A South African mother and two accomplices were sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday for trafficking her then-6-year-old daughter, in a case that gained nationwide attention since the child went missing last year.

Kelly Smith, her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis and their friend Steveno Van Rhyn were convicted of kidnapping and trafficking the girl, Joshlin Smith, after she disappeared from a small town in the Western Cape.

In a trial that shocked the country, a witness said Kelly Smith told her that she had sold her daughter to a sangoma, or traditional healer, for 20,000 rand ($1,100) and that the girl was desired for her “eyes and skin.”

Joshlin Smith has still not been found despite an extensive police search.

Announcing their sentences on Thursday, high court judge Nathan Erasmus said the fact Kelly Smith, Appollis and Van Rhyn were drug users was no excuse.

“There is nothing that I can find that is redeeming and deserving of a lesser sentence than the harshest I can impose,” Erasmus said.

For kidnapping the three were given 10-year jail terms.

Inside Vatican City, the home of Pope Leo, lies a vast collection of Indigenous artifacts that some people say shouldn’t be there.

The collection includes thousands dozens of colonial-era objects, including a rare Inuvialuit sealskin kayak from the western Arctic, a pair of embroidered Cree leather gloves, a 200-year-old wampum belt, a baby belt from the Gwich’in people and a beluga tooth necklace.

They are relics of a time of cultural destruction, critics say, taken by the Roman Catholic Church a century ago as trophies of missionaries in far-off lands.

Pope Francis promised to return the artifacts to communities in Canada as part of what he called a “penitential pilgrimage” for abuses against Indigenous people by the Church. But several years on, they remain in the Vatican’s museums and storage vaults.

Indigenous leaders are now urging Pope Leo to finish what Francis started and give the artifacts back.

“When things were taken that weren’t somebody else’s to take, it’s time to return them,” said Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

Calls to repatriate the artifacts began gaining steam in 2022, when a group of First Nations, Inuit and Métis delegates visited Rome for long-awaited talks with Pope Francis about historical abuses at Canada’s church-run residential schools.

While there, the delegates were given a tour of some of the Vatican’s collection and were astonished to see treasured relics stored thousands of miles away from the communities who once used them.

“It was quite an emotional experience to see all of these artifacts – whether they be Métis, First Nations of Inuit artifacts – so far away,” said Victoria Pruden, President of the Métis National Council, which represents the Métis Indigenous people of northwestern Canada.

Following that visit – and Francis’s subsequent trip to Canada, where he apologized for the Church’s role in residential schools – the late pontiff pledged to return the relics.

An expo of Indigenous objects

How the artifacts came to be in the pope’s possession requires a trip back to the era of Pope Pius XI, who led the Catholic Church from 1922.

Pius was known for promoting the work of missionaries, and in 1923 sent a call out to orders worldwide to gather evidence of the church’s vast reach.

“He said: Send in everything related to Indigenous life. Send in sacred belongings. Send in language materials. Send in Indigenous people, if you can manage it,” said Gloria Bell, an assistant professor of art history at McGill University.

“There were thousands of belongings stolen from Indigenous communities to please the greed of Pope Pius XI,” said Bell, who documented the exhibition in her book “Eternal Sovereigns: Indigenous Artists, Activists, and Travelers Reframing Rome.”

The church’s collection of Indigenous artifacts was compiled at a time when the cultural identity of Canada’s Indigenous people was being erased.

The Canadian government had made it compulsory for Indigenous children to attend residential schools – boarding schools largely run by the Catholic Church designed by law to “kill the Indian in the child” and assimilate them into White Christian society.

In these schools, Indigenous children were not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture and were harshly punished for doing so. Thousands of children died from abuse or neglect, with mass graves still being found decades after the last residential school closed in 1998.

Even as this injustice unfolded, their cultural belongings and artifacts were being displayed in the 1925 Vatican Mission Exposition, a 13-month long exhibit promoting the Church’s influence around the world, which drew millions of visitors.

The Vatican has claimed the artifacts were gifts to the Pope. But Bell says that’s a “false narrative” which doesn’t consider the context in which the objects were acquired.

“This acquisition period was a really assimilative period in Canadian colonial history,” Bell said.

The artifacts were never returned. A century later, many of the cultural objects and artwork remain at the Vatican, either in storage or on display at the Vatican’s Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum.

A papal apology

Laurie McDonald, an elder from Enoch Cree Nation who grew up on an Indigenous reserve in Maskêkosihk, Alberta in the 1950s and 1960s, knows what it’s like to have your culture taken from you.

“We were forbidden as a nation to use our cultural regalia, our cultural tools, or our medicines, and if we were caught, we were reported to the Indian agent,” said McDonald, referring to the Canadian government official responsible for assimilation policy.

McDonald was just 11 years old when he was forcibly taken from the home he shared with his grandmother and sent to Ermineskin Indian Residential School, one of Canada’s largest residential schools. Two weeks in, he tried to escape, but became caught on a barbed wire fence and a staff member ripped him off, leaving scars.

