En Iran, les étudiants se joignent au mouvement social

Après les commerçants, les étudiants: le mouvement de protestation contre la vie chère et la dégradation de la situation économique s’étend mardi en Iran, où le président s’est dit à l’écoute des “revendications légitimes” des manifestants.Au troisième jour de ce mouvement spontané, des manifestations étudiantes ont éclaté dans au moins 10 universités à travers le …

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Allemagne : braquage spectaculaire d’une banque, préjudice estimé à 30 millions d’euros par la police

Des cambrioleurs ont braqué une banque le week-end dernier à Gelsenkirchen, dans l’ouest de l’Allemagne, provoquant un préjudice de 30 millions d’euros selon la police, et la colère des clients mardi matin.Les suspects ont dévalisé plus de 3.000 coffre-forts d’une succursale de la caisse d’épargne locale, contenant de l’argent, des bijoux ou de l’or, a …

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Journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of JFK, dies at 35

American environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of late president John F. Kennedy, has died from cancer at the age of 35, her family announced Tuesday.”Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,” the family wrote in a statement posted on the JFK Library Foundation’s Instagram account.Schlossberg, a science and climate reporter for the New York Times, wrote movingly about her diagnosis with acute myeloid leukemia in an essay for The New Yorker published in November.Doctors were first alerted to the condition — mostly seen in older patients and among first responders to the 9/11 attacks in New York — after detecting an unusually high white blood cell count following the birth of her second child in May 2024.”During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe,” she wrote. “My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me.”She was also deeply critical of her relative Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who now serves as health secretary in President Donald Trump’s cabinet and has curtailed access to vaccines while slashing spending on government medical research.”I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government,” she wrote.Schlossberg published widely in leading outlets including The Atlantic and Vanity Fair, and in 2019 authored the prize-winning book “Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have.”The daughter of designer Edwin Schlossberg and diplomat Caroline Kennedy, she is survived by her husband, George Moran, a physician, and their two children.

Congo president to stand for re-election in 2026Tue, 30 Dec 2025 20:22:06 GMT

Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso will stand for re-election in March next year, his party said on Tuesday after choosing the 82-year-old for the contest, an AFP journalist reported.Sassou Nguesso led the small, oil-rich country under a one-party system from 1979 to 1992, before Pascal Lissouba defeated him in a first democratic contest. He ousted …

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Students join Iran demonstrations after shopkeepers protest

Iranian students staged street protests in Tehran on Tuesday, a day after the capital’s shopkeepers demonstrated against economic hardship and won a message of understanding from the president.According to Ilna, a news agency associated with Iran’s labour movement, protests erupted at 10 universities across the country, including seven in Tehran that are among the country’s most prestigious.Protests also broke out at the technology university in the central city of Isfahan and institutions in the cities of Yazd and Zanjan, Ilna and state-run IRNA reported.On Tuesday, security forces and riot police were deployed at major intersections in Tehran and around some universities, according to AFP journalists, while some of the shops closed the previous day in the capital’s centre had reopened. The student action came after Monday’s protests in central Tehran by shop-owners and a day ahead of the temporary closure of banks, schools and businesses in the capital and in most provinces to save energy during the bitterly cold weather.The Iranian rial has dropped against the dollar and other world currencies — when the protests erupted on Sunday, the US dollar was trading at around 1.42 million rials, compared to 820,000 rials a year ago — forcing up import prices and hurting retail traders.Demonstrations erupted on Sunday at the city’s largest mobile phone market, before gaining momentum, though they remained limited in number and confined to central Tehran. The vast majority of shops elsewhere continued to operate as usual.President Masoud Pezeshkian — who has less authority under Iran’s system of government than supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — met Tuesday with labour leaders and made proposals to tackle the economic crisis, according to press agency Mehr. “I have asked the interior minister to listen to the legitimate demands of the protesters by engaging in dialogue with their representatives so that the government can do everything in its power to resolve the problems and act responsibly,” he said in a social media post.According to state television, parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, also called for “necessary measures focused on increasing people’s purchasing power” but warned against foreign agents and government opponents attempting to exploit the protests.On Monday, the government announced the replacement of the central bank governor with former economy and finance minister Abdolnasser Hemmati.- Battered economy -Price fluctuations are paralysing sales of some imported goods, with both sellers and buyers preferring to postpone transactions until the outlook becomes clearer, AFP correspondents reported.According to the Etemad newspaper, one trader complained that officials had offered no support to storekeepers battling soaring import costs.”They didn’t even follow up on how the dollar price affected our lives,” he complained, speaking on condition of anonymity.”We had to decide to show our protest. With this dollar price, we can’t even sell a phone case, and the officials don’t care at all that our lives are run by selling mobile phones and accessories.”In December, inflation stood at 52 percent year-on-year, according to official statistics. But this figure still falls far short of many price increases, especially for basic necessities.The country’s economy, already battered by decades of Western sanctions, was further strained after the United Nations in late September reinstated international sanctions linked to the country’s nuclear programme that were lifted 10 years ago.Western powers and Israel accuse Iran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.The current protests against the high cost of living have not reached the level of the nationwide demonstrations that shook Iran in 2022.Those protests were sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women. Amini’s death triggered months of unrest, with hundreds of people, including dozens of security personnel, killed and thousands more arrested.In 2019, protests broke out in Iran after the announcement of a sharp increase in petrol prices. The unrest spread to around 100 cities, including Tehran, and left dozens dead.

