This second plane, a Dassault Falcon 2000 registration number YV3360, is similar to the aircraft seized by authorities in the United States on Monday, and it appears on a US Treasury list of sanctioned goods belonging to Maduro.

The plane seized by US authorities on Monday had been described by officials as Venezuela’s equivalent to Air Force One and was pictured in previous state visits by Maduro around the world.

It was seized after determining that its acquisition was in violation of US sanctions, among other criminal issues. The US flew the aircraft to Florida on Monday, according to two US officials.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that “the Justice Department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies.”

The Venezuelan government described the first Falcon’s seizure as “piracy” in a statement on Monday, and accused Washington of escalating “aggression” toward Maduro’s government following a contested presidential election this July.

The Dominican Republic’s President, Luis Abinader, said the plane seized Monday was not registered under the name of the Venezuelan government but rather under “the name of an individual.”

The country’s Attorney General’s Office received an order last May from a national court to “immobilize” the plane, according to the Dominican Republic’s foreign minister, Roberto Álvarez. The US had requested it be immobilized so they could search it for “evidence and objects linked to fraud activities, smuggling of goods for illicit activities and money laundering,” he said.

Monday’s seizure in the Dominican Republic marked an escalation as the US continues to investigate what it regards as corrupt practices by Venezuela’s government.

It also comes as the US recently placed pressure on the Venezuelan government to “immediately” release specific data regarding its presidential election, citing concerns about the credibility of Maduro’s claimed victory in the recent presidential election.

The death of a beloved white beluga whale has turned into a mystery in Norway as animal rights groups speculate whether he was actually assassinated.

The beluga, nicknamed Hvaldimir, rose to fame in 2019 after being spotted wearing a specially-made harness with mounts for a camera, sparking claims that the animal may have been trained by the Russian military.

Two Norwegian animal rights groups alleged on Wednesday that the whale was “shot to death” after Hvaldimir was found dead over the weekend in southern Norway.

OneWhale and NOAH are calling for a criminal investigation “based on compelling evidence that the whale was killed by gunshot wounds,” OneWhale, which describes itself as a “nonprofit committed to protecting Hvaldimir and relocating him to a wild population of belugas,” wrote in an Instagram post.

It added that “several veterinarians, biologists, and ballistics experts have reviewed [the] evidence of Hvaldimir’s injuries, determining that the whale’s death was the result of a criminal act.”

The organizations filed a police report to the Sandnes Police District and the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime.

“I don’t think we’ve had a case like this before,” said Southwestern Police District Superintendent Victor Fenne-jensen, who declined to comment on whether his department had investigated rumors that the whale was a Russian spy.

He added, Hvaldimir was “kind of a celebrity.”

However, Marine Mind, another non-profit that advocates for protecting marine life, has called the public to “refrain from speculation” until the country’s Veterinary Institute has finished its own investigation.

It was Marine Mind that found Hvaldimir’s body in the bay. “When we found Hvaldimir on Saturday, it was not possible to immediately determine the cause of death, and therefore it is important to refrain from speculation until the institute has completed its work,” Marine Mind posted to its Facebook page on Wednesday.

Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported that his body was found floating at the Risavika Bay in southern Norway Saturday by a father and son who were fishing, according to the Associated Press (AP).

The beluga, named by combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was lifted out of the water with a crane and taken to a nearby harbor where experts for experts to examine, AP reported.

Marine biologist Sebastian Strand told NRK Hvaldimir’s cause of death was not immediately clear and that no major external injuries were visible on the animal, the AP reported.

That the harness clips read “Equipment St. Petersburg” only contributed to the popular theory that he came from Murmansk, Russia, and was trained by the Russian navy.

Palestinian journalists say that they were fired on by the Israeli military during a raid in the occupied West Bank town of Kafr Dan.

Mohammed Mansour, a journalist for the Palestinian news agency WAFA, was injured when the car he was driving was struck by gunfire, according to video of the aftermath and his employer.

Footage filmed in the car by freelance journalist Jarah Khalaf shows a chaotic scene, as Mansour races through the streets and blood pours from his leg. All journalists were wearing flak jackets with “press” labels, and the car bore a “press” identifier on its hood.

