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Russia: Vladimir Putin accepts Kim Jong-un's invitation to visit North Korea

ALLIANCE Washington said on Wednesday it was "concerned" by the rapprochement between Moscow and Pyongyang

The romance between Moscow and Pyongyang continues. Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to visit North Korea at the invitation of its leader Kim Jong-un, who is currently visiting Russia to strengthen their military ties. For the time being, however, nothing has been officially announced about a possible agreement to deliver military equipment to Russia to support its offensive in Ukraine, as suggested by Washington.

Following a meeting on Wednesday, "Kim Jong-un courteously invited Putin to visit the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) at his convenience", the official North Korean news agency KCNA reported on Thursday, using North Korea's official name. That same day, the North Korean leader assured Vladimir Putin that Moscow would win a "great victory" over its enemies.

Prospects" for military cooperation

For his part, Putin toasted the "future strengthening of cooperation" with Pyongyang, speaking to the press about the "prospects" for military cooperation with North Korea despite the international sanctions.

Following the North Korean leader's arrival in Russia on Tuesday aboard his armoured train, Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin visited facilities at the Vostotchny cosmodrome in the Far East, which was completed in 2016 and will eventually replace the historic Baikonur space base. They then held official discussions lasting around two hours with their delegations and on a one-to-one basis. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Industry Minister Denis Manturov took part in the discussions.

According to Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un will also attend a "demonstration" by the Russian navy in the Pacific in Vladivostok. The North Korean leader will also visit "civil and military" aeronautical equipment factories in the Far East, according to the Russian head of state.

Washington threatens new sanctions

The US has expressed "concern" that Russia is interested in buying North Korean munitions to support its invasion of Ukraine. "We are obviously concerned about any emerging defence relationship between North Korea and Russia," said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

In Vostotchny, Vladimir Putin raised the possibility of Russia helping Pyongyang to build satellites, after North Korea recently failed twice to put a military spy satellite into orbit. Matthew Miller, spokesman for the US State Department, expressed concern that any cooperation on satellites would be "in violation of several UN resolutions". The US "will not hesitate" to impose sanctions against Pyongyang and Moscow if necessary, he warned.

Text by 20 Minutes with AFP

Titan submarine: Why the waters around the Titanic are still dangerous

In the autumn of 1911, a huge piece of ice broke off from a glacier to the south-west of Greenland's vast ice cap. Over the following months, it slowly drifted southwards, melting little by little as the sea currents and the wind blew it away.

Then, on the cold, moonless night of 14 April 1912, a 125-metre-long (410-foot) iceberg - all that remained of the 500-metre chunk of ice that had left a Greenland fjord the previous year - collided with the ocean liner RMS Titanic, which was making its maiden voyage from Southampton in the United Kingdom to New York in the United States. In less than three hours, the ship sank, taking more than 1,500 passengers and crew with her. The wreck now lies almost 3.8 km beneath the waves, almost 400 miles (640 km) south-east of the coast of Newfoundland.

Icebergs are always a hazard to shipping: in 2019, 1,515 icebergs drifted far enough south to enter the transatlantic shipping lanes between March and August. But Titanic's final resting place has its own dangers, which means that visits to the world's most famous wreck are a major challenge.

What can we expect after the deaths of the Titan submarine crew?
"It's a disaster. Everything has been washed away".
What are these mysterious stones found in rock 2.8 billion years old?

After the disappearance of a five-person submersible that was carrying paying passengers on an excursion to the wreck of the Titanic, the BBC has turned its attention to this region of the ocean floor.

Navigating the depths

The depths of the ocean are dark. Sunlight is absorbed very quickly by the water and cannot penetrate more than 1,000 metres from the surface. Beyond that, the ocean is plunged into perpetual darkness. This is why the Titanic is in a region known as the "midnight zone".

Previous expeditions to the wreck site described a descent of more than two hours in total darkness before the ocean floor suddenly appeared under the lights of the submersible.

With line of sight limited beyond the few metres illuminated by the onboard lights of the truck-sized submersible, navigation at this depth is a real challenge, and it's easy to become disorientated on the seabed.

5 myths that persist about the Titanic more than a century after it sank

However, the detailed maps of the Titanic wreck site, produced by decades of high-resolution scanning, can provide landmarks when objects are visible. Sonar also allows the crew to detect features and objects beyond the small area of light illuminated by the submersible.

