Four men were convicted in Spain Sunday in connection with the homophobic murder of a 24-year-old nursing assistant that sparked protests in cities across Spain and abroad.

Samuel Luiz died in hospital after being assaulted by a group of people outside a night club in A Coruna in the northwestern Galicia region in July 2021.

Diego Montaña, Alejandro Freire and Kaio Amaral were found guilty of aggravated murder, and Alejandro Míguez of complicity.

The jury in A Coruna found it proven that Montaña — the leader of the group — had concluded that Luiz was gay from his speech and clothing, shouting homophobic insults at him before the attack and making anti-gay comments afterward to the other accused.

The jury spent an unusually long five days deliberating after a trial that lasted nearly four weeks. Sentencing will take place later; the prosecution has asked for jail terms of between 22 and 27 years.

Some 364 hate crimes related to sexual orientation or gender identity were reported in Spain in 2023, and 184 arrests were made, according to Interior Ministry data.

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights says only a fraction of hate crimes are reported.

“The city’s special services are working at the scene and leading the rescue efforts, as well as crews from the Vilnius Airport Fire Service,” the airport spokesperson said.

The incident happened at about 5.30 a.m. local time (10 p.m. ET) near Zirniu Street, south of the capital.

The spokesperson said due to “ongoing rescue work near Vilnius Airport,” departures for several aircraft have been delayed.

“All scheduled aircrafts are currently taking off from Vilnius Airport,” the spokesperson said.

Reuters reported that the cargo plane that crashed was a DHL aircraft.

There was no immediate confirmation of casualties.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A massive fire tore through a coastal shanty town in the Philippine capital on Sunday, leaving at least 2,000 families homeless as flames billowed for nearly eight hours.

Drone footage from the Manila Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office showed raging orange flames razing densely packed stilt homes in Isla Puting Bato, a squalid area of Tondo, Manila.

The Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were destroyed and roughly 8,000 people displaced in the blaze that broke out at 8 a.m. Sunday and burned until 4 p.m.

Authorities are still investigating the cause of the fire disaster but blazes in Manila slums are often sparked by faulty electrical wiring or gas canisters.

Isla Puting Bato sits in the district of Tondo, which is Manila’s largest slum area home to roughly 654,220 people. Many live in shabby shacks across densely packed streets near a busy commercial port.

There have been no immediate reports of casualties.

Photos showed residents escaping the fire on makeshift rafts into the sea while others scrambled to salvage their belongings.

Elvira Valdemoro, a 58-year-old Manila resident and shop owner was devastated by the damage.

“I feel bad because we have no livelihood and no home. Everything is gone. We don’t know how we can eat. We are in a very bad situation, and it’s almost Christmas,” she told Reuters.

Manila Mayor Maria Sheilah “Honey” Lacuna-Pangan visited Isla Puting Bato on Monday and spoke with survivors who spent the night in makeshift tents.

“Please be patient. We will keep coming to deliver help. No one wanted this to happen,” Lacuna-Pangan told residents.

She urged residents to get registered and voluntarily evacuate to a temporary shelter, where meals and supplies would be delivered.

“We will help all of you. Don’t lose hope. Let’s help each other out ahead of Christmas time, we really hope to get you back to your homes.”

The regional source suggested that while the deal was closer than ever, it was not fully formed yet. US and Israeli officials cautioned no green light had been given to mediators yet.

In recent days Hezbollah has been considering a US-Israeli proposal for a 60-day pause in fighting that some hope could form the basis of a lasting ceasefire.

Israel launched a major offensive in Lebanon in mid-September following months of tit-for-tat border attacks which started when Hezbollah attacked Israel in solidarity with Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza. Since then, Israel has launched a ground invasion, killed a string of Hezbollah leaders – including one of its founders, Hassan Nasrallah – and injured thousands of people in an attack featuring exploding pagers.

Mounting death toll

On Saturday, Israeli attacks killed at least 84 people and injured 213, according to the Lebanese health ministry, including nearly 30 killed in a strike on a multi-story building in a densely populated neighborhood of central Beirut.

A total of 3,072 people have been killed and 13,426 injured since Israel stepped up its campaign against Hezbollah on September 16, according to Lebanese health ministry figures.

Lauren Izso, Kayla Tausche, Ruba Alhenawi, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Eyad Kourdi, Tamara Qiblawi contributed reporting

Israel’s cabinet unanimously voted to sanction the nation’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz, on Sunday citing its critical coverage of the war following the October 7 Hamas attacks and comments by the outlet’s publisher calling for sanctions on senior government officials.

Haaretz, which is widely respected internationally, has provided critical coverage of Israel’s war following the Hamas attacks on October 7, including investigations into abuses allegedly committed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as military operations expanded across Gaza and into neighboring Lebanon.

The proposal, put forward by communications minister Shlomo Kar’i, will end government advertising in the newspaper and cancel all subscriptions for state employees and employees of state-owned companies.

Haaretz described the move as an attempt to “silence a critical, independent newspaper.”

