International
France’s President, Macron returns to France as Protesters destroy 12 buses
France’s president rushed home from an EU summit Friday for a crisis meeting, after a third night of protests over a policeman’s killing of a teen saw cars torched, shops ransacked and hundreds arrested.
Police sources said that rather than pitched battles between protesters and police, the night was marked by pillaging of shops, reportedly including flagship branches of Nike and Zara in Paris.
Public buildings were also targeted, with a police station in the Pyrenees city of Pau hit with a Molotov cocktail, according to regional authorities, and an elementary school and a district office set on fire in northern town Lille.
The unrest has come in response to the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Nahel, whose death has revived longstanding grievances about policing and racial profiling in France’s low-income and multi-ethnic suburbs.
AFP journalists saw President Emmanuel Macron leaving the European Council summit in Brussels to chair a crisis meeting on the violence — the second such emergency talks in as many days.
Ahead of the meeting, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the government was considering “all options” to restore order, including declaring a state of emergency.
Around 40,000 police and gendarmes — along with elite Raid and GIGN units — were deployed in several cities overnight, with curfews issued in municipalities around Paris and bans on public gatherings in Lille and Tourcoing in the country’s north.
Despite the massive security deployment, violence and damage were reported in multiple areas.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 667 people had been arrested in what he described as a night of violence, while 249 police officers were injured, none of them seriously.
Rioting apparently linked to the Paris police shooting had even followed Macron to the Belgian capital, with Brussels police reporting 63 people detained late Thursday for setting fires and erecting barricades.
– ‘Severely disrupted’ –
France has been rocked by successive nights of protests since Nahel was shot point-blank on Tuesday during a traffic stop captured on video.
In her first media interview since the shooting, Nahel’s mother, Mounia, told the France 5 channel: “I don’t blame the police, I blame one person: the one who took the life of my son.”
She said the 38-year-old officer responsible, who was detained and charged with voluntary manslaughter on Thursday, “saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life”.
The memorial march for Nahel, led by Mounia, ended with riot police firing tear gas as several cars were set alight in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre, where the teenager lived and was killed.
Heightened security appeared to do little to deter unrest Thursday night.
In the city centre of Marseille, a library was vandalised, according to local officials, and scuffles broke out nearby when police used tear gas to disperse a group of 100 to 150 people who allegedly tried to set up barricades.
In Nanterre, the epicentre of the unrest, tensions rose around midnight, with fireworks and explosives set off in the Pablo Picasso district, where Nahel had lived, according to an AFP journalist.
The Paris region’s bus and tram lines remained “severely disrupted” on Friday, the RATP transport authority said, after a dozen vehicles were torched overnight in a depot and some routes were blocked or damaged.
The government is desperate to avoid a repeat of 2005 urban riots, sparked by the death of two boys of African origin in a police chase, during which 6,000 people were arrested.
Macron has called for calm and said the protest violence was “unjustifiable”.
The riots are a fresh challenge for the president, who had been looking to move past some of the biggest demonstrations in a generation sparked by a controversial rise in the retirement age.
– ‘Bullet in the head’ –
There have long been concerns over allegations of systemic racism in the French police and the UN rights office said Friday the killing of the teen of North African descent was “a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and racial discrimination in law enforcement.”
Nahel was killed as he pulled away from police who were trying to stop him for a traffic infraction.
A video, authenticated by AFP, showed two police officers standing by the side of the stationary car, with one pointing a weapon at the driver.
A voice is heard saying: “You are going to get a bullet in the head.”
The police officer then appears to fire as the car abruptly drives off.
The officer’s lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, told BFMTV late Thursday that his client had apologised as he was taken into custody.
“The first words he pronounced were to say sorry, and the last words he said were to say sorry to the family,” Lienard said.
AFP
International
Child marriage in southern Germany: Over 350 cases recorded, some brides as young as 11
The most recent entries in the overview relate to 2026. They include, among other things, marriages of 16- and 17-year-old girls to adult men.
• Child marriage / UNICEF
In the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, a total of 358 so-called child marriages have been officially recorded since 2012.
