The Sycamore Gap tree, which has stood for more than 200 years in the Northumberland National Park, was found fallen after overnight storms.

Its stump was seen with white paint marks and appeared cleanly cut, as if by a chainsaw, AFP reporters at the scene said. 

The crown of the tree lay partly on the ancient Roman fortification, which stretches 73 miles (118 kilometres) from coast to coast.

The sycamore became internationally famous when it was used for a scene in the 1991 blockbuster film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”, starring Kevin Costner.

Northumbria Police, which is probing the incident, said that the teenager was arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage.

Superintendent Kevin Waring said “the events of today have caused significant shock, sadness and anger throughout the local community and beyond”.

“Given our investigation remains at a very early stage, we are keeping an open mind,” he added.

The sycamore, which won the Woodland Trust’s Tree of the Year in 2016, is a key attraction that has been photographed by millions of visitors over the years.

– ‘Deliberately felled’ –

Tony Gates, chief executive of the Northumberland National Park Authority which manages the surrounding countryside, said it appeared the tree had been “deliberately felled”.

“It’s really sad that someone has taken it upon themselves to do what is really a terrible act of vandalism,” he told AFP at the scene.

“We’re not able at this stage to speculate on (by) who, or why this has taken place.”

Gates said he and volunteers at the national park felt “a real sense of loss” and that many people had been in tears at the news, which prompted a flood of social media messages expressing shock.

“This will have meant a lot to people. People will have been proposed to here, they will have held significant family occasions here,” he added. “Some people may have scattered the ashes of loved ones here. For someone to feel that they can do this to such a site, I just find really hard to comprehend.”

Hadrian’s Wall is an international landmark. Begun in 122 AD during the reign of emperor Hadrian, it marked the boundary between Roman Britannia and unconquered Caledonia to the north.

Thousands of soldiers and many of their families lived along the wall, leaving behind structures and items that have given archaeologists a deep insight into Roman life in the windswept northern limits of their empire.

Visitors had been told to stay away from the site, which was cordoned off with blue and white police tape.

Walkers on the popular cross-country route expressed disbelief at the loss of the photogenic landmark, which had become a symbol of the region.

“Sycamore Gap was a place of happy and moving memories for millions of people, and a symbol of home for people around the world,” said Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Kim McGuinness, calling it a “senseless crime”.

The chief executive of the Arboricultural Association, John Parker, told The Times the outpouring of shock and anger was a reminder of the cultural importance of trees to people.

But Jack Taylor, a campaigner with the Woodland Trust, said many ancient species had no legal protection.

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The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) announced in a statement that following a lengthy criminal investigation, it had filed an indictment against Karimova along with an Uzbek telecoms executive.

“The two accused are in particular alleged to have participated in a criminal organisation that operated in various countries, including Switzerland,” the statement said.

The charges covered the period from 2005 to 2013 and revolved around “participation in a criminal organisation”, money laundering”, “acceptance of bribes as foreign public officials”, and “forgery of documents”. The indictment was filed in Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court.

The OAG maintains that Karimova, daughter of the late Islam Karimov, had from 2001 to 2013 created and run a criminal organisation known as “The Office”, comprising several dozen people and a large number of companies.

The organisation began its operations in Switzerland in 2005 “to conceal the capital originating from its criminal dealings in Swiss bank accounts and safes and by purchasing real estate”, the statement said.

– ‘Men of straw’ –

Karimova, who is already serving a 13-year sentence in Uzbekistan for embezzlement, raked in large bribes from foreign companies wanting to access the booming Uzbek telecommunications sector, the indictment added.

The bribes were paid via companies in “The Office” to get her to wield her broad influence in favour of their market access, the OAG’s investigation found.

“The corrupt funds … were then moved in complex operations to various bank accounts, through several countries and different companies, before being transferred in particular to bank accounts in Switzerland”, it said.

Those accounts were opened in the name of companies within “The Office”. The supposed beneficiaries were in fact “men of straw”, put there to conceal that Karimova was the real recipient, the indictment added.

Investigations conducted in Switzerland have so far led to the seizure of assets totalling the equivalent of 780 million Swiss francs (806 million euros), comprising bank assets and real estate, as well as cash and valuables deposited in bank safes, said the OAG.

On filing its indictment the OAG requested the confiscation of another 440 million francs-worth of assets, it added.

While prosecutors say Karimova was in overall charge of “The Office”, they also indicted the head of the Uzbek branch of a Russian telecommunications company. This suspect, whose name was not given, was accused of being a “key member” of the criminal organisation.

The OAG first opened an investigation in 2012 into Karimova’s personal assistant over money laundering suspicions.