In 2022, McDonald returned to the site of his former school to witness Pope Francis’s historic apology on behalf of the Catholic Church.

“I am deeply sorry,” Francis said, looking out over the land of four First Nations. “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples.”

Pope Francis’s apology on behalf of the Catholic Church was deeply meaningful for many Indigenous peoples in Canada. But reconciliation is a long process, and Indigenous leaders say they hope Leo will continue what Francis started – first and foremost, by returning the artifacts.

McDonald said the objects represent stories and legacies which should have been passed down generations.

“Those may have been simple stuff to you, but to us, they were very, very important,” he said.

‘Thou shall not steal’

During his visit to Canada in 2022, Francis said local Catholic communities were committed to promoting Indigenous culture, customs, language and education processes “in the spirit of” The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, according to CBC.

Article 12 of UNDRIP says Indigenous peoples have the right to use and control their ceremonial objects, and states shall endeavor to return them.

Asked again in 2023 about repatriating the Indigenous artifacts, Francis told reporters aboard his plane, “This is going on, with Canada, at least we were in agreement to do so.” He invoked the seventh commandment – “thou shall not steal” – in expressing his support for restitution.

In recent years, museums around the world have increasingly returned items in their collections that were stolen or potentially acquired unethically to their countries of origin.

Last year, new regulations came into effect in the US requiring museums and federal agencies to consult or obtain informed consent from descendants, tribes or Native Hawaiian Organizations before displaying human remains or cultural items.

In 2022, Pope Francis returned three fragments of the Parthenon sculptures to Greece in a move he described as a “gesture of friendship,” according to the BBC.

However, a 2024 investigation by Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail found that the Vatican had not returned a single Indigenous-made item to Canada in recent years, except for a 200-year-old wampum belt which was loaned to a museum in Montreal for just 51 days in 2023.

Pruden, of the Métis National Council, said Francis “really moved things forward by embracing (UNDRIP).” She and other Indigenous leaders hope to soon see the artifacts returned.

“What a beautiful homecoming it would be to welcome these gifts that were made by our grandmothers and our grandfathers,” Pruden said, calling the objects “very important historical pieces that have a story to tell.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney discussed the return of the artifacts in a meeting with Canadian Catholic Cardinals in Rome this month ahead of Leo’s first mass, Jaime Battiste, a member of parliament who was also at the meeting, told the Canadian Press.

Woodhouse Nepinak said it’s “an uncomfortable and tough issue, but it has to be done.”

“You want to right the wrongs of the past. That’s what we want to do for our survivors, for their families, for the history of what happened here and to make sure that the story never dies out.”

A Russian deputy governor and prominent veteran of Moscow’s war in Ukraine was killed in an explosion in southern Russia early on Thursday, authorities said.

Zaur Aleksandrovich Gurtsiev, 29, died alongside another man in the blast on a street in Stavropol, which investigators said “committed using a homemade explosive device.”

“As part of the investigation, the scene of the incident is being inspected, examinations are being ordered, and the necessary investigative actions are being carried out to establish all the circumstances of the incident,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a Thursday statement.

Video footage circulated online and on state media appears the show the moment of the blast, which occurs just as Gurtsiev meets the other man in a darkened street, near a row of parked cars.

After the blast, the footage seemingly shows Gurtsiev lying on the ground, while the second man is rocked back by the explosion.

The man who died in the explosion in Stavropol along with Gurtsiev rented an apartment in a building near the scene of the incident, emergency services told state media outlet TASS.

Regional governor Vladimir Vladimirov wrote on Telegram that “all versions are being considered, including the organization of a terrorist attack” involving Ukraine.

Gurtsiev had taken part in the “Time of Heroes” program set up by President Vladimir Putin, used to promote veterans of Russia’s war in Ukraine to official positions in the government. His appointment as deputy regional governor was announced personally by Putin.

According to the Time of Heroes website, “Gurtsiev, despite his relatively young age, led the air part of the operation to liberate Mariupol.”

“He introduced his developments in the technology of targeting missiles, which allowed them to increase their accuracy and effectiveness many times over, including hitting the Azov supply base.”

Russian forces seized control of the port city of Mariupol in 2022 following a brutal 86-day siege – one of the deadliest and most destructive battles since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.

According to United Nations estimates, 90% of residential buildings were damaged or destroyed in Mariupol during Russian attacks, and around 350,000 people out of the pre-war population of about 430,000 were forced to flee.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview earlier this year that 20,000 civilians are believed to have been killed, though the death toll cannot be independently verified. Ukrainian officials accused Moscow of trying to cover up evidence of civilian casualties, a claim the Kremlin denies.

Gurtsiev is the latest in a number of Russian military figures to have been killed inside the country over the past year, a period in which the ramifications of Moscow’s war have increasingly been felt domestically.

Last month Russian authorities charged a “Ukrainian special services agent” with terrorism, after he was detained in connection with a car explosion that killed Russian General Yaroslav Moskalik, the deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.

