The aftermath of a Russian attack on the Retroville shopping mall in Kyiv last March. Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty ImagesLondonCNN —
Russian assets frozen in European accounts are generating billions of dollars in interest payments that could be diverted to help repair Ukraine’s war-torn economy — and the European Union just took a step closer to doing that.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Western countries froze nearly half of Moscow’s foreign reserves — some €300 billion ($327 billion). Around €200 billion ($218 billion) sits in the European Union — mostly at Euroclear, a financial institution that keeps assets safe for banks, exchanges and investors.
EU leaders agreed a crucial $50 billion funding package for Ukraine on Thursday and came closer to finalizing a plan to use the profits piling up in Euroclear’s accounts.
In a statement issued at the end of a summit, EU leaders said “potential revenues could be generated … concerning the use of extraordinary revenues held by private entities stemming directly from the immobilised Central Bank of Russia assets.”
Belgium-based Euroclear disclosed Thursday that it has earned €5.2 billion ($5.6 billion) in interest on income generated by sanctioned Russian assets since they were frozen by EU and Group of Seven countries in 2022.
“The number of sanctions and countersanctions that have been introduced since February 2022 are unprecedented and continue to have a significant impact on the daily operations of Euroclear,” the group said in a statement.
The European Union and its allies are determined to make Russia foot part of the colossal bill for rebuilding Ukraine — estimated by the World Bank a year ago at $411 billion over the next decade.
One proposal put forward by the European Commission would involve using a special levy to collect the windfall interest income, which would then be paid into the EU budget for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
That plan has been delayed by legal and financial concerns, with some EU member states and the European Central Bank worried that even carefully targeted measures could fall foul of international law and shake confidence in the euro as the world’s second biggest reserve currency. The EU has been at pains to contrast the illegality of Russia’s invasion with its own strict adherence to the rule of law.
EU member countries have now agreed in principle to tap this windfall interest income, although the details of how this will be done practically must still be ironed out, an EU diplomat told CNN. Lawyers are working on the text of the agreement before returning it to EU member states for final approval.
In its earnings statement,Euroclear — which settles cross-border trades and safeguards more than $40 trillion in assets — said it was focused on “minimising potential legal and operational risks” that may arise from proposals by EU officials to hand the money to Ukraine.
Euroclear said additional administrative costs relating to the sanctions cost it €62 million ($67 million) last year, “with considerable senior management and board focus on the topic.”
It added that cash on its balance sheet soared €38 billion ($41 billion) year-on-year to €162 billion ($175 billion), boosted by payments associated with frozen Russian assets, including bonds.
These payments include, for example, interest paid on bonds, known as coupons, or the proceeds generated by securities that mature and are reinvested.
Ordinarily, these payments would have been made to Russian bank accounts, but they have been blockedby the sanctions and are generating vast amounts of interest — even more so given the recent spate of rate hikes.
Euroclear, for its part, is embroiled in several legal proceedings pertaining to the sanctions — almost exclusively in Russian courts — as claimants seek to access the assets blocked in its books.
The company said it continues to https://ikutisaja.com retain profits related to these assets “until further guidance is provided on the distribution or management of such profits.”
A new study raises new questions about Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases.Andrew Brookes/Image Source/Getty ImagesCNN —
Early-onset dementia symptoms in five adultsmay be connected to a now-discontinued human growth hormone medical treatment that they received decades ago as children, a new study suggests.
The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, provides the first reported evidence of medically acquired Alzheimer’s disease in living people. In these cases, the patients’ early-onset dementia symptoms may be the result of the possible transmission of amyloid beta protein, which is a key component of Alzheimer’s disease when it forms plaques in the brain.
Abnormal buildup of the protein amyloid betain the brain is associated with Alzheimer’s and the new study suggests that amyloid beta contamination may have a connection with the early dementia symptoms experienced by the patients in the study. The study findings do not suggest that Alzheimer’s disease can be contagious, or spread like viral or bacterial infections, for instance, but they raise new questions about Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases.
“I should emphasize these are very rare occurrences, and the majority of this relates to medical procedures that are no longer used,” John Collinge, lead author of the study and director of the University College London Institute of Prion Diseases, said in a news briefing.
All five adults had growth hormone deficiency as children and received pituitary growth hormones prepared in a specific way from cadavers. The pituitary gland is located at the base of the brain, and human growth hormone, or HGH, is a natural hormone the gland makes and releases, promoting growth in children.
The new study suggests that repeated exposure,over multiple years,to treatments with cadaver-derived HGH that had been contaminated by both prions associated with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and amyloid beta seeds could transmit Alzheimer’s disease. Prions are proteins that can act as transmissible agents of neurodegenerative diseases.
The researchers wrote in their study that Alzheimer’s disease may be transmissible, in certain circumstances, in a way similar to conditions known as “prion diseases” — a family of rare progressive neurodegenerative disorders known to be associated with prion proteins, including Creutzfeldt–Jakobdisease or CJD. Although Alzheimer’s is not a prion disease, some separate research suggests that the two proteins that are hallmarks in Alzheimer’s disease — amyloid beta and tau — behave like prions.
“It looks like what’s going on in Alzheimer’s disease is very similar in many respects to what happens in the human prion diseases like CJD,” Collinge said in the news briefing. “It does raise implications about therapeutic approaches to Alzheimer’s disease.”
“We now provide evidence that Alzheimer’s disease is also transmissible in certain circumstances,” the researchers – from the University College London and National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in the United Kingdom – wrote in their study. Though they add that this type of transmission is “rare” and there is no suggestion that amyloid beta can be transmitted between people in everyday activities or modern-day routine medical care.
“After human growth hormones were no longer used in the 1980s due to concerns over Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease transmission, strict procedures were put in place to minimise cross-contamination. But in light of these findings, researchers recommend that medical procedures should be reviewed to ensure that rare cases of Alzheimer’s transmission like this do not happen in the future,” Dr. Susan Kohlhaas, executive director of research and partnerships at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said about the new study in a written statement distributed by the UK-based Science Media Centre.
“This study suggests that in very rare circumstances Alzheimer’s disease may be transmitted between humans via human growth hormone from deceased donors. It must be stressed that this treatment is no longer used today and has been replaced with synthetic growth hormone,” Kohlhaas said in the statement. “It’s also important to stress that this is the only recorded instance of Alzheimer’s transmission between humans.”
