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Paris, France (AFP) A 69-year-old gunman who opened fire at a Kurdish cultural centre and a hairdressing salon in Paris on Friday was deliberately seeking out foreigners, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. The man, a retired train driver, “was clearly targeting foreigners”, Darmanin told reporters, adding however that it was “not certain” that the man was aiming to kill “Kurds in particular”. Darmanin said: “We yet don’t know his exact motives.” There was also […]
CHONGQING, China (AFP) – “Deceased, deceased,” a staffer in full protective gear shouted as she handed a nurse a death certificate, their hospital in central China overflowing with Covid patients. China is battling a wave of infections that has hit the elderly hard, but has officially logged only a handful of deaths from the coronavirus after the government redefined the criteria by which Covid deaths are counted. At No. 5 People’s Hospital in Chongqing, the main […]
VIÑA DEL MAR, Chile (AFP) – At least two people died and some 400 homes have been damaged or destroyed in a fire that broke out Thursday in the Chilean seaside resort of Vina del Mar, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency. The flames, fanned by strong gusts of wind, spread from the upper areas of town down ravines and hills in the span of just a few hours to the lowest and […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) – Employees of Chinese tech giant ByteDance improperly accessed data from social media platform TikTok to track journalists in a bid to identify the source of leaks to the media, the company admitted Friday. TikTok has gone to great lengths to convince customers and governments of major markets like the United States that users’ data privacy is protected and that it poses no threat to national security. But parent company ByteDance told AFP […]
SUVA, Fiji (AFP) — Fiji’s opposition on Friday accused the government of sowing “fear and chaos” in a bid to stay in power, as the military began deploying to the streets of the capital Suva. AFP reporters witnessed a small number of military vehicles on patrol, a day after Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama announced their mobilization to maintain “law and order”. The scene was otherwise calm with people going about last-minute holiday shopping. Formal naval […]
by Sebastien RICCI with Luna LIN and Holmes CHAN in Hong Kong Agence France-Presse BEIJING, China (AFP) — China has requisitioned medical supplies production across the country as millions struggle to obtain basic drugs and testing kits in the face of a surge in Covid-19 cases. Pharmacies in major cities have been stripped bare in the wake of the Chinese government’s sudden decision to lift years of lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing. Authorities have urged […]
by Richard Pierrin with Amelie Baron in Paris Agence France-Presse PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) — His Haitian passport was in order, with up-to-date visas, so when police in the Dominican Republic detained him for hours, Josue Azor feels certain it was because of the black color of his skin. The arrest of the young photographer came amid a wave of expulsions of Haitian migrants by the Santo Domingo government, with Black people being specifically targeted, according […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Prices in Japan rose at their fastest pace since 1981 in November, data showed Friday, fuelled in part by higher energy costs. Core consumer prices, which exclude volatile fresh food costs, climbed 3.7 percent last month, compared to a year earlier, data released by the internal affairs ministry showed. Prices jumped most for processed food items but were also higher for electricity and durable goods like air conditioners. Rises in […]
JERUSALEM, Undefined (AFP) — Iran is seeking to expand the supply of advanced weapons to Russia, the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency said Thursday, according to local media. The warning from David Barnea comes after the United States earlier this month expressed alarm over a “full-scale defense partnership” between Tehran and Moscow, which invaded Ukraine last February. Tehran in November admitted it had sent drones to Russia, but insisted they were supplied before the […]
by Laurie CHEN and Vivian LIN in Shanghai Agence France-Presse CHONGQING, China (AFP) — Elderly patients lined the wards of hospitals in major cities in China Thursday as the country battled a wave of Covid cases. The virus is surging across the vast Asian nation in an outbreak authorities say is impossible to track after the end of mandatory mass testing. And with cases soaring, Washington called on Beijing to share its Covid outbreak data, […]
BOGORODYCHNE, Ukraine (AFP) – When Yuri Ponomarenko first came back to his home village in eastern Ukraine several weeks ago, he found it almost completely deserted, its silence broken only by the meowing of famished cats. Little has changed since then in Bogorodychne, highlighting the rough road ahead for front-line villages looking to make a full recovery now that the Russians have been pushed out. “I think I’m the first one to come back and live […]
PARIS, France (AFP) – France’s privacy watchdog said Thursday it has fined US tech giant Microsoft 60 million euros ($64 million) for foisting advertising cookies on users. In the largest fine imposed in 2022, the National Commission for Technology and Freedoms (CNIL) said Microsoft’s search engine Bing had not set up a system allowing users to refuse cookies as simply as accepting them. The French regulator said that after investigations it found that “when users visited […]
