World news in brief
France hit by fresh protests against Macron pension reform
Striking workers disrupted deliveries, public transport and schools yesterday in a second nationwide protest over president Emmanuel Macron’s plan to make French workers wait longer before retirement. Huge crowds marched through cities to denounce a reform that raises the retirement age by two years to 64 and poses a test of Mr Macron’s ability to push through change now that he has lost his working majority in parliament.
On the rail networks, only one in three high-speed TGV trains were operating and even fewer local and regional trains. Services on the Paris metro were thrown into disarray. Marching behind banners reading “No to the reform” or “We won’t give up”, many said they would take to the streets as often as needed for the government to back down. “We won’t drive until we’re 64!” bus driver Isabelle Texier said at a protest in Saint-Nazaire on the Atlantic coast. “For the president, it’s easy. He sits in a chair ... he can work until he’s 70, even,” she said. “We can’t ask roof layers to work until 64, it’s not possible.”
After 19 January, when more than a million people took to the streets on the first nationwide strike day, unions said initial data from protests across the country showed a bigger turnout. Opinion polls show a substantial majority of the French public oppose the reform, but Mr Macron intends to stand his ground. The reform is “vital” to ensure the viability of the pension system, he said on Monday.
Two monkeys ‘taken’ from Dallas Zoo
Two emperor tamarin monkeys are missing from Dallas Zoo, officials said after a string of incidents occurring there in just one month. The zoo authorities said their habitat seemed to have been tampered with and that they might have been “taken” from their enclosures. The officials notified the police and said they had reason to believe the tamarin monkeys’ habitat was “intentionally compromised”.
“Dallas Zoo alerted the Dallas Police Department after the animal care team discovered two of our emperor tamarin monkeys were missing. It was clear the habitat had been intentionally compromised,” the zoo said in a statement. “Emperor tamarin monkeys would likely stay close to home – the zoo searched near their habitat and across zoo grounds and did not locate them. Based on the Dallas Police Department’s initial assessment, they have reason to believe the tamarins were taken,” it added.
This is the fourth such suspicious case to have occurred at the 106-acre Dallas Zoological Park since 1 January. The first incident, on 13 January, involved a clouded leopard called Nova. The zoo discovered that it was not in its habitat and issued a code blue alert, indicating a non-dangerous animal was not in its home. The animal was later found unharmed but police said the clouded leopard’s habitat appeared to have been intentionally cut and not torn open by the animal.
The very next day, a cut in the fencing of a second animal habitat was found. Another incident involved the “suspicious” death of an endangered lappet-faced vulture named Pin at the zoo on 21 January. Officials said at the time that the circumstances surrounding the bird’s death were “unusual” and that the cause of death did not appear to be natural. The zoo said it has added additional cameras and increased overnight security patrols.
Balwin charged with involuntary manslaughter
Actor Alec Baldwin and a weapons specialist have been formally charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a New Mexico movie set, according to court documents filed by prosecutors yesterday. Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies filed the charging documents naming Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who supervised weapons on the set of the western Rust.
The filing comes nearly two weeks after she first announced that Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed would be prosecuted for what authorities have described as a pattern of criminal disregard for safety. In recent weeks, Carmack-Altwies has outlined two sets of involuntary manslaughter charges in connection with the shooting. Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed maintain their innocence and have vowed to fight the charges. AP
US responds to North Korea nuclear threat
The US will accelerate its deployment of advanced weapons including fighter warplanes and bombers on the Korean
peninsula, the country’s defence secretary Lloyd Austin said yesterday after arriving for talks in South Korea. Washington is looking to bolster its joint training and operational planning with its ally as the region witnesses the rising threat of nuclear tests and missile launches from North Korea.
The US defence secretary met with his South Korean counterpart Lee Jong-Sup in Seoul and “pledged to further expand and bolster the level and scale of this year’s combined exercises and training”, according to a statement from the US Department of Defense. “To this end, the two leaders concurred on the need to take into account changes in the security environment, including the DPRK’s [North Korea] recent steps with respect to its nuclear and missile programmes, to strengthen combined exercises and training, including the upcoming combined bilateral exercises,” the statement added.
The two leaders “agreed to expand the scope and scale of combined field training exercises and to conduct a large-scale combined joint fires demonstration this year”, it added.
Indian economy ‘to keep growing at more than 6%’
India’s growth story is set to see a slowdown as the country’s annual pre-budget survey pegged gross domestic product (GDP) consumption 6.5 per cent higher than the current fiscal year. According to the economic survey, tabled in the parliament ahead of the union budget, it is the slowest at which the Indian economy has grown in the past three years, even as the forecast is higher than the International Monetary Fund’s projection of 6.1 per cent.
The country saw a GDP growth of 7 per cent in the current fiscal year and 8.7 per cent for the year 2021 to 2022. “The actual outcome for real GDP growth will probably lie in the range of 6 per cent to 6.8 per cent, depending on the trajectory of economic and political developments globally,” the survey said.
Mainly a review of India’s economic performance in the previous fiscal year running from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023,
the survey is also the basis for the government’s fiscal projection for the upcoming budget session. The budget session, beginning today, will be extended until 6 April.
Iran jails couple for 10 years for video dance
A court in Iran has reportedly jailed a young couple for 10 years for dancing in front of a Tehran landmark in a video posted on social media. The clip, which went viral, was seen as a symbol of defiance against the regime and came amid widespread protests against a crackdown by authorities in which hundreds if not thousands have been killed.
Astiyazh Haghighi and her fiance Amir Mohammad Ahmadi, both 21, had been arrested in November after the video, in which they danced in front of the Azadi Tower. They were convicted of “encouraging corruption and public prostitution” and “gathering with the intention of disrupting national security,” according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
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