Education minister says 24 schools have been burnt or ransacked and 78 staff members injured since student unrest began last month
More than 400 schools in France will be closed or partly closed on Monday as authorities brace for another week of student protests.
Lessons will be totally or partly suspended in 400 to 500 schools because security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, the education minister, Édouard Geffray, said on Sunday.
Continue reading...Demonstrators take to the streets of Madrid and other Spanish cities after new legislation fails to pass
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Madrid and other Spanish cities as they step up demands for action to tackle a mounting housing crisis after government measures were struck down by the opposition.
Demonstrators on Saturday waved posters calling for a general strike after the measures drawn up to address mass anger over the eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid, and other housing issues, were rejected in parliament on Friday.
Continue reading...Opposition lawmakers join forces to defeat proposals made by Socialist-led coalition after eviction of 87-year-old
Rightwing lawmakers in Spain have rejected emergency measures put forward to tackle the country’s housing crisis, pitting a fractured parliament against the widespread protest movement that has swelled in recent days.
On Friday Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist-led coalition put forward two decrees that included a range of measures aimed at improving access to housing, from a ban on evictions until 2030 to the regulation of temporary lettings and lettings by room.
Continue reading...Thousands gather in Mumbai with heavy police presence as concerns mount that millions will be denied voting rights
India’s youth-led Cockroach movement kicked off more nationwide protests on Friday as thousands of people gathered in Mumbai, amid mounting concerns that millions of citizens are being unfairly stripped of their vote.
The movement, which calls itself the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) and has massive support among the country’s gen Zs, returned to the streets to demand the resignation of the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar.
Continue reading...Government struggling to deal with worst crisis in months after being taken by surprise by massive demonstrations
As dozens of school pupils sat on top of a pile of wheelie bins blocking a high school entrance in north-eastern Paris, Sophia, 17, was on the frontline of the barricade, when she would normally have been attending Spanish class.
“We hope this grows into a massive youth protest movement,” said the final year baccalaureate student at Paris’s Lycée Voltaire, who did not want her real name published. She was on her second day of blocking the school entrance along with hundreds of others, ensuring all lessons were cancelled. “We just want to be listened to by the government. We’d rather stand here doing this than have to learn in poor conditions. It’s the only way to make ourselves heard.”
Continue reading...About 900 demonstrations, blockades and related incidents under way outside high schools around the country
A fast-growing protest by high-school students over long hours, teacher shortages and decaying facilities has escalated into “urban violence”, the French government has warned, as it said many schools would switch to online classes to protect teachers and pupils.
The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, called a crisis cabinet meeting on Thursday and told ministers to cancel travel plans to deal with the demonstrations, which erupted in the Paris region last week but have snowballed across the country.
Continue reading...Women say nothing has changed since Delhi’s infamous Nirbhaya bus rape case 14 years ago
The posters, just like the women holding them, were taking no prisoners. “Girls don’t need curfews, rapists need consequences,” read one. “Lock your dicks rather than your women at home,” read another.
As hundreds of women walked from the gates of their university campus into the streets of Delhi – where sexual harassment, assault, catcalling and molestation are a constant, daily threat – they shouted together in a chorus of rage and defiance: “We want justice.”
Continue reading...More than 200 arrested while teachers join protest over class sizes, exhausting timetables and staff shortages
French teenagers blockading their schools in protest at class sizes, teacher shortages and long timetables have clashed with police, as politicians traded verbal blows over how to respond.
Demonstrations that began in Paris last week have escalated and spread across France, with the authorities reporting the arrests of 164 people on Monday.
Continue reading...Work and pensions secretary says the current system is flawed because it consigns too many people to a life on benefits when they would be better off working
‘I can deliver’: Burnham pledges radical change on eve of Labour conference
Kuenssberg puts it to Burnham that, according to the Health Foundation, a system offering adult social care free at the point of delivery (like healthcare delivered by the NHS) would cost £18bn.
Burnham says the cost is “not that high” (ie, not as high as £18bn).
Not that high.
But can I directly deal with this issue of the costs?
Louise Casey is still doing an official review for us, so I will set out the vision, if you like, on Tuesday [in his speech to the conference].
Louise will then help us with the how. How do we make this happen? When can we make it happen?
Continue reading...A council ban on drinking on the median strip in Canning Street, Carlton, sparks a peaceful protest featuring punch bowls, chips and laughter
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It looked like a typical spring evening on Melbourne’s Canning Street when a few dozen picnickers gathered on the grassy median strip on Friday, with drinks in hand.
People in one group who’d come with a full alfresco setting chattered as they ladled punch out of a glass bowl on a wooden table, set with a tablecloth and yellow flowers in a vase. Others sat on picnic blankets, passing around bags of chips.
Continue reading...Actors detained at Jewish Voice for Peace demonstration against Israeli prime minister’s address to the UN general assembly
Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon and Hacks star Hannah Einbinder were among people detained by police in New York on Thursday as they moved in to break up a protest against Benjamin Netanyahu.
