Three die after head-on collision between pickup truck and Honda Civic in Cape Breton

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A court in Greenland on Wednesday again extended the time in custody for a prominent anti-whaling activist as Denmark considers an extradition request from Japan.

The court ruled that Canadian-American Paul Watson must remain in detention until Oct. 2 while Denmark’s justice ministry considers the request. Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Japan.

Watson is the former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose high-seas confrontations with whaling vessels have drawn widespread attention.

He was arrested on July 21 when his ship docked in Greenland’s capital. Japan’s coast guard sought his arrest over an encounter with a Japanese whaling research ship in 2010, when he was accused of obstructing the crew’s official duties by ordering the captain of his ship to throw explosives.

Watson is said to face up to 15 years in prison.

In a statement, the prosecution noted that Watson has appealed Wednesday’s decision by the Nuuk district court to the High Court of Greenland. One of Watson’s lawyers, Julie Stage, confirmed the appeal, adding no date had immediately been set.

“We are not satisfied with the outcome,” Stage told The Associated Press.

Omar Todd, the CEO and co-founder of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, has visited Watson in the detention center outside Nuuk. Todd told the AP on Tuesday that Watson “is doing fine. He is, I guess, getting a little bit accustomed to the life there at the moment. But he is doing well. He is determined and optimistic.”

In Paris, hundreds gathered in support of Watson. “Japan wants Paul Watson. He’s like the enemy. It would be really, just absolutely, horrible,” said Elodie Pouet, a volunteer with Sea Shepherd France.

Another member of Watson’s legal team, William Bourdon, said “it would be a stain in Denmark’s history” to extradite him and expressed concern over the “criminalization of citizen militants who stand against the impunity of those committing crimes against the environment.”

Watson, who left Sea Shepherd in 2022, was also a leading member of Greenpeace but left in 1977 amid disagreements over his aggressive tactics.

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Philipp-Moritz Jenne in Vienna, Austria, and video journalist Alex Turnbull in Paris contributed to this report.

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PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — A lawyer representing the family of a man from Kosovo who was arrested in Turkey for allegedly transferring money to Mossad operatives there insisted on Wednesday that the suspect is innocent and offered the family’s cooperation in the investigation.

The suspect, identified as Liridon Rexhepi, entered Turkey on Aug. 25, and was detained last Friday and formally arrested on Tuesday, the Anadolu Agency said. The report said he had confessed during interrogation that he conducted the money transfers.

Since January, Turkish authorities have detained dozens of people on charges of collecting data on individuals, mostly Palestinians residing in Turkey, for the Israeli intelligence.

Israel has not commented on the arrests in Turkey.

In the Kosovar capital of Pristina, lawyer Arianit Koci said Rexhepi’s family is “shocked by this arrest” and convinced that he has “nothing to do with these charges.”

“Both the family and Liridon are ready to fully cooperate with authorities” he told The Associated Press, adding that “due to the sensitivity of the case, for the moment there is no information that I can share with the public.”

“We are convinced that our brother is innocent because we have never been involved in the above-mentioned claims, neither we as a family nor Liridon,” Koci wrote on Facebook.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been one of the strongest critics of Israel’s military actions in the war-torn coastal enclave and has praised Palestinian Hamas militants as a liberation group.

In May, Turkey halted all trade with Israel and has also applied to participate in a genocide case against Israel at an international court.

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Semini reported from Tirana, Albania. Follow Llazar Semini at

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ROME (AP) — Workers mounted a crane Wednesday to secure Rome’s Constantine Arch near the Colosseum after a lightning strike loosened fragments from the ancient structure.

A violent thunder and lightning storm that felled trees and flooded streets in the Italian capital damaged the honorary arch late Tuesday afternoon.

Fragments of white marble were gathered and secured by workers for the Colosseum Archeological Park as soon as the storm cleared, officials said. The extent of the damage was being evaluated.

“The recovery work by technicians was timely. Our workers arrived immediately after the lightning strike. All of the fragments were recovered and secured,’’ the park said in a statement.

Tourists visiting the site Wednesday found some stray fragments that they turned over to park workers out of concern they might have fallen from the arch.

“It is kind of surreal that we found pieces,″ said Jana Renfro, a 69-year-old tourist from the U.S. state of Indiana, who said found the fragments about 12 feet (three meters) from the base of the monument.

The group’s tour guide, Serena Giuliani, praised them for turning over the found pieces, saying it showed “great sensitivity for Roman antiquities.”

The honorary arch, more than 20 meters (nearly 70 feet) in height, was erected in A.D. 315 to celebrate the victory of Emperor Constantine over Maxentius following the battle at Milvian Bridge.

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