Have you missed the news a bit in the last two days? We summarize the main information for Saturday February 3 and Sunday February 4.
Parisians were called to vote on Sunday “for or against the creation of a specific rate for the parking of heavy, bulky, polluting individual cars”. The approximately 1.3 million voters were invited to vote until 7 p.m. on the creation of a specific parking rate for sports utility vehicles (sport utility vehicles, SUVs), with a tripling of the price. These “city 4×4s”, heavy and bulky but considered spacious and safe by their drivers, are today the best-selling vehicles in Europe.
The socialist mayor of the capital, Anne Hidalgo, justified the vote by the fight against pollution, better sharing of public space and “road safety”, accidents involving an SUV being according to the town hall “twice as fatal for pedestrians than with a standard car”.
If yes wins, SUV drivers who are not residents of the capital, nor professionals, will have to pay an hourly rate of 18 euros for the central districts and 12 euros for the outer districts.
After the government’s announcements to try to calm the anger of farmers, the police on Saturday evacuated the last blockages of the Confédération paysanne, namely the toll of Saint-Quentin-Fallavier (Isère) on the A43 and the Leclerc purchasing center for the Great West, in Saint-Etienne-de-Montluc (Loire-Atlantique). A decision which outraged the Peasant Confederation, the last union to have maintained the road blockages, pointing to the “government’s choice to treat mobilizations and trade union organizations differently”. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had given instructions throughout the movement to the police and gendarmes to let the farmers do their thing, unless they tried to get closer to Rungis or Paris.
The end of the road blockages does not, however, put an end to the mobilization of the agricultural world, which is awaiting the implementation of the announced measures and meeting the executive at the Agricultural Show (February 24-March 3). Smaller actions continue: supermarkets are also persistent targets of farmers, who accuse them of squeezing prices or selling foreign products.
The United States carried out retaliatory strikes on Friday targeting personnel of the Al-Quds Force, the foreign operations branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and pro-Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria.
At least twenty-three pro-Iranian fighters, including five in Deir ez-Zor, Syria, were killed in these airstrikes on eastern Syria and western Iraq, the Syrian Observatory reported of Human Rights (OSDH). In Iraq, sixteen people, including civilians, were killed and twenty-five were injured, according to an official toll announced by the Iraqi government.
These bombings occurred at the same time as the remains of three American soldiers, killed after a drone attack in Jordan, were repatriated to the United States. US President Joe Biden had promised to respond to this deadly attack carried out on January 28 near the Syrian border, attributed by Washington to groups supported by Iran.
A man, suspected of stabbing several people on Saturday morning at Lyon station in Paris, was taken into police custody. This was interrupted on Saturday evening because the behavioral examination had revealed “a psychiatric state incompatible with the coercive measure”, but it resumed on Sunday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
According to a provisional report from the prefecture, the attack, which took place shortly before 8 a.m. on Saturday, left one seriously injured, whose life remained in danger early Sunday afternoon, and two lightly injured. The police chief, Laurent Nuñez, spoke of a fourth person “very shocked” by the attack. “The blows were allegedly carried out with a hammer and a knife, weapons currently being analyzed,” according to the prosecution.
The Senegalese head of state, Macky Sall, announced on Saturday the indefinite postponement of the presidential election on February 25. An announcement that comes just hours before the opening of the electoral campaign. Macky Sall invoked the conflict which broke out between the Constitutional Council and the National Assembly, after the final validation by the court of twenty candidacies and the elimination of several dozen others.
Faced with this decision, the United States said it was “deeply concerned”, and the European Union called for elections to be held “as soon as possible”. France, for its part, asked the authorities to “remove uncertainties around the electoral calendar so that the elections can be held as soon as possible and in compliance with the rules of Senegalese democracy”.
Several opposition candidates announced to the press and on social networks that they would override the Senegalese president’s decision and maintain the launch of their electoral campaign on Sunday. They also called for a large demonstration in Dakar.
And also
Israel-Hamas. Hamas studies new truce proposal
North Ireland. Michelle O’Neill, from Sinn Fein, officially elected Prime Minister
Farmers. The first decrees on GNR and MHE have been published
Italy. Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, son of the last king of Italy, has died
Ukraine. Twenty-eight dead in Lyssychansk strike attributed to kyiv
Chile. The fires left at least 51 dead, a state of exception declared
CAN. Ivory Coast, qualified for the semi-finals of the competition
Namibia. Death of Hage Geingob, president of Namibia and activist against apartheid