French president’s office confirms state visit off after mass strikes and demonstrations across the country
King Charles’s state visit to Paris has been postponed amid mass strikes and protests, the French president’s office has said.
The king had been scheduled to arrive in France on Sunday on his first state visit as monarch, before heading to Germany on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Olha fled the Ukrainian city a year ago this week and has faced many challenges, including enrolling her children in school
I’m just an ordinary mother. My children went to school and enjoyed after-school clubs. Last February, I was preparing to shoot a short film about Kherson’s streets. A rehearsal was scheduled – but it never took place.
That was the day they bombed airports simultaneously across the country. Public transport stopped running from our city. The frontline ran straight to our city and a week later we found ourselves under occupation. One morning changed our lives, and that of every Ukrainian family, for ever.
Continue reading...Maryam al-Khawaja says she fears her father Abdulhadi’s health is deteriorating and condemns Denmark for inaction
Human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja’s health has suffered so much inside a Bahraini prison that his daughter Maryam has offered to trade places with him. She fears that without urgent action, her father will slowly die behind bars without being able to see his family.
“I don’t know how much longer my dad has. I spend every day dreading each time the phone rings, as it might be someone calling me to let me know my dad is no longer around,” said Maryam. “I know he has serious health issues and the authorities are using [lack of] access to proper treatment as a method of punishment. I don’t want to wait around for my dad to be released to us in a coffin. I can’t do that.”
Continue reading...Pair tell of witnessing or experiencing torture and brainwashing, as Republicans and Democrats vow to document ‘genocide’
Two women who say they experienced and eventually escaped Chinese “re-education” camps provided first-hand testimony to members of the US Congress on Thursday night, offering harrowing accounts of life in detention while urging Americans not to look away from what the US has declared a continuing genocide of Muslim ethnic minorities.
Speaking before a special bipartisan House committee at the start of Ramadan, Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uyghur woman, said she spent nearly three years in internment camps and police stations, during which she was subjected to 11 hours of daily “brainwashing education” that included singing patriotic songs and praising the Chinese government before and after meals.
Continue reading...Airstrikes in retaliation to attack on base in north-east by suspected Iranian-made drone that killed US contractor
The US military has carried out airstrikes against Iran-backed forces in retaliation for an attack that killed an American contractor and wounded five US troops.
A day after the deadly attack on US personnel in Syria, which Washington blamed on a drone of Iranian origin, sources said a US base in Syria’s north-east was targeted in a new missile attack. US officials said there were no US casualties in the incident on Friday.
Continue reading...Known as ‘Rice Tusker’ for his insatiable hunger, the 30-year-old pachyderm has been terrorising the Indian region for years
The trail of destruction left by an elephant in Kerala could finally come to an end on Sunday as a crack team of experts plan to capture him.
The team of 71 vets, forest officers and field workers have identified a specific spot among the wooded hills in Idukki district where Arikompan – which means the Rice Tusker, because of his love for rice – comes every couple of days to cool off in water.
Continue reading...Patrick Amadon, whose work flashed up names from pro-democracy protests, says it had to be taken down ‘to be a completed piece’
A Hong Kong department store took down a digital artwork that contained hidden references to jailed free-speech defenders, in an incident the artist says is evidence of the erosion of free speech by Chinese authorities.
Patrick Amadon’s No Rioters was put on display on a billboard at the huge Sogo Causeway Bay store as the city was promoting itself as a cultural hub following years of pandemic travel restrictions. Art Basel Hong Kong, a prominent art fair in Asia, began this week, alongside other art events.
Continue reading...Poor internet and logistical problems frustrate hearing into killing of British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous expert
Activists and lawyers representing the families of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira have voiced frustration and anger after the preliminary court hearings of three of their alleged murderers had to be suspended because of poor internet and logistical problems at the high-security prisons where the defendants are being held.
Three of the suspected killers of the British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous specialist were scheduled to give evidence from behind bars this week during partly online hearings that are expected to pave the way for a jury trial, possibly in the second half of this year.
Continue reading...Polly Sanderson-Grasham said seeing her father’s state after the incident was like ‘a slap in the face’
The daughter of the man who collided with Gwyneth Paltrow on a ski slope, has said seeing her father’s state after the incident was like “a slap in the face”.
Polly Sanderson-Grasham said that following the crash in 2016, her father was unable to “see the forest for the trees” and got “lost in the minutiae” of things.
Continue reading...Animal, which is thought to have broken out of its zoo enclosure, was tranquillised after being on the loose in South Korean capital
A young zebra walked, trotted and galloped for hours through the busy streets of Seoul before emergency workers tranquillised the animal and brought it back to a zoo.
The zebra – a male named Sero who was born in the zoo in 2021 – was in a stable condition and being examined by veterinarians on Thursday evening, said Choi Ye-ra, an official at the Children’s Grand Park in South Korea’s capital.
Continue reading...South Korean CEO of Terraform Labs is accused of multi-billion-dollar fraud involving TerraUSD and Luna currencies
A man suspected of being the fugitive South Korean cryptocurrency entrepreneur Do Kwon, accused of orchestrating a multi-billion-dollar fraud that shook global crypto markets last year, has been arrested in Montenegro.
