Italy on Tuesday approved the deployment of 500 troops to Milan after violent clashes as fuel price protests hit pasta production and food deliveries in southern Italy. A cabinet meeting on Tuesday also approved a series of security measures, including making the detention of minors easier and introducing the crime of "violent participation in a demonstration". FRANCE 24's Seema Gupta reports from Rome.
In what Ukraine's military is calling a historic first, a soldier who suffered injuries to both legs on the battlefield was evacuated by an unmanned aerial drone. His fellow servicemen say the soldier is "a hero" who didn't hesitate to strap himself to the hexacopter drone and fly back to his unit.
Spanish Guardia Civil officers have rescued a family and their dogs from a flooded home in Oliva, in eastern Spain. Dramatic footage shows officers carrying residents to safety as floodwaters engulf the town, while aerial images reveal the extent of the flooding across the Valencia region.
Advance warnings of missile attacks were seemingly suspended last week by the White House, but Ukraine’s president says: ‘Now it works’
The US has resumed sharing intelligence with Kyiv about Russian missile strikes, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday after a meeting with the US envoy Steve Witkoff in Norway.
He said Ukraine was again receiving advance warnings of ballistic missile attacks, which were seemingly suspended last week by the White House. “Now it works. It’s great,” he said, adding that the US move would save lives.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was meeting US special envoy Steve Witkoff on Tuesday in a bid to rescue relations that have sunk to new lows as President Donald Trump has courted Moscow and Kyiv has complained about Washington withholding vital defences. FRANCE 24's Gulliver Cragg reports from Kharkiv.
Through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Energy, the European Union is supporting the modernisation of the Čierny Váh pumped-storage hydropower plant in Slovakia by enabling its conversion to variable-speed operation. The EU is funding both the preparatory studies and the first phase of works under the SE Integrator project, led by Slovenské elektrárne, a.s. The […]
Troubled by the ongoing liquidity crisis impeding the United Nations ability to deliver on its mandates, delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today emphasized that Member States’ timely payment of assessed contributions to the regular and peacekeeping budgets is crucial. Speaking for the Group of 77 and China, Uruguay’s representative said the Group […]
Years ago I was flipping through the ads of a ‘Black Friday’ sale from a large US retailer, while visiting a relative in North Carolina. Amid the pens and pencils was a child’s school bag with a large neon printed unicorn surrounded by lollipops and or hearts.
It was bullet proof.
I can’t recall what caliber of bullet it promised to stop. But the same paper had a semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle for sale at only $549.99 [€490], which normally retails at almost $1,000. I snapped a photo of it.
Guns for sale in North Carolina, including a Bushmaster which had been used to kill small children at an elementary school prior to the sale (Pic: Nikolaj Nielsen)
A few years earlier, a Bushmaster had been used to gun down 20 small children at Sandy Hook Elementary. Most of them were only six-years old.
A Benenlli 12-gauge tactical shotgun was also on sale. Last week, five-year-old Rhoam Summer and two others, aged 8 and 11 were shot dead at a school in Oregon by a 16-year old with a shotgun.
I mention this as someone who grew up in the United States and went to school there but can’t identify with a normalisation of violence splashed out as one-off specials and deals ahead of Christmas, a holiday that is cynically meant to celebrate peace and kindness.
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Passengers across Europe are entitled to a full refund within 14 days, even if they booked through a travel intermediary. Companions of people with disabilities will fly free of charge.
Passengers across Europe are entitled to a full refund within 14 days, even if they booked through a travel intermediary. Companions of people with disabilities will fly free of charge.
Qatar welcomed the French president with full state honours on his arrival in Doha as the two countries are strengthening their strategic ties. Facing protests at home, Macron is seeking energy deals with Gulf partners to help ease fuel prices in France, but also contributing to regional stability.
Mounting anxiety as Russia’s war on Ukraine reaches Nato’s borders with targeting of vessels transporting agricultural cargo
Nato is deploying additional military assets to the Black Sea amid the recent deadly escalation of Russian attacks on merchant shipping, as five more vessels were attacked on Tuesday.
Russia’s military said it struck three cargo vessels in Ukraine’s port of Reni and two other cargo vessels en route to Odesa.
A handful of Republicans have spoken out against Donald Trump’s softening stance on Russia, threatening to pull financial support for his agenda over his “embarrassing” handling of the Ukraine war.
Don Bacon, an outgoing congressman in Nebraska, condemned Trump’s actions – which include a stunning agreement to buy Russian diesel and the pausing of sanctions on Moscow – as “absolutely disgraceful” and accused the US president of cozying up to a “war criminal” in Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart.
The EU’s top diplomat has backed the idea of a Black Sea naval mission to protect grain ships from Russian drones – but this would require a much bigger effort than Europe’s existing Red Sea operation, while air-policing might be more effective.
“The EU should send a mission to the Black Sea,” said EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday (20 October).
“To protect merchant shipping, not to escalate, not to scare anyone, but to make sure that we will supply safely fuel, merchandise at normal prices, anything we need. This is how it should be,” she said.
Some “six attacks in 10 days by suspected Russian drones marks a dangerous and unacceptable escalation,” in the region, Kallas added, with “rescuers still searching for seven sailors missing after the drone attack on two tankers near Romania’s Black Sea coast”.
The Russian attacks were costing Ukraine €60m a day in lost exports of grain and fertiliser, Kallas also said.
And Russia had changed its tactics to start targeting people instead of cargo, said Sidharth Kaushal, from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) defence think-tank in London.
“Before, they targeted ports, not civilians, or vessels at sea. They realised that threat to life is a much more effective deterrent to commercial shipping than threat to cargo,” he told EUobserver.
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Officers are instruments of state whose job is to repress, rather than manage, public dissent
Familiar images of teargas clouds drifting across Paris squares, police baton charges against masked protesters and terrified teenagers floored – and worse – by stun grenades have once again focused the world’s attention on France’s policing methods.
While most of its western European neighbours generally favour police tactics that prioritise crowd containment and de-escalation, France has long responded to social movements that take to the streets with, at times, shocking physical force.
Iran’s foreign ministry further warned Washington it would retaliate against any strike, and an IRGC spokesperson threatened to target undersea internet cables in the Gulf in another escalation of the ongoing war of words between Tehran and Washington.
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