Karimova herself was initially protected by diplomatic immunity, since she was serving as Uzbekistan’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, but after that immunity lifted in 2013, the investigation expanded to focus on her.

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Over 200,000 people are estimated to work in informal cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s largest producer of the critical mineral, a key ingredient in batteries.

Accusations of child labour and corruption also plague the sector.

In 2019, the DRC established the Entreprise Generale du Cobalt (EGC), which has a monopoly on buying and selling artisanal cobalt, with the aim of improving conditions.

However, the state company has remained largely inactive since.

On Thursday, EGC director general Eric Kalala told AFP the company is studying eight pilot sites from which it may soon start sourcing cobalt.

The sites are on concessions owned by the DRC’s state mining company Gecamines in the southeastern provinces of Lualaba and Haut-Katanga.

“We’re studying the mineralisation (of the sites) to check we can use them,” Kalala said on the sidelines of an EGC event in Kinshasa.

Confirmation of the pilot sites is expected within the coming weeks, he added, saying the EGC would then try to secure access to the mines, distribute protective gear and start a mineral traceability scheme.

“It’s a first step,” he said.

EGC officials at the Kinshasa event said the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and delays in establishing a market regulator contributed to the struggles to get the firm operating.

But Congolese mining activist Franck Fwamba told event attendees that politicians with stakes in informal cobalt mines were to blame.

He also suggested that DRC’s Mining Minister Antoinette N’Samba was opposed to the EGC.

Last year, N’Samba said in a media report that EGC’s artisanal cobalt monopoly was illegal.

The minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP.

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The International Energy Agency (IEA), which hosted the conference, has noted “spectacular” growth in renewable power and electric vehicles that is likely to cause fossil fuel demand to peak this decade — and also see demand for critical minerals surge.

Copper is a crucial component for wind turbines, while electric car batteries need lithium, cobalt and nickel.

While these minerals are found across the world, the concentration of processing, particularly in China, has caused concerns over sustainability amid trade and geopolitical tensions.

IEA chief Fatih Birol told delegates the “major challenge” countries face is how to ensure more diverse supplies, with other major issues including sustainability — both environmental and social — and how to increase recycling.  

And the world needs to move quickly, he said. 

“Clean energy transitions are moving faster than many people realise,” he said, adding that more than 80 percent of all new power plants built this year used renewable energy sources.  

Delegates from more than 40 countries attended the meeting — though China and Russia, another major producer, were absent — looking to define a new metals diplomacy.

Debates centred on ways to reorganise the system, with memories of the breakdown in global supply chains during the Covid pandemic still fresh. 

That and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine wreaked havoc in commodity markets, with prices spiking in 2021 and early 2022, though they began to stabilise late last year, the IEA has said. 

“We cannot replace the fossil fuel dependency with a raw material one,” said Thierry Breton, commissioner for the EU’s internal market, adding that the bloc was considering new legislation aimed at boosting mining and refining capacity. 

The United States, which has pledged to be a clean energy leader with its climate and trade policies, also called for increased international cooperation.

– Resource race –

The IEA has flagged concerns that projects and processing are clustered in a small number of countries.

It says China processed 74 percent of the world’s cobalt in 2022, 65 percent of lithium and 42 percent of copper. 

In an interview with AFP earlier this month, Birol said this concentration was a key challenge. 

“Which is not something against China, but if you put all the eggs in one basket it is really not a sustainable choice,” he said.  

Many mineral-rich countries such as Indonesia, Peru and the Democratic Republic of Congo have seen mining booms in recent years, with some aiming to pin their development on these resources. 

Indonesia’s Energy and Mineral Resource Minister, Arifin Tasrif, also called for a new foundation for global cooperation on critical minerals, highlighting that recycling would also play a crucial role. 

The IEA says the energy sector was the main factor behind a tripling in overall demand for lithium between 2017 and 2022, as well as a 70 percent jump in demand for cobalt and a 40 percent rise for nickel.

The IEA predicts that if countries increase their climate ambitions in line with its projections for the energy sector to decarbonise by mid-century, demand for critical minerals will grow by three-and-a-half times by 2030, exceeding 30 million tonnes.

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Sergei Skvortsov, who was arrested in a dawn raid on his suburban Stockholm home in November 2022, has lived in Sweden since the 1990s, running import-export companies.

The 60-year-old is charged with two counts of “unlawful intelligence activities” against the United States and Sweden for over a decade until his arrest.

Prosecutors have argued that Skvortsov was part of a vast Russian organisation built to acquire technology off-limits to Moscow because of international sanctions.