“Montenegrin police have detained a person suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives, South Korean citizen, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based Terraform Labs,” the interior minister, Filip Adžić, tweeted late on Thursday.
Continue reading...Shou Zi Chew attempts to play down concerns over data and privacy as lawmakers call for ban on Chinese-owned app
The chief executive of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, was forced to defend his company’s relationship with China, as well as the protections for its youngest users, at a testy congressional hearing on Thursday that came amid a bipartisan push to ban the app entirely in the US over national security concerns.
The hearing marked the first ever appearance before US lawmakers by a TikTok chief executive, and a rare public outing for the 4o-year-old Chew, who has remained largely out of the limelight as the social network’s popularity soars. TikTok now boasts tens of millions of US users, but lawmakers have long held concerns over China’s control over the app, which Chew repeatedly tried to assuage throughout the hearing. “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew said in Thursday’s testimony.
Continue reading...In an excerpt from her forthcoming book, CNN supreme court analyst Joan Biskupic reveals a body where the conservative majority fortified by Donald Trump is driving forward with decisions to change America – even as some of its members try to appear conciliatory in public.
She also describes chief justice John Robert’s decision to quickly move Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s papers from her office after she died in 2020, which offended some of her aides used to more relaxed transitions between justices.
Within days of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s memorial service in late September 2020, boxes of her files and other office possessions were moved down to a dark, windowless theater on the Supreme Court’s ground floor, where – before the ongoing pandemic – tourists could watch a film about court operations.
Grieving aides to the justice who’d served 27 years and become a cultural icon known as the “Notorious RBG” sorted through the chambers’ contents there.
Continue reading...At least 75 people held across country on ‘day of disruption’ as Knesset approves law designed to protect Netanyahu
Israel’s two-month-old protest movement took to the streets for a “day of disruption” as the parliament passed the first part of the hardline government’s controversial judicial changes into law.
The legislation, designed to protect the position of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was approved early on Thursday, after a heated all-night debate, by 61 votes to 47 – the minimum majority required.
Continue reading...This liveblog has now closed, you can read more of our coverage here
Any attempt to arrest President Vladimir Putin after the international criminal court (ICC) issued a warrant for the Kremlin chief would amount to a declaration of war against Russia, his ally Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday, while directly threatening to attack the seat of any government that allowed it to happen.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant on Friday, accusing Putin of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. It said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Putin bore individual criminal responsibility.
As a result of an attack by Russian drones [yesterday] on a hostel in Rzhyshchiv, Kyiv region, nine people were killed, the state emergency service reported. Rescue operations are completed.
In the middle of the night, the Russian military shelled Kramatorsk in Donetsk region: residential buildings, a boiler house and garages were damaged. On 22 March, shelling in the region killed two people and injured four others.
Continue reading...Largely peaceful protests are marred by outbreaks of violence as unions claim 3.5 million turned out, while authorities put number at just over 1 million
Emmanuel Macron felt the full force of French anger on Thursday as protesters gathered across the country to demonstrate their opposition to the pension age being raised from 62 to 64.
Unions claimed 3.5 million people turned out across the country, while the authorities suggested the figure was much lower, at just under 1.1 million.
Continue reading...Artem Uss broke electronic tag and went on run a day after court agreed to hand him over to US authorities
A Russian national accused of smuggling military technology has escaped house arrest a day after an Italian court agreed to hand him over to US authorities.
Italian authorities said Artem Uss, who was detained at Milan’s Malpensa airport on an international arrest warrant last October, broke his court-ordered electronic bracelet and left his house in Cascina Vione di Basiglio in the province of Milan.
Continue reading...Green party accuses FDP of gambling away country’s reputation after last-minute blocking of phase-out from 2035
A clash over climate protection measures is threatening to unravel Germany’s three-party governing alliance, after the Green party accused its liberal coalition partners of gambling away the country’s reputation by blocking a EU-wide phase-out of internal combustion engines in cars.
“You can’t have a coalition of progress where only one party is in charge of progress and the others try to stop the progress,” the country’s vice-chancellor and economy minister, Robert Habeck, said at a meeting of the Green party’s parliamentary group in Weimar on Tuesday.
Continue reading...With uncollected rubbish lining Paris streets, critics are comparing the optics of the royal arrival to 1789
Striking workers in France are refusing to provide red carpets for King Charles’s first overseas trip as monarch amid protests over rises to the pension age.
French trade union CGT announced this week that its members at Mobilier National, the institution in charge of providing flags, red carpets and furniture for public buildings, would not help prepare a reception for the king upon his arrival in Paris on Sunday.
Continue reading...Han Dong reportedly met with Chinese diplomat and suggested officials delay freeing two Canadians held by China
A Canadian lawmaker has resigned from the governing Liberal party following allegations that he secretly met with a Chinese diplomat and advised Beijing not to release two Canadian captives.
Han Dong announced in the House of Commons late on Wednesday that he would sit as an independent. Global News reported that he met with Han Tao, China’s consul-general in Toronto in February 2021 and suggested officials in Beijing delay freeing Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, two Canadians being held by China at the time. He is also alleged to have suggested releasing the two men would benefit the rival Conservative party.
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