CULIACAN, Mexico: Mexican authorities have arrested three alleged highway robbers in connection with the suspected murder of two Australian surfers who vanished last month, prosecutors said Friday.
The tourists’ burnt-out van was found with two unidentified bodies on Nov. 21 in the violence-plagued northwestern state of Sinaloa, but authorities have not confirmed that the remains belong to the Australians.
The van belonging to Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman was stopped on Nov. 21 by a gang driving a car that flashed police-like lights on a road in Sinaloa, said chief state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez.
The suspects shot a long-haired man in the face when he resisted the robbery, Higuera told reporters.
The robbers killed the second man, drove the vehicle to another location and “set fire to the van with two bodies inside,” Higuera said.
“The documented reports leads to believe that the bodies found inside the burned van could be those of the Australian citizens Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman,” he said.
The prosecutor stressed that while the case was being investigated as a murder, DNA tests are due to confirm the identities of the bodies.
Two other suspects are on the run. Prosecutors did not say when the arrests were made.
“These people are part of a criminal group dedicated to vehicle thefts, drug dealing and with a history of committing murders,” Higuera said.
Municipal and federal police uniforms were seized from the suspects, who wore them to commit highway robberies, the prosecutor said. One of the gang members worked as a lookout, notifying accomplices when he saw vehicles that could be robbed.
Lucas and Coleman, both 33, were last reported to be in the Sinaloa town of Topolobampo on November 20 after arriving on a ferry from the Baja California peninsula.
The two men had driven from Edmonton, Canada and across the United States to Mexico to join Coleman’s Mexican girlfriend in the western city of Guadalajara.
Their van was discovered on Nov. 21 on a rural road of the town of Navolato. Last weekend, authorities confirmed the vehicle belonged to the Australians, raising fears about their fate.
Navolato’s mayor, Miguel Calderon, described the region as a “Bermuda Triangle” of crimes that include robberies, murders and kidnappings.
More than $60,000 has been raised on the crowdfunding website www.gofundme.com to help the two men’s parents travel to Mexico and bring their sons home.
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop voiced “grave concerns” for the young men on Monday.
The Australian foreign affairs department issued a statement on Sunday on behalf of the families saying they were aware of reports that the van had been located and that “a tragic event has occurred.”
“The families hold deep fears for the safety of their sons but stress that they are still waiting for details to be confirmed,” the statement said.
The state is home to the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel led by fugitive drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who broke out of a maximum security prison in July.
While tens of thousands of Mexicans have been killed and 26,000 gone missing in nearly a decade of drug violence, violent attacks on foreign tourists are less common.
In July 2014, the decomposing body of Franco-American Harry Devert was found with signs of strangulation in the southwestern state of Guerrero, six months after he went missing while crossing the country on a motorcycle. He had traveled from New York, hoping to reach Brazil for the World Cup.
Mexico arrests 3 for suspected murder of Australian surfers
Mexico arrests 3 for suspected murder of Australian surfers
EU gives Bulgaria green light to adopt euro from start of 2026
Bulgaria has been striving to switch its lev currency to the euro ever since it joined the European Union in 2007
BRUSSELS: The European Commission and the European Central Bank gave Bulgaria the go-ahead on Wednesday to adopt the euro currency from the start of 2026, making Bulgaria the 21st country to join the single currency area.
In a “convergence report” describing how Bulgaria’s economy dovetails with the rest of the euro zone, the Commission said Bulgaria met the formal criteria needed to adopt the currency now used by 347 million Europeans in 20 countries.
“Today, the European Commission concluded that Bulgaria is ready to adopt the euro as of 1 January 2026 – a key milestone that would make it the twenty-first Member State to join the euro area,” the Commission said in a statement.
The Commission also looked at whether Bulgaria’s economy and markets are integrated with the rest of the EU, as well as the trends in the country’s balance of payments.
In a separate report, the ECB also said Bulgaria was ready.
“I wish to congratulate Bulgaria on its tremendous dedication to making the adjustments needed,” ECB Executive Board Member Philip Lane said in a statement.
Bulgaria has been striving to switch its lev currency to the euro ever since it joined the European Union in 2007. But after such a long wait, many Bulgarians have lost the initial enthusiasm with 50 percent now skeptical about the euro, according to a Eurobarometer poll in May. Some Bulgarians fear the currency switch will drive up prices.
“Ensuring price transparency and combating abusive price increases will require a special effort,” EU Economic Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told a news conference.
“Previous practices and data from other euro area countries demonstrate that this is perfectly achievable, with price increases resulting from previous changeovers having been minimal,” he said.
Becoming a member of the euro zone, apart from using euro notes and coins, also means a seat at the European Central Bank’s rate-setting Governing Council.
The positive recommendation from the EU executive arm means that EU leaders will have to endorse it later in June. EU finance ministers will then fix the conversion exchange rate for the Bulgarian lev into the euro in July, leaving the rest of the year for the country to technically prepare for the transition.
MEETING THE CRITERIA
To get the positive recommendation, Bulgaria had to meet the inflation criterion, which says that the euro-candidate cannot have consumer inflation higher than 1.5 percentage points above the three best EU performers.