“The occupation surprised us by shooting at us directly. Our colleague Mohammed Mansour was here in this car,” said Khalaf. “The army shot at us more than once, even though we had press signs and were wearing body armor and everything.”

WAFA said that the Israeli military “fired live bullets directly at the vehicle,” which was carrying four journalists reporting on the Tuesday raid. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that it treated four journalists who were injured by gunfire and shrapnel.

Violence from the Israeli offensive in Gaza since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks has spilled into the occupied West Bank in recent months. The IDF unleashed a barrage of raids and airstrikes in multiple parts of the territory on August 28 – including in the cities of Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarem – bulldozing highways and razing buildings to rubble.

The IDF has said that its operations in the West Bank are necessary “in order to remove immediate terror threats in real time.”

Humanitarian groups have accused the Israeli military of using disproportionate force against Palestinian residents, inflicting severe damage on critical infrastructure and disrupting health care services. On Tuesday, a UN spokesperson warned that Israeli forces are using “lethal war-like tactics” in the occupied territory, with people being killed, injured and displaced – and have blocked critical access to aid organizations.

‘We were directly targeted’

In another video, reporters film Israeli military bulldozers tearing up the surface of a street in Jenin. The IDF says this is done to find and dismantle explosive devices.

Khalaf said he was also among the journalists filming the Israeli military bulldozers on Monday, when suddenly “a bulldozer started backing on us.”

“We moved down the road when the bulldozer turned … and chased after us,” added Khalaf. “We were trapped behind a wall, but the bulldozer kept coming forward toward us when it started destroying shops and the sidewalk we were on. We were trapped for a few minutes before we managed to get away.”

Israeli forces have killed 33 Palestinians in the West Bank, including six children and two elderly people, since launching the operation last month, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah. Another 130 people have been injured. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and militants.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, said Friday that three of its members had been killed.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has long been critical of his country’s Supreme Court as it stood in the way of some of his signature policy proposals. This month, as he closes out his six-year term in office, he appears poised to remake the entire judiciary in his mold.

Lawmakers in Mexico City this week began to push through a sweeping constitutional reform that would see Mexicans select judges at all levels of government through elections, a procedure that legal experts say would turn Mexico into an international outlier.

The controversial measure passed the lower chamber of Congress on Wednesday with overwhelming support. The reform will next be voted on in the Senate, where its approval is likely due to López Obrador’s ruling coalition being one senator short of a supermajority.

López Obrador, a popular leftist, says the overhaul is necessary to rid the judiciary of corruption and ensure its responsive to the popular will. Critics of the reform call it a power grab that will expose one of the last remaining checks on presidential power to political influence.

“I see this as a constitutional crisis,” said Mariana Campos, the general director of México Evalúa, a civil society organization. “The judiciary has been a counterweight for the executive and the legislative branches, and the president and his political group believe that they can’t advance their objectives with this type of counterweight.”

Opposition to the reform has quickly manifested into monumental schisms, with the country’s Supreme Court justices voting this week to join a nationwide protest of judicial workers grinding most legal proceedings to a halt.

A rare and stinging critique from US Ambassador Ken Salazar in Mexico City, in which he called the election of judges “a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy,” led to an international spat between the countries. And warnings from business groups that the reform could undermine the Mexican investment environment sent the value of the peso tumbling.

On Tuesday, protesting judicial staff blocked the entrance to the lower chamber of Congress, forcing lawmakers into an overnight session held in a sports complex, with basketball hoops hanging overhead.

Still, even critics of the reform acknowledge it appears likely to move swiftly through the Mexican legislature with the president’s political party exerting wide margins of control.

A battle for seats

Under the current law, Supreme Court judges in Mexico are nominated by the president and must be approved in the Senate. Federal judges are selected by a judicial commission that uses professional exams and coursework to evaluate candidates on a meritocratic basis.

If the reform passes, judicial elections would take place next year after a period of campaigning. About 7,000 judges would be required to battle for their seats, or turn the gavel over over to the most popular candidate.

It would see candidates for judicial postings submit applications and be nominated to run in an election by evaluation committees within the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

Additionally, the number of judges serving on the Supreme Court would be reduced from 11 to nine, and their term would be shortened to 12 years instead of 15.