According to experts quoted in Swedish media, the technology was mainly electronic devices that can be used, among other things, in nuclear weapons research.

Much of the three-week trial has been held behind closed doors on national security grounds.

“He is a procurement agent for the Russian military complex and its intelligence unit GRU,” prosecutor Henrik Olin told the Stockholm district court in his final arguments.

“Russia has a need for electronic technology. There is a Russian procurement system, and this system is run by the intelligence services… Skvortsov and his two companies are a part of this system,” Olin said.

Skvortsov, clad in a dark suit for Thursday’s court appearance, has maintained he is innocent.

He says he is a legitimate businessman who sought the proper Swedish authorisations for his exports.

But Olin said that the authorisations were designed to “provide a veil of legitimacy” and that Skvortsov used false names of business partners, omitted information about the types of products he exported and provided false information about their end users.

– Links to US case –

Olin asked the court to hand down a sentence of between four-and-a-half and five years.

Sweden’s charge of “unlawful intelligence activities” is a notch lower than espionage.

Skvortsov’s lawyer Ulrika Borg called for her client’s acquittal, arguing that the prosecution had failed to provide evidence that Skvortsov was a part of Russia’s procurement system.

“He has testified that he is a businessman with a lot of contacts in many areas, ranging from vegetables to Roscosmos,” she said, referring to Russia’s space agency.

“Among all of these, the prosecution has chosen to pick out people that it claims are part of or connected to Russian intelligence, just because they may have lived on the same street,” Borg said.

Olin previously told AFP the electronic devices were mainly from the United States.

He said that US authorities had prosecuted people in New York in 2016 for providing Russia’s “military complex” with electronic devices, and that US authorities believe Skvortsov took over that role from those individuals.

A US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official testified behind closed doors during the Stockholm trial, alongside officials from the Swedish intelligence services.

Skvortsov and his wife were arrested in a raid on their home in the Stockholm suburb of Nacka, when two Black Hawk helicopters and an elite commando force swooped down on their house.

His wife was later released and allegations against her dismissed.

The verdict is to be announced on October 26, the court said.

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A gunman dressed in combat gear opened fire in a flat in the Dutch city then burst into a nearby medical centre. Fires broke out in both places but were later extinguished.

“The two shooting incidents in Rotterdam have resulted in fatalities. We will first inform family and relatives and will explain more later,” the city police said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

Elite police units had burst into the hospital in the Dutch city searching for the suspect, who was armed with a handgun, authorities said.

The suspect is 32 and the motive for the attack is unknown, local news agency ANP said, citing police. He is suspected of carrying out both shootings and there is not a second shooter, police said.

Pictures from the scene showed people streaming out of the hospital, including medics and patients, as police in body armour moved in. Police helicopters buzzed overhead.

Medics in white coats wheeled patients out on stretchers and wheelchairs 

Police had earlier said the suspect was wearing “combat-style” clothes, was tall, with black hair and carrying a backpack.

“First there was a shooting on the fourth floor. Four or five shots were fired. Then a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the education centre,” said a medical student cited by RTL Nieuws, who did not give his name.

“There was a lot of panic and screaming… I didn’t hear any shots, just the panic and that’s what I started to act on,” public broadcaster NOS cited another eyewitness as saying.

Rotterdam is often the scene of shootings, usually attributed to score settling by rival drug gangs.

Authorities were expected to hold a news conference shortly to give more details.

In 2019, three people were shot dead on a tram in Utrecht, sparking a huge manhunt.

And in 2011, the country was left shocked when 24-year Tristan van der Vlis killed six people and wounded 10 others in a rampage at a packed shopping mall.

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The killing and an ensuing gun battle at a monastery in a village close to the Serbian border marked one of the gravest escalations in the former breakaway province in years.

“For this, Serbia should be sanctioned,” Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti told lawmakers on Thursday.

If not, he added, “it will do it again”.

Kurti also said that the “military arsenal of the Serbian professionals who attacked Banjska was made up of weapons from Serbia”.

Kurti was referring to the weapons the Kosovo authorities claim to have seized in the northern village of Banjska during an operation carried out against the gunmen.

According to a list published by Kurti, the haul included an armoured vehicle, grenades, AK47 rifles and rocket launchers, in all worth several million euros.

Belgrade has repeatedly rejected Pristina’s accusations.

The Kosovo police officer was killed on Sunday when gunmen ambushed a patrol a few kilometres (miles) from the Serbian border.

An hours-long firefight followed between the Kosovo police and several dozen heavily armed men holed up in the monastery.

Three gunmen were killed and three were arrested, while the fate of the others remains unknown.

According to Pristina, several are hospitalised in southern Serbia.

