UN agencies on Thursday warned of a "worrying" spike in migrants crossing the dangerous Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, saying already this year more than 100,000 had made the journey.. "The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warn of the worrying increase of people crossing the Darien jungle," the two said in a joint statement.
France's top constitutional court is to rule Friday on whether to approve President Emmanuel Macron's deeply unpopular pensions overhaul after months of protests.. First, the nine-member council is to rule on whether the pensions overhaul, which has been formulated as a social security budget law, is in line with the constitution.
When Andres was 12, his Dominican Republic citizenship -- his only possession of any real value -- was snatched from him by a court ruling targeting people with foreign-born parents.. Andres, whose surname is being concealed to protect him, is one of some 250,000 Dominicans born to foreign parents -- mainly Haitians -- who had their birthright citizenship stripped by a Constitutional Court ruling in 2013.
The US state of Montana on Thursday was on the verge of implementing a total ban on TikTok, after a proposal passed a key hurdle in the state's legislature.. "It is hard to see how the state would be able to defend it and win," Tobias told AFP. When an earlier version of the bill passed in the Montana senate, TikTok decried a "disastrous precedent" that would have "serious consequences", especially on TikTok creators and Montana businesses that use the app.
A transgender former legislator and LGBTQ activist, Tamara Adrian, announced her candidacy Thursday in Venezuela's opposition primaries that will determine who challenges President Nicolas Maduro in next year's election.. In 2016, Adrian became the first transgender legislator in the conservative South American country.
US President Joe Biden on Thursday declared "I'm home" as he was feted on a visit to his ancestral homeland Ireland, whose story he said proved the triumph of hope over despair.. But, following a testy visit to Belfast prior to Dublin, Biden also issued a pointed warning that the UK "should be working closer with Ireland" to protect a 25-year-old peace deal in Northern Ireland.
French President Emmanuel Macron's recent trip to Beijing was billed as a chance to showcase European unity and persuade Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help rein in Russian aggression.. Lithuania's foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis was scathing about the argument that Europe can persuade Xi to intercede with Russia's President Vladimir Putin to de-escalate Moscow's war in Ukraine.
The European Union's central data regulator said on Thursday it was forming a task force to help countries deal with wildly popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, ramping up the pressure on its US maker OpenAI. Italy temporarily banned the program last month over allegations its data-gathering broke privacy laws, and France's regulator said on Thursday it had opened a formal procedure after receiving five complaints.. Italy, the first regulator to bar the bot, this week issued a slew of actions OpenAI would need to take to get back into the country -- not least providing a legal basis for its data gathering.
Russia said Thursday it had cut off Ukrainian forces inside Bakhmut, while Kyiv insisted supply lines were still open into the town, scene of the most brutal battle of the war.. Kyiv has said the battle for the town is key to holding back Russian forces along the entire eastern front.
Twelve years after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was shunned, Arab countries have gradually welcomed his regime back into the fold -- as victor of a war that has yet to end. . For Mohammad al-Abdallah of the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, normalisation with Assad is an attempt "to bring the Arab region back to how it was before 2011".
