Fifty-five men from across France were arrested between Monday and Thursday morning as part of a large-scale operation to dismantle a pedophile network operating through the messaging service Telegram, according to France’s Office for the Protection of Minors.

“These 55 individuals all exchanged CSAM imagery (Child Sexual Abuse Material) with the dangerous pedophile, so we had digital evidence implicating all of them,” said Bevan.

Bevan said that the arrests are “the fruit of a ten-month long investigation.”

“It was a major investigation and infiltration operation on this Telegram group,” Bevan said. “We had to follow the exchanges, analyze them, and identify the individuals hiding behind these Telegram pseudonyms — especially those who had children, had criminal records, or worked in sensitive professions involving contact with children.”

Bevan said the men are from all ages and backgrounds: fathers, civil servants, military personnel, and paramedics.In France, the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material is punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a €100,000 ($112,747) fine.

French authorities indicted Durov on August 28, 2024 on several charges, including money laundering and spreading child sex abuse material. Durov said in a statement soon afterwards that he was committed to improving his app’s moderation and that authorities were trying to hold him “personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram.”

Organized crime and violence in the Mexican state of Sinaloa has forced a local sanctuary to close and transfer at least 700 animals – including elephants, tigers, lions, ostriches, chickens, monkeys, crocodiles, and hippos – to a new location 212 kilometers (approximately 131 miles) away.

The animals were relocated from the Ostok Sanctuary in Culiacan, a city in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, to Mazatlan, in the southern part of the state, due to ongoing violence, according to sanctuary director Ernesto Zazueta.

In recent months, violence between rival factions of the Sinaloa cartel has surged across the state in northwestern Mexico, particularly in Culiacan.

According to Zazueta, this is the largest relocation of wildlife in Mexico ever carried out due to violence.

Zazueta stated that the sanctuary closed due to threats to staff, robberies, and extortion attempts from criminal groups.

“Culiacan is the toughest area. We had never had problems in other occasions, but nowadays it became very difficult for us to even reach the sanctuary. They practically chased us out of the place because there were people who wanted to extort us,” Zazueta said.

Zazueta said the sanctuary came to its decision after one of its elephants, named Viki, had a problem with her leg and the staff realized that no veterinarian was willing to make the trip to Culiacan due to safety concerns.

The British government is to rollout the use of medication to suppress the sex drive of sex offenders, as part of a package of measures to reduce the risk of reoffending and alleviate the pressures on the prison system, which is running out of space.

In a statement to Parliament Thursday following the release of an independent sentencing review, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said so-called chemical castration would be used in 20 prisons in two regions and that she was considering making it mandatory.

“Of course, it is vital that this approach is taken alongside psychological interventions that target other causes of offending, like asserting power and control,” she said.

Though the review highlighted the treatment would not be relevant for some sex offenders such as rapists driven by power and control, rather than sexual preoccupation, Mahmood said studies show that chemical castration can lead to a 60% reduction in reoffending.

It’s been used in Germany and Denmark on a voluntary basis, and in Poland as mandatory for some offenders.

The recommendation was part of a wide-ranging review led by former justice secretary, David Gauke. As well as looking at ways to cut reoffending, Gauke recommended reforms to overhaul the prisons system, which is running at near-capacity.

One of the first things Mahmood did as justice minister after Labour returned to power after 14 years last July was sanction an early-release program for prisoners to free up space. She says she inherited a judicial system that had been neglected for years by the previous Conservative government and set up the review as a means to stabilize it.

“If our prisons collapse, courts are forced to suspend trials,” she said. “The police must halt their arrests, crime goes unpunished, criminals run amok and chaos reigns. We face the breakdown of law and order in this country.”

The review recommended that criminals could be released from prison earlier than currently, while judges could be given more flexibility to impose punishments such as driving bans. It also recommended that sentences of less than 12 months would also be scrapped, apart from exceptional circumstances such as domestic abuse cases. It also called for the immediate deportation for foreign nationals handed a three-year sentence or less.

The review called for higher investment in the probation service to allow officers to spend more time with offenders for their rehabilitation and extra funding for the many more being tagged in the community.

Mahmood responded by giving a 700 million-pound ($930 million) a year for probation within years.

“If the government doesn’t put the resources into probation that is necessary, then the risk here is that we won’t make progress on rehabilitation that we need, and there will be a public backlash against it,” Gauke said.

The prison population in England and Wales has doubled over the past 30 years or so to nearly 90,000. That’s despite a fall in crime rates and is driven in part by the fact that longer sentences are being handed out amid pressure to be tough on crime.

Robert Jenrick, the justice spokesman for the Conservatives, warned that scrapping short sentences would be effectively “decriminalizing” offenses like burglary, theft and assault. And tags, he said, are as useful as “smoke alarms putting out bonfires” in stopping reoffending.

In response, Mahmood said she was clearing up the mess left by the Conservatives and that the government has also embarked on the largest expansion of the prison estate since Victorian times in the 19th century.

Italian police say they chased down a German tourist after spotting him transporting an ancient Roman artifact on a rented e-scooter.

