التصنيف: estaql

The teacher was killed in 2020 outside his school in Paris, after sharing cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in class.

Six teenagers have gone on trial behind closed doors in connection with the beheading of French history teacher Samuel Paty.

The murder, which shocked the country, took place in 2020 after the teacher had shown his pupils caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on freedom of expression.

Paty, 47, was killed outside his school in a Paris suburb by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old assailant of Chechen origin, who was shot dead by police soon afterwards.

The six youths cannot be identified due to their age. They entered court on Monday wearing hoodies to hide their faces.

Five of the six, who were 14 to 15 years old at the time, face up to 2.5 years in prison for criminal conspiracy with intent to cause violence. They are accused of identifying the teacher to the killer in exchange for money.

The other defendant, a girl who was 13 at the time, allegedly told her parents that Paty had asked Muslim pupils to leave the room before showing the caricatures. However, she was not in the class at the time.

Consumed with regret

During questioning, the teenagers swore that at most they thought Paty would be “flagged up on social media”, “humiliated” or maybe “roughed up”, but they never imagined “it would go as far as murder”.

“He is consumed with regret and is very fearful of the confrontation with Paty’s family,” Antoine Ory, lawyer for one of the accused, said on Monday before the hearing started.

Paty’s sister Mickaelle said in a statement through lawyer Louis Cailliez that her brother would still be alive without a “fatal association of small cowardices, big lies”.

“The role of the minors was fundamental in the sequence of events that led to his assassination,” a lawyer for Paty’s family said.

The hearings, due to last until December 8, will be held behind closed doors. Eight adults are also accused and will appear before a special criminal court.

Last month, almost two years to the day of Paty’s killing, a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed teacher Dominique Bernard and gravely wounded two other people in an attack at a school in northern France.

Like Anzorov, Bernard’s suspected killer Mohammed Moguchkov also hailed from Russia’s mainly Muslim North Caucasus region.

Anzorov targeted Paty after messages spread on social media that the teacher had shown his class the cartoons. They had originally featured in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015, triggering a deadly attack by gunmen.

Pope Francis is receiving antibiotics intravenously to treat a lung inflammation and will scale back some appointments.

However, the Vatican has said the pontiff does not have pneumonia or fever.

The pope himself revealed on Sunday that he had been unwell and had been forced to cancel his weekly window appointment to greet people in St Peter’s Square.

Instead, he gave his blessing from the chapel of the hotel on Vatican grounds where he lives.

The Vatican said in a written statement on Monday that an inflammation was causing some respiratory difficulties for Francis, whose 87th birthday is next month.

“The condition of the pope is good and stationary, he doesn’t have a fever, and the respiratory situation is in clear improvement,” the statement said.

A CT scan, which the pope underwent on Saturday afternoon at a Rome hospital, ruled out pneumonia.

To aid the pope’s recovery, “some important commitments expected for the next days have been postponed so he can dedicate the time and desired energy” to his recovery, the statement added.

It is not clear what appointments were being put off, but it appeared he was keeping his private audience with the president of Paraguay.

In televised remarks on Sunday, the pope indicated he is going ahead with a three-day trip to the United Arab Emirates on 1 December to deliver a speech on climate change at the upcoming United Nations COP28 talks.

When he gave his blessing on Sunday, a bandage, holding in place a cannula for intravenous treatment, was clearly visible on his right hand.

Around 500,000 people have been left without power after a storm took down power lines, ripped up trees and damaged buildings in Crimea.

Russian state news agency Tass said the storm also hit southern Russia and sent waves flooding into the beach resort of Sochi.

It is part of a weather front that hit Romania and Moldova on Sunday, leaving one person dead and hundreds of places without electricity amid heavy snowfall and strong blizzards.

Several Crimean regions declared a state of emergency after it became the strongest recorded storm in 16 years with wind speeds reaching 90mph (144kph).

The government in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, told people to stay at home on Monday.

Government offices were also shut as well as schools and hospitals.

The head of one Crimean region, Natalia Pisareva, said everyone in the Chornomorske area of western Crimea had no water supply and central heating because pumping stations had lost power.

There were also reports of a problem with a gas pipeline in Saky, western Crimea.

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In an aquarium in Sevastopol, around 800 exotic fish and animals died after the room they were in was flooded, the Crimea 24 TV channel reported.

