The Maldives has officially barred Israeli passport holders from entering the country, citing solidarity with Palestinians amid the Jewish state’s war against Hamas in Gaza initiated by the terrorist group’s murder-and-kidnapping spree in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Maldives President Dr Mohamed Muizzu has ratified the Third Amendment to the Maldives Immigration Act (Law No. 01/2007), following its passage by the People’s Majlis at the 20th sitting of the first session of the year, held on 15 April 2025.

The Amendment introduces a new provision to the Immigration Act, expressly prohibiting the entry of individuals holding Israeli passports into the territory of the Republic of Maldives, said the President’s office.

According to the President’s Office, the decision reflects the Indian Ocean nation’s condemnation of what it describes as Israel’s “ongoing atrocities” against the Palestinian people.

(Agencies)

Peru’s former president, Ollanta Humala, has been found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

A court in the capital, Lima, said that Humala had accepted illegal funds from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to bankroll his election campaigns in 2006 and 2011.

His wife, Nadine Heredia, who co-founded the Nationalist Party with Humala, was also found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years.

Heredia was granted asylum by Brazil and will have safe passage to travel there with her son, Peru’s foreign ministry said.

Prosecutors had asked that Humala be sentenced to 20 years in jail and Heredia to 26 and a half years.

After a trial lasting more than three years, the court gave its long-awaited verdict on Tuesday.

Humala attended the verdict in person while his wife heard it via video link.

The 62-year-old former president and his wife had denied any wrongdoing.

Who is Ollanta Humala?

Humala, a former army officer who fought against the Maoist Shining Path rebels, first came to national prominence in 2000 when he led a short-lived military rebellion against then-President Alberto Fujimori.

In 2006, he ran for president. He allied himself with the Venezuelan president at the time, Hugo Chávez, and prosecutors alleged that Humala had accepted illegal funding from Chávez to finance his campaign.

His rival for the presidency, Alan García, used Humala’s close ties to Chávez as a way to attack him, warning voters “not to let Peru turn into another Venezuela”.

In 2011, Humala ran for the presidency again, this time on a more moderate platform.

He said that rather than emulating Chávez’s socialist revolution in Venezuela, he would model his policies on those of the Brazilian president at the time, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

His approach proved successful and he defeated his right-wing rival, Keiko Fujimori.

But violent social conflicts early on his presidency quickly dented his popularity.

He also lost the support of many members of Congress, further weakening his position.

His legal troubles started shortly after his term had finished in 2016.

That year, the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht confessed to paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to government officials and political parties across Latin America, to win business orders.

Prosecutors accused Humala and his wife of receiving millions of dollars from Odebrecht.

A year later, a judge ordered that the couple be placed in pre-trial detention.

They were released after a year but the investigation into their links with Odebrecht continued, culminating in today’s verdict.

(BBC News)

Pop star Katy Perry and five other women safely returned to Earth after reaching space aboard Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket.

The singer was joined by Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez and CBS presenter Gayle King, who said a highlight of the flight was hearing Perry sing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”.

After landing back on Earth, Perry said she felt “super connected to life” and “so connected to love”.

The flight lasted around 11 minutes and took the six women more than 100km (62 miles) above Earth, crossing the internationally recognised boundary of space and giving them a few moments of weightlessness.

Also on board were former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

The New Shepard rocket lifted off from its West Texas launch site just after 08:30 local time (14:30 BST).

The capsule returned to Earth with a parachute-assisted soft landing, while the rocket booster also landed back in Texas.

Cheering could be heard from inside the capsule as the recovery crew went to collect them.

Jeff Bezos opened the capsule door to welcome back Lauren Sánchez, the first to disembark.

“I’m so proud of this crew,” she said tearfully. “I can’t put it into words.”

She paused, before adding: “I looked out of the window and we got to see the moon.”

“Earth looked so quiet,” she said, adding that it was not what she expected. “It was quiet, but really alive.”

Next out was Katy Perry, who kissed the ground and lifted a daisy to the sky – her daughter is called Daisy.

Gayle King also got on her knees and kissed the ground.

“I just want to have a moment with the ground, just appreciate the ground for just a second,” she said.

The last to get out, Kerianne Flynn, pointed at the sky and shouted: “I went to space.”

A celebrity cast had watched the launch from the ground.

Speaking from the viewing platform, Khloé Kardashian said: “I didn’t realise how emotional it would be, it’s hard to explain. I have all this adrenaline and I’m just standing here.”

“Whatever you dream of is in our reach, especially in today’s day and age. Dream big, wish for the stars—and one day, you could maybe be amongst them,” she added.

Oprah Winfrey spoke about her friend Gayle King, and revealed she was a nervous flier.

“I mean, for her—whew—anytime we’re on a flight, she’s in somebody’s lap at the slightest bit of turbulence. She has real, real-world anxiety when it comes to flying. And this… this is her overcoming a wall of fear,” she said.

The spacecraft was fully autonomous, requiring no pilots, and the crew did not manually operate the vehicle.

The last all-female spaceflight was over 60 years ago when Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space on a solo mission aboard the spacecraft Vostok 6.

Since then, there have been no other all-female spaceflights but women have made numerous significant contributions.

The space tourism industry is still in its infancy, so every successful launch is significant and demonstrates that these short, commercial flights can be carried out safely.

(BBC News)