French president shrugs off security fears after he is slapped on walkabout in run-up to elections
Emmanuel Macron has insisted he will continue to meet the public despite security fears after he was assaulted on a walkabout.
The French president was speaking as an opinion poll suggested his popularity is increasing. The latest survey by Ifop showed Macron gained 7 percentage points over the last month and was considered favourably by 50% of people.
Continue reading...Ethical streetwear co-operative Top Manta says profits will help migrant vendors ‘become legal and work for a decent wage’
After years of selling cheap copies of designer shoes and handbags, Barcelona’s street vendors have set up a co-operative and launched a line of trainers under the brand name Top Manta.
Unlike an earlier attempt to establish a brand in 2017 by sticking a logo on shoes imported from China, the trainers are made in Alicante in Spain and Porto in Portugal.
Continue reading...Friend of 15-month-old’s family reveals details of Channel smuggling trade that led to their deaths
The authorities in Norway did not have much to go on when they found the body on the shore on New Year’s Day. But the baby boy was wearing a jacket – navy blue with white stitching.
And that helped them solve the mystery of what had happened to 15-month-old Artin Iran Nezhad, who had last been seen weeks before and hundreds of miles away.
Continue reading...Analysis: upholding of genocide conviction for 1995 atrocities is a victorious end to a process few thought would succeed
When Ratko Mladić’s life sentence for genocide and crimes against humanity was confirmed, marking the end of the road for the Bosnian Serb general 10 years after his capture, Munira Subašić was in The Hague courtroom to watch.
In July 1995, Subašić was outside a UN compound, a disused battery factory near Srebrenica, appealing for protection from Dutch peacekeepers along with thousands of other terrified Bosnian Muslims.
Continue reading...Scrutiny of government procedures after ‘not-for-profit’ PPE contract led to ‘€20m enrichment’
The Dutch government has promised an independent investigation into a supposedly not-for-profit €100m (£86m) deal to buy face masks from China last year that ended up making three young entrepreneurs about €20m richer.
The investigative website Follow the Money (FTM) revealed that Sywert van Lienden, 30, a former civil servant turned TV pundit and activist, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Christian Democrat (CDA) party (part of the ruling coalition), netted €9.2m.
Continue reading...Judgment means 78-year-old former Bosnian Serb military chief will spend the rest of his life in prison
Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb commander nicknamed the “butcher of Bosnia”, will spend the rest of his life in prison after a UN court dismissed his final appeal against convictions for genocide and crimes against humanity, in a judgment hailed as “historic” by the White House.
Unlike previous appearances at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the 78-year-old showed little emotion as an hour-long reading of the judgment finally put an end to attempts to quash the charges against him.
Continue reading...A member of the public slaps the French president during a visit in southern France. Footage shows Macron walking up to a group of people in Tain-l'Hermitage, outside the city of Valence. As he begins to interact with the crowd, a man slaps him, reportedly shouting, 'Down with Macronia,' before security staff intervene
Continue reading...Two arrested after man shouted ‘down with Macronism’ before assaulting French president
Emmanuel Macron was slapped in the face by a man during a walkabout in southern France.
The president’s security detail immediately pulled the man to the ground and moved Macron away from the crowd, though the president appeared unhurt and determined to continue meeting the public.
Continue reading...Analysis: Armin Laschet’s campaign to succeed Angela Merkel is copying her strategy of skirting around hard political choices
Angela Merkel’s method of winning elections has earned its own phrase among German political scientists: “asymmetric demobilisation”, the art of running a campaign that skirts around hot-button issues in order to present voters with a choice between personalities rather than policies.
Three and a half months before Germany goes to the polls, Merkel’s aspiring successor Armin Laschet seems to have taken her strategy to heart. With a campaign that has so far failed to tackle the country’s hard choices on carbon emissions, digitisation, eurozone integration and military spending, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its candidate for chancellor may get away with it too.
Continue reading...UK considering unilaterally extending grace periods under Northern Ireland protocol
The row between the UK and the EU over checks on sausages and other chilled foods sent from Britain to Northern Ireland has deepened, with the Brexit minister telling Brussels that trade war threats will not wash with voters.
As a major meeting on Wednesday approached, Lord Frost said: “Further threats of legal action and trade retaliation from the EU won’t make life any easier for the shopper in Strabane who can’t buy their favourite product. Nor will it benefit the small business in Ballymena struggling to source produce from their supplier in Birmingham.”
Continue reading...European and Australian police join forces with FBI to seize weapons, drugs and $148m in cash
A global sting in which organised crime gangs were sold encrypted phones that law enforcement officials could monitor has led to more than 800 arrests in 18 countries.
The operation by the FBI and Australian and European police, ensnared suspects in Australia, Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East involved in the narcotics trade.