Agence France-Presse footage shows NYPD officers cuffing Thelma & Louise star Sarandon at the demo in the city as the Israeli prime minister was readying to address the United Nations general assembly.
Continue reading...Media workers are grappling with increasingly volatile press climate in US, with some detained and even deported
As hundreds of masked and armed US federal agents besieged the streets of Minneapolis, turning the midwestern city into the frontline of the Trump administration’s unprecedented crackdown on immigration, the independent photographer John Abernathy was documenting one of the protests that had become a daily occurrence when Immigration and Customs Enforcement tackled him.
A photograph of him on the ground, pepper spray running down his face, captured the violence with which ICE agents had for weeks treated immigrants and the thousands of US citizens who had come to their defence. It was also a stark reminder that journalists were not immune to the agency’s aggressive tactics.
Continue reading...Authorities ban anti-immigration march after fireworks and other projectiles thrown at officers in city centre park
Dutch riot police dispersed several hundred far-right protesters in The Hague on Saturday after violence erupted and local authorities banned a planned march in the city against immigration and asylum policies.
The Dutch public broadcaster NOS reported that 24 people had been arrested, after some protesters threw fireworks and other projectiles at police.
Continue reading...Protesters teargassed as minister claims widespread raids and arrests under obscenity laws were to ‘protect families’
Turkish authorities have used accusations of obscenity to justify a wave of raids and arrests targeting the LGBTQ+ community, which has grown to include journalists as well as more than 150 arrested during protests against the raids.
Starting in the early hours of Sunday, Turkish police carried out simultaneous raids on the offices of LGBTQ+ rights organisations and HIV-advocacy groups in the cities of Istanbul, the capital, Ankara, and the coastal city of İzmir, as well as the cities of Aydın and Mersin.
Continue reading...Leaked documents and testimony reveal extent of regime’s crackdown in 2022 and how it paved the way for more brutal killings of protesters this year
Iranian security forces “coordinated” the killing, torture and sexual abuse of hundreds of people who took part in the women-led nationwide protests in September 2022, according to leaked state documents and interviews.
Tens of thousands of people, including children, took to the streets of towns and cities across Iran after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, after her arrest by the “morality” police for allegedly not complying with the country’s hijab regulations.
Continue reading...Hampshire and Isle of Wight force says it wants to speak to men in connection with anti-migrant unrest that left seven officers injured
Police have released images of six men they would like to speak to after violent disorder in Portsmouth last week that left seven officers injured.
About 200 people gathered at Eastney Marina on Sunday night after a small boat carrying asylum seekers arrived on the south coast having crossed the Channel. The activists dispersed the following day in the early hours.
Continue reading...Charity condemns ‘disgraceful’ intimidation and insists it will continue core purpose of saving lives at sea
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) has had a “significant” boost in donations since becoming a target of far-right agitators protesting over small boat crossings.
The charity’s staff and volunteers have been subjected to “online and physical abuse” after involvement in a rescue on Sunday in which a dingy carrying asylum seekers was brought into Portsmouth.
Continue reading...Hamza Chowdhury says he will challenge party leader and has received nominations from other Green councillors
Healey says Andy Burnham set out in his statement to MPs last week what he thought had gone wrong
The fundamentals of our economy [were] hollowed out through a series of past policy decisions, political power was centralised, weakening the relationships between the people, the businesses and the institutions who can make things happen beyond Whitehall. The economic enablers were privatised and outsourced, leaving accountability to a thicket of arm’s length bodies and regulators, too often without the predictability or the pace that underpins a thriving market economy. And our country was deindustrialised as the cost to make anything, to build anything here soared, and our dependence on unreliable sources grew, including in areas critical to our national security and sovereignty.
Let me be clear, I recognise that the costs of business, its energy bills, regulation, burdens, planning constraints, labour costs, have grown since Covid and I want to draw the line.
And whether it is the cost of business or the cost of living, the only way we deal with these in the long term is growth.
Continue reading...Taraneh Rahimi was told prison guards would rape her sister, Romina, if she did not sign a confession
The twins were 19 and still in high school when they were taken from their beds in the dead of night by masked men later identified as being sent by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
After four months of desperately seeking news from hospitals and state institutions, their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, finally learned their fate. Taraneh and Romina Rahimi had been seized over their decision to join millions on the streets of Iranian cities during the January protests against the regime. The twins were unrecognisable by the time of their mother’s prison visit in May.
Continue reading...As photojournalist sentenced to 15 years, rights groups warn law would turn civic engagement into security crime
Iran has taken the first step towards criminalising contact with foreign media, in a move human rights groups have said attempts to “sever the entire Iranian society from the rest of the world”.
For journalists, researchers and even ordinary citizens, the proposed law being discussed by Iranian lawmakers this month could make speaking to international audiences and groups a potential criminal act and restrict coverage of events such as January’s mass anti-regime protests.
Continue reading...