Submersible pilots also rely on a technique known as inertial navigation, which uses a system of accelerometers and gyroscopes to track their position and orientation relative to a known starting point and speed. OceanGate's Titan submersible is equipped with a state-of-the-art autonomous inertial navigation system, which it combines with an acoustic sensor called a Doppler Velocity Log to estimate the vehicle's depth and speed relative to the seabed.

Despite this, passengers on previous Titanic voyages with OceanGate have described how difficult it is to find your way around once you reach the bottom of the ocean. Mike Reiss, a TV comedy writer who worked on The Simpsons and took part in an OceanGate voyage on the Titanic last year, told the BBC: "When you hit the bottom, you don't know where you are. We had to wriggle blindly along the bottom of the ocean knowing the Titanic was somewhere, but it's so dark that the biggest thing under the ocean was only 500 metres away from us and we spent ninety minutes looking for it."

Crushing depths

The deeper an object sinks into the ocean, the greater the pressure of the water around it. On the seabed, at a depth of 3,800 m, the Titanic and everything around it was subjected to pressures of around 40 MPa, or 390 times higher than at the surface.

"To put that into perspective, it's about 200 times the pressure of a car tyre," Robert Blasiak, an oceanography researcher at Stockholm University's Stockholm Resilience Centre, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, "That's why you need a submersible with very thick walls." The Titan submersible's carbon fibre and titanium walls are designed to enable it to operate at a maximum depth of 4,000 metres.

Why is NASA exploring the depths of the Earth's oceans?

We are probably most familiar with the strong surface currents that can sweep boats and swimmers off their course, but there are also underwater currents deep in the ocean. Although they are generally not as powerful as those found at the surface, they can nonetheless move large quantities of water. They can be driven by surface winds that influence the water column below, by tides in deep waters or by differences in water density due to temperature and salinity, known as thermohaline currents. Rare events known as benthic storms - which are generally linked to eddies at the surface - can also cause powerful, sporadic currents that can carry material along the seabed.

The information we have on the underwater currents around the Titanic, which was divided into two main sections after the bow and stern separated during the sinking, comes from research into the shapes of the seabed and the movement of squid around the wreck.

Part of the wreck of the Titanic is known to lie close to a section of the seabed affected by a southward-flowing current of cold water known as the Western Boundary Undercurrent. The flow of this 'undercurrent' creates migratory dunes, ripples and ribbon-like patterns in the sediments and mud of the seafloor, which have enabled scientists to understand its force. Most of the formations observed on the seabed are associated with relatively weak or moderate currents.

The ripples of sand along the eastern edge of the Titanic's debris field - the scattering of personal effects, fittings, coal and parts of the ship itself that spilled out during the sinking - indicate the existence of an east-west undercurrent, while within the main wreck site, the scientists say, the currents tend from north-west to south-west, possibly due to the larger pieces of the wreck changing their direction.

To the south of the bow, the currents appear to be particularly changeable, flowing from north-east to north-west and south-west.

Many experts expect that the winnowing of these currents will eventually bury the wreck of the Titanic in the sediment.

Deep-sea marine archaeologist Gerhard Seiffert, who recently led an expedition to scan the wreck of the Titanic in high resolution, told the BBC that he did not think the currents in the area were strong enough to pose a risk to a submersible - provided it had electricity.

"I am not aware of any currents posing a threat to an operational deep-sea vehicle at the Titanic site," he said. "In the context of our mapping project, currents represented a challenge to the accuracy of the mapping, not a safety risk."

Sediment flows

After more than a hundred years at the bottom of the sea, the Titanic has gradually deteriorated. The initial impact of the two main sections of the ship colliding with the seabed twisted and deformed large parts of the wreck. Over time, microbes that feed on the ship's iron have formed icicle-shaped "hardnesses" and are accelerating the deterioration of the wreck. In fact, scientists estimate that the higher bacterial activity on the stern of the ship - largely due to the greater damage it has sustained - is causing it to deteriorate forty years faster than the bow.

The wreck is constantly collapsing, mainly due to corrosion," explains Mr Seiffert. Every year, a little bit. But as long as you stay at a safe distance - no direct contact, no penetration through openings - no damage is to be feared."

Although extremely unlikely, sudden flows of sediment at the bottom of the sea have already damaged and even washed away man-made objects on the ocean floor.

The most significant events - such as the one that severed the transatlantic cables off Newfoundland in 1929 - are triggered by seismic phenomena such as earthquakes. There is a growing awareness of the risk posed by these events, although there is no evidence that an event of this type was involved in the disappearance of the Titan submarine.

