4 kids, mother killed in their French home, father held
Paris, Dec 26: Four children between nine months and 10 years old and their mother were killed in their apartment east of Paris, in what the local prosecutor called an exceptionally violent crime. Authorities said the children’s father was arrested Tuesday and is the primary suspect. Neighbours spotted a pool of blood outside the family’s door on Christmas Day and alerted police, who discovered the five bodies, Prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier told reporters in the city of Meaux. The mother and two daughters, ages 7 and 10, were stabbed several times overnight from Sunday to Monday, he said. The couple’s two sons, ages 9 months and 4 years old, were suffocated or drowned. The prosecutor described a small, blood-stained apartment in extreme disarray. The motive for the killings was unclear. The suspect, a 33-year-old man born in the Paris suburb of Colombes, was arrested Tuesday outside his father’s home northeast of the French capital, the prosecutor said. The suspect had stabbed his partner once before, when she was pregnant with their older son in 2019, but the investigation was dropped because he was declared mentally unsound at the time of the attack, the prosecutor said. (AP)
‘Iran increasing production of highly enriched uranium’
Vienna, Dec 26: Iran has increased the rate at which it is producing near weapons grade uranium in recent weeks, reversing a previous slowdown that started in the middle of this year, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report to member states. Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in the report that Iran “in recent weeks had increased its production of highly enriched uranium, reversing a previous output reduction from mid-2023,” according to an IAEA spokesperson Sunday. Iran had previously slowed down the rate at which it was enriching uranium to 60 per cent purity. Uranium enriched at 60 per cent purity is just a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent. The UN nuclear watchdog said its inspectors had verified the increased rate of production since the end of November at facilities in Natanz and Fordow to about 9 kilograms per month, up from 3 kilograms per month since June and representing a return to earlier levels of production. (AP)
Cyberattack blocks Albania’s Parliament
Tirana, Dec 26: Albania’s Parliament reported Tuesday it had suffered a cyberattack with hackers trying to get into its data and wipe them out, temporarily halting its work. A statement said Monday’s cyberattack had not “touched the data of the system,” adding that experts were working to discover what consequences the attack could have. It said services would resume at a later time. The local media reported that a cellphone provider and an air flight company were also targeted by cyberattacks on Monday from Iranian-based hackers called Homeland Justice, something which could not be verified independently. (AP)