In a statement following the vote, Kar’i wrote: “We must not allow a reality in which the publisher of an official newspaper in the State of Israel will call for the imposition of sanctions against it and will support the enemies of the state in the midst of a war and will be financed by it, while international bodies are undermining the legitimacy of the State of Israel, its right to self-defense and are actually imposing sanctions against it and its leaders.”

Amos Schocken, the newspaper’s publisher, drew criticism for referring to Palestinian “freedom fighters” during a speech at an event organized by the outlet in London on October 27.

“It (the Netanyahu government) doesn’t care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population. It dismisses the costs of both sides for defending the settlements while fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters that Israel calls terrorists,” he reportedly said.

Following widespread criticism of the comments in Israel, Schocken clarified his comments saying that he did not believe Hamas militants were freedom fighters.

In an editorial Haaretz said that Schocken was referring to “Palestinians living under occupation and oppression in the West Bank.”

Still, it said Schocken had “erred” by referring to anyone who deliberately harms and terrorizes civilians as “freedom fighters,” arguing that the correct term was “terrorists.”

In the speech Schocken also called for international sanctions on Israeli leaders as the only way to force the government to change course.

“In a sense, what is taking place now in the occupied territories and in part of Gaza is a second Nakba,” he said. “A Palestinian state must be established and the only way to achieve this, I think, is to apply sanctions against Israel, against the leaders who oppose it and against the settlers.”

In addition to Schocken’s comments at the London event, Kar’i singled out the newspaper’s coverage of the war in his statement on Sunday.

“The decision came in the wake of many articles that damaged the legitimacy of the State of Israel in the world and its right to self-defense,” he said.

Haaretz slammed the move in a statement on Sunday, calling it “another step in Netanyahu’s journey to dismantle Israeli democracy.”

“Like his friends Putin, Erdoğan, and Orbán, Netanyahu is trying to silence a critical, independent newspaper,” the statement said. “Haaretz will not balk and will not morph into a government pamphlet that publishes messages approved by the government and its leader.”

The move comes two months after the military raided and shut down Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah and six months after the government shut down the broadcaster’s operations inside Israel in May, prompting condemnation from the United Nations and rights groups.

On Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said preliminary investigations showed at least 137 journalists and media workers had been killed covering the war, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.

At least five people have died as Storm Bert swept across the United Kingdom, causing power outages and widespread train and flight cancelations.

Dramatic footage which emerged over the weekend showed rivers in Wales, one of the hardest hit areas, bursting their banks to submerge low-lying streets and vehicles parked outside.

Rescuers waded through hip-deep water to rescue pets with an inflatable raft, while residents teamed up to manually remove water with buckets.

Fatalities during the storm have been reported in multiple locations across Britain.

A man in his 60s died after a tree fell on a car in the south English city of Winchester on Saturday while another man, in his 40s, was killed in a crash in Northamptonshire, a central county, according to local police.

Further north, a 34-year-old man died in a single-vehicle collision in the early hours of Saturday, West Yorkshire Police said.

British news agency PA Media also reported that two other people were killed as the storm battered the UK over the past few days. That included a body found in the search for a dog walker who went missing in floodwater on Saturday, it reported, citing North Wales Police.

Another man in his 80s died after his car entered water at a ford in the northern county of Lancashire Saturday afternoon, PA Media reported, citing local police.

It was unclear whether all of these incidents were linked directly to the storm.

There have been 53 heavy rainfall reports across the UK, according to the European Severe Weather Database. Total rainfall in the last 24 hours reached over 130mm, the UK Meteorological Office (Met) reported, issuing multiple warnings against strong winds for central, southern and eastern parts of England, as well as Northern Ireland and western Scotland.

The storm is expected to clear from the far northeast early Tuesday, though risks of further downpours and strong winds remain across the south of the UK until Wednesday, the Met Office has warned.

Some 300 flights in and out of London Heathrow Airport were cancelled over the weekend, with nearly 1,200 flights delayed.

Train services connecting London and Swansea in Wales, as well as from Exeter to Okehampton and Barnstaple in the southwestern part of the country, were among a raft of routes that were canceled, according to Great Western Railway.

Northern Rail reported “severe disruptions” for several services including in Lancaster, York and Sheffield in north of England.

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks detected unplanned a spate of power outages in England and Scotland over the weekend, according to its website.

More than 60 flood warnings and alerts were reported in Wales alone for the past day, according to Natural Resources Wales.

“Thank you to the emergency services who are working tirelessly to protect communities — my thoughts are with those impacted,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote on X.

The cold front associated with Storm Bert will impact parts of western Europe, where orange warnings for high winds are in place for parts of Germany and France.

The father of an Australian teenager who died from methanol poisoning while on a backpacking holiday has issued a plea to the Laos government to fully investigate his daughter’s death and ensure such incidents don’t happen again.

Bianca Jones, 19, was one of six foreign tourists who died in a suspected mass methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng, a popular backpacker destination in northern Laos.

The deaths of two Australian teenagers, a British woman, an American man and two Danish women – and reports of others taken ill – prompted several Western nations to warn their citizens of the potentially fatal consequences of drinking tainted alcohol in the Southeast Asian country.

