Murrell is the former husband of ex-SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, who suddenly resigned in 2023, shortly before she was arrested as part of the probe into the party’s finances

International News via Reuters:

Former Scottish National Party chief executive Peter Murrell on Monday pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 ($540,000), admitting diverting funds from the party which were used to buy items such as cars, a motorhome and luxury goods.

Murrell is the former husband of ex-SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, who suddenly resigned in 2023, shortly before she was arrested as part of the probe into the party’s finances. She was cleared of wrongdoing in March last year.

The police probe and the arrest of the SNP’s longest-serving leader were deeply embarrassing for the pro-independence party which has dominated Scottish politics for most of the last two decades. 

Police had been investigating what had happened to money raised by Scottish independence campaigners in 2017 which was supposed to have been ring-fenced but had allegedly been used for other purposes.

In written terms of his guilty plea, Murrell admitted embezzling £400,310.65 from the SNP between August 12, 2010, and January 13, 2023, about £60,000 less than he was originally charged with.

“Peter Murrell has shown utter contempt for the high public trust placed in him as the Chief Executive of a political party and his position in the wider political establishment in Scotland for many years,” said Police Scotland’s Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston.

“He abused his privileged position with access to Scottish National Party funds to divert cash into his own accounts and bankroll the lavish lifestyle he craved but could not afford.”

The details of the indictment showed he had used the funds to buy several vehicles, as well as items from luxury brands such as Estee Lauder and Harrods.

Murrell was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on June 23.

($1 = 0.7412 pounds)

Reporting by Alistair Smout, additional reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Gus Trompiz

The comments came during public hearings in the wide-ranging inquiry known as a ​Royal Commission that focus on events prior to last December’s Bondi attack, which killed 15 attending a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at the famed Sydney beach

International News via Reuters:

Australian state police did not prepare a threat assessment for the event where the Bondi Beach mass shooting occurred and denied a request from the Jewish community to station officers there, an inquiry into the attack heard on Monday.

The comments came during public hearings in the wide-ranging inquiry known as a ​Royal Commission that focus on events prior to last December’s Bondi attack, which killed 15 attending a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at the famed Sydney beach.

A New South Wales police officer said no threat assessment was prepared for the event, but agreed in hindsight that one would have been appropriate.

“I see no reason why a threat assessment could not be completed for that event,” said Assistant Commissioner Leanne McCusker, adding that such an exercise would have enabled security arrangements that matched the threat level.

Threat assessments are generally limited for gatherings classed as major events, including Jewish high holy days, but not Hanukkah.

The inquiry also heard that state police were warned of the risks by CSG, a Jewish private security service group, before the attack.

CSG gave them its own threat assessment, warning of a heightened risk of violent or antisemitic incidents at Hanukkah, the inquiry heard.

This stemmed from “the anticipated visibility of identifiably Jewish individuals in public spaces and the prominence of the festival”, such as the Bondi event, the inquiry heard.

An anonymous CSG member said he requested “static” police officers at the event in view of the risk, the numbers expected to attend and the fact that it was to be held in the open air, where CSG could not carry arms.

But police did not believe they were required, he added.

“I said that there would be a lot of unease from the community not having a static police presence on the ground.”

TERROR THREAT LEVEL RAISED

The inquiry was also told that antisemitism in Australia was left unchecked after the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war, which fuelled violence against Jewish people and led the spy agency to raise the national terrorism threat level to “probable” from “possible” in August 2024.

“The war in the Middle East invoked a range of emotions in Australia,” said Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

“Some of those violent aspects … and those behaviours, including antisemitism that, in our view, were left unchecked, were therefore normalised and gave more permission for violence … and Jewish Australians were on the receiving end.”

From late 2024, Burgess said, antisemitism also escalated from threats and intimidation to direct targeting of people, businesses and places of worship.

Such incidents included vandalism and arson targeting homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles before the Bondi attack.

Burgess said the agency concluded that Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind two antisemitic attacks, on a kosher restaurant in Sydney and Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue.

Iran was probably involved in more attacks, but the agency “just can’t quite get there” in its efforts to nail down responsibility, he added.

“There was absolutely a concern that the antisemitism could escalate to actual terrorist acts” after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, said Stephen Nutt, an assistant commissioner of the Australian Federal Police.

The commission’s first series of hearings earlier this month focused on the nature and prevalence of antisemitism, taking testimony from members of the Jewish community.

Reporting by Christine Chen in Sydney; Editing by Clarence Fernandez

Among the group’s suspected leaders were two accountants and state employees who assisted farmers with submitting applications to receive EU farm funds based on false declarations of farm land, police officials said

International News via Reuters:

Greek police arrested 20 people on the island of Crete on Monday, saying they had dismantled a criminal gang suspected of defrauding the European Union of agricultural subsidies – the latest case in a growing scandal that has shaken the government.