And in February Armen Sarkisyan, the founder of a pro-Russian militia group in eastern Ukraine – described by authorities in Kyiv as a “criminal mastermind” – died following a bombing in central Moscow. The bombing took place in an upmarket residential complex in the capital city, state media outlet TASS reported at the time.

Israel approved a massive expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank this week in a move described as a continuation of de facto annexation of the territory.

Peace Now, an Israeli non-governmental organization that tracks settlements, said it was the largest expansion of settlements since the signing of the Oslo Accords more than 30 years ago.

Israel will establish 22 new settlements, including deep within the West Bank and in area from which the country had previously withdrawn, as part of the new security cabinet decision, according to a joint statement from Defense Minister Israel Katz and far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

“All the new communities are being established with a long-term strategic vision, aimed at reinforcing Israeli control of the territory, preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, and securing development reserves for settlement in the coming decades,” the statement said.

Peace Now blasted the government for making such a decision in the midst of a war.

“The government is making clear – again and without restraint – that it prefers deepening the occupation and advancing de facto annexation over pursuing peace,” the organization said. “The Israeli government no longer pretends otherwise: the annexation of the Occupied Territories and expansion of settlements is its central goal.”

Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, as well as in East Jerusalem and the occupied Golan Heights, are considered illegal under international law.

The Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), were designed to pave the way to the establishment of a Palestinian state and the realization of a two-state solution.

For months, Israel’s military has carried out a massive operation in the West Bank, deploying tanks to the territory for the first time in decades and displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians. In February, Katz ordered the military “to prepare for a prolonged presence” as the military evacuated Palestinian refugee camps. Within the last several weeks, Israeli forces have carried out multiple waves of raids and arrests across the West Bank.

Peace Now said 12 of the new settlements will be the legalization of illegal outposts. Outposts are illegally established be Jewish settlers without approval from the government with the intention to push for formal recognition and legalization. Another nine of the settlements will be entirely new, while the final one will be the conversion of an existing neighborhood to an independent settlement, according to Peace Now.

Two of the settlements in the new plan were evacuated during the disengagement from parts of the West Bank in 2005, which forbade Israelis from establishing a civilian presence in those areas. That law was overturned by the current right-wing Israeli government.

Smotrich gloated about the new settlements, making clear his goal was annexation. “The next step – sovereignty! We did not take a foreign land, but the inheritance of our ancestors,” he said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the security cabinet approved a land registration process for Area C of the West Bank, which is under Israeli civil and security control. Peace Now called the move “a mega theft of Palestinian lands.”

A huge chunk of a glacier in the Swiss Alps broke off on Wednesday afternoon, causing a deluge of ice, mud and rock to bury part of a mountain village evacuated earlier this month due to the risk of a rockslide, authorities said.

One person is currently missing, officials said.

Drone footage broadcast by Swiss national broadcaster SRF showed a vast plain of mud and soil completely covering part of the village of Blatten, the river running through it and the wooded sides of the surrounding valley.

“We’ve lost our village,” Matthias Bellwald, the mayor of Blatten told a press conference after the slide. “The village is under rubble. We will rebuild.”

Stephane Ganzer, an official in the canton of Valais where Blatten is located, told Swiss media that about 90% of the village was covered by the landslide.

“An unbelievable amount of material thundered down into the valley,” said Matthias Ebener, a spokesperson for local authorities in the southwestern canton of Valais.

One person was missing, Ebener said. Officials gave no further details on the person during the press conference.

Officials said millions of cubic metres of rock and soil have tumbled down since Blatten was first evacuated this month when part of the mountain behind the glacier began to crumble, sparking warnings it could bring the ice mass down with it.

A video shared widely on social media showed the dramatic moment when the glacier partially collapsed, creating a huge cloud that covered part of the mountain as rock and debris came cascading down towards the village.

Experts consulted by Reuters said it was difficult to assess the extent to which rising temperatures spurred by climate change had triggered the collapse because of the role the crumbling mountainside had played.

Christian Huggel, a professor of environment and climate at the University of Zurich, said while various factors were at play in Blatten, it was known that local permafrost had been affected by warmer temperatures in the Alps.

The loss of permafrost can negatively affect the stability of the mountain rock which is why climate change had likely played a part in the deluge, Huggel said.

The extent of the damage to Blatten had no precedent in the Swiss Alps in the current or previous century, he added.

The rubble of shattered wooden buildings could be seen on the flanks of the huge mass of earth in the drone footage.

Buildings and infrastructure in Blatten, whose roughly 300 inhabitants were evacuated on May 19 after geologists had identified the risk of an imminent avalanche of rock and ice from above, were hit hard by the rockslide, Ebener said.

SRF said houses were destroyed in the village nestled in the Loetschental valley in southern Switzerland.

Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter expressed her solidarity with the local population as emergency services warned people the area was hazardous and urged them to stay away, closing off the main road into the valley.

“It’s terrible to lose your home,” Keller-Sutter said on X.