While the reform spells out judicial elections that are independent of political parties, an analysis released earlier this year by the Center for Constitutional Studies, an investigative branch of the Supreme Court, concluded that the new selection process for judges would “undermine the perception of impartiality” in the judiciary.

“The method of designating candidates to judicial positions favors their proximity to political authorities, political parties or judicial leaders,” the analysis said.

The analysis also noted that judicial elections would generate “a risk of co-optation of jurisdictional bodies by private interests, such as large business groups or even criminal organizations,” who already use widespread violence to influence local political elections.

“The government is creating an institutional infrastructure that will permit external pressures on judges so that they’re not necessarily responding to the law and the facts, but rather trying to look good in order to be able to maintain their position,” Campos, with México Evalúa, said.

The effort to hand over the selection of judges to a popular vote arrives as López Obrador’s political movement grows in power. In June, Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City and López Obrador’s political protégé, was elected president in a landslide, winning nearly 60 percent of the nationwide vote.

Sheinbaum, who will take office on October 1, has challenged the perception that the reform would concentrate power for ruling party Morena. In a video statement last week, she emphasized that the process to nominate judge candidates will be split between the three branches of government.

Defenders of the reform have also pointed to the United States as an example of a long-running model for judicial elections. But the comparison between the two countries is inadequate, said Michael Nelson, a political science professor at Pennsylvania State University who studies judicial systems around the world.

Thirty-nine states in the US carry out judicial elections in some form, while federal judges are appointed by the president and confirmed in the Senate. “Mexico would be the only country in the world that elects judges at such a scale,” he said.

The heavily politicized context that the reforms are being made under could also impact how voters view the elections in the near-term, Nelson said.

“The Mexico proposal is not coming out of nowhere – this isn’t people sitting around in Philadelphia in the 1700s saying how should we design a judiciary,” he said. “(Voters) are going to remember that these elections came about because the president was angry at the courts and their experience of the election is going to be filtered through that.”

Legal experts say the closest benchmark to weigh the Mexican reform against comes from Bolivia, the small Andean state which in 2011 became the first modern country to directly elect its federal judges.

The reform there achieved some of its desired results: Bolivia’s federal bench became the most diverse constitutional court in the Western Hemisphere, with historically high numbers of female and minority jurists, according to a 2015 paper in the Journal of Law and Courts.

But opinion polls measured a decrease in public confidence in the Supreme Court after the reform took hold, the research found.

“Even if changes are perfectly designed and adopted with broad consensus, if the public perceives the process to have been politicized then public faith in the resulting institutions may be in jeopardy,” said Florida State University professor Amanda Driscoll, one of the authors of the paper.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July effectively spiked a draft hostage and ceasefire deal by introducing a raft of new, 11th-hour demands, according to a report by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth citing a document it obtained.

The report lends credence to charges often leveled at the prime minister – most notably by hostage families – of purposefully prolonging the war and torpedoing deals for his political benefit. Far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition have pledged to bring down the government should he end the war.

According to the newspaper, at least three of six hostages found dead in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces over the weekend were due for release as part of the May draft agreement – Carmel Gat, Aden Yerushalmi, and Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

A senior Israeli official on Wednesday said the new report was “misinformed, misleading and hampers the chance of achieving the release of hostages.”

But separately, an Israeli source familiar with the talks said Netanyahu’s demands were to blame for the deaths of the hostages over the weekend.

The Hostages Families Forum said this weekend that “the finding of the bodies yesterday is a direct result of Netanyahu’s thwarting of the deals.”

The ‘Netanyahu Outline’

Yedioth Ahronoth reported that rather than accepting that proposal, the Israeli negotiators submitted new demands, making changes to the proposals they themselves had originally made.

The new demands were nicknamed the “Netanyahu Outline,” the newspaper reported.

Hamas at the time said that Netanyahu had “returned to the strategy of procrastination, evasion, and avoiding reaching an agreement by setting new conditions and demands.”

Bergman, writing in Hebrew, wrote in Tuesday’s report that among the new demands was that Israeli forces continue to occupy the Egypt-Gaza border area, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and maintain a 1.4-kilometer perimeter in Gaza along the Israeli border. The newspaper posted maps reportedly from the late-July Israeli response. The original May 27 proposal, according to Yedioth Ahronoth, offered an eventual full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

“Things are very tense. Very much up in the air,” the source said.