Dr. Richard Isaacson, who was not involved in the new study, said in an email that he has suspected for a while that Alzheimer’s disease may have some transmissibility similar to prion diseases, but prior research he has seen was unable to prove it.
“While it’s hard to say, there must be something different about how HGH may have infected recipients in this study when compared to prior work,” said Isaacson, director of research at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Florida.
He added that “the public has nothing to fear” since this type of human growth hormone treatment is no longer in clinical practice, but the study emphasizes the importance of sterilization and decontamination of instruments in between surgeries.
While there is no suggestion that amyloid beta can be transmitted between individuals in day-to-day activities, “its recognition emphasizes the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmissions via other medical and surgical procedures,” researchers wrote in the study.
“I’m also intrigued by how these results may inform potential therapeutic targets and strategies in the future,” Isaacson said, regarding Alzheimer’s disease.
‘Asking new scientific questions’
The researchers examined eight cases in which a person had a history of being treated with human growth hormone derived from a cadaver’s pituitary gland. All of them had been treated as children. Five of the patients were still alive during the study and were in their 50s. The three others had died at ages 57, 54 and 47.
The researchers found that five of the patients had symptoms consistent with early-onset dementia and three of those five had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease before the study. Four of the patients started experiencing symptoms between the ages of 48 and 49. The remaining patient started having symptoms at 55.
“We have found that it is possible for amyloid-beta pathology to be transmitted and contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Gargi Banerjee, the study’s first author and researcher at the University College London Institute of Prion Diseases, said in a newsrelease.
“This transmission occurred following treatment with a now obsolete form of growth hormone, and involved repeated treatments with contaminated material, often over several years,” Banerjee said. “There is no indication that Alzheimer’s disease can be acquired from close contact, or during the provision of routine care.”
The new study is the first time that Dr. James Galvin, director of the Comprehensive Center for Brain Health at UHealth, the University of Miami Health System, has heard of Alzheimer’s disease transmission in humans.
“The cases were all very young onset, which would make one suspicious that there are extraneous factors involved. Typically, early onset is linked to genetic mutations, but as this was not found, the most likely common attributable cause would be the cadaveric growth hormone treatment. More investigation is needed,” Galvin, who was not involved in the study, said in an email.
“I would say at this point, there is nothing additional that we need to do as far as clinical practice, but this certainly lends itself to asking new scientific questions. Proteins involved in brain disease, such as prion protein in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, are transmissible,” he said. “Additionally, other proteins involved in disease, such as alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia, share some of these properties but do not appear to https://ikutisaja.com be transmissible. The science of amyloid and tau proteins in Alzheimer’s disease may need to be revisited.”
In the music world, old grudges die hard, especially when it comes to devoted fans of a specific artist.
On Friday, Britney Spears’ 2011 song “Selfish” – off her seventh album “Femme Fatale” from that year – reached no. 1 on the US iTunes chart, topping a new song of the same name from her former boyfriend Justin Timberlake, who dropped his “Selfish” track just the day before.
On Saturday, Spears’ song was still holding steady at the no. 2 spot on the chart, two slots ahead of Timberlake at no. 4.
Why does this matter? Both a 2021 documentary titled “Framing Britney Spears” and a memoir by the singer published last year, titled “The Woman In Me,” reframed and pulled back the covers on Spears’ very high-profile, decades-old romance with Timberlake, with whom she starred on the Mickey Mouse Club as children and later dated from 1999 to 2002.
In the memoir, Spears talked about how the breakup of her relationship with Timberlake became very public due to infidelity on her part, but what the public didn’t know was that Timberlake had not been faithful either, Spears wrote in the memoir, and that she was aware of his indiscretions.
She also discussed how she had an abortion during her relationship with Timberlake, something she wrote she “never would have done” if it were up to her alone. “To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life,” she added in her book.
Those revelations came two years after the “New York Times Presents” Hulu documentary “Framing Britney Spears,” which also renewed focus on her breakup with Timberlake and how, at the time, the former *NSYNC member was portrayed more positively in the media narrative about their breakup while Spears was summarily vilified.
The documentary prompted Spears’ devoted fanbase – who became galvanized during the #FreeBritney movement toward the end of her 13-year-long conservatorship – to call for an apology from Timberlake, which he did days after the doc’s premiere, writing on social media at the time, “I’ve seen the messages, tags, comments and concerns and I want to respond.”
“I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, https://ikutisaja.com or did not speak up for what was right,” he continued, later adding, “I specifically want to apologize to Britney Spears.”
Clearly, devotees of Spears are still rallying to show support for the “Piece of Me” singer.
For years, tennis has been searching for the players to fill the sizeable shoes of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic when all of the ‘Big Three’ finally hang up their rackets.
Carlos Alcaraz has emerged only relatively recently to pick up the torch as the leading star of the new generation, but Jannik Sinner now has the chance to join him at the head of the pack.
Sinner ended defending champion Novak Djokovic’s 33-match winning streak at the Australian Open, a run stretching back to 2018, to reach his maiden grand slam final, where he will face Russia’s Daniil Medvedev on Sunday.
The 22-year-old has always been lauded as one of the tennis’ most talented young players, but his ascension since the latter stages of last season has vaulted him into the upper echelons of the sport.
It was put to Sinner after his semifinal win that he, Alcaraz and Holger Rune seem to be having more success than the generation before them.
“I feel like that mentally everyone is different and [the] attitude on the court is different, but that, what I think we have in common is we believe in ourselves in one way, and this helps a lot because, in tennis, when you believe, it’s a huge amount already,” Sinner told reporters.
“But I think we have [been] really lucky to see him [Djokovic] around, that we can see what he’s doing, how he’s practicing. Hopefully, Rafa [Nadal] is coming back, so I can see also him. I had the privilege to watch him when I was in Adelaide with him. Roger, unfortunately, I have never had the chance to, but it is what it is.
“In another way, I feel like talking about my part is that I always try to learn from them and then trying to get something from them, no? This has been always my part of the process, and the process we are making is not finished yet because I feel like that we still have to improve a lot.”