In Russia, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium stopped crude oil loading at the Novorossiysk port due to “extremely unfavourable weather conditions”.

A five-year-old British boy has died after falling into a swimming pool while on holiday in Egypt.

Kelan Logan-Derench from Sutton Coldfield in Birmingham was on his first holiday abroad when he had the “tragic accident” on Saturday 25 November.

The boy was on holiday with his mother Ciara, elder sister Cienna and his grandmother at the time.

Serena Whitehead, a friend of Kelan’s mother, has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to bring him back to the UK and pay for his funeral.

She wrote on the page: “Kelan had a tragic accident and fell into the swimming pool and heartbreakingly nothing could be done to save him and he sadly lost his life.

“Kelan was a cheeky, mischievous, happy little boy, he was a younger brother to Cienna and was about to become a big brother himself in February 2024.”

Ms Whitehead added that Kelan’s family were “absolutely broken” after the boy’s death.

The page, which was created on Sunday, had raise more than £12,000 of its £15,000 target as of Monday morning.

The gleaming Etihad Boeing 777 they stepped into could not have made for a more stark contrast from the apocalyptic scene they’ve left behind in Gaza.

And they emerged into the cabin lights looking mostly dazed. One elderly woman hugged the first female cabin crew member she saw.

She had plenty of reason to be both grateful and immensely relieved.

She – like the nearly 200 people slowly boarding with her – was on one of the few flights out of the hell that is Gaza right now – and they had just got a ticket offering their first real chance of survival.

Follow live: Israel-Gaza latest

The Sky News team joined them on the flight: one of the first mercy missions organised by the United Arab Emirates to airlift wounded, sick or vulnerable children and families out of the war zone.

They were taking advantage of the humanitarian pause in the bombing to try to evacuate as many sick, ill and wounded as possible.

Some of the elderly and sick were pushed in wheelchairs to the foot of the plane and then half carried, half helped up the steps.

Others cradled their babies or held their toddlers close.

One young girl, aged about 11, was tightly strapped to a stretcher and taken into the body of the aircraft via a hydraulic lift.

She was accompanied by her 16-year-old sister.

“She’s very ill,” one of the medics told us, “she was severely dehydrated. We struggled to get a drip inside her and she’s got multiple trauma injuries.”

Many of the passengers are cancer patients who’d been forced to leave the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital – the only cancer treatment hospital in the Gaza Strip – after it was bombed.

One orthopaedic surgeon, who herself is suffering from lung cancer, described the humanitarian situation inside Gaza as “catastrophic”.

“There are about 7,000-9,000 badly injured or sick people who urgently need to be taken out of Gaza for medical treatment,” Dr Hanan Azghbi estimated.

She said her own hospital – the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital was overwhelmed with patients lying on floors and filled with people who’d sought refuge there.

It is now one of more than 20 hospitals completely out of action leaving only a fraction still functioning.

“I saw babies with double amputations,” she told us, “There are many, many people who’ve lost limbs. It is a catastrophe,” she repeated.

The medical team of 29 doctors, paramedics and emergency workers had flown into the Egypt-Gaza border unsure of who they were picking up, what the injuries or illnesses were and the extent of them.

So, they filled the plane with a range of medical equipment and medicines designed to help them cope with most eventualities.

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They set up a mini-ICU towards the rear of the plane and erected at least 10 stretchers positioned over rows of folded aeroplane seats, with resuscitation equipment and drips at the ready. In the event they needed to use only one.

Most of the passengers were able to be helped into their seats with a number receiving the first painkillers they’ve had access to in days or weeks.

Over the next week or so, the UAE will build a field hospital in Gaza with 150 beds. Compared to the huge numbers needing help right now, it is likely to be extremely busy.

The patients are being flown to Abu Dhabi where they’ll be placed in a number of hospitals able to respond to their medical needs.

Most have come with at least one family member accompanying them and these relatives will be accommodated nearby.

It was noticeable what few possessions the passengers arrived with.

Many came away from Gaza carrying just small plastic bags. That is all they’ve been left with.

Many have seen relatives killed and lost their homes, their jobs, their future. They leave Gaza not knowing if they’ll ever be back – and if they do return, just what exactly they’ll return to.