FRANCE
Actress Moreau dies at 89
Actress Jeanne Moreau, who shot to fame in Jules et Jim and starred in some of the most critically acclaimed films of the 20th century, has died aged 89, her agent said yesterday. The actress, whose husky voice and show-stopping beauty captivated movie audiences, was found dead at her home in Paris, the district’s mayor said. Having made her name in Francois Truffaut’s 1962 story of a love triangle, Moreau had a prolific career and appeared in films well into her 80s. She won a Cesar, for best actress in 1992 for The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea. President Emmanuel Macron said Moreau had “embodied cinema” and she was a free spirit who “always rebelled against the established order.”
UNITED STATES
Eight mowed down by van
The driver of a van that plowed into a group of people dining on a Los Angeles sidewalk, injuring at least eight people, was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of hit-and-run, authorities said. A witness said the van jumped a curb and careened into a group of people eating outside The Fish Spot restaurant in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood., pinning several people under the van. A preliminary investigation indicates the driver ran a red light and collided with another car, Los Angeles Police Sergeant C. Barlow said. The impact of the crash caused the van to run off the road and onto the sidewalk.
TURKEY
Hundreds more detained
Authorities detained 1,098 people over the past week for suspected links to militants or last year’s failed coup attempt, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. It said 831 of those were detained for suspected ties to the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, 213 were suspected of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party and 46 were detained over alleged links to the Islamic State group. Eight were held for suspected ties to “leftist terrorist groups,” it said.
TURKEY
Rally supports Palestinians
Thousands of supporters of a conservative party on Sunday rallied in Istanbul to protest measures taken by Israel in Jerusalem and show solidarity with the Palestinians. Waving Palestinian and Turkish flags, the protesters chanted slogans such as “Istanbul and Jerusalem are arm-in-arm.” “I hope that when they see how many people are here, then Israel will get the message,” protester Sadik Sen said. “We want to show to our Muslim brothers there that we are behind them.”
GERMANY
Gondola rescue successful
Up to 76 people on Sunday afternoon were rescued from cable cars suspended over the Rhine River in Cologne after a gondola crashed into a support pillar, leaving passengers stranded. Fire crews lowered people to safety from cable cars in a dramatic recovery operation, with children seen clinging to parents as they dangled 40m above the river. A pregnant woman and a man were slightly injured in the rescue, in which mobile cranes were used to bring the stranded passengers to safety.
UNITED KINGDOM
Highest pub for sale
A Yorkshire pub, the Tan Hill Inn, needs an owner with stamina, eccentricity and love, its landlady said as the pub went on sale for £900,000 (US$1.18 million). The 17th-century inn, which holds the record for being the highest in the nation, stands 528m above sea level and is regularly cut off by heavy snowfall.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the