Medvedev is part of that prior generation, but the Russian has previously enjoyed grand slam success as the winner of the US Open in 2021.
Medvedev is bidding to win his second grand slam title.David Gray/AFP/Getty Images
This is the 27-year-old’s third Australian Open final after losing to Djokovic in 2021 and Nadal in 2022, but Medvedev is now much more assured in his game, highlighted by his stunning semifinal comeback over Alexander Zverev.
It has been a marathon route for Medvedev to reach the final in Melbourne, playing three five-set epics and spending almost 21 hours out on the court so far.
The Russian even made light of his tough journey so far, writing on a courtside camera lens after his win over Zverev: “Not enough sleep but whatever.”
But Medvedev credited those tough matches for getting him through the semifinal.
“Mentally 100%, I’m stronger than I was before this tournament because now I know that I’m capable of some things maybe I thought I’m not,” he told reporters. “Because before, I didn’t do anything like this to get to the final.
“So mentally, I’m stronger than before, and I’m happy about it. Probably honestly, it’s better to https://ikutisaja.com be in the final winning three-set, four-set matches. That’s the better way physically. But it is what it is, and I’m proud and looking forward to the final to give my 100% again.”
Many parts of the world are experiencing a rapid depletion in the subterranean reserves of water that billions of people rely on for drinking, irrigation and other uses, according to new research that analyzed millions of groundwater level measurements from 170,000 wells in more than 40 countries.
It’s the first study to piece together what’s happening to groundwater levels at a global scale, according to the researchers involved, and will help scientists better understand what impact humans are having on this valuable underground resource, either through overuse or indirectly by changes in rainfall linked to climate change.
Groundwater, contained within cracks and pores in permeable bodies of rock known as aquifers, is a lifeline for people especially in parts of the world where rainfall and surface water are scarce, such as northwest India and the southwest United States.
Reductions in groundwater can make it harder for people to access freshwater to drink or to irrigate crops and can result in land subsidence.
“This study was driven by curiosity. We wanted to better understand the state of global groundwater by wrangling millions of groundwater level measurements,” said co-lead author Debra Perrone, an associate professor in University of California’s Santa Barbara’s Environmental Studies Program, in a news release on the study that published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
The authors found that groundwater levels declined between 2000 and 2022 in 71% of the 1,693 aquifer systems included in the research, with groundwater levels declining more than 0.1 meter a year in 36%, or 617, of them.
The Ascoy-Soplamo Aquifer in Spain had the fastest rate of decline in the data they compiled — a median decline of 2.95 meters per year, said study coauthor Scott Jasechko, an associate professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at University of California Santa Barbara.
Several aquifer systems in Iran were among those with the fastest rate of groundwater decline, he added.
The team wasn’t able to gather data from much of Africa, South America and southeast Asia because of a lack of monitoring, but Jasechko said the study included the countries where most global groundwater pumping takes place.
Declines not universal
The study also highlighted some success stories in Bangkok, Arizona and New Mexico, where groundwater has begun to recover after interventions to better regulate water use or redirect water to replenish depleted aquifers.
“I was impressed by the clever strategies that have been put into action to address groundwater depletion in several places, though these ‘good news’ stories are very rare,” Jasechko said via email.
To understand whether the declines seen in the 21st century were accelerating, the team also accessed data for groundwater levels for 1980 to 2000 for 542 of the aquifers in the study.
They found that declines in groundwater levels spedup in the first two decades of the 21st century for 30% of those aquifers, outpacing the declines recorded between 1980 and 2000.
“These cases of accelerating groundwater-level declines are more than twice as prevalent as one would expect from random fluctuations in the absence of any systematic trends in either time period,” the study noted.
Donald John MacAllister, a hydrologist at the British Geological Survey who wasn’t involved in the research, said it was a really “impressive” set of data, despite some gaps.
“I think it’s fair to say this global compilation of groundwater data hasn’t been done, certainly on this scale, at least to my knowledge before,” he said.
“Groundwater is an incredibly important resource but one of the challenges is… because we can’t see it, it’s out of mind for https://ikutisaja.com most people. Our challenge is to constantly bang the drum for policymakers — that we have this resource that we have to look after, and that we can use to build resilience and adapt to climate change.”
Israeli soldiers hold the coffin of Major Ilay Levy, one of the soldiers killed Monday, during a funeral in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance/Getty ImagesJerusalemCNN —
Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed during fighting in Gaza on Monday, the military said, in the deadliest day for its troops inside the battered enclave since the war with Hamas began.
Most of the soldiers – 21 – were killed in an attack in central Gaza “when a terrorist squad surprised our fighters and launched missiles and rockets,” said Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
That attack, which Hagari said happened several hundred meters from the eastern border, was the deadliest single incident for the IDF in Gaza since the ground invasion began on October 27. A further three Israeli soldiers – an IDF captain and two majors – were killed in a separate incident the same day, in southern Gaza.
The attack in central Gaza took place as the IDF soldiers were laying explosives to demolish “terror infrastructure and buildings,” according to Hagari.
A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) hit one of the buildings and set off an explosion that led to its collapse.
“Most of our fighters died because of the collapse of that building,” Hagari said.
Another RPG hit a nearby IDF tank, killing the tank commander and another Israeli soldier, Hagari added.
On Monday, the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza said the number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 7 has risen to 25,295, with at least 63,000 injuries recorded.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing increasing political pressure on multiple fronts, said the deaths of the soldiers represented “one of the most difficult days since the outbreak of the war.”
“I mourn for our fallen heroic soldiers. I hug the families in their time of need and we all pray for the peace of our wounded,” Netanyahu said, adding that the IDF had launched an investigation into the incident.
The Israeli military’s large-scale bombing campaign in Gaza has been ongoing since the October 7 murder and kidnapping rampage by Hamas gunmen that saw some 1,200 people killed in Israel and more than 250 taken hostage. One hundred and thirty two hostages remain in Gaza. Of those, 104 are believed to still be alive.
The incidents in Gaza on Monday bring the number of Israeli soldiers killed since operations there began to 219.
The previous deadliest day for IDF soldiers in Gaza since the start of the conflict was October 31, when 16 Israeli troops died. That day also included the previous deadliest incident, which saw 11 troops killed in an armored personnel carrier.