David Barnea, the director of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, met on Monday with officials from Qatar, which is mediating a deal, but there are “no meetings this week and nothing planned,” the source said.

In its report on Tuesday, Yedioth said Israeli negotiators in July insisted as part of their new demands on specific guarantees that Palestinian civilians allowed to return to northern Gaza would not bring weapons with them.

Netanyahu’s team, also for the first time, submitted a list of 40 hostages it wanted released as part of a first phase of a potential agreement, the paper reported. It added that the move was controversial because the Israeli negotiators were themselves determining whom they considered to be “sick,” and thus eligible for release, rather than leaving it vague.

Finally, the newspaper reported that the new Israeli demands said a specific group of long-term Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for female Israeli soldiers be sent “abroad” after their release, rather than – as the previous agreement reportedly stated – “abroad or into Gaza.”

Nearly 2,400 allegations of sexual abuse across hundreds of Ireland’s religious-run schools have been documented in a new report, marking the latest grim revelations to emerge from the country’s historic Church-State entanglement.

The report, released Tuesday, documented 2,395 allegations of historical child sexual abuse, involving 884 alleged abusers in 308 schools across the country.

Most of the allegations were reported from the records of 42 religious orders that currently run or previously ran schools in Ireland. The scope of the allegations ranges from 1927-2013. More than half the men accused – which include teachers and priests – have died, it said.

Ireland’s Minister for Education Norma Foley said Tuesday that the level of abuse detailed in the report was “truly shocking – and so is the number of alleged abusers.”

She called the report a “harrowing document, containing some of the most appalling accounts of sexual abuse.”

More than 140 survivors provided harrowing testimony for the report, describing being molested, stripped naked, raped and drugged in “an atmosphere of terror and silence.”

Their abuse was often “accompanied by ferocious violence,” the 700-page report said.

Most of the survivors interviewed for the report are men now in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Some said it was the first time they‘d spoken about the abuse and its impact on them, with many saying that their childhood “stopped the day the abuse started.”

Some survivors said the abuse was “so pervasive” that it could not have gone unnoticed by senior leadership within the religious orders that were running the schools. They added that they believed some of those leaders not only ignored the abuse but facilitated and participated in it.

Others said that they believed there had been a “cover-up” in the schools or by the religious order, and “collusion” between the State and Church.

“Many participants said that they felt that the power of the Catholic Church permeated their lives in every way and, for the majority, they felt there was no one they could tell, including their parents,” the report said.

The Catholic Church has been deeply entwined with the Irish state for much of its history. Although a referendum in the 1970s drastically reduced the Church’s political sway, it remained pervasive in many aspects of civil society. Today, nearly 90% of schools in Ireland remain Catholic, even though the percentage of the population that identifies as such is much lower.

Lifelong impact

As adults, survivors detailed a litany of difficulties stemming from the abuse, including failed relationships, mental and physical health problems and addiction issues. Some said that the abuse made them decide not to have children. Others who did said it impacted their parenting.

Many survivors said that they had moved away from family and friends to avoid memories of childhood trauma and described feeling alienated from religious services. Some avoided attending a parent’s funeral or other family event because they said they could not enter a church as a result of the abuse.

A government-mandated investigation into sexual abuse at religious-run boarding and day-schools was first launched after Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ aired a documentary in 2022 that highlighted systemic sexual abuse at Blackrock College, a prestigious private school in Dublin.

The report found that the abuse was spread across public and private schools, including 17 special education schools – which recorded 590 allegations involving 190 alleged abusers.

Foley said on Tuesday that the Irish government would begin a process of establishing a commission to further investigate the abuse and that a redress scheme would be established.

She said that religious orders have a “moral obligation” to contribute to any future redress scheme.

Meanwhile, those religious orders have not committed to contribute to the Mother and Baby Homes redress scheme, which opened for applications earlier this year.

The 2021 Mother and Baby Homes report found that 9,000 babies and children died in 18 of Ireland’s mother and baby homes – church-run institutions where unmarried women were sent to deliver their babies in secret, often against their will – over eight decades.

The religious congregations who ran Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries – workhouses where thousands of women and girls lived and worked without pay for years in “harsh and physically demanding” situations – have also declined to contribute to a State redress scheme set up in 2013 to compensate the survivors of those institutions.

