Author: admin@primenews

Australian football star Sam Kerr has officially been ruled out of the 2024 Paris Olympics, as she recovers from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear. The striker was injured during a Chelsea training camp in January. Announcing a squad for Australia’s final pre-Olympics friendlies, the Matildas’ coach said Kerr would not return in time for the Games in July. Kerr – arguably Australia’s biggest sporting idol – is the nation’s all-time record goal scorer. She is the latest in a long list of high-profile female footballers – including England captain Leah Williamson and Dutch striker Vivianne Miedema – to suffer…

BMW, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Volkswagen (VW) used parts made by a supplier on a list of firms banned over alleged links to Chinese forced labour, a US congressional report has said. At least 8,000 BMW Mini Cooper cars were imported into the US with components from banned Chinese firm Sichuan Jingweida Technology Group (JWD), according to the report by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden’s staff. “Automakers’ self-policing is clearly not doing the job,” the Democrat Senator said. Jaguar Land Rover told the BBC it “takes human rights and forced labour issues seriously and has an active ongoing programme…

The southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu is using an AI-based surveillance system to prevent elephant deaths on its railway tracks. Elephant deaths on and near the state’s railway tracks are rising, with 36 fatalities recorded from train collisions in the past decade, according to official data. Eleven of these fatalities occurred on two railway tracks near Madukkarai, where the forest borders the state of Kerala. These tracks intersect with the elephants’ migratory route to neighbouring forests. In 2021, the state’s high court ordered the forest department and railways to prevent elephant deaths on these tracks. The forest department has…

Benjamin Netanyahu responded with fury to the news that he might face an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was “a moral outrage of historic proportions”, he said. Israel was “waging a just war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organisation that perpetrated the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.” In a bitter personal attack, Mr Netanyahu said Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was one of the “great antisemites in modern times.” Mr Khan, he said, was like judges in Nazi Germany who denied Jews basic rights and…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has angrily condemned the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor for seeking arrest warrants for him alongside Hamas’s leaders over alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict. Mr Netanyahu said he rejected with disgust that “democratic Israel” had been compared with what he called “mass murderers”. Mr Netanyahu’s comments have been echoed by US President Joe Biden, who said there was no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.  The chief ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant bore criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and…

Virgin Trains could return to running rail services on the West Coast route between London and Glasgow five years after losing the franchise. It means that Virgin would be competing with Avanti West Coast, the train company it lost the contract to in 2019. Virgin Trains had operated the service, which runs from London Euston via Birmingham and Manchester to Scotland, for 22 years before it was disqualified from bidding for the franchise. Virgin Group confirmed to the BBC that it had applied to the Office of Rail and Road, the regulator, for an Open Access licence. Under this type…

Britain’s Emma Raducanu has withdrawn from the French Open, just 24 hours before qualifying was due to begin. The 21-year-old is not injured, but has decided to skip Roland Garros to train and give herself a “chance to keep fit for the rest of the year”. Raducanu was not awarded a wildcard for the clay-court Grand Slam and her ranking was not high enough to gain direct entry into the main draw. Qualifying starts on Monday and the French Open begins on 26 May. “It’s important for me to keep laying on the foundations, and I will use the time…

Nelly Korda secured her sixth victory in seven tournaments by winning the Mizuho Americas Open on Sunday. The 25-year-old’s level-par 71 saw her win on 14 under, one shot clear of Australian Hannah Green at the Liberty National Golf Course in Jersey City. Korda started the final day with a two-shot lead but had three bogeys and one birdie on the front nine to be level with Green at the halfway point. After matching each other down the stretch it was the Australian who blinked first, missing a par putt on the 18th that would have forced a play-off. The…

US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to connect the war in Gaza to a “political strategy” for the territory’s future. Jake Sullivan met Mr Netanyahu in Israel after holding talks in Saudi Arabia on Saturday. His intervention comes a day after war cabinet minister Benny Gantz threatened to quit if Mr Netanyahu did not come up with a post-war plan for Gaza. Mr Netanyahu has so far not articulated a vision for what comes after the war, saying only that he is focused on “total victory”. However there is a growing political…

In the 17 years since it launched, the Assassin’s Creed series has taken fans all over the world, from Ancient Greece to Victorian London. But despite many, many requests, it’s never tiptoed into Japan. Until now. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, previously codenamed Assassin’s Creed: Red, is a long-awaited pivot for the franchise into the country’s feudal, 16th Century Sengoku Period. So what took so long? Game director Charles Benoit tells BBC Newsbeat that, for each new Assassin’s Creed game, the team weighs up potential settings and measures feedback from fans of the series. “So there’s a lot of people involved,” he…