The IDF said Tuesday that the city is now surrounded, while the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry says nearly 200 people have been killed in the past day.
In a statement Tuesday, the IDF said “dozens of terrorists” had been killed in the past 24 hours by IDF ground troops in coordination with the Israeli air force.
“Over the past day, IDF troops carried out an extensive operation during which they encircled Khan Younis and deepened the operation in the area. The area is a significant stronghold of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade,” the IDF said.
Hagari said Israeli soldiers continue to fight in Khan Younis, adding, “It’s a very complicated area – very crowded, with a lot of people living there.” One hundred Hamas fighters have been killed in the Khan Younis area within the last day, Hagari claimed.
A source familiar with the matter told CNN Monday that a major Israeli military offensive underway in western Khan Younis is expected to last several more days. The source said Israeli troops had encircled the Khan Younis refugee camp and were conducting raids to try and dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities in the area.
Medical facilities in the city have been battered amid an Israeli assault in the area Monday, Palestinian health officials said, as the number of people killed in Israel’s siege on Gaza continues to rise.
On Monday, the Hamas-controlled health ministry said Nasser Hospital is receiving more patients with serious injuries than it can accommodate and intensive care units have reached capacity.
This month, Israeli officials said its military will shift toward a new, less intense phase of operations in Gaza, but a humanitarian crisis in the enclave continues to deepen.
Netanyahu is facing mounting pressure both on the state of the conflict at present and on what Gaza will look like once the fighting ends.
The Israeli prime minister is being pushed by the international community – including the US, Israel’s most important ally – to allow the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Domestically, he is being pressured to guarantee Israel’s security, most notably from far-right members of his coalition.
He has also faced growing criticism inside Israel for so far failing to secure the release of all the hostages https://ikutisaja.com taken by Hamas during their October 7 attack.
Israel has offered a two-month ceasefire to Hamas as part of a prospective hostage deal, Axios reported Monday, citing two unnamed Israeli officials. Israeli officials are optimistic about Hamas’ response to that proposed deal, CNN foreign policy analyst Barak Ravid told CNN on Monday.
Editor’s Note: Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel’s weekly newsletter. Get the latest news in aviation, food and drink, where to stay and other travel developments.CNN —
Thousands of airline passengers across Europe woke up this morning at the wrong destination – and even in the wrong country – after Storm Isha caused havoc with flights, with dozens of cancelations, diversions and go-arounds in western Europe.
It’s usually the quickest way of getting from A to B for long journeys, but for those traveling to and from Ireland and the UK last night, flying became an odyssey. Airports in Ireland and the UK were badly hit by the storm, with gusts of up to 90 mph slicing across the runways.
Many aircraft heading west diverted to safer landings in continental Europe, often having flown to the destination before failing to land. Ryanair was especially affected, since its base is Dublin, where a whopping 166 inbound and outbound flights were canceled on Sunday, according to Kevin Cullinane, group head of communications at daa, the operator of Dublin Airport.
The airport also saw 36 flight diversions and 34 go-arounds – where planes abandon landing mid-process and decide to ‘go around’ for another try.
The numbers explain the extraordinary scenes that unfolded as aircraft attempted to complete their flights to and from Ireland.
A Ryanair flight from Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, to Dublin made it almost as far as the Irish capital, before turning around and diverting to Bordeaux, France, without attempting to land.
Another Ryanair flight, FR555, was meant to make a quick hop from Manchester to Dublin. After circling nearby in a holding pattern, it attempted to land at Dublin but made a go-around and diverted to Paris Beauvais. What’s usually a half-hour flight became two-and-a-half hours.
Another Manchester-Dublin flight went back and forth between the UK and Ireland for over three hours, appearing to circle but abandon landing at Dublin, attempt to get on the ground at Belfast (where it made a go-around) and circling over Glasgow before landing in Liverpool – just 31 miles away from the departure airport.
A Manchester-Dublin flight tried Dublin, Belfast and Glasgow before landing in Liverpool.FlightRadar
A third, FR816, due to make the hour-long flight from Shannon to Edinburgh, flew all the way to Scotland and then diverted to Cologne, in Germany. It was heavily delayed, too: due to depart Dublin at 3.35 p.m. it arrived in Cologne around midnight.
A Lufthansa flight from Munich to Dublin was forced to do a go-around and return to Munich.
Cork, in Ireland, saw 13 cancelations on Sunday, as well as six diversions and seven go-arounds.
The UK was also badly hit. There were over 100 go-arounds at UK airports, according to NATS, the UK’s air traffic control operator.
“Isha made its presence felt in the south of England and Ireland, where the winds were gusting 70-75 mph, south-westerly which meant crosswinds at our major airports in the south, with wind shear and turbulence adding extra challenges for flight crews,” Steve Fox, head of network operations for NATS, wrote in a blog post.
“And in the north of the country, the winds were even more fierce, with gusts of more than 90 mph creating problems not just for aviation but the whole of the transport infrastructure.
“As UK airfields started to fill up with aircraft either unable to depart or diverted, throughout the evening we monitored the situation as aircraft diverted from Dublin to Deauville, Edinburgh to Cologne and wherever in the UK was least affected and space still available at the pilot’s critical decision point.”
There were 44 cancelations at Edinburgh, according to a spokesperson for the airport, who called Sunday’s operations “challenging.” Eight flights were diverted.
Manchester saw 14 cancelations, but fewer go-arounds than other airports because of the direction of the gusts, according to a spokesperson. “We did see some diverted flights leaving Manchester and some diverted to Manchester because of conditions at other airports, particularly Dublin,” they said. A domestic carrier, Loganair, canceled all its flights yesterday at the airport.
London’s Gatwick airport saw 22 diversions, but was able to take five flights diverted from other airports, according to a spokesperson for the airport. Stansted, northeast of London, was less affected, with nine cancelations but receiving 31 diversions.
An easyJet flight from Antalya, Turkey, to Manchester, made all the way to the UK before turning around and making a safe landing in Lyon, France.
One aircraft even attempted to land in the UK instead of continue its route. Ryanair flight 718 from Manchester to Budapest was seen descending to 1,200 feet at Stansted before ascending again and continuing to Budapest.