Among the group’s suspected leaders were two accountants and state employees who assisted farmers with submitting applications to receive EU farm funds based on false declarations of farm land, police officials said.

Since starting to operate in 2019, the network’s illegal revenue topped €3 million ($3.49 million), police said in a statement.

Monday’s arrests are the latest in a series of local cases linked to a wider probe by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office – an independent EU office – into alleged crimes in Greece against the bloc’s financial interests.

Last year, European prosecutors charged dozens of Greek stock-breeders with faking ownership of grazing land to claim millions of euros in EU subsidies, with the alleged help of state employees and conservative politicians.

The scandal has made political waves in Greece, prompting parliamentary probes – which were inconclusive – as well as ministers’ resignations and calls for early elections by opposition parties.

At the request of the European chief prosecutor, parliament voted in April to lift the ‌parliamentary immunity of 13 lawmakers from the ruling New Democracy party, so they can be investigated over their suspected role in separate cases.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis urged EU prosecutors to decide swiftly whether to indict the lawmakers, as he seeks to stem the political fallout from the probe before the next parliamentary election due by spring 2027.

($1 = 0.8589 euros)

Reporting by Yannis Souliotis; Writing by Renee Maltezou;Editing by Helen Popper

Researchers modelled future ranges for numerous species of vascular plants, a category that accounts for almost all the world’s plants – those with water- and nutrient-carrying tissues

International News via Reuters:

Some of the plants that make familiar landscapes recognizable may not survive by century’s end as climate change becomes an increasingly important driver of species loss, according to scientists, reshaping and often shrinking suitable habitats that the plants need to survive.

Researchers modelled future ranges for numerous species of vascular plants, a category that accounts for almost all the world’s plants – those with water- and nutrient-carrying tissues. They looked at more than 67,000 species, meaning about 18% of the world’s known vascular plants. 

They found that 7% to 16% could lose more than 90% of their range, placing them at high risk of extinction. Examples include Catalina ironwood, or island ironwood, a rare endemic California tree, bluish spike-moss from a plant lineage dating back more than 400 million years, and roughly one third of Eucalyptus species, one of Australia’s most recognizable plant groups.

The researchers came to their estimates after examining millions of records on plant locations as well as greenhouse-gas emissions scenarios for 2081-2100.

A plant’s habitat is not simply a place on a map, but the full array of conditions it needs: temperature, rainfall, soils, land use and landscape features such as shade. 

“One way to picture this is to imagine plants trying to follow a moving ‘climate envelope.’ As temperatures warm, many species can shift northward or uphill to stay cool enough. But temperature is only part of the story,” Junna Wang, a Yale University postdoctoral researcher, and Xiaoli Dong, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis, said in joint comments to Reuters.

Wang and Dong helped lead the study published in the journal Science.

In many places, the study indicated, climate change is shrinking these combinations, leaving fewer areas where all the conditions that a species needs still exist together. 

For plants, movement, or dispersal, usually happens across generations, via seeds or spores carried by wind, water, animals or gravity. Yet when the researchers compared realistic movement with a scenario in which plants could reach any newly suitable habitat, extinction rates were very similar.

“If slow movement were the main problem, then allowing unlimited dispersal should dramatically reduce extinction risk. But that is not what we found,” Wang and Dong said.

That matters for conservation. 

“If dispersal limitation were the main driver, then strategies like assisted migration – physically helping species move to new areas – could solve much of the problem. But if climate change is reducing the amount of suitable habitat overall, then simply helping species move may not be enough,” they added.

The projected impacts vary by region. Cold-adapted plants in the Arctic may lose habitat as extreme cold climates shrink. Dry regions, including parts of the western United States and Mediterranean-climate regions, face risk from stronger drought, lower soil moisture and more frequent wildfires. In southern and eastern coastal Australia, coastlines may limit poleward shifts.

At the same time, local plant diversity could rise across about 28% of Earth’s land surface as species move into newly suitable areas, including parts of the tropics and subtropics where increased rainfall – rather than temperature alone – could make conditions suitable for additional species, the researchers found. 

They described this as a global reshuffling, with some species disappearing from parts of their historical range while others move into new areas, but said local gains do not mean plants are doing better overall.

These shifts could also create “novel communities” – combinations of plants that have not historically lived together but would begin encountering one another for the first time. How would these interactions play out? The researchers said they do not know.

Plants underpin most terrestrial ecosystems. They store carbon, stabilize soils, support wildlife and provide food, timber, medicines and other materials. So changes in plant diversity can have cascading effects on nature and people. 

“If climate change reduces vegetation cover, ecosystems may absorb less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which can further intensify warming. That creates a feedback loop in which climate change harms plants, and reduced plant cover/productivity in turn worsens climate change,” Wang and Dong said.

“Ultimately, protecting plant diversity is not only about conserving nature for its own sake – it is also about maintaining the ecological systems that support human societies,” they said.

Reporting by Marta Serafinko in Gdansk, Poland; editing by Will Dunham