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by Anna Maria Jakubek Agence France-Presse WARSAW, Poland (AFP) — Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Thursday defended a controversial Holocaust bill intended to safeguard his country’s image abroad but which has instead drawn dismay from Israel, the US, the EU and Ukraine. The head of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party government spoke after the senate approved the legislation, which sets fines or a maximum three-year jail term for anyone who refers to Nazi German […]
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — Here are key events that have marked Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the monarchy. Islamic republic proclaimed On January 16, 1979 the US-backed shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, leaves for exile after months of protests against him. On February 1 revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini makes a triumphant return from exile. Ten days later the shah’s government falls, public radio announces “the end of 2,500 years of despotism”. An […]
by Dmitry Zaks © Agence France-Presse VOLGOGRAD, Russia (AFP) — First they dug up the bones and defused the bombs. Then Russia erected a light-as-air stadium for the 2018 World Cup that rises from the ground around which two million people died over 200 days in the Battle of Stalingrad — the tragic turning point of World War II. “Every millimetre of this soil is soaked in blood,” Volgograd Governor Andrei Bocharov said in an interview. “There […]
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AFP) — Painter and Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak on Monday opened a museum of his allegorical work inspired by Jewish history in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, more than half a century after he held his first exhibition as a nine-year-old inside its wartime ghetto. As a boy he was sent to live in the ghetto after the German Nazis occupied the city in 1941 during World War II. He survived — unlike most of his […]
As the winter season approaches, 14 international artists were tasked with installing works of arts in 14 of the famous groves of the Versailles gardens where Kings and Queens once entertained their visitors. https://youtu.be/P57pn0iuVYU
BERLIN, Germany (AFP) — About 10,000 people in Berlin were forced to leave their homes on Monday as bomb disposal units prepared to defuse an unexploded World War II bomb. Construction workers found the 250-kilo (550-pound) device earlier in the day, prompting police to seal off the area within a 500-metre radius of the site in west Berlin’s Innsbrucker Platz. Underground and suburban rail traffic was disrupted, and officers went house to house to ensure […]
AS ASEAN celebrates its 50th anniversary, let’s look back a history to know more about the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN was created on 8 August 1967 when five leaders – the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – sat down together in the main hall of the Department of Foreign Affairs building in Bangkok, Thailand and signed a document. “By virtue of that document, the Association of Southeast […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Pop superstar Katy Perry has made history by becoming the first user to garner 100 million followers on Twitter, the social media platform announced. “Today we #WITNESS history,” Twitter said Friday in a tweet, referencing the title of Perry’s recently released fifth album. “Congratulations @katyperry, the first to reach 100 million followers! #LoveKaty.” The 32-year-old singer recently livestreamed her life for 96 hours, inviting fans to watch as she slept, […]
HONG KONG, China (Reuters) – Atop Hong Kong’s tallest peak blanketed in clouds, three masked urban explorers took a step back in time as they climbed through a hole in a wire mesh fence, climbed down a hill and marched toward an abandoned army barracks built during British colonial times, likely used during World War Two. Twenty years since Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule, these young, alternative conservationists are eager to document the […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) – South Korea’s new President Moon Jae-In on Friday scrapped state-issued school history textbooks introduced by his ousted predecessor, saying they represented an “outdated and one-sided” view of the past, his office said. The previous Park Geun-Hye administration had introduced state-authored history textbooks at middle and high schools, arguing that some existing tomes reflected left-leaning and pro-North Korea ideologies. Park’s conservative government began publishing the new textbooks this year despite opposition […]
by Anna MALPAS Agence France Presse MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Tatiana Panova holds a photograph of her great-grandfather as a solemn-faced student in 1923 in the Soviet Union, around 16 years before he died in a prison camp during the Stalin purges. While Alexander Yakovlev’s death was over half a century before her birth, Panova, 25, has gained a tiny window into his thoughts and life thanks to an aged diary that her family preserved. […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japan said on Thursday it has paid millions of dollars in UNESCO annual funding dues after holding back the payment over a World War II-era history row. UNESCO, the UN cultural and scientific body, last year agreed to China’s request to include documents in its Memory of the World register recording atrocities by Japanese troops after the fall of the Chinese city of Nanjing 1937. Japan — one of UNESCO’s biggest contributors […]
