FRANCE
Paris on flooding alert
Parisians have been warned to stay away from the Seine as it continues to rise, flooding surrounding roads and causing disruption to the city’s transport network. As water levels on Wednesday touched 5.2m, the capital’s authorities said the river was expected to reach 6.1m by tomorrow. Quayside roads and tunnels have been closed and all river traffic, including cruise boats and water taxis, halted as vessels are unable to pass under the bridges. Houseboat residents have been advised to move out and city police head Michel Delpuech told residents to take extreme care near the water. Parisians were also warned they were more likely to come across members of the city’s rat population after the rising water swamped the rodents’ dens and forced them to seek drier shelters.
AUSTRALIA
National day rallies planned
Tens of thousands of people plan to mark Australia Day, today, with mass protests, demanding the date of the national holiday be changed given its links to colonization and the ill-treatment of Aborigines. Australia Day marks the date the British First Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbor in 1788 and declared the land unoccupied, despite encountering Aborigines, and established settlements. Aborigines have occupied the continent for about 50,000 years. “We expect at least 10,000 to 12,000 people, twice as many as last year, to come out and call for invasion day to be abolished,” said Raymond Weatherall, an organizer of a rally in Sydney. More than half of all Australians support changing the date of the national holiday, a poll by The Australia Institute think tank showed last week. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, under pressure from his conservative back bench and populist right-wing politicians, has said he supports celebrating Australia Day on Jan. 26.
UNITED KINGDOM
Doctors say fear for Assange
The ongoing six-year confinement of WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange in London’s Ecuadoran embassy is dangerous to his physical and mental health, new clinical assessments said. A pair of doctors reached the verdict after spending 20 hours over three days in October last year performing “a comprehensive physical and psychological evaluation” of Assange, the Guardian reported on Wednesday. “While the results of the evaluation are protected by doctor-patient confidentiality, it is our professional opinion that his continued confinement is dangerous physically and mentally to him, and a clear infringement of his human right to healthcare,” they wrote in the newspaper.
UNITED STATES
Trump ready for interview
President Donald Trump said he is “looking forward” to being interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump told reporters on Wednesday he would be willing to answer questions under oath. Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, but his probe has expanded to include potential misdeeds by those in Trump’s orbit and the president himself. Trump also said he does not recall asking then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe last year about whom he voted for in 2016. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was questioned for hours in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, the Department of Justice said, as prosecutors moved closer to a possible interview with Trump about whether he took steps to obstruct an FBI probe into contacts between Russia and his 2016 campaign.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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