Neu Delhi (AFP) – Delhi swelters in a heatwave, while India’s government-run weather bureau cautions that station measurements showing a potentially record-breaking temperature in the capital may have been due to a fault in the measuring equipment. India is no stranger to searing summer temperatures, but years of scientific research have found that climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent, and more intense.
Tiflis (AFP) – Thousands protest in Tbilisi after Georgia’s parliament voted in favour of the controversial “foreign influence” law, overriding a presidential veto despite weeks of widespread protest and warnings from the West that the move could undermine the country’s path to the EU.
Meseberg (AFP) – Kyiv should be allowed to “neutralise” the Russian military sites from which Moscow’s troops are firing missiles into Ukraine, says French President Emmanuel Macron during a press conference alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Speaking during a state visit to Germany, Macron adds that “we must not allow them to hit other targets in Russia, obviously civilian capabilities or other military targets.”
New York (AFP) – The first-ever criminal trial of a former US president reaches its dramatic final phase, with both sides wrapping up their closing arguments. The stage is now set for the 12-member panel to begin deliberating. Less than six months before an election in which Donald Trump is seeking to return to the White House, the stakes are high both for the 77-year-old personally and for the country.
Pretoria (AFP) – South African voters turn out for a watershed general election Wednesday, with the ANC’s exclusive grip on power in doubt for the first time in three decades of democracy. With opposition challenges from both the left and right, unemployment and crime at near record levels and a new generation growing up with no memory of the struggle against white-minority rule, the ruling party may need to share power.
Rafah (AFP) – Palestinians mourn their loved ones after an Israeli strike on May 26 set a displaced people’s camp ablaze in Rafah, killing 45 people, according to Palestinian officials. Despite the global outrage, another Israeli strike killed at least 21 people at a displacement camp west of Rafah on Tuesday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said. The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 36,096 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Brockworth (AFP) – Competitors chase wheels of cheese down a steep hill, few remaining upright, in the annual Cooper’s Hill Cheese Roll that sees people launch after an eight-pound Double Gloucester.
Noumea (AFP) – France on Tuesday lifted a state of emergency in its Pacific territory of New Caledonia but is maintaining a curfew and sending hundreds of paramilitary reinforcements after two weeks of unrest in which seven people died, and hundreds were injured. France’s plan to give voting rights to thousands of non-indigenous long-term residents has sparked riots as indigenous Kanaks say it would dilute the influence of their votes.
Brüssel (AFP) – “If you want peace, let’s meet at the peace summit. It is absolutely fair that we are preparing this platform together with other partners because the war is ours, and the initiative must be ours,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says in Brussels, urging countries to attend the upcoming gathering in Switzerland set for June 15-16.
Madrid (AFP) – ‘The recognition of the State of Palestine as a State is a decision we do not take against anyone, least of all against Israel, a friendly people whom we respect’, says Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez, with his government poised to formally take the step alongside Ireland and Norway. He adds that ‘this decision reflects our outright rejection of Hamas’.
