Greenpeace removes wax statue of Macron over French trade with Russia
In its statement announcing the removal of the statue, Greenpeace said Macron 'does not deserve to be exhibited in this world-renowned cultural institution until he has terminated French contracts with Russia and driven an ambitious and sustainable ecological transition across Europe.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
41 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Syria's Sharaa: from jihadist to statesman
From wanted jihadist to statesman embraced by world leaders, Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has undergone a stunning transformation in just six months since ousting longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad. Born in 1982, Sharaa abandoned his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, trimmed his thick beard and swapped fatigues for a suit and tie since his Islamist coalition of forces seized Damascus on December 8. He was proclaimed interim president the following month, and later tasked with leading his country through a five-year transitional period under a temporary constitution that experts and rights groups said concentrates power in his hands. Appearing calm and soft-spoken, Sharaa has sought to shed many of the attributes that once defined him. Gone is the shadowy persona associated with a single mugshot released at the height of the US-led war in Iraq following his capture there by American forces. Videos posted online in recent weeks have shown him, a tall man, playing basketball in a shirt and tie alongside his foreign minister. Others show him driving his car in Damascus, or eating in a working-class restaurant to cheers from passers-by. "I think he has succeeded in his transformation," said Jerome Drevon, a specialist in Islamist militancy at the International Crisis Group. In a matter of months, Sharaa has visited Europe and been "accepted on the whole in the region even by countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia that are not at all supporters of Islamists, much less jihadists", he added. The reception Sharaa has received demonstrates "a real recognition of the new authorities", he told AFP. On Sharaa's first trip to the West last month, he met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. Just a week later during a trip to Riyadh, he shook hands with US President Donald Trump who announced Washington would lift sanctions on Syria, a triumph for the new authorities. Trump described Sharaa as a "young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter." Sharaa remains under United Nations sanctions and a travel ban, and must request an exemption for all foreign trips. Drevon said that Arab and Western countries had made a pragmatic choice by supporting the young leader. "There are still security problems, there are tensions inside the country, but I think that most foreign countries recognise that right now, there is no alternative," he said. Sharaa has set up in what was once Assad's presidential palace overlooking Damascus, receiving a steady stream of senior foreign officials. During a Muslim holiday around two months ago, he and his wife Latifa al-Droubi, who now appears with him in public on occasion, welcomed Syrian orphans there. While seeking to distance himself from his guerrilla past, he has sought to extract political capital from his rebel roots. Last week, he presided over a cabinet meeting, saying: "We came to power through revolution we aren't used to luxurious palaces." "Until two years ago, I didn't even have an office. We used to meet in the car, on the street, under an olive tree," he added, referring to his time in the former rebel bastion of Idlib in northwestern Syria. In January, authorities announced the dissolution of all armed groups, including Sharaa's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the lightning offensive that toppled Assad. HTS was known as the Al-Nusra Front before it broke ties with the Al-Qaeda jihadist network in 2016. Sharaa is "a pragmatic radical", said Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam. Born in Saudi Arabia, Sharaa is from a well-to-do Syrian family and was raised in Damascus's upscale Mazzeh district. He started studying medicine but then became associated with underground Islamist circles. Following the US-led invasion of neighbouring Iraq in 2003, he and other Syrians crossed the border to join what they saw as a resistance to foreign occupation. He joined Al-Qaeda there, and was subsequently detained for five years. In March 2011, when the revolt against Assad's rule erupted in Syria, Sharaa returned home and founded the Al-Nusra Front. A realist in his partisans' eyes, an opportunist to his adversaries, Sharaa said in May 2015 that he had no intention of launching attacks against the West unlike his adversaries in the Islamic State jihadist group. In 2017, Sharaa imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in northwestern Syria, claiming control of swathes of Idlib province. HTS went on to develop a civil administration in the area, amid accusations of brutal abuses against those who dared dissent. sk-lar-at/lg/ser
Hindustan Times
7 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