Continue reading...Artin, previously listed as missing, died alongside his Iranian-Kurdish relatives when boat sank last October
A body that was found on a Norwegian shore several months ago has been identified as that of a 15-month-old child named Artin, who died alongside his relatives as they tried to cross the Channel to start a new life in the UK last October, local police have said.
The body was found near Karmøy in south-west Norway on New Year’s Day – more than two months after the vessel carrying the Iranian Kurds Rasul Iran Nezhad, Shiva Mohammad Panahi and their three children sank.
Continue reading...India announces free jabs for over-18s; Norway to shorten vaccine interval
Brazil’s health ministry has reported 37,156 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 1,010 deaths, according to Reuters:
The South American country has now registered 16,984,218 cases since the pandemic began, while the death toll has risen to 474,414, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the United States and India and its second-deadliest.
Portugal’s foreign minister has said that Spain’s decision to require a negative coronavirus test for people crossing the border must be “a mistake”, Reuters reported Lusa news agency saying on Monday:
Portugal had asked Spanish authorities for clarification on “what could only have been a mistake”, Portugal’s foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva said.
“We have asked Spanish authorities for clarification and await it being granted as quickly as possible, because if not we will need to adopt equivalent reciprocal measures,” Santos Silva said, adding that “the epidemiological situation in Spain is, at the moment, worse than what we are living in Portugal.”
Continue reading...Members of the body that awarded the 2019 peace prize to Ethiopia’s premier, Abiy Ahmed, should all depart in protest
The war on Tigray in Ethiopia has been going on for months. Thousands of people have been killed and wounded, women and girls have been raped by military forces, and more than 2 million citizens have been forced out of their homes. Prime minister and Nobel peace prize laureate Abiy Ahmed stated that a nation on its way to “prosperity” would experience a few “rough patches” that would create “blisters”. This is how he rationalised what is alleged to be a genocide.
Nobel committee members have individual responsibility for awarding the 2019 peace prize to Abiy Ahmed, accused of waging the war in Tigray. The members should thus collectively resign their honourable positions at the Nobel committee in protest and defiance.
Continue reading...National team shirt features map of Ukraine that includes Russian-annexed Crimea
The head of the Ukrainian football association has caused outrage in Russia by unveiling a new national team shirt emblazoned with a map of Ukraine that includes Crimea.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and Moscow considers the peninsula part of Russia, but it is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine.
Continue reading...A unique ‘pig toilet’ and a diet of organic leftovers are part of former vet Kees Scheepens’ plans to put animal welfare and sustainability first
“Oma, hoi! Hier! Hallooo,” Dr Kees Scheepens, a Dutch farmer known as the “pig whisperer”, is calling his two oldest pigs for some apricot snacks.
Oma or “granny”, a seven-year-old sow, lives with a Berkshire boar called Borough, who’s nine, off a quiet lane in the town of Oirschot, in the south of the Netherlands, on a farm called Hemelrijken – Dutch for “the realms of heaven”.
Continue reading...Data shows increased danger for those on the frontline in the pandemic, with misinformation, scarce vaccines and fragile health systems blamed
Hundreds of healthcare workers treating Covid patients around the world have experienced verbal, physical, and sometimes life-threatening attacks during the pandemic, prompting calls for immediate action from human rights campaigners.
Covid-related attacks on healthcare workers are expected to rise as new variants cause havoc in countries such as India and rollouts of vaccination programmes belatedly get under way in some countries, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to health.
Continue reading...Red Army soldier David Dushman used his T-34 Soviet tank to mow down the electric fence of the Nazi death camp
David Dushman, the last surviving soldier who took part in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1945, has died at the age of 98.
He died in a Munich clinic on Friday night, the city’s Jewish IKG cultural community said on Sunday, describing him as a liberating “hero of Auschwitz”.
Continue reading...Conservative win in Saxony-Anhalt seen as last big test ahead of national election in September
Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) fought off a challenge from the far right in a state election on Sunday seen as the last big test for Germany’s political parties before a national vote in September that will end the chancellor’s 16 years atop German politics.
In exit polls the CDU, whose current leader, Armin Laschet, will vie for the top job in September, improved on its 2017 performance to gain 36% of the vote in the eastern state – a result the state premier, Reiner Haseloff, said symbolised “a clear demarcation against the far right”.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson has pledged to give details of how UK will meet its climate targets before Cop26
The German government is backing an extension of EU carbon pricing that will end free carbon permits for airlines, putting pressure on the UK to put in place a similar package to meet climate targets.
The European Commission will propose a dozen climate policies on 14 July, each designed to slash greenhouse gases faster in line with an EU goal to cut net emissions by 55% by 2030 from 1990 levels.
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