Sunday’s violence has reignited tensions between the former foes.

Animosity between Kosovo and Serbia has persisted since a war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in the late 1990s.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a move Belgrade — and its allies Moscow and Beijing — still does not recognise.

Serbia declared the three killed men its “martyrs” and observed a day of national mourning on Wednesday, with hundreds gathering to commemorate them at the Church of Saint Sava in the capital Belgrade.

Serbian tennis star and world number 1 Novak Djokovic, shared on Instagram a photo from the gathering featuring the faces of the three killed men with three praying hands emoticons.

The United States and the European Union condemned the incident, calling on Serbia and Kosovo to take “urgent measures” to reduce the violence and work towards de-escalation.

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Brus, together with three others, founded the “Vienna Actionism” movement which emerged in the 1960s.

The actionists did not shy away from using blood, urine and excrement as they defied the confines of traditional painting.

Of the group, only Brus is still alive, with retrospectives in Vienna and the city of Graz showing prints from his key performances, his pictorial poems and other important pieces to mark his 85th birthday.

“From an Austrian perspective, Guenter Brus is certainly one of the few who have outstanding international significance. It is impossible to imagine art history without him,” said Roman Grabner, who runs a museum dedicated to Brus in Graz, where the artist now lives.

Born on September 27, 1938, in the village of Ardning in central Austria, Brus studied art in Graz before moving to Vienna where he worked with Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler — the other actionists.

One of Brus’s most notable and first performances was in 1965 when he crisscrossed Vienna with his body painted white and bisected by a jagged black line before being arrested by police.

Grabner said the “legendary” act demonstrated “the rift in Austrian post-war society, including of course that of the individual who suffered from this situation”. 

-‘Contaminated by aging Nazis’-

Austria — the birthplace of Adolf Hitler — was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 and long cast itself as a victim before, in the 1980s, beginning to face up to its role in the Holocaust.

Brus openly spoke up about the country’s dark past, saying in a 2018 interview with the Belvedere Museum that “Vienna, as all of Austria, was contaminated by aging Nazis”.

The movement at times took a heavy toll on the artist.

Brus, with his wife Anna and their young daughter, fled Vienna in 1969 after he was sentenced to six months in jail for degrading Austrian state symbols.  

He had taken part in a performance that involved stripping naked in a university lecture hall, defecating and masturbating while chanting the national anthem.

“In Austria nothing more would have been possible. We were shadowed by the judiciary as rioters, and rebels… We were stared at on the tramway,” said Brus, who settled in Berlin with his family before eventually moving back.

Brus held his last live performance in Munich in 1970, in which he appeared nude and cut himself with a razor blade.

According to Anna Brus, who also featured in some of his acts, his performances had become life-threatening.

“I couldn’t continue with the performances… I had to realise that I couldn’t continue like this,” he said in 2018.

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With Moscow’s “special military operation” now dragging through its twentieth month, both sides have been digging deep and procuring weapons from allies in preparation for a protracted conflict.

The announcement came as NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and the defence ministers of Britain and France visited Kyiv, where President Volodymyr Zelensky lobbied for more air defence systems.

“We need to get through this winter together, to protect our energy infrastructure and people’s lives,” Zelensky told Stoltenberg, warning of a fresh campaign of Russian strikes after last year’s strikes left millions short of water and heating.

Ukraine’s newly appointed defence minister Rustem Umerov, after meeting with his British counterpart Grant Shapps, said “Winter is coming but we are ready”.

Ukraine has repeatedly asked for more Western weapons, including longer-range missiles, to help break through Russian positions and launch strikes deep within Russian-controlled territory.

It began its counter-offensive in June but has acknowledged slow progress as its forces encounter lines of heavily fortified Russian defences.

– ‘Hybrid war’ –

Stoltenberg acknowledged that Ukraine’s army was facing “fierce fighting” as it slowly claws back territory from Russian forces, but said Kyiv was gaining ground.

“Every metre that Ukrainian forces regain is a metre that Russia loses. Moscow is fighting for imperialist delusions,” he said.

The speed of Ukraine’s advances has raised concerns in some Western countries over Kyiv’s military strategy, but Stoltenberg again vowed that the US-led defence bloc was unwavering in its support.

“NATO will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes,” he told Zelensky during his unannounced visit to Kyiv. Zelensky meanwhile said it was a “matter of time” before Ukraine joins the alliance.

When the Kremlin launched its large-scale military operation in Ukraine last year it had hoped to quickly capture territory and to topple the Ukrainian government within days.

But the conflict has dragged on and Russia has ramped up arms manufacturing and pumped massive funds into its military machine, despite persistently high inflation and a weaker ruble.