In April, the best performers were France with 0.9 percent, Cyprus with 1.4 percent and Denmark with 1.5 percent, which put Bulgaria with its 2.8 percent just within the limit.
The euro candidate country also cannot be under the EU’s disciplinary budget procedure for running a deficit in excess of 3 percent of GDP. Bulgaria meets this criterion with a budget deficit of 3.0 percent in 2024 and 2.8 percent expected in 2025.
The country’s public debt of 24.1 percent of GDP in 2024 and 25.1 percent expected in 2025 is well below the maximum level of 60 percent, and its long-term interest rate on bonds is well within the 2 percentage point margin above the rate at which the three best inflation performers borrow.
Finally, Bulgaria had to prove it had a stable exchange rate by staying within a 15 percent margin on either side of a central parity rate in the Exchange Rate Mechanism II.
This was easily done because Bulgaria has been running a currency board that fixed the lev to the euro at 1.95583 since the start of the euro currency in 1999.
Bulgaria’s euro adoption will come three years after the last euro zone expansion, when Croatia joined the single currency grouping at the start of 2023.
The accession of Bulgaria into the euro zone will leave only six of the 27 EU countries outside the single currency area: Sweden, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Denmark.
None of them have any immediate plans to adopt the euro either for political or because they do not meet the required economic criteria.
Sweden tries militant over Jordanian pilot burned to death by Daesh
- “Osama Krayem has, together and in agreement with other perpetrators belonging to Daesh, killed Maaz Al-Kassasbeh,” prosecutor Reena Devgun told the court
- In the 22-minute video of the killing, the victim is seen walking past several masked Daesh fighters, including Krayem, according to prosecutors
STOCKHOLM: A convicted Swedish militant went on trial in Stockholm on Wednesday accused of war crimes for his role in the 2014 killing of a Jordanian pilot who was burned alive in Syria.
The case is considered unique as the other militants involved in the brutal killing, which sparked international outrage at the time, are presumed dead, Swedish prosecutor Henrik Olin told AFP.
Osama Krayem, a 32-year-old Swede, is already serving long prison sentences for his role in the Paris and Brussels attacks in 2015 and 2016.
He now faces charges of “serious war crimes and terrorist crimes” for his alleged participation in the killing of the Jordanian pilot.
On December 24, 2014, an aircraft belonging to the Royal Jordanian Air Force crashed in Syria.
The pilot was captured the same day by fighters from the Daesh group near the central city of Raqqa and he was burned alive in a cage sometime before February 3, 2015, when a video of the gruesome killing was published, according to the prosecution.
The slickly-produced propaganda video was one of the first such videos released by Daesh.
The killing shocked Jordan, which was participating in the US-led coalition’s strikes against Daesh positions in Syria.
“Osama Krayem has, together and in agreement with other perpetrators belonging to Daesh, killed Maaz Al-Kassasbeh,” prosecutor Reena Devgun told the court on Wednesday.
“Osama Krayem, in uniform and armed, guarded and led the victim Maaz Al-Kassasbeh to a metal cage, where the latter was then locked up. One of the co-perpetrators then set fire to Maaz Al-Kassasbeh, who had no possibility to defend himself or call for help,” Devgun said.
Krayem, wearing a dark blue shirt and with a thick beard and long, loose dark hair, had his back to the handful of journalists and spectators who followed Wednesday’s proceedings behind a glass wall in the high security courtroom in Stockholm’s district court.
He appeared calm as the prosecution laid out the charges, which could result in a life sentence if Krayem is convicted.
In the 22-minute video of the killing, the victim is seen walking past several masked Daesh fighters, including Krayem, according to prosecutors.
The pilot is then seen being locked in the cage and praying as he is set on fire.
Prosecutors have been unable to determine the exact date of the murder but the investigation has identified the location.
The pilot’s father, Safi Al-Kassasbeh, told AFP on Wednesday the family hoped Krayem would “receive the harshest penalty according to the magnitude of the crime.”
“This is what we expect from a respected and fair law,” he said.
It was thanks to a scar on the suspect’s eyebrow, visible in the video and spotted by Belgian police, that Krayem was identified and the investigation was opened, Devgun said when the charges were announced last week.
Other evidence in the case includes conversations on social media, including one where Krayem asks a person if he has seen a new video “where a man gets fried,” according to the investigation, a copy of which has been viewed by AFP.
“I’m in the video,” Krayem said, pointing out the moment when the camera zooms in on his face.
The other person replies: “Hahaha, yes, I saw the eyebrow.”
The defendant’s lawyer, Petra Eklund, told AFP before the start of the trial that her client admitted to being present at the scene but disputed the prosecution’s version.
“He denies the acts for which he is prosecuted,” she said.
“He acknowledges having been present at that place during the event, but claims not to have acted in the manner described by the prosecutors in the account of the facts,” she added.
Krayem, who is from Malmo in southern Sweden, joined the Daesh group in Syria in 2014 before returning to Europe in September 2015.
