A French court on Friday convicted six teenagers in connection with the 2020 beheading of history teacher Samuel Paty, whose murder shocked the country. The teacher had shown his pupils caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression, angering some Muslim parents. Most Muslims avoid depictions of prophets, considering them to […]
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday made Turkey’s ratification of Sweden’s stalled NATO membership application conditional on the US Congress “simultaneously” approving Ankara’s request for F-16 fighter jets. Sweden and Finland dropped decades of military non-alignment and sought the nuclear protection afforded by the US-led defence organisation in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last […]
President Vladimir Putin said Friday he will run for re-election in 2024, Russian news agencies reported, allowing the Kremlin leader to extend his decades-long grip on power into the 2030s. The 71-year-old has led Russia since the turn of the century, winning four presidential ballots and briefly serving as prime minister in a system where […]