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Iran Prosecutor Says 10 Indicted for 2020 Plane Shootdown

General view of the debris of the Ukraine International Airlines, flight PS752, Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed after take-off from Iran's Imam Khomeini airport, on the outskirts of Tehran. (File photo: Reuters)
General view of the debris of the Ukraine International Airlines, flight PS752, Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed after take-off from Iran's Imam Khomeini airport, on the outskirts of Tehran. (File photo: Reuters)
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Iran Prosecutor Says 10 Indicted for 2020 Plane Shootdown

General view of the debris of the Ukraine International Airlines, flight PS752, Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed after take-off from Iran's Imam Khomeini airport, on the outskirts of Tehran. (File photo: Reuters)
General view of the debris of the Ukraine International Airlines, flight PS752, Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed after take-off from Iran's Imam Khomeini airport, on the outskirts of Tehran. (File photo: Reuters)

Iranian media are quoting the outgoing military prosecutor of Tehran as saying that 10 officials have been indicted for the 2020 shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane.

Tehran military prosecutor Gholamabbas Torki made the comment Tuesday while handing over his office to Nasser Seraj.

The semiofficial ISNA news agency and the Iranian judiciary's Mizan new agency both reported the remarks, without elaborating.

Following three days of denial in January 2020 in the face of mounting evidence, Iran finally acknowledged that its forces mistakenly downed the Ukrainian jetliner with two surface-to-air missiles. All 176 people aboard the plane were killed.

In preliminary reports on the disaster last year, Iranian authorities blamed an air defense operator who they said mistook the Boeing 737-800 for an American cruise missile, The Associated Press reported.

The shootdown happened the same day Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on US troops in Iraq in retaliation for an American drone strike that killed a top Iranian general.

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Mexico’s President Amused by Trump’s Order to Rename the Gulf of Mexico

Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum delivers a speech at the National Palace, in Mexico City, Mexico January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum delivers a speech at the National Palace, in Mexico City, Mexico January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
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Mexico’s President Amused by Trump’s Order to Rename the Gulf of Mexico

Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum delivers a speech at the National Palace, in Mexico City, Mexico January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum delivers a speech at the National Palace, in Mexico City, Mexico January 21, 2025. (Reuters)

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has an answer for US President Donald Trump about his idea of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”: he can call it whatever he wants on the American part of it.

Sheinbaum on Tuesday had been working through the raft of executive orders from Trump that relate to Mexico, emphasizing Mexico’s sovereignty and the need for dialogue, but when she got to the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, she couldn’t help but laugh.

“He says that he will call it the Gulf of America on its continental shelf,” Sheinbaum said. “For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico, and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico.”

Trump said in his inaugural address Monday that he will change the name, an idea he first brought up earlier this month during a news conference.

“A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” he said. Hours later he signed an Executive Order to do it.

Sheinbaum projected on a large screen at her daily press briefing Trump’s order called “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.”

The order says that within 30 days, the US secretary of the interior will rename “the US Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba.”

Americans and Mexicans diverge on what to call another key body of water, the river that forms the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Americans call it the Rio Grande; Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo.

The first time Trump mentioned the idea of changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, Sheinbaum responded sarcastically suggesting instead renaming North America as “América Mexicana” or “Mexican America.”

This time, she just briefly insisted: “For us and for the entire world it will continue to be called the Gulf of Mexico.”