursday unveiled the last and most important of the restored Raphael Rooms, the spectacularly frescoed reception rooms of the Apostolic Palace that in some ways rival the Sistine Chapel as the peak of high Renaissance artistry.
A decadelong project to clean and restore the largest of the four Raphael Rooms uncovered a novel mural painting technique that the superstar Renaissance painter and architect began but never completed. Raphael used oil paint directly on the wall, and arranged a grid of nails embedded in the walls to hold in place the resin surface onto which he painted.
Vatican Museums officials recounted the discoveries in inaugurating the hall, known as the Room of Constantine, after the last scaffolding came down. The reception room, which was painted by Raphael and his students starting in the first quarter-century of the 1500s, is dedicated to the fourth-century Roman emperor Constantine, whose embrace of Christianity helped spread the faith throughout the Roman Empire.
“With this restoration, we rewrite a part of the history of art,” Vatican Museums director Barbara Jatta said.
Pope Julius II summoned the young Raphael Sanzio from Florence to Rome in 1508 to decorate a new private apartment for himself in the Apostolic Palace, giving the then-25-year-old a major commission at the height of his artistic output.
Even at the time, there were reports that Raphael had wanted to decorate the rooms not with frescoes but with oil paint directly on the wall, to give the images greater brilliance. The 10-year restoration of the Room of Constantine proved those reports correct, said Fabio Piacentini, one of the chief restorers.
Vatican technicians discovered that two female figures on opposite corners of the hall, Justice and Courtesy, were actually oil-on-wall paintings, not frescoes in which paint is applied to wet plaster. They were therefore clearly the work of Raphael himself, he said.
But Raphael died on April 6, 1520, at the age of 37, and before the hall could be completed. The rest of the paintings in the room were frescoes completed by his students who couldn’t master the oil technique Raphael had used, Jatta said.
During the cleaning, restorers discovered that Raphael had clearly intended to do more with oil paints: Under the plaster frescoes, they found a series of metal nails they believed had been drilled into the wall to hold in place the natural resin surface that Raphael had intended to paint on, Piacentini said.
“From a historical and critical point of view, and also technical, it was truly a discovery,” he said. “The technique used and planned by Raphael was truly experimental for the time, and has never been found in any other mural made with oil paint.”
The final part of the restoration of the room was the ceiling, painted by Tommaso Laureti and featuring a remarkable example of Renaissance perspective with his fresco of a fake tapestry “Triumph of Christianity over Paganism.”
The Raphael Rooms were never fully closed off to the public during their long restoration, but they are now free of scaffolding for the many visitors flocking to the Vatican Museums for the 2025 Jubilee.