Performers cancel concerts at Kennedy center after Trump renaming

A prominent jazz group and a dance company have canceled shows at Washington’s premier performing arts center to protest its renaming to include US President Donald Trump.Family members of late president John F. Kennedy and Democratic politicians have already expressed outrage over the change this month at the Kennedy Center rebaptizing it the Trump-Kennedy Center.Now artists are voicing their disapproval. Several who were scheduled to perform end-of-year and 2026 shows at the center have pulled out.The Cookers, a veteran jazz ensemble, voiced “deep regret” they would not be performing on New Year’s Eve as planned.  “Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice,” the group said in a statement that did not give a reason for the cancellation.But the band’s drummer, Billy Hart, told The New York Times that the center’s name change had “evidently” played a role in their decision. Richard Grenell, the Trump-appointed president of the arts center, denounced the artists canceling shows and said they “were booked by the previous far left leadership.””Boycotting the Arts to show you support the Arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” he wrote on X late Monday.Late last week, Grenell accused another jazz artist, Chuck Redd, of a “political stunt” and said the center would be seeking $1 million in damages after the musician cancelled a performance he hosts there annually on Christmas Eve, according to a copy of a letter from Grenell seen by AFP. A New York dance company, Doug Varone and Dancers, withdrew from a performance scheduled for April. They posted on Instagram Monday, “With the latest act of Donald J. Trump renaming the Center after himself, we can no longer permit ourselves nor ask our audiences to step inside this once great institution.”And last week, folk singer Kristy Lee announced on social media that she was cancelling a January 14 performance as “losing my integrity would cost me more than any paycheck.”Trump has stamped his mark on the Kennedy Center since the start of his second term as part of an assault on cultural institutions that his administration has accused of being too left-wing.A number of musicians and other artists had already pulled out of performing at the center after Trump named himself its chairman and replaced most of its board with people loyal to him.The new management of the center has cut drag shows and events celebrating the LGBTQ+ community, and it has hosted conferences for the religious right and invited more Christian artists.According to US media reports, ticket sales have declined since the new board of directors took over.

Décès du doyen des survivants du seul camp nazi de France

Henri Mosson, doyen des survivants du camp alsacien de Natzweiler-Struthof, seul camp nazi de France, est décédé à l’âge de 101 ans dans la nuit de lundi à mardi à Dijon, a indiqué son fils à l’AFP.”Mon papa nous a quittés cette nuit (…) Il m’a transmis le flambeau de la mémoire que je saurai honorer avec force et détermination pour lutter contre toute forme de haine”, a réagi mardi Gérard Mosson dans un message à l’AFP.”C’est avec une profonde tristesse que nous apprenons le décès du doyen des survivants de Natzweiler-Struthof”, a confirmé l’Association Natzweiler-Struthof, Histoire et mémoire, sur sa page Facebook.Le président Emmanuel Macron a rendu hommage au dernier survivant du camp et “porteur de mémoire”. “Comme tant, je me souviens de sa force de vie et d’enseignement. Pensées à ses proches”, a-t-il écrit sur X en se remémorant sa présence, en novembre 2024, aux commémorations des 80 ans de la libération de l’Alsace.Henri Mosson, décédé à quelques jours de son 102e anniversaire, le 5 janvier, avait été condamné à mort le 27 juin 1943 à l’âge de 19 ans, pour avoir récupéré des armes pour la résistance bourguignonne. Sa peine commuée, il est finalement déporté au camp de Natzweiler-Struthof (Bas-Rhin), où sont envoyés les détenus dits “Nacht und Nebel” (Nuit et brouillard) : des opposants politiques que les nazis veulent faire disparaître sans laisser de traces.Le président Emmanuel Macron y avait effectué une visite, en novembre 2024, à l’occasion des 80 ans de la libération de Strasbourg.Transféré à Dachau (Allemagne) avant d’être libéré le 30 avril 1945, Henri Mosson s’est par la suite fait passeur de mémoire à ses quatre enfants, six petits-enfants et dix arrière-petits-enfants, mais aussi aux quelque “200 écoles” où il est intervenu. “Même en Allemagne”, avait-il récemment souligné dans un témoignage à l’AFP.”Il faut informer les jeunes. On ne sait pas ce qui peut arriver”, dit-il. “Vous pouvez avoir les Russes dans deux mois, ça peut recommencer. Vous avez vu l’Ukraine…”, avait-il ajouté.Henri Mosson a été “un inlassable témoin de la résistance et de la déportation auprès des scolaires et du grand public” et “reste dans le souvenir des milliers d’élèves et d’auditeurs qui ont pu l’entendre un jour raconter son histoire et celle de ses camarades détenus”, écrit l’Association Natzweiler-Struthof, Histoire et mémoire.Henri Mosson “a traversé l’horreur sans jamais céder à la haine ni à la tentation de l’héroïsation”, a souligné dans un communiqué François Rebsamen, le président de l’agglomération de Dijon et ancien maire de la ville. Il avait remis la Légion d’honneur à l’ancien déporté le jour de son centième anniversaire, le 5 janvier 2024.