The blaze that killed 72 people in Grenfell Tower in London was caused by “decades of failure” by the UK government and the construction industry that allowed the 24-storey building to be wrapped in flammable cladding, a seven-year public inquiry has found.

The fire began in the early hours of June 14, 2017, sparked by an electrical fault in a refrigerator on the fourth floor. What could have been a small house fire instead turned into Britain’s deadliest blaze since the Blitz, after the flames leapt to flammable insulation and cladding, which had been added to the tower during a major renovation the previous year.

In a 1,700 page report spanning seven volumes, Martin Moore-Bick, the chair of the inquiry, said the “systematic dishonesty” of the firms that made and sold the cladding and insulation had led to the blaze.

“The simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable, and those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways, by those who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupied,” Moore-Bick said.

The report concluded that the fire was “the culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry,” he said.

Grenfell United, which represents the survivors and bereaved families of those killed in the blaze, said the report marked “a significant chapter in the journey to truth, justice and change,” but “justice has not been delivered.”

“The inquiry report reveals that whenever there’s a clash between corporate interest and public safety, governments have done everything they can to avoid their responsibilities to keep people safe,” it said in a statement. “The system isn’t broken, it was built this way.”

The inquiry had taken “longer than we hoped,” Moore-Bick said in a press conference, in part because it “unveiled many more matters of concern than we had previously expected.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his thoughts are “wholly with those bereaved by, and survivors of, the Grenfell Tower tragedy and the residents in the immediate community,” according to PA.

He said the new Labour government will “carefully consider the report and its recommendations, to ensure that such a tragedy cannot occur again.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The blaze that killed 72 people in Grenfell Tower in London was caused by “decades of failure” by the UK government and the construction industry that allowed the 24-storey building to be wrapped in flammable cladding, a seven-year public inquiry has found.

The fire began in the early hours of June 14, 2017, sparked by an electrical fault in a refrigerator on the fourth floor. What could have been a small house fire instead turned into Britain’s deadliest blaze since the Blitz, after the flames leapt to flammable insulation and cladding, which had been added to the tower during a major renovation the previous year.

In a 1,700 page report spanning seven volumes, Martin Moore-Bick, the chair of the inquiry, said the “systematic dishonesty” of the firms that made and sold the cladding and insulation had led to the blaze.

“The simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable, and those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways, by those who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupied,” Moore-Bick said.

The report concluded that the fire was “the culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry,” he said.

Grenfell United, which represents the survivors and bereaved families of those killed in the blaze, said the report marked “a significant chapter in the journey to truth, justice and change,” but “justice has not been delivered.”

“The inquiry report reveals that whenever there’s a clash between corporate interest and public safety, governments have done everything they can to avoid their responsibilities to keep people safe,” it said in a statement. “The system isn’t broken, it was built this way.”

The inquiry had taken “longer than we hoped,” Moore-Bick said in a press conference, in part because it “unveiled many more matters of concern than we had previously expected.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his thoughts are “wholly with those bereaved by, and survivors of, the Grenfell Tower tragedy and the residents in the immediate community,” according to PA.

He said the new Labour government will “carefully consider the report and its recommendations, to ensure that such a tragedy cannot occur again.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tendered his resignation ahead of an expected major cabinet reshuffle as a fresh wave of Russian missiles overnight killed at least seven people, including a child.

Kuleba is the latest high-profile member of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s cabinet to resign as Russia’s invasion grinds on, and his decision comes ahead of an expected visit by the president to the US this month.

As Ukraine’s top diplomat, Kuleba has been a prominent fixture in Zelensky’s administration and one of the most public-facing, especially overseas.

Ukraine’s parliament will consider the foreign minister’s resignation at one of its plenary meetings soon, speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said on Telegram.

Davyd Arakhamia, the majority leader of Ukraine’s parliament, said Tuesday that there would be major changes expected in the cabinet this week.

“As promised, a major government reset can be expected this week. More than 50% of the Cabinet of Ministers’ staff will be changed,” Arakhamia said on Telegram, adding that new members would be appointed imminently.

