Latest news with #ThomasSAMSON
eNCA
6 days ago
- Politics
- eNCA
International media groups urge Israel to allow access to Gaza
GAZA - International news agencies Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP) and Reuters as well as the BBC on Thursday called on Israel to allow journalists in and out of Gaza, which is subject to a strict blockade. "We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families," the media groups said in a joint statement. They added that "journalists endure many deprivations and hardships in war zones. We are deeply alarmed that the threat of starvation is now one of them." "We once again urge the Israeli authorities to allow journalists in and out of Gaza. It is essential that adequate food supplies reach the people there," they concluded. AFP | Thomas SAMSON With Gaza sealed off, many media groups around the world depend on photo, video and text coverage of the conflict provided by Palestinian reporters to international news agencies such as AFP. International criticism is growing over the plight of the more than two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where more than 100 aid and rights groups have warned that "mass starvation" is spreading. Since the war started following the unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas, a small number of journalists have been able to enter Gaza only with the Israeli army and under strict military censorship rules. Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in early July that more than 200 journalists had been killed in Gaza since the war began. - Evacuations - AFP news agency has published accounts of life inside Gaza from its reporters this week. It has said it is concerned about "the appalling situation" they face due to a daily struggle to find food. "We have no energy left due to hunger and lack of food," said Omar al-Qattaa, a 35-year-old AFP photographer shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year. "Obtaining food in Gaza is extremely difficult. Even when it is available, prices are multiplied by 100," video journalist Youssef Hassouna said. AFP | - Israel says humanitarian aid is being allowed in and accuses Hamas of exploiting civilian suffering, including by stealing food handouts to sell at inflated prices or shooting at those awaiting aid. The World Health Organization's chief warned on Wednesday of widespread starvation in Gaza, saying food deliveries into the territory were "far below what is needed for the survival of the population". Witnesses and Gaza's civil defence agency have repeatedly accused Israeli forces of firing on aid seekers. The UN said the military had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food since late May. AFP succeeded in evacuating eight staff members and their families from Gaza between January and April 2024, after months of effort. - 'Starving' - The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a media freedom group, said in a statement on Wednesday that Israel was "starving Gazan journalists into silence". "They are not just reporters, they are frontline witnesses, abandoned as international media were pulled out and denied entry," CPJ regional director Sara Qudah was quoted as saying. AFP | Eyad BABA Many Palestinian journalists have spoken out or posted about their exhaustion, with Sally Thabet, a correspondent for Al-Kofiya satellite channel, fainting after a live broadcast this week, the CPJ said. Doha-based Al Jazeera, the most influential Arabic media group, also called for global action to protect Gaza's journalists on Tuesday. The channel, which has been banned in Israel, has had five of its reporters killed since the start of the conflict in what it says is a deliberate targeting campaign by Israel. In some cases, Israel has accused reporters of being "terror operatives", such as when it killed a Gaza-based Al Jazeera staff journalist and freelancer last year -- allegations condemned by the Qatari news network. AFP | Youssef HASSOUNA, AFPTV STRINGER
eNCA
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- eNCA
The main moments of Paris Couture Week
Paris Haute Couture Week has wrapped up after four days of shows that featured the end of an era at Balenciaga, the start of a new one at Maison Margiela, and some surprise appearances and absences. AFP looks back on the key moments of the Autumn-Winter 2025-2026 season: - New eras - Demna bowed out at Balenciaga after a decade in charge with a show on Wednesday that drew the usual smattering of celebrities to the front rows but had some surprise models on the runway. Kim Kardashian channelled Elizabeth Taylor as she walked the room in a sultry slip dress, while veteran French actress Isabelle Huppert appeared in a turtleneck pulled up to her ears. Belgian Glenn Martens debuted at Maison Margiela the same day. Critics praised his bold first steps as a replacement for British design legend John Galliano, who stepped down in January. The New York Times called Martens' "Artisanal" collection, which included thrifted clothing, a "brilliant no-holds-barred debut" while Women's Wear Daily said it "tilted the Paris house in a dark, daring and DIY direction". - Armani's absence - One notably absentee was Giorgio Armani, 91, who had already cancelled his menswear show in Milan due to health reasons. AFP | Thomas SAMSON He also missed the Paris Armani Prive show on doctors' orders. "In 20 years of Armani Prive, it's the first time I'm not in Paris," he said in a statement sent to AFP. "My doctors advised more rest, even though I felt ready." He added that he had "followed and overseen every aspect of the show remotely", stressing: "I approved and signed off on everything you will see." - Cardi B's couture - New York rapper Cardi B had a busy week in Paris and seemed intent on out-couturing many of the models. AFP | Thomas SAMSON She appeared at the opening show of the