Euro News reported that only eight of these forced marriages have so far been legally annulled.
According to authorities, the other 350 cases were brought to an end in other ways.
This alarming finding comes from a response by the Baden-Württemberg state government to a minor inquiry submitted by AfD state parliament members Nikolaos Boutakoglou and Emely Knorr.
The Tübingen regional authority is responsible for recording the data, the answer came from the Ministry of the Interior.
The eight final annulments took place between 2018 and 2024. Among the documented cases was the marriage of an 11-year-old girl from Iraq to a 17-year-old Iraqi, which was annulled in 2020.
As early as 2018, the marriage of a 14-year-old Afghan girl to a 30-year-old man had been ended.
In 2024 two further annulments were added: they concerned a 16-year-old German girl and a 25-year-old Pakistani man and a 16-year-old Syrian girl and a 27-year-old man from the same country.State parliament member Nikolaos Boutakoglou wrote on Facebook that the issue was “really awful” but was being treated as a taboo.
According to its own account, the ministry deals exclusively with such marriages entered into abroad.
Since summer 2017, the Act to Combat Child Marriages has been in force in Germany.
In 2024, the Bundestag adopted new rules to protect minors in marriages concluded abroad.
Hundreds of cases without state intervention
The significantly higher number of cases concluded in other ways raises questions about how these marriages continued.
For the period from 2015 to 2026, the regional authority lists a total of 350 proceedings under the heading “other disposals.”But what became of the other child marriages?
The state government cites, among other things, the death of a spouse, reaching adulthood, a decision not to seek annulment or a new marriage concluded abroad.
In these cases, there was therefore no legally binding annulment.
For 2023, the records include the case of a 12-year-old Afghan girl who was married to a 21-year-old Afghan man. Girls aged 13 and 14 also appear several times in the statistics.
The most recent entries in the overview relate to 2026. They include, among other things, marriages of 16- and 17-year-old girls to adult men.
The statistics record the age of the spouses at the time of marriage and their respective nationalities.
Pope Leo XIV has announced that he will undergo surgery in the coming days to remove a small, localized nodule found on his lung during a recent routine medical checkup.
The 71-year-old pontiff made the disclosure himself during his weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square. “Doctors found a localized nodule in my lung,” he said. “It was detected at a very early stage and is well-contained.
The doctors believe it is advisable to intervene, so, following their advice, I have decided to undergo surgery to remove it.”
The Vatican confirmed the operation is scheduled for the first days of this week at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, which has a dedicated papal suite. Holy See spokesman Matteo Bruni said the Pope is expected to need about a week to recover. On Monday, the Vatican added that Leo will be admitted Tuesday morning.
The nodule’s nature—whether benign or malignant—has not been specified. Medical experts note that most lung nodules are non-cancerous, and early detection generally carries a favorable outlook.
This marks the first significant health issue of Leo’s papacy since his election in May 2025. The American-born pope, known for remaining physically active, has continued his full schedule of audiences and is still expected to proceed with a planned trip to Latin America next month.
International
‘Up to our people’ to pick leader, Zelenskyy responds to Trump’s pledge for new elections in Ukraine
Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line, more than four and a half years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday his country could hold elections if Russia agreed to a 60-day total ceasefire, pushing back against US counterpart Donald Trump’s call for Ukraine to pick a new leader.
“First of all, with all respect to President Trump, it’s up to our society, up to our people to choose one or another leader”, Zelenskyy told ABC News in a televised interview, a day after Trump said Ukraine needed a new president who would agree to end the war.
Zelenskyy said he told Trump’s team that if they really wanted Ukraine to hold elections, “please tell Putin to give us two months, 60 days of total ceasefire, 60 days, and we will organise elections”.
“We want peace, we are ready for a ceasefire, we are ready to begin with any kind of steps of de-escalation”, Zelenskyy told ABC in a TV interview.
“And if the Russians want us not to attack their diesel, their refineries, etc., we are asking President Trump to give them a signal not to attack the energy infrastructure of Ukraine”.
Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line, more than four and a half years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Euro News
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