Police investigating hate speech targeting Olympics opening ceremony artistic director Thomas Jolly

Police investigating hate speech targeting Olympics opening ceremony artistic director Thomas Jolly
US’ singer Lady Gaga sings a song at the Sully bridge area before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 02 August 2024
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Police investigating hate speech targeting Olympics opening ceremony artistic director Thomas Jolly

Police investigating hate speech targeting Olympics opening ceremony artistic director Thomas Jolly
  • Jolly filed a police complaint on Tuesday for death threats, “public insults” and “defamation“
  • Jolly said he has been “the target of threatening messages and insults on social networks”

PARIS: Paris prosecutors said Friday that police have opened a hate speech investigation following a complaint by Olympics opening ceremony artistic director Thomas Jolly over death threats.
The Paris prosecutors’ office said in a statement that Jolly filed a police complaint on Tuesday, four days after the opening ceremony, for death threats, “public insults” and “defamation.”
Jolly said he has been “the target of threatening messages and insults on social networks” and criticizing his sexual orientation and his wrongly-assumed Israeli roots,” the statement said. France’s Central Office for Combating Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes has been charged with the investigation.
Jolly’s complaint comes after the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony prompted a storm of outrage, including angry comments from Donald Trump, in the wake of a contentious scene featuring drag queens and other performers. Although Jolly has repeatedly said that he wasn’t inspired by “The Last Supper,” critics interpreted part of the show as a mockery of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting showing Jesus Christ and his apostles.
Barbara Butch, a popular DJ who performed in the show, also said she suffered a torrent of online threats. Butch has filed a complaint alleging online abuse and harassment, which police are also investigating.


Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot

Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot
Updated 03 October 2024
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Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot

Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot

BERLIN: A teenager suspected of plotting an attack against Jews was arrested in September in western Germany, a court source and local media reports said Thursday.
The 15-year-old boy has been placed in pre-trial detention over plans to “commit a crime,” Dusseldorf prosecutors told AFP, without providing further details.
Police had previously detained the suspect in August following intelligence it had received, according to the Bild and Spiegel newspapers.
The teenager was released but arrested again after investigators discovered conversations on his phone with a suspected foreign extremist believed to have tried to talk him into perpetrating a knife attack.
The two allegedly discussed potential targets, including festivals and Jewish communities, and the teenager also reportedly posted videos on TikTok featuring Daesh flags, according to Bild and Spiegel.
The arrest came as Germany has tightened security measures after a knife attack in the western city of Solingen on August 30 that was claimed by the Daesh group.
Three people were killed and several others were injured in the Solingen attack.
A 26-year-old Syrian suspect, who had been slated for deportation but evaded law enforcement, turned himself in after a day on the run and confessed to the attack.
And in June, a German court sentenced a 15-year-old boy to four years in jail for planning an Islamist attack on a Christmas market in the western city of Leverkusen.


Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support

Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support
Updated 03 October 2024
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Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support

Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support

BERLIN: Thousands of people in Berlin on Thursday demonstrated against Germany’s military support for Ukraine as it battles to hold back invading Russian troops.
Participants answered a call by a radical left-wing collective to gather in the German capital and brandished placards reading “Negotiations! No weapons!,” “No to war” and “Pacifism is not naive.” Some also held anti-American signs.
One of their main demands was for Germany to stop sending weapons to Ukraine, which Kyiv desperately needs to defend itself from Russian aggression.
The protest came one week ahead of the first state visit by a US president to the European country since Ronald Reagan in 1985.
Joe Biden is also expected to meet with Ukraine’s allies to discuss military support to the war-torn nation, at the US army base in Ramstein, western Germany.
Far-left populist leader Sahra Wagenknecht, who attended the Berlin protest, has long called for an end to weapon deliveries to Kyiv and opposes a plan to deploy US long-range missiles in Germany.
Germany has been the second-largest contributor of military aid to Ukraine after the United States, but plans to halve its budget for that aid next year.
Wagenknecht’s pro-Russia, anti-NATO stance has contributed to her party’s positive results in three eastern state elections, securing 12 percent of the vote in Brandenburg.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in September stunned the political establishment by winning its first-ever parliamentary vote — in the eastern state of Thuringia — and coming a close second in neighboring Saxony.
The AfD’s platform relied on its usual discourse against asylum-seekers, multiculturalism and Islam, but also on critiques of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s policy of unconditional support for Ukraine.
The state leaders of Saxony and Brandenburg, where AfD came in second, as well as the head of the conservatives in Thuringia, have called for a ceasefire in Ukraine, in an article expected to be published on Friday in the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung newspaper.
Germany and the European Union’s dioplomatic efforts so far have been “too indecisive,” they said, urging Berlin to bring Russia to the negotiating table.