week on Monday at Schiaparelli in a traf fic-stopping tasselled neckpiece and posed with a crow perched on her hand outside the Petit Palais exhibition space. The next day, she turned heads at Stephane Rolland, with a sculptural black headpiece that surrounded her like a religious shroud. On Wednesday she was front row at Balenciaga. - The rose trend - Floral patterns were everywhere, with the rose especially dominant. Giambattista Valli adorned airy gowns with oversized fabric roses, Elie Saab featured them on princess-style dresses, while Armani Prive used pearl-embroidered roses. Balenciaga incorporated rose sequin prints into a skirt suit and Robert Wun showcased black-and-white roses on a structured strapless crinoline dress. - Best of the rest - AFP | STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN Syrian designer Rami Al Ali made history as the first couturier from his country to take part in the official Paris calendar, choking back tears at the end of his show of exquisitely tailored pieces. Dutch duo Viktor & Rolf delivered a typically playful and sculptural spectacle, while Hong Kong's Robert Wun burnished his reputation further with some striking looks inspired by cinema and theatre. By Marine Do-vale And Adam Plowright
Toronto Sun
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Toronto Sun
Europe court says France allowed to fine president portrait snatchers
Protesters hold upside-down portraits of the president in 2019. Photo by Thomas SAMSON / AFP/File Strasbourg (France) (AFP) — Europe's top human rights court on Thursday ruled France was within its rights to hand suspended fines to climate activists over stealing official portraits of the president from town halls to demonstrate in 2019. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Eleven protesters had filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights, arguing France had impeded their right to freedom of expression. But the ECHR found that France had not interfered with the activists expressing themselves, and that the judicial proceedings could in fact be considered 'part of their communication strategy'. The suspended fines of 200 to 500 euros ($230 to $590) had been among the 'most lenient sanctions possible' and therefore not disproportionate, the court based in the French city of Strasbourg added. All town halls in France display the president's portrait, with Emmanuel Macron's showing him perched on the edge of his desk with two mobile phones and the memoirs of French resistance hero and post-war president Charles de Gaulle behind him. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The group behind the 2019 portrait thefts, Non-Violent Action COP21 (ANV-COP21), claimed some 130 pictures had been stolen across France that year. They said it was their 'moral duty' to act in the face of what they called the inaction of Macron's government on climate change. The 11 plaintiffs in the ECHR case had exhausted all legal avenues in France, from lower courts to the supreme court, in three separate cases after stealing portraits in Paris and two other locations in eastern France. France's highest court has since the 2019 incident however changed its position. In 2023, it approved the acquittal of another group of activists over stealing the president's picture, arguing it had not been an attack on his dignity and that climate change was a subject of 'general interest'. It added that the official images of Macron were only worth 8.90 euros ($10), frame not included. Other defendants have since been acquitted in similar cases. Critics had targeted Macron's portrait before 2019. In October 2017, mayors in the central Creuse region turned his picture around so that Macron faced the wall, to protest cuts to local government budgets and job losses. Editorial Cartoons Toronto & GTA Sports Money News MLB
Toronto Sun
03-07-2025
- General
- Toronto Sun
Strike by French air traffic controllers disrupts summer travel
Thomas SAMSON/AFP/File Photo by Thomas SAMSON / AFP/File Paris (AFP) — French air traffic controllers launched a two-day strike on Thursday to demand better working conditions, disrupting travel for tens of thousands of people at the start of a summer holiday season. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account The DGAC civil aviation authority has asked airlines to cancel some of their flights to ensure there are enough controllers on duty. The strike affected air traffic across Western Europe. Ryanair, Europe's largest airline, said on Thursday it was forced to cancel 170 flights, affecting 30,000 passengers. 'Once again, European families are being held hostage by French air traffic controllers,' said Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary. The Airlines for Europe association, which includes Ryanair, Air France-KLM, Lufthansa, British Airways and EasyJet, described the action as 'intolerable'. According to sources familiar with the matter, 270 air traffic controllers out of a total workforce of around 1,400 went on strike. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. UNSA-ICNA, the second biggest labour group in the sector, launched the action to demand better working conditions and more staff. It was joined by the third largest union, USAC-CGT. Shortly after 10 am on Thursday, flights were experiencing significant delays, including an average of 1.5 hours for arrivals and 1 hour for departures in Nice, France's third-largest airport. A quarter of flights departing from or arriving at Paris Charles de Gaulle and Paris Orly have also been cancelled. Airports in the south were particularly hit. In addition to Nice, 30 percent of flights have been cancelled in cities including Lyon, Marseille, and Montpellier. On the eve of the school holidays on Friday, the situation is expected to become even more tense at Paris airports and Beauvais, where the DGAC has ordered a 40-percent reduction in the number of flights. On Thursday morning, the Eurocontrol monitoring agency warned airlines of 'significant' delays in the airspace managed by the air traffic control centres in Marseille, Brest and Reims. Sources said that business aviation, particularly in Nice and Le Bourget near Paris, has also been significantly affected. France's transport minister called the unions' demands unacceptable. 'The demands made by minority unions are unacceptable, as is the decision to hold this strike at the start of the holiday season,' Philippe Tabarot said on Wednesday. Sports Money News MLB Editorial Cartoons News
