Author: France 24

The United States plans to impose sanctions on more than 500 targets involved in Russia’s war in Ukraine, as fighting continues to rage two years after Moscow’s invasion, the Treasury Department said Thursday. Nearly a week after Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison, President Joe Biden met privately with his widow and daughter in California. Issued on: 23/02/2024 – 01:41Modified: 23/02/2024 – 01:39 3 min The action to be rolled out on Friday will hit “Russia, its enablers, and its war machine”, a Treasury spokesperson told AFP.The official added that these sanctions will be introduced from both the Treasury…

Back to homepage / Middle East Israel-Hamas war Israel launched deadly air strikes on Rafah on Thursday, after threatening to send troops in to hunt for Hamas militants in the southern Gaza city where around 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge. Another 97 people were killed over the past 24 hours in Hamas-run Gaza, the health ministry said, as a US envoy was in Israel for fresh efforts to secure a truce. Read our liveblog for all the latest developments in the Israel-Hamas war. Issued on: 23/02/2024 – 04:46Modified: 23/02/2024 – 05:06 2 min A Palestinian looks at the destruction after an Israeli strike on…

An FBI informant charged with lying about US President Joe Biden and his son has been arrested again, just days after being released on bail, his lawyers said in a court filing Thursday. Issued on: 23/02/2024 – 05:02 2 min Alexander Smirnov, 43, a dual US and Israeli national, was arrested last week and indicted for fabricating claims that Hunter Biden demanded multi-million-dollar bribes from Ukrainian firm Burisma — on whose board he was serving at the time — to protect it from an investigation when his father was US vice president.Earlier this week Smirnov was released by a court in Nevada,…

A fire engulfed two residential buildings in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia on Thursday, killing four people and leaving 19 others missing hours after the blaze started, authorities said. Issued on: 23/02/2024 – 03:16 1 min The fire sent fleeing residents onto balconies where some were rescued by firefighters, officials said.Firefighters rushed to the scene on the outskirts of the city centre as flames burst from windows of the 14-story residential building where the blaze apparently started. Residents could be seen waiting for rescue on balconies, and firefighters used a crane to lift two residents from one of the…

A spacecraft built and flown by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines LUNR.O landed near the south pole of the moon on Thursday, the first US touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever achieved entirely by the private sector. Issued on: 23/02/2024 – 00:49Modified: 23/02/2024 – 01:05 3 min The six-legged robot lander, dubbed Odysseus, touched down at about 6:23 pm EST (2323 GMT), the company and NASA commentators said in a joint webcast of the landing from Intuitive Machines’ mission operations center in Houston.As planned, the spacecraft was believed to have come to rest at a crater named Malapert…

Senegal’s President Macky Sall said Thursday his mandate would end as planned on April 2, but left open the new date for a presidential election which he postponed earlier this month. Issued on: 22/02/2024 – 23:03 3 min Sall has faced a clamour to set a date for the vote after his abrupt delay to the February 25 election triggered weeks of crisis.Amid simmering social and political tensions, the president put off a decision on the date until after a political dialogue due to begin on Monday. In an apparent move to pacify public opinion, Sall also said he would consider…

Images of huge crowds of protesters in several towns in Germany have been circulating widely online since early February – but with false and misleading captions. Posts on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram claim that the protests were held in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, as Israel continues its deadly assault on the Palestinian enclave. In reality, these are images of large protests held in mid-January against the extreme-right AfD political party. Issued on: 22/02/2024 – 14:42 3 min If you only have a minute: Accounts on Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) have been sharing videos showing…

Israel has announced plans to launch a full-scale offensive on the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza strip, claiming it is the only way to “completely destroy” Hamas. But according to former French military officer and author Guillaume Ancel, a large-scale military operation in the city that is now host to half of Gaza’s population is of no strategic interest. In his analysis, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s only goal is to make the Palestinian enclave “uninhabitable”. The countdown has begun for Rafah. Israel repeated on Sunday its threats of carrying out a major ground attack against the southern Gaza city before the…

Issued on: 22/02/2024 – 17:41 02:44 ‘Dad, come back’: Palestinians radio loved ones in Israeli jails (2024) © AFP / France 24 Deprived of visiting rights after the October 7 Hamas attack, families of Palestinian detainees in Israel are trying to reach their loved ones by radio as prisons cut off communications. On the show “Messages for the Prisoners” broadcast on the Ramallah-based station Radio Ajyal, listeners can hear dozens of families trying to communicate with their loved ones in Israeli jails. Read more on related topics: Source link

The mother of Russia’s top opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Thursday that she has seen her son’s body and that she is resisting strong pressure by authorities to agree to a secret burial outside the public eye.  Issued on: 22/02/2024 – 18:31 4 min Speaking in a video statement from the Arctic city of Salekhard, Lyudmila Navalnaya said investigators have allowed her to see her son Alexei Navalny’s body in the city morgue. She reaffirmed her demand for her son’s body to be handed over to her and decried the pressure she was being subjected to by Russian authorities to try…