Over the years, researchers have identified signs that the seabed around the wreck of the Titanic was affected by huge submarine landslides in the distant past. Huge volumes of sediment appear to have slid down the continental slope from Newfoundland to create what scientists call an "instability corridor". They estimate that the last of these 'destructive' events occurred tens of thousands of years ago, creating layers of sediment up to 100 metres thick. But these events are extremely rare, explains David Piper, a marine geology researcher at the Geological Survey of Canada, who spent many years studying the seabed around the Titanic. He compares these events to the eruption of Vesuvius or Mount Fuji in terms of frequency - on the order of once every tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.

Other phenomena known as turbidity currents - where water becomes loaded with sediment and flows along the continental slope - are more frequent and can be triggered by storms. "We show a repetition interval of around five hundred years," explains Piper. But the topography of the seabed in the area should direct the sediment flows towards a feature known as the 'Titanic Valley', which would mean that they would not reach the wreck at all.

How will the next "supercontinent" be formed?

According to Seiffert and Piper, it is unlikely that such an event could have played a role in the disappearance of the Titan submersible.

Other geological features around the wreck site have yet to be explored. During a previous expedition to the Titanic with OceanGate, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a former French Navy diver and submersible pilot, visited a mysterious anomaly that he had detected with sonar in 1996. It turned out to be a rocky reef, covered in marine animals. He was hoping to visit another landmark that he had detected near the wreck of the Titanic on previous expeditions.

As the search continues for the missing ship, there are few clues as to what may have happened to the Titan and her crew. But in such a harsh and inhospitable environment, the risks involved in visiting the wreck of the Titanic are as relevant today as they were in 1986, when the first people to set eyes on the ship since it sank embarked on the journey to the depths.

Text by Richard Gray / BBC Future

Increase in killer whale attacks on sailing boats in the Strait of Gibraltar

Killer whale attacks on sailing boats off the coast of Spain have been on the increase for the past three years. Between 2020 and 2022, their number reached almost 500, according to the Atlantic Killer Whale Working Group. A phenomenon that is raising questions among scientists and the authorities.

"They went straight for the radar. They didn't circle the boat or try to play games... nothing! They came straight at the radar at full speed", Friedrich Sommer, the German owner of the "Muffet", a sailing boat damaged by an orca attack, told AFP.

He is not the only one waiting in Barbate, a small town on the Atlantic coast of Andalusia (southern Spain), for his boat to be repaired. "This one has completely lost its rudder" and the orcas have done "structural damage to the hull", explains Rafael Pecci, in charge of repairs, referring to a yacht belonging to another foreigner.

From the main beach, you can see the mast of a boat that sank at the beginning of May after an attack by these cetaceans, which can grow up to nine metres long for males and seven for females, weighing between 3.5 and 6 tonnes.

28 "interactions

These "interactions", the term used by specialists and the authorities to describe these attacks, began in 2020 off the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, particularly between Cadiz and Tangiers (Morocco). This is due to the increased presence in this area near the Strait of Gibraltar of one of the killer whales' favourite prey species: bluefin tuna, which come from the Atlantic in spring to spawn in the Mediterranean.

According to the Spanish sea rescue organisation Salvamento Marítimo, 28 "interactions" have already taken place in 2023. Between 2020 and 2022, the number reached almost 500, according to the Atlantic Killer Whale Working Group (GTOA).

Several hypotheses

"We know very little about the causes of these interactions," José Luis García Varas, head of the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) oceans programme in Spain, told AFP. There is no shortage of legends in the region, and one killer whale has quickly become the emblem of the phenomenon: Gladis Lamari, the matriarch of a clan to whom numerous attacks are attributed, is said to have taught her calves to attack sailing boats.

Orcas "form families, groups, they are very intelligent and there is a kind of oral transmission of knowledge between them", stresses José Luis García Varas.

Renaud de Stephanis, a doctor in marine sciences and president of the Circe organisation (Conservation, Information et Etude des Cétacés), believes that there are "several hypotheses" that could explain these attacks. While some explain this behaviour by a certain "animosity" felt by the orcas towards sailboats and other boats, others see it as simple "games". At the moment, "we don't have a definitive explanation", he stresses.

Text by RTS.ch ats/fgn

Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: several children rescued on Friday, keeping hopes alive

Several earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria early on Monday 6 February.
Estimates, still provisional, put the death toll at more than 24,000.
Nevertheless, 120 hours after the tragedy, the search is intensifying, and living children were pulled from the rubble on Friday.