According to a finance ministry document published Thursday, defence spending is set to jump by over 68 percent year-on-year to almost 10.8 trillion rubles ($111.15 billion) — more than spending allocated for social policy.

“It is obvious that such an increase is necessary, absolutely necessary, because we are in a state of hybrid war, we are continuing the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. 

“I’m referring to the hybrid war that has been unleashed against us,” he said.

Defence spending in 2024 is set to total around three times more than education, environmental protection and healthcare spending combined, figures calculated by AFP showed.

“The focus of economic policy is shifting from an anti-crisis agenda to the promotion of national development goals,” the finance ministry said in the document.

It said this included “strengthening the country’s defence capacity” and “integrating” four Ukrainian regions Moscow claims to have annexed last year — Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

President Vladimir Putin and other officials have largely shrugged off the economic effects of the Ukraine offensive, arguing that Russia has weathered the storm of Western sanctions.

But Russia’s central bank warned this month that economic growth was set to slow in the second half of 2023, while ordinary Russians feel the pinch from rising prices.

– Drones and cruise missiles –

Russia’s spending plans were announced as Stoltenberg and the British and French defence ministers visited Kyiv to discuss additional military aid for Ukraine.

The visits came ahead of Kyiv’s first Defence Industries Forum, where Ukrainian officials were to meet representatives from over 160 defence firms and 26 countries.

“Ukraine is now closer to NATO than ever before,” Stoltenberg said at the press conference, listing measures the bloc had taken to support Ukraine.

While neither side has been able to boast significant gains on the frontline in recent weeks, both Moscow and Kyiv have launched systematic aerial attacks on strategic facilities with drones and cruise missiles.

Ukraine said earlier Thursday that Russia had deployed a “massive” drone attack overnight, adding that it had destroyed 31 of the 39 aircraft.

Russian unmanned aerial vehicles were intercepted over Black Sea coastal regions and further inland, said Nataliya Gumenyuk, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian southern military command.

Russia “is not letting up pressure and searching for new tactics: namely, with the use of mass attacks”, Gumenyuk said.

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Armenia supported the bid by the region’s ethnic Armenian majority to win independence from Azerbaijan — a three-decade quest that ended last week in a lightning offensive by Baku.

Here are some key differences between the Caucasus rivals:

– Revolts vs dynasty –

Armenia, a predominantly Christian country, has been rocked by political and economic instability since it gained independence from the Soviet Union.

The country’s post-Soviet leadership repressed opposition to its rule and was largely beholden to the interests of Russia.

Street protests in 2018 brought current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to power. 

He cracked down on corruption but infuriated Armenians by agreeing in 2020 to return parts of Nagorno-Karabakh that had been in the hands of ethnic Armenian separatists since the early 1990s.

Azerbaijan, a predominantly Muslim country with a secular tradition, has been under the authoritarian grip of a single family since 1993. 

Heydar Aliyev, a former officer of the Soviet’s KGB security services, ruled the oil-rich country until October 2003. 

He handed over power to his son, Ilham, weeks before his death.

Like his father, Ilham has quashed all opposition to his rule but Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenia in the 2020 Karabakh war boosted his popularity.

– Turkey vs Russia –

Turkey, with ambitions to be a regional power broker in the Caucasus, has thrown its weight behind historical ally Azerbaijan.

Their alliance is fuelled by a mutual mistrust of Armenia, which harbours hostility towards Ankara over the killings of some 1.5 million Armenians by Turkey during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire.

More than 30 countries have recognised the killings as genocide, though Ankara fiercely disputes the term.

Russia, which maintains close ties with Armenia, is the major power broker in the region. After the 2020 war, Moscow deployed 2,000 peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Yerevan relies on Russian support and military guarantees because its own defence budget is overshadowed by Azerbaijan’s spending on arms.

But bogged down in its Ukraine war, Russia is losing its influence in the post-Soviet space — and Moscow’s failure to help Yerevan in the face of the Azerbaijani threat has fuelled anti-Russian sentiment among Armenians.

– Oil vs celebs –

Azerbaijan has in recent years used its oil wealth to try to boost its standing on the world stage.

It has invested in massive sponsorship deals including the UEFA Euro 2020 football championship, in which it hosted games.

Azerbaijan has also cashed in on the war in Ukraine to try to replace Russia as a major supplier of gas to Europe.

Armenia, for its part, has a vast and influential diaspora that fled during the Ottoman-era repressions.

Reality TV star Kim Kardashian, the late singer Charles Aznavour, and pop star and actress Cher all trace their roots to Armenia.

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