Have you missed the news a bit in the last two days? We summarize the main information for Saturday March 2 and Sunday March 3.
In the port city of Odessa, in southern Ukraine, a Russian drone hit a nine-story building on the night of Friday March 1 to Saturday March 2. Ten people died, including two babies aged 4 and 8 months and a 3-year-old child, lamented the governor of the Odessa region, Oleh Kiper, on Sunday. A day of mourning was declared in the city and its oblast.
The Ukrainian state emergency service warns that this is a provisional assessment and that searches are still underway to try to find people under the rubble. After this Russian attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday reiterated his call on his Western allies to provide more air defense systems.
Negotiations have been taking place since Sunday in Cairo, Egypt, with a view to obtaining a truce between Israel and Hamas during Ramadan in the Gaza Strip. The proposal from the mediating countries – Qatar, United States, Egypt – concerns a six-week pause in the fighting and the release of 42 hostages held in Gaza compared to that of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
“The Israelis have accepted in principle the elements of the agreement,” a senior American official in Washington assured Agence France-Presse on Saturday, but Israel has not confirmed this information.
On the humanitarian aid side, airdrops began in Gaza on Saturday and the European Commission announced on Friday the release of 50 million euros to finance the budget of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The European Union was due to pay its annual subsidy of 82 million euros to the UN agency on Thursday, but Israel’s revelation on January 26 that twelve UNRWA employees (out of a total of 13,000) allegedly participated in the deadly attack against the Jewish state on October 7, 2023, led to an intense debate within the Commission on maintaining this financial aid.
The day after and two days after his funeral, during which thousands of Muscovites gathered despite warnings from the Kremlin, hundreds of Russians marched on Saturday and Sunday in Moscow in front of the grave of Alexei Navalny, a dead opponent of Vladimir Putin. in prison, to pay homage to him.
On the morning of Saturday, his mother, Lioudmila Navalnaïa, already present on Friday, visited her son’s grave, largely covered with flowers and wreaths. She was accompanied by Alla Abrossimova, the mother of Mr. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaïa. The latter, as well as the couple’s two children and her brother live abroad and were unable to attend the funeral, where they could have been arrested. Alexei Navalny’s widow has vowed to continue her husband’s work and has repeatedly said in recent days that Vladimir Putin “assassinated” him, something the Kremlin strongly denies.
In a speech in Marseille delivered in front of 5,000 people, the head of the National Rally (RN) list denounced “the great erasure of France” caused by the European Union and Emmanuel Macron, according to him. “A great erasure which results in the decline of France at home but also in Europe and in the world, by the decay of the State, by the dislocation of the country and above all by the disunity of the French,” said continued the far-right leader, targeting “the great eraser, Emmanuel Macron.”
Ultra-favorite in the polls with around ten points more than the Renaissance-MoDem-Horizons list, Jordan Bardella’s RN has a double objective: to come first and do at least as well as in the last European elections (23.34 %). Opposite, Macronie, stuck for several weeks at less than 20% voting intentions, and its candidate Valérie Hayer intend to respond to Jordan Bardella’s meeting from Saturday March 9, in Lille, with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and his government in full to support the head of the list.
Even at 39, the Los Angeles Lakers superstar continues to make NBA history. LeBron James became, on Saturday March 2 in Los Angeles, the first player in the history of the North American professional basketball league to score 40,000 points in the regular season, despite the defeat against the Denver Nuggets (114-124). ), reigning champions.
In athletics, French indoor pole vault champion Margot Chevrier was seriously injured at the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Glasgow on Saturday after a poor landing during her attempt at 4.65 meters in the final of the competition. . She was evacuated to the emergency room of a hospital and suffered from an open fracture of the talus (ankle).
This weekend marked the start of the 2024 Formula 1 season. It started like last year: with a victory for reigning world champion Max Verstappen, followed by his teammate Sergio Perez, both drivers for the team Red Bull. The latter is shaken by criticism aimed at his boss, Christian Horner, after an internal investigation for “inappropriate behavior” towards an employee, for which he was cleared.
