French pension plan protesters briefly occupy Summer Olympics HQ; Prince Harry tells London court ‘vile’ press has blood on its hands and more
Following is a summary of current world news briefs.
French pension plan protesters briefly occupy Summer Olympics HQ
Members of the hard-left CGT trade union briefly occupied the headquarters of the Paris Summer 2024 Olympics on Tuesday on the 14th day of protests against government plans to raise the retirement age to 64. BFM television images showed the protesters entering the building in Aubervilliers, northern Paris.
Prince Harry tells London court ‘vile’ press has blood on its hands
Prince Harry launched a fierce attack on the “vile” press on Tuesday, blaming tabloids for destroying his adolescence and later relationships, as he gave evidence against a tabloid publisher whose titles he accuses of unlawful activities. Harry, the fifth-in-line to the throne, became the first senior royal to appear in a witness box in more than a century in a lawsuit he and 100 others have brought against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN).
Blinken heads to Saudi Arabia amid strained ties, Israel normalization in mind
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken travels to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday on a mission to steady Washington’s relationship with Riyadh after years of deepening disagreements on issues ranging from Iran and regional security to oil prices.
Blinken is expected to meet with top Saudi officials and possibly the kingdom’s de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MbS, during his time in Riyadh, the capital, and the coastal city of Jeddah, in what will be Washington’s second recent high-level visit. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan traveled to Saudi Arabia on May 7.
Russia probe into Navalny poisoning inadequate -European court
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Tuesday that Russian authorities’ investigation into the alleged poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in 2020 was inadequate and ordered Russia to pay Navalny 40,000 euros in damages. In August 2020, Navalny – Russia’s most prominent opposition politician – survived an apparent attempt to poison him during a flight in Siberia, with what Western laboratory tests determined was a nerve agent. He was treated for that poisoning in Germany but voluntarily returned to Russia in 2021, where he was arrested on arrival and jailed.
Dam destroyed in Ukraine, flooding war zone
A torrent of water burst through a huge dam on the Dnipro River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine on Tuesday, flooding a swathe of the war zone and forcing villagers to flee. Ukraine and its Western allies accused Russia of blowing up the dam in a deliberate war crime. The Kremlin said it was Ukraine that had sabotaged the dam, to distract attention from a counteroffensive Moscow claims is faltering. Some Russian-installed officials said the dam had burst on its own.
Breakthrough on stalled EU migration deal coming this week – official
European Union countries are expected this week to agree on how to share out the responsibility of hosting refugees and migrants, a top EU official said on Tuesday of what would mark a breakthrough after years of bitter feuds within the bloc. The EU’s migration chief spoke ahead of talks between home affairs ministers of the bloc’s 27 member states on Thursday. On the table is an overhaul of EU asylum rules which broke down in 2015 as more than a million people – mostly fleeing the war in Syria – reached the bloc across the Mediterranean.
France’s last surviving D-Day commando joins beach landing anniversary
Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of the French commandos who stormed the Normandy beaches defended by Hitler’s troops in 1944, on Tuesday joined President Emmanuel Macron at a seafront ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Gautier, 100, presented a student marine commando with his green beret at a passing out parade at Colleville-Montgomery, near where a 17-year-old Gautier had landed on Sword Beach in a hail of enemy fire.
Ukrainians weigh order to leave after dam breach, as Russian troops patrol
Russian occupation authorities ordered residents of three districts to leave their homes on Tuesday after the huge Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine was breached in the early hours, but some locals said they would stay despite the rising waters. Residents contacted by Reuters said the mood was tense in the town of Nova Kakhovka, which sits on the Russian-controlled southern bank of the Dnipro River, on the downriver side of the dam.
Over 100 bodies remain unclaimed after Indian rail disaster
Indian authorities made fervent appeals to families on Tuesday to help identify over 100 unclaimed bodies kept in hospitals and mortuaries after 275 people were killed in the country’s deadliest rail crash in over two decades. The disaster struck on Friday, when a passenger train hit a stationary freight train, jumped the tracks and hit another passenger train passing in the opposite direction near the district of Balasore in the eastern state of Odisha.
Clashes between Sudan’s warring factions intensify, no end in sight
Sudan’s warring military factions clashed by air and on the ground in the country’s capital on Tuesday, as increased violence and spreading lawlessness added to the misery of residents already struggling with limited food and medicine. Fighting between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, now in its eighth week, has killed hundreds of civilians, and driven 400,000 across borders and more than 1.2 million out of the capital and other cities.
(With inputs from agencies.)
