Author: Launce Allard

Spanish judge rules former football chief should go on trial for kissing Jenni Hermoso after 2023 final A Spanish judge has proposed that the disgraced former Spanish football chief Luis Rubiales be tried over the kiss he allegedly forced on the Women’s World Cup star Jenni Hermoso. In a ruling on Thursday after his preliminary investigation, judge Francisco de Jorge of Spain’s top criminal court concluded that the kiss “was not consensual and was a unilateral and unexpected move” by Rubiales, who is facing charges of sexual assault and coercion. The judge also proposed putting three others on trial for…

Deposit of natural hydrogen could be the largest ever found and enough to meet global demand for two years Hydrogen has long been seen as a wonder fuel that does not give off greenhouse gases when used, and which could help replace fossil fuels. But there is at least one major drawback to this idea because the production of hydrogen largely uses fossil fuels and so making clean hydrogen from the process of splitting water needs renewable sources of electricity. Lots of power is required and it is expensive. Less well known are deposits of natural hydrogen buried underground. Scientists…

Brussels (25/11 – 33.3) Tajikistan Supreme Court has sentenced a widely respected 65-year-old female journalist, Ulfathonim Mamadshoeva, to 21 years in prison on charges of incitement to overthrowing the government. Mamadshoeva was accused by the authorities of being a leading figure behind the political turbulence that rocked her native Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) earlier this year. State propaganda has previously alleged that the veteran reporter and activist hatched the purported plot, for which no credible evidence has been produced, at the behest of an unnamed foreign government. Mamadshoeva’s brother, Khursand, was last week sentenced to 18 years in prison on…

It has been namechecked by Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Lana Del Rey but the owner of the Cristal champagne brand has issued a legal letter after a small London firm picked a similar moniker for one of its wines. Renegade Urban Winery, which is based on an industrial estate in Walthamstow, east London, said it had been contacted by representatives of the champagne-maker Louis Roederer who claimed that the UK producer’s use of the name Crystal on a pink sparkling wine infringes the French firm’s Cristal brand. The lawyers also accused Renegade, which makes 70,000 bottles of wine annually compared…

Marion Deichmann was nine years old when her mother was arrested in the Vél’ d’Hiv round-up in Paris and sent to a Nazi concentration camp. “Two militia came to our little apartment and said, ‘we’ve come to collect Alice Deichmann’,” Marion, now 91, recalls. “We knew that there were working camps, but nobody knew then about the ‘final solution’ – the plan to exterminate Jews in a gas chamber. So my mother was taken. I remember the last thing she said to me was, ‘be good, I’ll be back’.” Alice was sent to the Drancy transit camp on the outskirts of Paris,…

A number of British and Irish nationals are among those receiving hospital treatment for botulism after eating sardines in a French restaurant. A 32-year-old woman has died and several others are being treated after the outbreak of the rare food-borne illness in Bordeaux. It has been reported that the woman is the wife of an Irish national. Santé publique France, the country’s public health agency, said the homemade sardines had been stored by the owner of Tchin Tchin Wine Bar in the French city. The Irish Embassy in Paris urged citizens who ate at the restaurant and have symptoms to…

French prosecutors have opened an investigation after the alleged rape of a female Irish rugby supporter. It is understood the incident happened in Bordeaux at the weekend, following Ireland’s World Cup game against Romania. Gardaí (Irish police) said its officers deployed in France for the Rugby World Cup to assist Irish supporters “are liaising with local authorities in relation to an alleged incident”. It added that it is a matter for French police. The public prosecutor’s office in Bordeaux said forensic tests are ongoing and images from the area’s video protection cameras are being studied. Source : bbc

Pupils will be banned from wearing abayas, loose-fitting full-length robes worn by some Muslim women, in France’s state-run schools, the education minister has said. The rule will be applied as soon as the new school year starts on 4 September. France has a strict ban on religious signs in state schools and government buildings, arguing that they violate secular laws. Wearing a headscarf has been banned since 2004 in state-run schools. “When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them,” Education Minister Gabriel Attal told France’s TF1 TV, adding:…

Archaeologists have found evidence of a mass execution of German prisoners who were forced to dig their own graves and then shot by the French Resistance a few days after D-Day, during World War Two. French and German teams discovered bullets and cartridges, as well as coins, at a remote site in central France identified by the last surviving witness. After France surrendered to Hitler’s Germany in 1940, the underground Resistance movement gathered force over years of occupation and by June 1944 was poised to help the Allied invasion in Normandy. The eight-day excavation in wooded hills near the town…

An airport in France will be renamed in honour of Queen Elizabeth II after receiving permission from the King, officials in the town have said. Le Touquet, in northern France, received the blessing from the King on Monday, its town hall said. Touquet-Paris-Plage airport will be Elizabeth II Le Touquet-Paris-Plage International Airport. The town hall said the tribute to the “Great Queen” would also recognise the “most British of French resorts”. A date for the inauguration has not been set. It comes after the original proposal was made to the British Crown six days after the death of the Queen…