He was arrested in Belgium in April 2016.
In June 2022, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in France for helping plan the November 2015 Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed.
The following year, he was given a life sentence in Belgium for participating in the March 2016 bombings at Brussels’ main airport and on the metro system, in which 32 people were killed.
Krayem has been temporarily handed over to Sweden for the Stockholm trial, which is scheduled to last until June 26.
NATO defense buildup must ‘outpace Russia’: US envoy
- “The urgency of this moment is undeniable as the Russia-Ukraine conflict grinds on, Moscow is already preparing for its next move,” Whitaker told journalists
- “NATO allies must outpace Russia. We have no other choice. Let me be clear, the time is now“
BRUSSELS: NATO’s push to ramp up defenses must outstrip Russia’s rearmament drive as Moscow is already gearing up for its “next move” beyond Ukraine, the US ambassador to the alliance said Wednesday.
The warning came ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers Thursday that will seek to forge a deal on hiking military spending for a summit later this month.
US President Donald Trump has called on Washington’s allies to commit to spending five percent of their GDP on defense.
NATO chief Mark Rutte looks on track to secure a compromise deal agreement at the upcoming summit in the Hague for 3.5 percent of GDP on core military spending, and 1.5 percent on broader security-related areas such as infrastructure.
“The urgency of this moment is undeniable as the Russia-Ukraine conflict grinds on, Moscow is already preparing for its next move,” US ambassador Matthew Whitaker told journalists.
“We are already seeing the Kremlin aims to rebuild its military. NATO allies must outpace Russia. We have no other choice. Let me be clear, the time is now.”
Whitaker said “the United States expects every ally to step up with concrete plans, budgets, timelines, deliverables, to meet the five percent target.”
“This is not going to be just a pledge. This is going to be a commitment. Every ally must commit to investing at least five percent of GDP in defense and security, starting now again, this is not a suggestion,” he said.
The US envoy said that Washington remained committed to NATO’s Article Five mutual defense clause — but expected allies to step up their spending.
“We will defend every inch of allied territory, and we will do it from a position of unmatched
strength,” Whitaker said.
NATO ministers will sign off at their meeting in Brussels on new capability targets for the weaponry needed to face the threat from Russia.
“We are going to take a huge leap forward,” Rutte said.
“These targets set out what forces and concrete capabilities the allies need.”
Rutte said he was “absolutely, positively convinced” that NATO countries would agree to a new spending deal in The Hague.
The NATO chief insisted that the United States “have made totally clear their commitment to Article Five.”
He similarly insisted that Washington remained committed to backing Ukraine despite defense secretary Pete Hegseth skipping a meeting of Kyiv’s backers in Brussels on Wednesday.
Indonesia weighing buying Chinese J-10 fighter jets
- Indonesian minister says will factor in reports Pakistani J-10 shot down multiple Indian jets in May
- Indonesia has in recent years embarked on efforts to modernize its aging military hardware
JAKARTA: Indonesia is weighing buying China’s J-10 fighter jets, given their relatively cheaper price and advanced capability, as it also considers finalizing a purchase of US-made F-15EX jets, a senior official said on Wednesday.
Southeast Asia’s most populous country has in recent years embarked on efforts to modernize its aging military hardware.
In 2022 it bought 42 French Rafale jets worth $8.1 billion, six of which will be delivered next year.
“We have had talks with China and they offered us a lot, not just J-10, but also ships, arms, frigates,” said Deputy Defense Minister and retired Air Marshal Donny Ermawan Taufanto.
“We’re evaluating J-10,” Taufanto said, adding that Jakarta was reviewing system compatibility and after-sales support as well as pricing.
A potential purchase has been considered for over a year, before the recent conflict between India and Pakistan, but Taufanto said Indonesia would factor in reports that a Pakistani J-10 plane shot down multiple Indian jets last month.
Jakarta also continues to consider whether to proceed with the next step for its purchase of F-15EX fighters, he said, following the defense ministry’s deal with planemaker Boeing for the sale in 2023.
Taufanto said the US jets’ capabilities were well recorded, but suggested the offered price of $8 billion for 24 planes remained in question.
French President Emmanuel Macron said after meeting Indonesian counterpart Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta last week that they had signed a preliminary defense pact that could lead to new orders of French hardware including Rafale jets.
“We’re considering (France’s) offer. We’re considering our own budget, we’re evaluating, especially given we have other options like J-10, F-15,” Taufanto said.
Ukraine’s Zelensky suggests truce until meeting with Putin can be arranged
- “We propose to Russians a ceasefire until the leaders meet,” Zelensky told a briefing in Kyiv
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday proposed implementing a ceasefire until such time as a meeting can be arranged with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“My proposal, which I believe our partners can support, is that we propose to Russians a ceasefire until the leaders meet,” Zelensky told a briefing in Kyiv.
June 2 peace talks with Russia in Istanbul made little progress toward ending the three-year-old war in Ukraine, apart from an exchange of proposals and a plan for a major swap of prisoners of war, which Zelensky said would take place this weekend.
