Month: July 2022

Russia launched a missile strike Sunday on the southern Ukranian city of Mykolaiv, which has been the target of several strikes in recent weeks.   The Associated Press reports that an “industrial and infrastructure facility” was the target.    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his daily address Saturday, urged Ukrainians to develop “a kind of emotional sovereignty” over the disinformation and propaganda that Russia and others have distributed in various media about Ukraine. Zelenskyy said, “We do not depend on what the enemy constantly launches against you and me.” He said the Ukrainian people must “have the power to consciously perceive any …

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Family by family, house by house, French police rounded up 13,000 people on two terrifying days in July 1942, dispatching them to Nazi death camps simply because they were Jewish. Eighty years later, France is honoring the victims, and trying to keep their memory alive. For the dwindling number of survivors of France’s wartime crimes, commemoration ceremonies Sunday are especially important. At a time of rising antisemitism and far-right discourse sugarcoating France’s role in the Holocaust, they worry that history’s lessons are being forgotten. A week of ceremonies marking 80 years since the Vel d’Hiv police roundup on July 16-17, …

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“It’s absolutely crazy to stick yourself to the road with superglue,” admits Lina Schinkoethe. And yet, the 19-year-old recently landed in jail for doing just that, in protest at what she believes is the German government’s failure to act against climate change. Schinkoethe is part of a group called Uprising of the Last Generation that claims the world has only a few years left to turn the wheel around and avoid catastrophic levels of global warming. Like-minded activists elsewhere in Europe have interrupted major sporting events such as the Tour de France and the Formula One Grand Prix in Silverstone …

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Two landmark new studies in France are bursting myths about immigration at a time when xenophobic far-right discourse has gained ground. They show that the children of immigrants are increasingly melting into French society, but some with African and Asian backgrounds face persistent discrimination. Karima Simmou, a 20-year-old French Moroccan student at the prestigious Paris university Sciences Po, embodies the phenomenon. She comes from a working-class family of eight children, with a mother who raised the family and a father who worked as a miner in western France. Her family pushed her to go to the elite school. “As a …

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As bullets and bombs fall in Ukraine, Russia is waging an expanding information war throughout Eastern Europe, researchers and officials say, using fake accounts and propaganda to spread fears about refugees and rising fuel prices while calling the West an untrustworthy ally. In Bulgaria, the Kremlin paid journalists, political analysts and other influential citizens 2,000 euros a month to post pro-Russian content online, a senior Bulgarian official revealed this month. Researchers also have uncovered sophisticated networks of fake accounts, bots and trolls in an escalating spread of disinformation and propaganda in the country. Similar efforts are playing out in other …

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A cargo aircraft Antonov An-12 crashed late Saturday near Paleochori Kavalas in northern Greece, the fire brigade said. Eyewitnesses said the aircraft was on fire and that they had heard explosions, Athens News Agency reported. A local man, Giorgos Archontopoulos, told state broadcaster ERT television he had thought something was wrong as soon as he heard the aircraft’s engine. “At 22:45 I was surprised by the sound of the engine of the aircraft,” he said. “I went outside and saw the engine on fire.” Local officials said seven fire engines had been deployed to the crash site but that they …

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North Macedonia has approved a French proposal that opens the way for negotiations to join the European Union and overcome Bulgarian objections.  There were 68 votes in favor of the proposal in the 120-member chamber, with the leftist coalition, which has 61 seats, getting the backing of small ethnic Albanian parties. Opposition lawmakers left the chamber in protest, abstaining from the vote.  Protesters gathered again outside Parliament, as they have done every day for 10 days, but the protest ended peacefully.  Under the proposal, announced by French President Emmanuel Macron last month, North Macedonia would commit to changing its constitution …

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