Author: France 24

Iranian presidential hopefuls Masoud Pezeshkian and Saeed Jalili held their final campaign rallies on Wednesday in preparation for Friday’s snap election runoff. Around 61 million Iranians are eligible to vote on who will succeed the late president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.  Source link

The energy required to power AI data centres has caused Google’s greenhouse emissions to increase 48% since 2019. Meanwhile, General Motors is faced with a 146 million dollar fine to settle allegations that its vehicles released more pollution than the carmaker reported. But first, Bolivia’s president has announced the country is lifting its ban on cryptocurrencies.  Source link

The Hamas militant group said Wednesday it has sent new “ideas” to Qatari mediators aimed at ending the nearly nine-month Gaza war with Israel. Source link

Japan’s first new banknotes in 20 years have entered circulation featuring three-dimensional portraits of the founders of financial and female education institutions in an attempt to curb counterfeits. While ATMs and ticket machines have been updated to treat the new bills, many of the country’s ubiquitous vending machines have not.  But first, a new law has gone into effect in Greece allowing employees to work six days a week in order to make up for a shrinking working population.  Source link

British sprinter Mark Cavendish on Wednesday secured his 35th Tour de France stage win, breaking Belgian legend Eddy Merckx’s 1975 record for most individual stage wins. Source link

Lebanon-based Hezbollah on Wednesday said it had fired a barrage of rockets targeting Israeli positions in retaliation for an attack that killed one of its senior commanders, the third top Hezbollah commander to be killed in almost nine months of hostilities along the Israel-Lebanon border. Source link

Inspired by a true story, “Ghost Trail” introduces us to the clandestine groups tracking down Syrian war criminals in Europe. Director Jonathan Millet joins us to talk about how he constructed an espionage film with amateur spies at its centre, and we discuss the long road to justice for the millions of Syrians devastated by the horrors of 13 years of war. Film critic Lisa Nesselson also takes us through Kevin Costner’s passion project, “Horizon”, as the first chapter of his four-part epic opens in French cinemas. Plus we get a rundown of the best road movies on show at…

FRANCE 24 spoke to Ami Ayalon, who was the head of Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, from 1996 to 2000. “As long as he (Binyamin Netanyahu) is prime minister, we shall not have peace [and] security,” Ayalon said. The former spy chief said he believes “most of the people who voted for him (Netanyahu) want him to leave his position” and that “he should do it immediately”. Ayalon, who is also a former commander-in-chief of the Israeli navy, called for an end to the war in Gaza, saying that there was no military solution possible. He added that everything…

Thousands of Japanese people who had been forcibly sterilised between 1948 and 1996 will be able to ask for compensation after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that its old eugenics law was unconstitutional. Source link

Bolivia’s president thwarted an attempted coup last week… but as a political feud continues between rivals, the country’s deepening economic crisis, and President Luis Arce’s refusal to admit there is one, arefuelling the public’s distrust in the government.  But first, with the Olympics just around the corner, hotels in Paris are facing a decline in occupancy rates as worries over price hikes and restrictions are keeping many tourists away.  Source link