Flight tracking websites lit up with bizarre routes and swirls, as planes circled, waiting for a safe window to land – then turned around to divert somewhere in another country.
By Monday morning, the knock-on effects were showing, with aircraft out of position scattered across Europe. There were 29 cancelations at Dublin by 8.30 a.m., said Cullinane. Passengers affected by the storm will have additional parking charges waived, he added. There was just one cancelation at Cork today.
‘People want drama’
A Manchester-Dublin flight ended up in Paris.FlightRadar
As is becoming customary when there’s a storm in the UK, aviation streamer Jerry Dyer of Big Jet TV was at Heathrow, watching the planes come in during the afternoon.
Although the winds hadn’t reached their peak – Dyer stopped the feed when it got dark – he caught on camera aircraft struggling with the wind and making hard landings – such as an Aeromexico flight from Mexico City, that started “oscillating” as it landed, tipping from side to side.
“It’s like driving a vehicle in heavy winds, you’re counteracting everything,” he told CNN.
“It’s very controlled, they know what they’re doing.”
Over 350,000 people have watched his footage of the Isha landings.
“People watch for entertainment value but are also secretly watching to see if anything happens – they want drama, like a go-around,” he said.
Another streamer compiled footage of every go-around at Birmingham Airport.
One pilot who landed at London Heathrow in the late afternoon told CNN that they battled winds of almost 90 knots (104 mph) at 3,000 feet, which dropped to 35 knots (40 mph) at ground level.
“Getting the aircraft onto the ground safely is a huge team effort in circumstances like yesterday and not all of that team is piloting the aircraft,” said the pilot, who wished to remain anonymous because their airline does not allow them to speak for it.
“This presents significant challenges for not only the pilots but the air traffic controllers that vector the aircraft onto their final approach. The wind was https://ikutisaja.com so strong yesterday we had a groundspeed that would have, in less extreme conditions, seen us overtaken by a helicopter.”
They added that dealing with situations like this are normal.
“Whilst it may be exciting and sometimes stressful for passengers, and even entertaining when narrated by Jerry from Big Jet TV, it’s all part of a day’s work for an airline pilot. We train for these extreme events and plan for success, but also consider our contingencies in great detail. Yesterday we allowed sufficient fuel for an additional approach if needed, extra holding, and even a diversion to an airport where the wind wasn’t so acute,” they said.
“Safety isn’t an accident, it’s all about planning and having options when a landing isn’t assured at your destination.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads the weekly cabinet meeting at the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv on January 7.Ronen Zvulun/Pool/AFP/Getty ImagesCNN —
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday rejected calls for Palestinian sovereignty following talks with US President Joe Biden about Gaza’s future, suggesting Israel’s security needs would be incompatible with Palestinian statehood.
“I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of Jordan – and this is contrary to a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said in a post on X
The Israeli leader did not provide any other details in his one-line post in Hebrew. The territory west of Jordan encompasses Israel, the occupied West Bank, and Hamas-run Gaza, where Israel is battling the militant group following the October 7 attacks.
Biden and his top officials — including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited Israel and the region last week — have said the creation of a Palestinian state with guarantees for Israel’s security is the only way to finally bring peace and stability to the Middle East.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Sunday called opposition to a two-state solution “unacceptable.”
“The refusal to accept the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, and the denial of the right to statehood for the Palestinian people, are unacceptable,” Guterres posted on X.
Amid reports the US, Egypt and Qatar want Israel to join a new phase of talks with Hamas, Netanyahu this weekend also publicly rejected what he characterized as Hamas’ terms for releasing more Israeli hostages from Gaza: an end of the war, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian enclave, and the release of more Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
“If we agree to this – our soldiers fell in vain. If we agree to this – we will not be able to guarantee the security of our citizens,” Netanyahu said Sunday.
Global calls for a Palestinian state
Netanyahu’s comments comes amid a rift with the US, Israel’s most important ally, on what Gaza will look like once the conflict ends, and exposes the complex position Netanyahu is in.
The Israeli prime minister is facing competing pressure from the international community to allow the creation of a viable Palestinian state and domestically to guarantee Israel’s security, most notably from far-right members of his coalition.
Adding to the pressure, he is also facing calls for early elections, with thousands taking to the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday. Critics have accused Netanyahu of prolonging the war to stay in power. War cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot says he hopes that is not the case, but also says elections should happen within months.
Netanhahu’s statement on Palestinian sovereignty appears to run counter to what he told President Biden a day earlier, CNN reporting suggests. Netanyahu had told Biden in a private phone call on Friday that he was not foreclosing the possibility of a Palestinian state in any form, a personal familiar with the conversation told CNN.
Self-propelled artillery Howitzers roll in southern Israel along the border with the Gaza Strip on January 19.Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images
Biden administration officials have recently been engaged in discussions about a future demilitarized Palestinian state, an idea the US president finds “intriguing,” the source said.
Following the phone call, their first in weeks, Biden told reporters he believed Netanyahu could ultimately be convinced of some kind of two-state solution. “There are a number of types of two-state solutions,” he said.
“There’s a number of countries that are members of the UN that are still – don’t have their own military; a number of states that have limitations, and so I think there’s ways in which this can work,” Biden added.
But the day after Biden spoke, the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement: “In his conversation with President Biden, Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated his policy that after Hamas is destroyed Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty.”
Biden and Netanyahu remain publicly at odds over the question of what will happen to Gaza once the Israel-Hamas war concludes, despite intense American efforts over the past several months to engage officials in Israel and the wider region on a plan they hope can finally resolve the decades-long conflict.
The two-state solution has been the goal of the international community for decades, dating back to the 1947 UN Partition Plan, and many nations say that it is the only way out of the conflict.
President Joe Biden takes questions from members of the press at the White House on January 18.Samuel Corum/Getty Images
It remains an open question how post-war Gaza will be governed but Netanyahu has had long-standing objections to https://ikutisaja.com a two-state solution.
And while Netanyahu’s stance is contentious internationally, he faces pressure from more right-wing members of his cabinet who have caused outrage with their suggestions on what should happen to people living in Gaza.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has championed the idea of a Palestinian exodus from Gaza. He and far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir sparked anger when advocating for the resettlement ofPalestinians outside the Gaza Strip.