Laos, an opaque communist state that tightly controls its media, remained silent on the deaths for over a week before issuing its first statement, but details are still scant, including who else remains in hospital, which nationalities are affected and how widespread the poisonings are.

“We can’t have the passing of our daughter … not lead to change to protect others,” he said.

Bianca Jones was enjoying a backpacking trip to Laos with her friend when they became severely ill after a night out in Vang Vieng. The two friends were ultimately transferred to separate hospitals in neighboring Thailand where they spent several days fighting for their lives in critical condition.

Bianca Jones’ death was announced on Thursday, her friend Holly Bowles died the following day.

“Our daughter was on the trip of a lifetime with one of her best mates,” Jones said, according to Nine News. “This was meant to be a trip full of lifelong memories, and was to be the first of many.”

“Young men and women should be able to travel, create their own life experiences and be safe,” he added. “We’ll forever miss our beautiful girl and hope her loss of life has not been in vain.”

British national Simone White, a 28-year-old lawyer, was also among those who died in Laos.

In the wake of their daughters’ deaths, Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles’ parents have set up a GoFundMe page to help raise awareness of methanol poisoning, describing it “a silent but deadly risk that often claims lives without warning.”

The fundraiser, which has already received more than $133,000, aims to assist the families with expenses in bringing their loved ones’ home, support prevention efforts and launch awareness campaigns to educate travelers, communities and businesses about the dangers of methanol poisoning.

Methanol is an alcohol chemical commonly used in industrial solvents, cleaning products and fuel, though it can be added to alcoholic drinks either inadvertently through traditional brewing methods or deliberately – usually in the pursuit of profit.

Though the complete circumstances of those deaths remains unclear, a statement from the official Lao News Agency (KPL) Friday reported the “suspected cause of the death is believed to be the consumption of tainted alcoholic beverages.”

But Laos authorities have not given any indication of where and how tainted alcohol might have been served.

On Saturday, Laos state media The Vientiane Times identified three others who died as Danish nationals Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman, 20, Frela Vennervald Sorensen, 21, and US citizen James Louis Hutson, 57.

In an official statement, the Laos government said investigations were underway to find out the cause of the deaths and vowed to “bring the perpetrators to justice.”

The government “is profoundly saddened over the loss of lives of foreign tourists in Vang Vieng District … and expresses its sincere sympathy and deepest condolences to the families of the deceased,” it said in a short statement.

Citing a Laos Police Immigration Department report, The Vientiane Times said Laos authorities are “also aware of Australian media reports, which suggest that 12 other foreign tourists have been hospitalized.”

At least five of the six tourists who died stayed at the same hostel in Vang Vieng, and part of the investigation has focused on reports the hostel had offered guests free shots of alcohol before they left for a night out.

The hostel’s owner and manager have been detained but not charged, the Associated Press reported, citing an officer at Vang Vieng’s Tourism Police office and hostel staff.

Backpacker town at the center of the suspected mass poisoning

Thousands of people suffer from methanol poisoning every year, with most cases reported in Asia from people drinking bootlegged liquor or homemade alcohol. Many Southeast Asian nations have low safety standards, patchy regulatory enforcement and high levels of police corruption.

Colin Ahearn, owner of the Facebook page “Just Don’t Drink Spirits in Bali,” which raises awareness about methanol poisoning in the region, said “this has been by far the biggest case I’ve ever come across.”

“It’s an underground, criminal-type thing when you get this number of cases in one particular area,” he said, and was “a way to lower costs of doing business.”

Laos, one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia, has been hit hard by skyrocketing inflation in recent years. Tourism is a key source of revenue for the country’s struggling economy.

A major part of that much-needed revenue comes from towns like Vang Vieng. It has long attracted crowds of foreign tourists as an idyllic stopping point between the capital Vientiane and UNESCO World Heritage-listed city of Luang Prabang.

In the early- to mid-2000s, the picturesque rural town gained a notorious reputation on the Southeast Asian “banana pancake” trail for its wild parties and river tubing culture, along with the wide availability of cheap alcohol and illicit drugs.

A string of fatal accidents linked to poor safety standards and a culture of excess along the river prompted the government in 2012 to shut several bars and activities, reinventing the town as an eco-paradise and adventure travel hub.

Backpackers are not the only group drawn to Laos and Vang Vieng’s mountainous surroundings. In recent years, the town has become popular with a broader range of tourists, especially among families and tour groups from South Korea and neighboring China.

Laos has also become a major focus of China’s vision for Southeast Asia as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a vast overseas infrastructure development program that launched more than a decade ago.

A $5.5 billion railway has brought a flood of Chinese investment to the remote, landlocked country. In 2021, the semi-high-speed Laos-China Railway opened to passengers, connecting the southwestern Chinese commercial hub of Kunming to the Laos capital – a roughly 10-hour journey spanning some 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).

Officials claim it has boosted numbers of overland Chinese travelers while greatly benefiting local vendors and businesses, though the project is seen by some analysts as a “fiscal trap.”

And this year, a “Laos Year 2024” initiative was launched with a goal of bringing in 4.6 million tourists and generating $712 million.