Thousands rally in Austria against far right

Thousands rally in Austria against far right
Updated 03 October 2024
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Thousands rally in Austria against far right

Thousands rally in Austria against far right

VIENNA: Thousands of people protested in Austria’s capital Vienna on Thursday against a possible return to power for the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which topped national elections on Sunday.
The FPOe won almost 29 percent of the vote in Sunday’s general election, ahead of the conservative People’s Party (OeVP) with just over 26 percent.
“The Austrian Freedom Party is a danger because it has already said that it wants to govern in the image of Hungary’s Viktor Orban,” said Rihab Toumi, a 26-year-old student, referring to the nationalist leader of Austria’s neighboring country.
Although the FPOe topped the polls, there is no guarantee that their radical leader Herbert Kickl will be given a chance to form a government since no other party is willing to work with him.
“This result was a shock and we cannot let a party that drifts so far to the right garner so much support without saying anything,” said social worker Marianne, 53, who declined to share her surname.
Organizers claimed there were 15,000 to 17,000 protesters in central Vienna, who marched toward parliament.
Demonstrators held up placards saying “Let’s defend democracy,” “No alliances with Putin’s friends” and other anti-FPOe slogans.
Kickl has criticized European Union sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Demonstrators intend to march every Thursday, having similarly done so after the far right formed part of short-lived coalition governments in 2000 and 2017.


US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials

US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials
Updated 03 October 2024
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US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials

US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials

More than 200 people are confirmed dead after Hurricane Helene carved a path of destruction through several southeastern US states, officials said Thursday, making it the second deadliest storm to hit the US mainland in more than half a century.
A compilation of official figures by AFP confirms 201 fatalities across North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia. More than half of the deaths were in flood-ravaged North Carolina.
Helene is the deadliest on the US mainland since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,392 people.
Despite hundreds of rescues across six states and an enormous response including more than 10,000 federal personnel assisting local responders, the death toll from the sprawling storm is expected to rise, with many residents still unaccounted for in a mountainous region known for its pockets of isolation.
“We are continuing to find survivors,” North Carolina’s Buncombe County, the epicenter of the tragedy where more than 60 people are confirmed dead, said in its latest update, adding there are residents still cut off from the outside world due to landslides and destroyed bridges.
“Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the families of those that had just experienced this heartbreak and this tragedy,” Georgia Governor Brian Kemp told a briefing n his state, where he said the number of confirmed dead has risen to 33.
US President Joe Biden was undertaking a second straight day of visits to affected states, traveling Thursday to Florida, where Helene blew into the state’s northern Gulf shore last week as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with wind speeds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour.
Biden took an aerial tour of the coast to survey the devastation, then walked past rows of destroyed homes and buildings in Keaton Beach, near where the storm made landfall.
He next heads to neighboring Georgia.
 


More than 800 mpox deaths recorded across Africa

More than 800 mpox deaths recorded across Africa
Updated 03 October 2024
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More than 800 mpox deaths recorded across Africa

More than 800 mpox deaths recorded across Africa
  • “The epidemic is not under control,” Jean Kaseya, the head of Africa CDC said
  • The Democratic Republic of Congo would begin vaccinating in two days

NAIROBI: More than 800 people across Africa have died from mpox, the African Union’s disease control center said Thursday, warning the epidemic “was not under control.”
Some 34,297 cases have been recorded across the continent since January, the AU’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said, adding that the figure included 38 cases in Ghana.
This brings to 16 the number of African countries where mpox has been officially detected this year, according to the health agency.
“The epidemic is not under control,” Jean Kaseya, the head of Africa CDC told a press briefing, saying the number of deaths since the start of the year was 866.
He also warned that the testing rate remained “too low,” noting that some 2,500 new cases had been detected in the past week.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — the epicenter of the outbreak — would begin vaccinating in two days, Kaseya added. Vaccinations had been due to begin October 2.
Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.
It causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions, and can be deadly.