Sinar Daily
08-06-2025
- Science
- Sinar Daily
Time machine: How carbon dating brings the past back to life
It uses a technique called carbon dating, which has "revolutionised archaeology", winning its discoverer a Nobel Prize in 1960, French scientist Lucile Beck said. 08 Jun 2025 04:04pm A laboratory technician presses graphite samples in an aluminum cathode to prevent contamination before the measurement process at the LMC14 Laboratory (Laboratoire de Mesure du Carbone 14) at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA: Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives) in Saclay, southwest Paris, on May 22, 2025. (Photo by Thomas SAMSON / AFP) SACLAY - From unmasking art forgery to uncovering the secrets of the Notre-Dame cathedral, an imposing machine outside Paris can turn back the clock to reveal the truth. It uses a technique called carbon dating, which has "revolutionised archaeology", winning its discoverer a Nobel Prize in 1960, French scientist Lucile Beck said. Carbon dating can turn back the clock to reveal the truth. By comparing the number of carbon particles separated by the particle accelerator, scientists can get an estimate of how old something is. This all makes it possible to spot a forged painting by demonstrating that the linen used in the canvas was harvested well after when the purported painter died. Carbon dating can be used to date materials that do not directly derive only from living organisms. (Photo by Thomas SAMSON / AFP) She spoke to AFP in front of the huge particle accelerator, which takes up an entire room in the carbon dating lab of France's Atomic Energy Commission in Saclay, outside the capital. Beck described the "surprise and disbelief" among prehistorians in the 1990s when the machine revealed that cave art in the Chauvet Cave in France's southeast was 36,000 years old. The laboratory uses carbon dating, also called carbon-14, to figure out the timeline of more than 3,000 samples a year. So how does it work? First, each sample is examined for any trace of contamination. "Typically, they are fibres from a jumper" of the archaeologist who first handled the object, Beck said. The sample is then cleaned in an acid bath and heated to 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 Fahrenheit) to recover its carbon dioxide. This gas is then reduced to graphite and inserted into tiny capsules. Next, these capsules are put into the particle accelerator, which separates their carbon isotopes. Isotopes are variants of the same chemical element which have different numbers of neutrons. Some isotopes are stable, such as carbon-12. Others -- such as carbon-14 -- are radioactive and decay over time. Carbon-14 is constantly being created in Earth's upper atmosphere as cosmic rays and solar radiation bombard the chemical nitrogen. In the atmosphere, this creates carbon dioxide, which is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis. Then animals such as ourselves get in on the act by eating those plants. So all living organisms contain carbon-14, and when they die, it starts decaying. Only half of it remains after 5,730 years. After 50,000 years, nothing is left -- making this the limit on how far back carbon dating can probe. By comparing the number of carbon-12 and carbon-14 particles separated by the particle accelerator, scientists can get an estimate of how old something is. Cosmic radiation is not constant, nor is the intensity of the magnetic field around Earth protecting us from it, Beck said. That means scientists have to make estimations based on calculations using samples whose ages are definitively known. This all makes it possible to spot a forged painting, for example, by demonstrating that the linen used in the canvas was harvested well after when the purported painter died. The technique can also establish the changes in our planet's climate over the millennia by analysing the skeletons of plankton found at the bottom of the ocean. Notre-Dame revealed Carbon dating can be used on bones, wood and more, but the French lab has developed new methods allowing them to date materials that do not directly derive from living organisms. For example, they can date the carbon that was trapped in iron from when its ore was first heated by charcoal. After Paris's famous Notre-Dame cathedral almost burned to the ground in 2019, this method revealed that its big iron staples dated back to when it was first built -- and not to a later restoration, as had been thought. The technique can also analyse the pigment lead white, which has been painted on buildings and used in artworks across the world since the fourth century BC. To make this pigment, "lead was corroded with vinegar and horse poo, which produces carbon dioxide through fermentation," Beck explained. She said she always tells archaeologists: "don't clean traces of corrosion, they also tell about the past!" Another trick made it possible to date the tombs of a medieval abbey in which only small lead bottles had been found. As the bodies in the tombs decomposed, they released carbon dioxide, corroding the bottles and giving scientists the clue they needed. "This corrosion was ultimately the only remaining evidence of the spirit of the monks," Beck mused. - AFP More Like This