Life at Sea promised a dream trip on the MV Lara, but the company failed to buy the ship when investors pulled out.Life At Sea CruisesCNN —
In April 2023, George Fox was gearing up for the adventure of a lifetime: a three-year cruise taking him around the world. The departure was set for Life at Sea’s inaugural cruise, slated to leave Istanbul on November 1.
There was just one problem: His bank refused to wire his payment.
“I told them I needed to make a foreign transaction wire, and I had to tell them what it was for,” says Fox.
“My bank told me they didn’t want to do it. They said, ‘It’s too risky.’ I couldn’t believe it.
“I said it was my money, but they said, ‘It’s coming from our bank.’ They were acting on my behalf.”
In the end, they agreed. Fox’s bank asked him to research Miray Cruises, the Turkey-based company that was launching the Life at Sea project after 30-odd years of cruising around the Mediterranean.
“It took a week or two – I had to find out the names of the owners and do a lot of research, but they finally acquiesced,” he says.
Today, Fox is one of more than 100 would-be passengers waiting for a refund from Miray, which canceled the cruise just two weeks before its delayed departure date. In all, he says he paid $70,000 of the $230,000 total fee for three years in an external cabin.
Others say they spent more. One would-be passenger CNN spoke with says they are more than $300,000 down.
When canceling, Life at Sea vowed to refund passengers in full. Payments were to be made in three monthly tranches, with the first to be completed by December 22,according to company emails seen by CNN.
But now, after two of three payments should have arrived, passengers say that only a handful have seen any money, and no one has got what they were expecting. The company doesn’t deny problems with repayment, and it now says that customers will be reimbursed in full by February 15.
The majority, including Fox, have not even seen a dollar, passengers tell CNN.
The high hopes and eventual failure of the Life at Sea cruise reads a bit like a Greek tragedy.
Over the past 10 months, as it went from dream to nightmare, CNN has been in contact with around 20 would-be passengers. Some say they always feared the cruise would be canceled, but they signed up anyway – the dream was too alluring. Some think it was a scam; others think the company simply couldn’t afford to buy the ship. Some hope they might see their money back. Others think it was as good as gone as soon as they spent it.
Hearing their stories, two months after the cruise was abruptly canceled, sheds light on why so many booked – some even selling their homes and property to do so.
So what happened?
‘I didn’t even hesitate for a second’
The idea for Life at Sea was to take an older, smaller ship on a trip of a lifetime – at an affordable price.Life At Sea Cruises
In March 2023, Miray launched its Life at Sea concept: 1,095 days sailing around the world in a floating apartment block. The idea of a long-term, round-the-world cruise wasn’t new, but Life at Sea’s relative affordability – fares started at $30,000 per person per year, including accommodation, food, drinks, laundry and even health care – made waves.
For many people, the idea of living in a small cabin is the stuff of nightmares. But for the passengers who’d signed up to fill 111 cabins of the Life at Sea vessel, it seemed perfect.
Some were experienced cruisers. Others, such as Meredith Shay, had never set foot on a ship.
Shay made headlines as the first person to sign up. A retired flight attendant, travel is in her blood, and cruising around the world sounded a lot more relaxing – and affordable – than flying. “The concept of being in one room and not having to jump onto airplanes was very enticing,” she says now.
Shay had already been thinking about long-term cruising when Life at Sea first launched. While Miray was by no means the first company to offer it, other options tend to be at least double the price. Several startups in the field had already delayed their launches or failed to acquire ships.
“But then this one popped up – they were leaving quickly, doing it for just three years and the itinerary was close to perfect,” says Florida-based Shay. “I jumped on it.” Within 12 hours of reading about Life at Sea, she’d booked a cabin.
She wasn’t the only one to move fast. Also in Florida, Jenny Phenixhad been looking into the idea for several years.
“When they described a residential cruise at a price I could actually afford, that was a no-brainer for me,” she says. “My entire working life, I was planning on traveling as much of the world as possible once I retired. It’d all depend on what I could afford, and I thought I’d be doing it in little chunks, as much as I could fit in before the end of my life. No other cruise was even close to affordable for me, so when I saw that, it was a game changer. I didn’t even hesitate for a second.”
As for Fox, once he paid his deposit, he decided not to share his plans with anyone.
“I guess I always had a feeling inside that it might not happen,” he says. “I never told anyone, because I didn’t want to https://ikutisaja.com make a big deal about it and then tell everyone it fell apart.”
‘If it’s a scam, you deserve to keep my money’
Renderings of the ship touted a dream lifestyle.Life At Sea Cruises
To begin with, everything was plain sailing, but then the plans hit rougher waters.
As managing director of Life at Sea, Mikael Petterson had been overseeing sales. Petterson says the idea for Life at Sea was originally his, conjured up while working as a cruise start-up consultant.
“I’ve worked with some of our competitors, and they all shoot for the moon – million-dollar residences; it’s never affordable,” he says.
His idea, he says, was to get a slightly older ship, with slightly smaller cabins, and make it “affordable for the everyday person.” A shipbroker paired him up with Miray which, unlike other residential cruise start-ups, already had a boat: the MV Gemini, a 19,000-ton vessel built in 1992, with a capacity of 1,074 passengers. Petterson was hired to manage sales.
By the end of March 2023, just one month after sales opened, Petterson says his team had sold 285 out of 400 cabins. Miray disputes this, claiming that after Petterson’s departure, it found “around 130 cabins” booked, 30 of which later canceled.
In April, says Petterson, they got bad news. On a visit to the MV Gemini, his team was told by engineers that the ship wasn’t up to scratch for the planned journey. Miray disputes this, although in a March email Ethem Bayramoğlu, Miray’s then vice president of marine operations and ground services, called a proposed nonstop transatlantic crossing in the Gemini “very risky” because of limited fuel capacity.
“Vedat said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. We’re going to get you a new ship,’ ” says Petterson, referring to Vedat Ugurlu, Miray’s owner.
Passengers knew nothing of the speedbump. As they pored over pictures of the MV Gemini, the Life at Sea team traveled to Germany to visit the Aura, a larger, 42-ton ship with a capacity of more than 1,200, that was soon to be retired by Carnival subsidiary AIDA Cruises. They decided to buy.