UN conference to push for two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations chief on Thursday urged world leaders and officials attending an upcoming U.N. conference on ending the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict 'to keep the two-state solution alive.' Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters that the international community must not only support a solution where independent states of Palestine and Israel live side-by-side in peace but 'materialize the conditions to make it happen.' France and Saudi Arabia are co-chairing the conference, which the U.N. General Assembly is holding from June 17 to June 20 in New York. French President Emmanuel Macron will attend and other leaders are expected, but Israel will not be there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the creation of a Palestinian state, a position that was overwhelmingly adopted by Israel's parliament in a vote last year. 'We won't be taking part in a conference that doesn't first urgently address the issue of condemning Hamas and returning all of the remaining hostages brutally taken by Hamas in Gaza, which along with the massacring of 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals on Oct. 7, 2023, was what triggered this conflict to begin with,' Jonathan Harounoff, the Israeli Mission's international spokesperson, told The Associated Press. Netanyahu has also opposed a one-state solution, which would reduce Israel's Jewish majority with the West Bank and Gaza's Palestinian populations. Instead, he has advocated for annexing large parts of the West Bank, without including Palestinians. Guterres said the current violence makes a two-state solution all the more necessary. 'My message to world leaders and delegations is that it is absolutely essential to keep alive the two-state solution perspective with all the terrible things we are witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank," Guterres said. 'And for those that doubt about the two-state solution, I ask: What is the alternative?' the secretary-general said. 'Is it a one-state solution in which either the Palestinians are expelled or the Palestinians will be forced to live in their land without rights? That would be totally unacceptable.' At a May 23 preparatory meeting, both co-chairs called for action, not more words. Anne-Claire Legendre, Middle East adviser to Macron, said that while the international community must support efforts to end the war in Gaza and release the hostages, it must also urgently put a political solution 'front of mind.' Manal Radwan, an adviser to Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry, said action is critical because the conference is taking place 'at a moment of historic urgency' and 'unimaginable suffering' in Gaza. Israel's military campaign since Oct. 7, 2023, has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants. The offensive has destroyed large parts of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of roughly 2 million Palestinians. 'This conference must be the beginning of the end of the conflict,' Radwan said. And Israel's occupation 'must end for peace and prosperity to prevail in the region.' The co-chairs said in a document sent to U.N. members before the preparatory meeting that the primary goal of the conference is to identify actions by 'all relevant actors' to implement the two-state solution — and, more importantly, 'to urgently mobilize the necessary efforts and resources to achieve this aim, through concrete and timebound commitments.' One of the aims at the conference is to increase the number of countries recognizing Palestine as an independent state. So far, more than 145 of the 193 U.N. member nations have done so. The Palestinians view their state as encompassing Gaza and the West Bank with east Jerusalem as the capital. Macron has said France should move toward recognizing a Palestinian state. "And therefore in the coming months we will,″ he told broadcaster France-5 in April after he returned from a trip to Egypt, where he pressed for a ceasefire in Gaza. Netanyahu said in a statement after talking to Marcon on April 15 that he strongly objected to establishing a Palestinian state, saying it would be 'a huge reward for terrorism' after the Oct. 7 attacks and would be 'a stronghold of Iranian terrorism' minutes away from Israeli cities. Lee Keath in Cairo and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
The Hindu
7 hours ago
- The Hindu
Recognising Palestinian state now would send 'wrong signal': Germany
Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Thursday that recognising a Palestinian state at the moment would send "the wrong signal". Speaking at a Berlin press conference with his Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar, he said that "negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be concluded" first, before the recognition of a Palestinian state. Spain, Ireland and Norway last year recognised a Palestinian state, and French President Emmanuel Macron has recently stepped up his support for the idea, leading Israel to accuse him of a "crusade against the Jewish state". Last week Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz vowed to build a "Jewish Israeli state" in the occupied West Bank, a day after the government announced the creation of 22 new settlements in the Palestinian territory. Wadephul said Thursday that he was "concerned about the extremely tense situation in the West Bank" and that the German government "rejects" the creation of new Israel settlements there as illegal under international law. He also said, on the Gaza war, that "too little" aid was reaching civilians in the war-torn territory, where the United Nations warned last month that the entire population was at risk of famine. Wadephul said he had renewed his "urgent request to allow humanitarian aid to Gaza" without restrictions as required by international law. He also stressed that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas and other enemies, and that "therefore Germany will of course continue to support Israel with arms deliveries, that was never in doubt".
