Author: France 24

The number of children worldwide who died before age five reached a record low in 2022, the United Nations said in a report published Tuesday, as for the first time fewer than five million died.  Issued on: 13/03/2024 – 08:17Modified: 13/03/2024 – 08:19 2 min According to the estimate, 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday in 2022, a 51 percent decrease since 2000 and a 62 percent drop since 1990, according to the report, which still warned such progress is “precarious” and unequal.”There is a lot of good news, and the major one is that we have come…

Leonid Volkov, a close ally of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was admitted to hospital on Tuesday after being attacked outside his home in Lithuania, local police told AFP. Issued on: 13/03/2024 – 00:08 2 min Volkov, 43, is one of Russia’s most prominent opposition figures and was a close confidant of Navalny, working as the late leader’s ex-chief of staff and as chair of his Anti-Corruption Foundation until 2023.”Leonid Volkov has just been attacked outside his house. Someone broke a car window and sprayed tear gas in his eyes, after which the attacker started hitting Leonid with a…

France’s government and Corsican elected officials have agreed on the wording of a proposed constitutional revision granting the île de Beauté (Island of Beauty) a special status, six months after President Emmanuel Macron broke a longstanding French taboo on the subject of autonomy for the island scarred by decades of conflict with Paris.  Half a century after the start of Corsica’s armed nationalist struggle, the Mediterranean island inched closer to autonomy in the early hours of Tuesday as officials hammered out a deal on a proposed constitutional revision after marathon talks at the interior ministry in Paris.  The draft text provides for…

Issued on: 12/03/2024 – 17:19Modified: 12/03/2024 – 17:42 03:16 Andrew Hilliar, FRANCE 24 Journalist, Jerusalem © France 24 There are “big questions about how and where this ship is going to unload its humanitarian aid”, said FRANCE 24’s journalist in Jerusalem, Andrew Hilliar. “As far as we are aware, there are no working piers that are big enough to handle this ship. At the same time, the ship can’t get too close to the shore because the waters off the coast of Gaza are too shallow,” he added.  Read more on related topics: Source link

Turkey, Iran and Morocco are vying for a greater economic and military role in Africa’s Sahel after former colonial ruler France’s forced withdrawal from the volatile region. Issued on: 12/03/2024 – 11:29Modified: 12/03/2024 – 11:27 3 min Turkish military equipment and Moroccan and Iranian development and infrastructure projects are tempting for cash-strapped Sahelian military regimes grappling with jihadist violence.Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have undergone coups since 2020, against a backdrop of a bloody jihadist insurgency.Their military rulers have since exited a wider Western African bloc and created a joint defence pact to fight the jihadists.Under-equipped Sahelian armies want “to…

Back to homepage / Shows / arts24 Issued on: 12/03/2024 – 16:18Modified: 12/03/2024 – 16:22 11:38 arts24 © FRANCE 24 After “Oppenheimer”’s success at the Oscars, we take you to the film’s shooting location in New Mexico that is thought to have inspired the man now known as “the father of the atomic bomb”. We also take a look at the first exhibition from mystery French street artist Invader and a photography exhibition celebrating the writing of Nobel Prize for Literature laureate – Annie Ernaux. Read more on related topics: Source link

France’s government and elected officials from Corsica have agreed on wording for granting autonomy to the Mediterranean island, a region that often chafes at rule from Paris. Issued on: 12/03/2024 – 15:53Modified: 12/03/2024 – 15:54 3 min President Emmanuel Macron in September set a six-month deadline to find a way to give the island “a form of autonomy”.Corsicans have long wanted more say on their own affairs, as well as official status for their language and protection from outsiders buying up land – two thorny requests that Paris has been reluctant to grant.Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin and Corsican officials in…

Rifaat al-Assad, an uncle of the Syrian president, will stand trial in Switzerland for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity that decades ago earned him the nickname “The Butcher of Hama”. Issued on: 12/03/2024 – 13:11Modified: 12/03/2024 – 13:09 3 min The office of Switzerland’s Attorney General (OAG) said it was charging the former Syrian vice president and former Syrian army officer with a long list of crimes committed in February 1982, during a notorious clash between the Syrian military and Islamist opposition in the town of Hama in western Syria.There was no immediate official reaction from Syria nor…

Pro-Ukrainian militias on Tuesday staged a brazen cross-border attack on Russia, hours after Kyiv launched one of its largest drone attacks since the start of the war. Issued on: 12/03/2024 – 13:30Modified: 12/03/2024 – 13:31 4 min Groups of pro-Kyiv volunteer fighters, made up of Russians who oppose the Kremlin, said that they had broken into the Kursk and Belgorod regions, while Moscow said it had foiled multiple Ukrainian attempts to infiltrate the border. “We crossed the border,” the Freedom of Russia legion, a militia that claims to be made up of Russian citizens fighting on behalf of Ukraine, said it…

Voters in Portugal go to the polls Sunday in an early election that could see the country join a shift to the right seen across Europe after eight years of Socialist rule.  Issued on: 10/03/2024 – 07:35 2 min Final opinion polls published Friday show the centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) narrowly ahead of the Socialist Party (PS) but short of an outright majority in parliament, which could make the far-right party Chega a kingmaker for forming a governing coalition.But analysts warned the results of the election, Portugal’s second in two years, remained wide open given the large number of undecided…