Petterson says that as a May 30, 2023,customer payment deadline approached, he still hadn’t received confirmation that a suitable ship had been acquired for the cruise – so without consulting Miray, he postponed the payment deadline by a month. When Miray objected, he resigned, along with much of his team, and told passengers the cruise was off.
In response, Kendra Holmes – who was promoted from vice president of strategy and business development to CEO – told passengers on Facebook that around half the founding team had left, but that Miray was determined to make the cruise go ahead.
Things turned nasty.
Petterson – who says his team was never paid commission for sales made – told clients the cruise was off and criticized Miray on social media. Miray promptly brought a defamation lawsuit against him, although the company dismissed it in December 2023 after the cruise had been canceled. Petterson has now launched a rival project, Villa Vie Residences.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit against Life at Sea from four members of the original sales team demanding nearly $600,000 in damages is underway. Bayramoğlu, now chief operating officer of Miray, calls it “ridiculous.” He has shown CNN an invoice from Petterson, demanding $1.7 million in commission – what they’d be owed if everyone had paid in full – dated May 10, 2023, when only deposits had been taken.
“How can we pay $1.7 million if we have collected only $500,000 as deposit?” Bayramoğlu asks.
The schism within the cruise team rattled some passengers. Miray offered full refunds to anyone who wanted to cancel. Sharon Lane took her money and ran. “The risk was too great,” she told CNN at the time. Looking back now, she’s relieved: “I lost large sums of money twice in my life by trusting people to do what they promised. I did not want to risk a third financial disaster.”
But many stayed. “There’s no trepidation at all,” Shay told CNN at the time. “I’m over-the-moon excited to just drop out and drop into a new life.”
Others who stayed had reservations. “I had to ask myself, ‘Is it a scam?’ ” says Fox of the new team. “I decided no, it can’t be.” Holmes, the CEO, called him personally to go through plans. “After I talked to her, I was persuaded it was legit, even if I wasn’t convinced they’d succeed,” he says. “I told her, ‘If it’s a scam, you deserve to keep my money.’ ”
Diving ever deeper
Miray put down a deposit to buy the AIDAaura. But when putative investors backed out, the sale was off.Marit Hommedal/NTB Scanpix/AFP/Getty Images
In early summer, diver Noel Hansen met for coffee with his old friend Kendra Holmes. Miray’s new CEO was also a qualified diving instructor who had previously worked for Hansen, who owns The Dive Place in Clermont, Florida.
“We’ve known Kendra for years, and we were chatting in the store. It started out as a light conversation about ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to go diving around the world?’ ” he says.
“It progressed to the point where she came back and said, ‘I want to do a dive-round-the-world program, and I’d like you guys to do it.’ ”
Hansen and his team got to work. “We spent weeks going through the itinerary, setting up contacts for dive opportunities in the ports of call. Then, because we were going to be putting two staff members on the ship, we hired another instructor in September.”
‘Hook, line and sinker’
Rebecca Varner (left) sold her house to go on the cruise. She’s now in Costa Rica with fellow passenger Lorna Bolduc.Rebecca Varner
No one outside Life at Sea and Miray knows exactly how many people signed up for the cruise. In July, Holmes suggested to CNN that around 200 cabins had been sold, with new bookings for the Aura evening out the cancelations from the Petterson split. Now, she estimates they had about 150.
When the cruise was canceled in November, Bayramoğlu told passengers that only 111 cabins were booked.
Some people had lucky escapes thanks to Miray’s own staff.
Bonnie Kelter, from New Jersey, had read about the cruise when it was first announced, but boarding it had seemed like pie-in-the-sky.Then, in August, her husband announced he wanted a divorce.
“I said, ‘Well I don’t have grandchildren, I don’t have a husband – the anchor had been cut off my neck,’ ” she says. “My ex was like, ‘You’re crazy.’ In my mind I was on the ship already.” The staffing and medical care appealed to her as a newly single retiree, as did the community that the passengers were building on social media.
Kelter immediately put her house up for sale and called Life at Sea, asking if she could put down a third of the money they wanted – it was all she could afford until her house sold.
“She said she had to go to upper management, and I never heard back. When I read on CNN about the delays, I thought, ‘Well, I won’t press her,’ ” she remembers. But she trusted Miray’s sales representative: “She had a good answer for everything. If she was lying, she was really good.”
Kelter’s plan was to put down her deposit as soon as her house sale went through. Luckily for her, it sold on December 1, two weeks after the trip was canceled. She didn’t lose money, but she no longer has a home.
She is now living in an extended-stay property, working out her next move.
Kelter wasn’t the only person to sell her house to go on the cruise.
“I liquidated everything I owned in preparation for that trip – I was in hook, line and sinker,” says Rebecca Varner.
Varner had spent 30 years traveling the globe for the US Foreign Service, but 18 years earlier she had settled in Maine. She loved her community there, but reading about the cruise, she’d felt a pull.
Regular cruises, where you dip into port for a day, had never appealed to her, but a cruise where you spend around a week in each port, as Life at Sea was promising? “This was going to take me to cultures I could explore,” she says.
She put her house on the market in April, then sold her car and possessions that she’d collected from all over the world. In October, she moved in with her sister in Florida to await the departure.
‘Homeless and jobless’
Jenny Phenix feared she’d end up without a place to live if the cruise was canceled. Her prediction came true.Jenny Phenix
Life at Sea had told passengers that it would officially buy AIDA’s Aura by late September 2023 and rechristen it as the MV Lara, with dry dock renovations starting soon after. But as the clock ticked into October, several passengers got worried: the company had stopped responding to messages.
Holmes told CNN on October 6 that the sale would close the following week. She said the cruise was “not delayed” and that whispers that the sale had not completed were “merely a rumor.” She added that passengers were “not concerned.”
In fact, Holmes says now, she flew to Germany in late September to complete the purchase of the Aura, and boarded the ship with her team, as well as crew that Miray had hired.
But while she was in a meeting onboard with Carnival to sign for the ship, she got a call from Miray owner Ugurlu.
“He basically told me, ‘The money didn’t come through. We’re working on it. We need another week.’ So then I had to tell Carnival, ‘We didn’t get the money.’ It was the most humiliating position I’ve ever been put in in my entire life.”