Among those who have resigned was the Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin, who was in charge of weapons production. He is expected to assume another defense role, Reuters reported.

The resignations also include the justice, environment and reintegration ministers.

In his nightly address Tuesday, Zelensky said the coming fall will be “extremely important for Ukraine” and as such “our state institutions must be set up so that Ukraine achieves all the results we need.”

“To do this, we need to strengthen some areas of the government… I am also counting on a slightly different weight for certain areas of our foreign and domestic policy,” he said.

Missiles hit Lviv

The expected reshuffle came as Russian missiles continued to rain down on Ukrainian cities.

Lviv’s mayor Andriy Sadovyi confirmed the deaths and said residential buildings were damaged in the attack.

Earlier, the head of the city’s regional military administration Maksym Kozytskyi said among the dead is a 14-year-old girl and that at least 25 people were injured in the attack. A 15-month-old child suffered “moderate” injuries and four other children have minor injuries, he said.

Lviv, in Ukraine’s far west, is generally considered one of the safer places in the country and many people from eastern regions relocated there to seek safety.

The day before, a Russian strike against a military educational facility in central Ukraine killed 51 people and injured more than 200 others, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office, in one of the deadliest single attacks since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“Ordinary residential buildings in the city, schools, and medical facilities were damaged,” Zelensky said of the Lviv attack in a Telegram post Wednesday.

Five people were also injured in Russian attacks in the central city of Kryvyi Rih after a hotel building was destroyed, according to the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration Serhiy Lysak. It came just over a week after Russia launched a massive drone and missile attack aimed at energy infrastructure across the country, in which two were killed in an attack on a hotel in Kryvyi Rih.

“Each of our partners in the world who help Ukraine with air defense is a real defender of life,” Zelenksy said, appealing for more support for its air defenses. “And anyone who convinces partners to give Ukraine more range in order to respond to terror justly is working to prevent such Russian terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities. Terror must be stopped.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A series of smiling Instagram photos of diplomats wearing purple and enjoying cupcakes has caused a spat between Iran and Australia, with the Australian ambassador summoned to explain the “disrespectful” behavior.

The Australian Embassy in Tehran posted photos on Monday to mark Wear It Purple Day, an annual celebration of LGBTQIA+ youth founded in Australia.

“Today, and every day, we’re dedicated to creating a supportive environment, where everyone, especially LGBTQIA+ youth, can feel proud to be themselves,” the caption read.

The post drew swift condemnation from Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which deemed it “disrespectful and contrary to Iranian and Islamic cultural norms,” according to state news agency IRNA.

Homosexuality is illegal in Iran, which considers same-sex relations a breach of Islamic values, punishable under the country’s Sharia-based law.

“The official Instagram page of the Australian Embassy in Tehran has promoted homosexuality in a derogatory post,” IRNA reported.

Australian ambassador Ian McConville responded by saying the embassy “had no intention of offending the Iranian people,” according to IRNA.

The bi-lingual post on the official Australia In Iran Instagram account has drawn thousands of likes and comments, including from the German Embassy Tehran which responded with three purple heart emojis.

Asked about the diplomatic spat in an interview with Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, government minister Murray Watt said he was “concerned” about Iran’s reaction to a message he said was in keeping with his own country’s values.

“We support all Australians, regardless of their sexual orientation, their gender, their race, and I am concerned to see this reaction from the Iranian government to the activities of the Australian embassy,” Watt told the ABC.

“We’re very proud about the fact that our embassies promote Australian values internationally and I’m very concerned to see an overseas government seemingly take action against an Australian embassy that is upholding Australian values,” he said.

According to Amesty International, LGBTQIA+ people suffer “systemic discrimination and violence in Iran,” where the punishment for consensual same-sex relations ranges from flogging to the death penalty.

Iranian authorities have sentenced rights advocates to death over posts on social media.

In 2021 prominent Iranian LGBTQIA+ campaigners Zahra Sedighi-Hamadani and Elham Chobdar were arrested and later sentenced to death for alleged crimes including “corruption on earth” and “promoting homosexuality” over social media, according to the US government and Amnesty International.

Both advocates were released on bail in 2023, and Sedighi-Hamadani fled Iran for an “undisclosed country” the next year. Chobdar was re-arrested in 2024 and remains in detention, according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.