Officers apprehended the 24-year-old on Wednesday evening after he was spotted zipping down the historic Via Veneto near the US Embassy with the 30 kilogram (66lbs) marble base of an ancient column between his feet.

Rome’s archeological superintendent described the artifact as being of “historic interest.”

Police said the tourist had told them that he obtained it as a “souvenir,” but it is unclear if he paid someone for it.

Police said the man has not been charged but is under investigation for “receiving stolen cultural goods.” They did not release his name.

Archeological experts are still studying the artifact to determine where it was taken from.

Tourists behaving badly have long been a cause of annoyance to Italian authorities.

In recent years, tourists have been arrested for driving e-scooters and a Maserati down the Spanish Steps, carving initials into the Roman colosseum, and riding a moped into the ancient ruins of Pompeii.

In February a tourist from New Zealand was fined for diving into the Trevi Fountain.

Earlier this month, an American tourist had to undergo emergency surgery after he was impaled on a spire after trying to climb over a fence surrounding the ancient Roman colosseum.

U.S. President Donald Trump showed a screenshot of Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what he falsely presented on Wednesday as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans.

“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by the picture during a contentious Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

In fact, the video, published by Reuters on February 3 and subsequently verified by the news agency’s fact check team, showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot following deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.

The blog post showed to Ramaphosa by Trump during the White House meeting was published by American Thinker, a conservative online magazine, about conflict and racial tensions in South Africa and Congo.

The post did not caption the image but identified it as a “YouTube screen grab” with a link to a video news report about Congo on YouTube, which credited Reuters.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Andrea Widburg, managing editor at American Thinker and the author of the post in question, wrote in reply to a Reuters query that Trump had “misidentified the image.”

She added, however, that the post, which referred to what it called Ramaphosa’s “dysfunctional, race-obsessed Marxist government”, had “pointed out the increasing pressure placed on white South Africans.”

The footage from which the picture was taken shows a mass burial following an M23 assault on Goma, filmed by Reuters video journalist Djaffar Al Katanty.

“That day, it was extremely difficult for journalists to get in… I had to negotiate directly with M23 and coordinate with the ICRC to be allowed to film,” Al Katanty said. “Only Reuters has video.”

Al Katanty said seeing Trump holding the article with the screengrab of his video came as a shock.

“In view of all the world, President Trump used my image, used what I filmed in DRC to try to convince President Ramaphosa that in his country, white people are being killed by Black people,” Al Katanty said.

Ramaphosa visited Washington this week to try to mend ties with the United States after persistent criticism from Trump in recent months over South Africa’s land laws, foreign policy, and alleged bad treatment of its white minority, which South Africa denies.

Trump interrupted the televised meeting with Ramaphosa to play a video, which he said showed evidence of genocide of white farmers in South Africa. This conspiracy theory, which has circulated in far-right chat rooms for years, is based on false claims.

Trump then proceeded to flip through printed copies of articles that he said detailed murders of white South Africans, saying “death, death, death, horrible death.”

Russian armed forces are creating a “security buffer zone” along the border between Russia and Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

“I have already said that a decision was made to create the necessary security buffer zone along the border. Our armed forces are currently solving this problem. Enemy firing points are being actively suppressed, the work is underway,” Putin said.

Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said the plan was “aggressive” and demonstrated that “Russia is the obstacle of peace efforts now.”

Thursday’s announcement was made ahead of an expected prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia on Friday – an outcome of last week’s face-to-face talks in Turkey, the first time the two countries have held direct talks at any level in three years.

The Russian president previously raised the possibility of creating a “buffer zone” in March during a visit to Russia’s Kursk region. He doubled down on the border plan during a meeting on Thursday with members of the government, during which he discussed the need to “restore and rebuild everything that was destroyed” in the border region.

“(We must) help people return to their native villages, settlements, (and) where security conditions allow, restore all transport and other infrastructure,” Putin added.

The Russian leader is planning on hosting a dedicated meeting to discuss the “restoration” projects, Russian state media reported on Thursday.

The announcement comes days after Putin visited Russia’s Kursk region for the first time since claiming to have completely retaken the region from Ukrainian forces, state media reported on Wednesday.

During the visit, the Russian leader said that Ukrainian forces were trying to move toward the Russian border, according to RIA Novosti news agency.

Kyiv launched its offensive into the Russian border territory last August – the first ground invasion of Russia by a foreign power since World War II – and had held control of parts of the region until late last month. Kyiv had intended on using it as a key bargaining chip in any peace talks.

Such dialogue did not materialize until last week, when teams from Kyiv and Moscow met in person in Turkey to begin discussing an end to the war and agreed upon a prisoner exchange – 1,000 people from each side.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Russia had received Ukraine’s proposed list of prisoners of war to be exchanged in Friday’s expected swap, according to Russian state media.

“Yes, indeed, we have received it now,” Peskov was reported as saying when asked about the Ukrainian list.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X Thursday that Ukraine is “clarifying the details for each individual included on the lists submitted by the Russian side.”

“The agreement to release 1,000 of our people from Russian captivity was perhaps the only tangible result of the meeting in Türkiye. We are working to ensure that this result is achieved,” Zelensky posted.