She says the ship was sold to another company as Miray looked, unsuccessfully, for other investors.
Miray then set its sights on buying Aura’s sister ship, the AIDAvita, which was also on sale. That way, they could reuse the customized interiors they’d had made for Aura. But without investment, it was impossible.
Passengers knew nothing of this but realized there was a problem when Miray went silent.
Speaking anonymously at the time, Phenix warned, “I’m completely homeless and jobless come November 1.” Her fears came true. Ahead of the cruise, she closed her two companies and rented out her condo. She says she couldn’t now afford the mortgage even if she evicted her tenant, which she wouldn’t do.
Her fellow would-be passenger George Fox says: “I started to doubt whether it was going to happen. It didn’t seem like they were anywhere near getting enough people.” He decided not to send his next payment. “I was already out $70,000,” he says. “I was still hoping it would happen,but I had a gut feeling.”
He wasn’t the only one.
Noel Hansen had lined up a vendor to supply diving equipment to the ship, but they needed a month’s lead time. “When the communications stopped dropping to the residents, that’s when we went, ‘Wait a minute.’ ” He told the vendor to hold fast.
‘I knew it was coming’
George Fox never told anyone he’d booked a spot on the cruise, in case it never departed.Courtesy George Fox
Throughout October, more and more passengers spoke with CNN about their fears that the cruise might not happen. The company was adamant that it would.
On October 24, Miray’s PR spokesperson told CNN that the departure date had been moved to November 30. On November 13, with still no ship on the horizon, the same PR rep said that Holmes had resigned as CEO. Holmes appeared to confirm the news via text to CNN.
Yet four days later it was Holmes who would tell passengers that the cruise was off. At the time, she told CNN that she had resigned, but that her relationship with Miray was “complicated.” CNN broke the news that the cruise was canceled on November 24.
“It was the same as when my parents said they were getting divorced,” says Fox. “I was like, well, doh! I knew it was coming.”
Passengers had boxed up their possessions into “pods” to be loaded onto the ship. The pods were in a Miami warehouse. After waiting in vain for Miray to return their belongings, Varner and another passenger, Lorna Bolduc, paid for delivery themselves.
Bolduc was watching the fallout from Florida where she was renting. She says she paid around $200,000 for an external cabin – upfront, in full, to take advantage of an early bird discount.
“I wasn’t embarrassed it was canceled,” she says. “What’s embarrassing is that people ask, ‘Are you getting your money back and I said ‘Yeah, it’s coming end of December.’ Then in January they asked, ‘Did you get your first instalment?’ ”
Because although Miray vowed to refund all passengers in three monthly tranches, starting in December, few have received any money so far, according to passengers, one of whom is missing $325,000.
Miray’s Bayramoğlu now promises that all passengers will be refunded in full by February 15, the original date for the completion of the reimbursements, in either one or two transactions. He says they will also repay expenses incurred including travel to Europe and the rerouting of passenger pods.
He blames the repayment issues on passengers disputing the transactions through their banks.
“The banks have frozen our funds to secure the payback and will refund the money by itself,” he says. “Our bank here wants to make sure that all chargebacks are paid in full. We now have an agreement with the banks and the refunds will be made very soon.”
Meanwhile, the passengers are in limbo. Some are traveling together: Bolduc and Varner have “dropped off the map” to Costa Rica for three months, and Phenix is renting on the beach in Ecuador along with two other passengers.
Phenix is one of the 78 disillusioned passengers who signed a letter to the US attorney of Southern Florida asking him to investigate fraud claims on January 16.
“I don’t believe it started out to be anything fraudulent, but I absolutely believe when they realized the Gemini wouldn’t be able to make the trip and then started giving us a lot of incorrect information or withholding important information – at that point it became fraud,” she says. Bayramoğlu says the company “protests” the accusation “because we will pay everything back. Miray Cruises is for real and spent more than 33 years in the cruise industry.”
He added: “Now, we are concentrated on making the refunds, to declare the new vessel for 2024 Life at Sea departure and to continue our Aegean Islands operations with Gemini.”
Miray has offered the would-be passengers a free Mediterranean cruise this summer, and it has promised to actually launch a Life at Sea cruise in November.
Bolduc and Varner, who are feeling sanguine, would consider it “if it were to take place – but I don’t think it will after this,” says Varner, who’s waiting until spring to decide what to do next.
George Fox, whose bank had flagged his initial payment, doesn’t think it was a scam.
“It just fell apart. And the man with the money will either make good or he won’t, simple as that.”
Hansen, the dive shop owner, has a similar theory.
“I don’t think there was an outright intention to defraud or mislead, I personally think they just weren’t sure how to handle it and it was getting out of control,” he says. “I think it was a spiraling staircase going down to the depths of hell. Once the spiral started it kept on going.”
The wristwatch that landed Arnold Schwarzenegger in detainment at Munich Airport on Wednesday raised €270,000 ($294,000) after being sold at a dinner in Austria for his charity, the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative.
The event, which raised €1.31m in total, was attended by US Climate Envoy John Kerry along with many other climate action visionaries. Art pieces and unique jewelry were also auctioned off.
“Amidst the ongoing fight against pollution, I also witness the progress that has been achieved. We have come a long way. Today, so many people are here to be part of the solution,” Schwarzenegger said at the dinner. “I extend my gratitude to everyone who has joined my fight against pollution.”
Schwarzenegger is facing criminal tax proceedings for failing to declare the Audemars Piguet watch to customs officers in Munich after he got off a flight from Los Angeles, a Munich Customs press officer told CNN Wednesday.
“He did not declare a product. A product that was imported from non-EU countries in order to remain in the EU. And this process applies to everyone,” press officer Thomas Meister said.
Meister said the former California governor and “Terminator” star was released and traveled on after being held for over two hours.
The actor agreed to pre-pay potential taxes on the watch but the officers failed to get a credit card machine to work for an hour until they gave up and brought him to a bank and asked him to withdraw cash from an ATM to pay, a source close to the actor told CNN.
The ATM they brought him to had a limit that was https://ikutisaja.com too low, and the bank was closed.
When he returned, a new officer brought a new credit card machine that worked, the source added.
