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Billionaire Russian oligarchs and Ukrainian elites accused of corruption are among hundreds of people who have acquired EU passports under controversial “golden visa” schemes, the Guardian has learnt.
The government of Cyprus has raised more than €4bn since 2013 by providing citizenship to the super rich, granting them the right to live and work throughout Europe in exchange for cash investment. More than 400 passports are understood to have been issued through this scheme last year alone. Read more HERE.
A largely peaceful rally in St Louis turned rowdy on Sunday as a handful of demonstrators protesting at the acquittal of a white police officer over the fatal shooting of a black man in 2011 threw bottles in response to police making arrests.
Hundreds of people gathered for the third night in a row in the Missouri city of almost 320,000 people. Violence erupted the previous two nights, evoking memories of the riots following the 2014 shooting of a black teenager by a white officer. Read more HERE
More than 80 people are now confirmed dead in an attack on a restaurant frequented by Shia Muslim pilgrims in southern Iraq that was claimed by Islamic State.
Iraqi officials said 84 people had been killed and 93 people injured in the attack in Nasiriyah, in Iraq’s southern Thi Qar province on Thursday evening. Seven Iranians were among the dead, said the provincial governor, Yahya al-Nassiri. Nassiri added that the province’s director of intelligence had been removed. Read more HERE.
Iceland could face its second snap election in a year after one of the three parties in its ruling coalition said it was quitting because of a “serious breach of trust” over the alleged cover-up of a scandal involving the prime minister’s father.
The Bright Future party said on its Facebook page that it had “decided to terminate cooperation with the government”, effectively bringing down Bjarni Benediktsson’s administration barely nine months after it was formed. Read more HERE
North Korea has threatened to sink Japan and said the US should be “beaten to death like a rabid dog” after the two countries spearheaded fresh UN security council sanctions in response to the regime’s recent nuclear test.
The Korea Asia-Pacific peace committee, which oversees North Korea’s relations with the outside world, described the UN security council, which passed a new round of sanctions on Monday, as a “tool of evil” in the pay of Washington, and called for it to be broken up. Read more HERE.