PARIS: A 40-year-old man was arrested on Monday on suspicion of stabbing and injuring a soldier who was guarding a major Parisian railway station, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
The attack at the Gare de l’Est station in northern Paris came less than two weeks before the start of the Olympic Games in the French capital.
The soldier’s life was not in danger, Darmanin said on X, while a police source told AFP that he had suffered a knife wound “between the shoulder blades.”
The suspect was quickly arrested following the attack just before 10:00 p.m. (2000 GMT) by other soldiers on patrol while the injured man was taken to hospital “conscious,” the source said.
The suspect is a 40-year-old born in the Democratic Republic of Congo who obtained French nationality in 2006, a police source said.
He “said he is Christian and shouted ‘God is great’ in French” at the moment of the attack, another police source added.
The suspect said he attacked the soldier “because the military kills people in his country,” the second source said.
The man was known to authorities in France over a 2018 murder that saw him detained in a psychiatric facility, two police sources told AFP.
In 2018, he fatally stabbed a 22-year-old man at the Chatelet-les-Halles metro station in central Paris.
He was declared not legally responsible for the murder due to diminished responsibility and was never tried, according to a court judgment verified by AFP.
Contacted by AFP, neither the public prosecution service nor the national anti-terrorist prosecution service responded.
“Thoughts to the soldier injured tonight at the Gare de l’Est,” Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu wrote on X, paying tribute to the French troops protecting citizens.
He said the soldier was part of a special military operation to protect sensitive sites in Paris that was deployed following the 2015 Islamist attacks on the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper.
In February 2017, an Egyptian attacked soldiers with a machete outside the world-renown Louvre museum in central Paris, shouting “Allah akbar” — which means “God is great” in Arabic.
Christian man who shouted ‘God is great’ as he stabbed soldier in Paris arrested
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Christian man who shouted ‘God is great’ as he stabbed soldier in Paris arrested
Indian state plans law for Muslim marriages and divorces
- The bill is seen as a state-level step toward the government’s proposed common civil code of law
Guwahati: Indian authorities in Assam state have introduced a bill that would require Muslims to register their marriages and divorces, with the chief minister claiming the measure will help stop child marriage.
The bill is seen as a state-level step toward the government’s proposed common civil code of law, which is bitterly opposed by Muslim activists as an attack on their faith.
India’s 1.4 billion people are subject to a common criminal law, but personal matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance are governed by varying rules based on the traditions of different communities and faiths.
In Assam, it is already mandatory for other religions to register marriages with civil authorities.
Assam’s state government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said the bill would be tabled during the next state assembly.
“Our basic intention is to stop child marriages,” Himanta Biswa Sarma, chief minister of the northeastern state, told reporters Wednesday.
Sarma said the Assam Compulsory Registration of Muslim Marriages and Divorces Bill would not restrict religious rituals, but only ensure marriages and divorces were registered.
The bill will “provide safeguards and benefits... especially to women and prevent the menace of child marriages,” he said.
Modi said this month he wanted to press ahead with a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) to standardise laws for personal matters across faiths and religious communities.
Many communities, particularly Muslims, fear a UCC would encroach on their religious laws.
Modi maintains it would serve as an equalizer.
“Those laws that divide the country on the basis of religion, that become reason for inequality, should have no place in a modern society,” Modi said during an Independence Day address on August 15.
“That is why I say: the times demand that there is a secular civil code in the country.”
Modi won a third successive term in office in June but was forced into a coalition government for the first time in a decade.
The BJP’s Hindu nationalist rhetoric has left India’s Muslim population of more than 220 million increasingly anxious about their future.
India’s Modi urges peace ahead of Ukraine visit
- Narendra Modi will be the first Indian premier to make a Ukraine trip
- The Indian government has avoided explicit condemnations of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine
WARSAW: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said no conflict could be resolved on a battlefield as he spoke in Poland on the eve of his historic visit to war-torn Ukraine.
Modi will be the first Indian premier to make a Ukraine trip and is the first in 45 years to visit Poland, Kyiv’s loyal ally that is a key transit for foreign leaders heading to its war-torn neighbor.
The Indian government has avoided explicit condemnations of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, instead urging both sides to resolve their differences through dialogue.
“It is India’s strong belief that no problem can be resolved on a battlefield,” Modi said in Warsaw, adding his country supports “dialogue and diplomacy for restoration of peace and stability as soon as possible.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk welcomed Modi and his delegation at the seat of government, with flags of both countries hoisted outside the building and their anthems played by the military band.
“History has taught our nations the importance of respecting the rules, respecting borders, territorial integrity,” Tusk said as he spoke to reporters alongside the Indian leader.
Tusk also added that Modi “reaffirmed his willingness to commit himself personally to a peaceful, just, quick end to the war.”
After the talks, Modi will lay a wreath at a war memorial in central Warsaw before heading for talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Later on Thursday the Indian leader is expected to leave the Polish capital to travel to neighboring Ukraine for his first visit to the country fighting to stave off the Russian invasion.
Modi has trodden a delicate balance between maintaining India’s historically warm ties with Russia while courting closer security partnerships with Western nations as a bulwark against regional rival China.
“As a friend and partner, we hope for an early return of peace and stability in the region,” Modi said in a statement published Wednesday before his departure for Poland.
In Kyiv, Modi will hold talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky and “share perspectives on peaceful resolution of the ongoing Ukraine conflict,” the statement added.
On Wednesday, Modi commemorated an Indian maharaja who sheltered Polish children during World War II, laying flowers at the marble lotus-crowned monument erected in Warsaw in honor of the maharaja.
In a little-known story linking the two nations, the maharaja hosted Polish children in what is now Gujarat — Modi’s home state where he was chief minister before launching national political career.
The Indian leader announced a youth exchange program named after the maharaja, under which 20 Polish young people would be invited to India each year.
“We are finally starting to have the right level of political and diplomatic relations,” Polish deputy foreign minister Wladyslaw Teofil Bartoszewski said about the visit.
He said Warsaw was counting on cooperation with India in “in the agricultural sector, in the IT sector, in the security sector, in the new technology sector, especially green technology.”
Modi on Wednesday delivered a speech in Hindi to the Indian community in Warsaw, promising “a drastic expansion of Indian economy in coming years.”
He is expected to meet with Leszek Balcerowicz, a former Polish finance minister and free market pioneer who steered Poland’s economic transition from communism to capitalism in early 1990s.
According to the Indian Embassy, Modi will also meet captains of kabaddi teams — a tag-meets-rugby contact team sport rooted in Indian mythology and said to date back 5,000 years.
Floods swamp Bangladesh as nation finds its feet after protests
- At least two people have died and hundreds of thousands are stranded in the floods in at least eight districts
- Around 2.9 million people have been affected and more than 70,000 people have been taken to shelters
DHAKA: Floods triggered by torrential rains have swamped a swath of low-lying Bangladesh, disaster officials said Thursday, adding to the new government’s challenges after weeks of political turmoil.
At least two people have died and hundreds of thousands are stranded in the floods in at least eight districts in southern and eastern areas.
“Around 2.9 million people have been affected and more than 70,000 people have been taken to shelters,” Mohammad Nazmul Abedin, senior official in the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, told AFP.
Long-time premier Sheikh Hasina quit as prime minister this month and fled to India after weeks of deadly student-led protests, ending her 15-year autocratic rule.
The South Asian nation of 170 million people, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, has seen frequent floods in recent decades.
It is among the countries most vulnerable to disasters and climate change, according to the Global Climate Risk Index.
The annual monsoon rains cause widespread destruction every year, but climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.
The army and the navy have been deployed, with speedboats and helicopters rescuing those stranded by the swollen rivers.
Much of the country is made up of deltas where the Himalayan rivers the Ganges and the Brahmaputra wind toward the sea after coursing through India.
Neighbouring India’s foreign ministry rejected accusations it was to blame for the floods, denying it had deliberately released water from an upstream dam.
It said the catchment area had experienced the “heaviest rains of this year over the last few days,” and that the flow of water downstream was due to “automatic releases.”
Asif Mahmud, a key leader of the student protests that ousted Hasina, and now the sports minister in the interim cabinet, had accused India of not only hosting Hasina, but of “creating a flood” by deliberately releasing water from dams.
India said that was “factually not correct.”
“Floods on the common rivers between India and Bangladesh are a shared problem inflicting sufferings to people on both sides, and requires close mutual cooperation toward resolving them,” New Delhi’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Hasina’s rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.
But Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government preferred Hasina over her rivals from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which it saw as closer to conservative Islamist groups.
Modi has offered his support to the new Bangladeshi leader Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is heading the caretaker administration.
Thailand confirms Asia’s first known case of new mpox strain
- Clade 1b causes death in about 3.6 percent of cases, with children more at risk, according to the WHO
- Mpox much less likely to spread rapidly than COVID-19 because of the close contact needed to catch it
BANGKOK: Thailand on Thursday confirmed Asia’s first known case of a new, deadlier strain of mpox in a patient who had traveled to the kingdom from Africa.
The patient landed in Bangkok on August 14 and was sent to hospital with mpox symptoms.
The Department of Disease Control said laboratory tests on the 66-year-old European confirmed he was infected with mpox Clade 1b.
“Thailand’s Department of Disease Control wishes to confirm the lab test result which shows mpox Clade 1b in a European patient,” the department said in a statement, adding that the World Health Organization (WHO) would be informed of the development.
“We have monitored 43 people who have been in close contact with the patient and so far they have shown no symptoms, but we must continue monitoring for a total of 21 days.”
Anyone traveling to Thailand from 42 “risk countries” must register and undergo testing on arrival, the department said.
Mpox cases and deaths are surging in Africa, where outbreaks have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda since July.
The World Health Organization has declared a global public health emergency over the new variant of mpox, urging manufacturers to ramp up production of vaccines.
The disease — caused by a virus transmitted by infected animals but passed from human to human through close physical contact — causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.
While mpox has been known for decades, a new deadlier and more transmissible strain — known as Clade 1b — has driven the recent surge in cases.
Clade 1b causes death in about 3.6 percent of cases, with children more at risk, according to the WHO.
Thongchai Keeratihattayakorn, head of the Thai Department of Disease Control, said that mpox was much less likely to spread rapidly than COVID-19 because of the close contact needed to catch it.
Zelensky says has visited Ukraine’s Sumy area, bordering Russia’s Kursk region
- Zelensky said his troops had seized another settlement and “replenished the exchange fund,” meaning it captured more prisoners of war to be used as leverage for future swaps
Kyiv, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he went on Thursday to border areas in Sumy region, just across the frontier from Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops are staging an unprecedented offensive.
Over two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv’s troops caught the Kremlin off-guard on August 6 by launching a large-scale assault inside Russian territory, where they captured dozens of settlements.
“I visited the border area of the Sumy region and held a meeting with Commander-in-Chief (Oleksandr) Syrsky and the head of the Sumy regional military administration,” Zelensky said on social media.
Zelensky said his troops had seized another settlement and “replenished the exchange fund,” meaning it captured more prisoners of war to be used as leverage for future swaps.
Ukrainian officials have said the goals of the offensive included creating a “buffer zone” in Russian territory, seeking an end to the war on “fair” terms and stretching Russian forces.
Kyiv’s troops are however still struggling in the eastern Donbas region, where the Russian army has been making steady gains.
Zelensky said he discussed “steps taken to strengthen the defense toward Toretsk and Pokrovsk” in the Donbas, frontline areas with fierce fighting.
As the war stretches into its third year, Ukraine has been stepping up its attacks on Russian territory.
A source in Ukraine’s Security Services told AFP that Ukrainian forces had hit the Marinovka airfield in the Volgograd region, saying “each operation reduces Russia’s superiority in the skies and significantly limits their aircraft capabilities.”
Volgograd regional governor Andrei Bocharov said Thursday that a drone downed by air defenses had sparked a fire “at a defense ministry facility” without giving details.
Russia has denounced the Kursk offensive, in which at least 31 civilians have died and 143 have been injured, according to TASS state news agency.