Several children were pulled alive from the rubble on Friday 10 February in Turkey and Syria, five days after the earthquake that killed more than 24,000 people. On the same day, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for "an immediate ceasefire in Syria to help support the disaster-stricken population.

Several rescues on Friday

On both sides of the border, thousands of homes were destroyed and rescue workers are stepping up their efforts to find survivorsEven though the crucial 72-hour window for finding survivors has closed. However, on Friday, a six-year-old boy, Moussa Hmeidi, was pulled alive from the rubble, to cheers, in the north-western Syrian town of Jandairis, according to an AFP journalist. He was in a state of shock and had facial injuries.

In the south of Turkey, in Antakya, "at the 105th hour After the earthquake, rescuers pulled an 18-month-old infant, Yusuf Huseyin, from the rubble of a building, and then, twenty minutes later, his brother Muhammed Huseyin, according to the NTV television channel. Two hours earlier, Zeynep Ela Parlak, a three-year-old girl, had already been rescued in this city devastated by the earthquake.

In the Gaziantep region (south-east), Spanish soldiers also rescued a mother and her two children from the rubble on Friday afternoon. In Nurdagi, in the same province, Zahide Kaya, six months pregnant, was pulled out alive after some 115 hours under a pile of ruins, according to the Anadolu agency. An hour earlier, her daughter Kubra, aged six, had also been rescued.

And while the search for survivors continues, according to the latest official figures, the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, followed by around a hundred tremors, killed at least 24,000 people.

Text TF1 info by Pierre Antoine VALADE

The apocalypse clock has never been so close to midnight, the hour of the end of time

It's 90 seconds to midnight and that means that humanity has never been so close to a global cataclysm, announced the group of scientists who run the apocalypse clock, which monitors not time but the end of time. The war in Ukraine has been singled out.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has been in charge of this symbolic project since 1947, unveiled its new timetable, designed to measure the imminence of a global catastrophe, at a press conference in Washington.

It has been brought forward by 10 seconds and now stands at 90 seconds to midnight, the fateful hour he hopes will never be reached.

The dangers of war in Ukraine

Since 2020, the clock has been 100 seconds shy of midnight, a record since its creation. The doomsday clock "is a symbol that measures how close we are to destroying the world with dangerous technologies that we have made ourselves", according to the scientists.

"We're moving the clock forward, and it's the closest it's ever been to midnight", said the group as it unveiled the new schedule, referring in particular, but "not exclusively", to "the growing dangers of war in Ukraine".

"We live in a time of unprecedented danger, and the doomsday clock represents this reality", explained Rachel Bronson, President of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Moving the clock forward "is a decision that our experts are not taking lightly. The US government, its Nato allies and Ukraine have a multitude of channels for dialogue at their disposal; we urge leaders to do their utmost to explore all of them in order to move the clock back", she added. This is why the expert group's communiqué will be available in English, Russian and Ukrainian, a first, she added.

In addition to the war in Ukraine and the nuclear threat, the scientists took into account "the persistent threats posed by the climate crisis", as well as the fact that "devastating events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, can no longer be considered as rare events that occur only once every hundred years". The group of experts also discussed misinformation and surveillance technologies.

Saving time in 1991

Originally, after the Second World War, the clock read minus 7 minutes to midnight. By 1991, at the end of the Cold War, it had moved back to 17 minutes before midnight. In 1953, as well as in 2018 and 2019, it showed minus 2 minutes to midnight.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bomb. The group of experts sets the new time every year.

RTS afp/fgn

Germany to deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev

According to Der Spiegel, Olaf Scholz will give the green light to this delivery, as requested by Kiev.

Germany is to supply Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks, as requested by Kiev, two German media reported on Tuesday evening. For its part, the United States may agree to supply Abrams tanks, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to give the go-ahead, probably on Wednesday, for the dispatch of German Leopard 2 type 2A6 tanks, according to Le Spiegel on its website, without citing a source. The media outlet adds that this involves "at least one company", i.e. at least ten heavy tanks. The NTV news channel, quoting sources close to the government, also reports that the German Chancellor, who has been under pressure for several weeks to give his agreement, is preparing to announce it.

World-renowned weapon

When questioned by AFP, the Social Democrat Chancellor's entourage declined to comment on Tuesday evening. The German leader, who is due to address the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, at 12:00 GMT on Wednesday, would also give his agreement to countries, including Poland, that wish to deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev, according to these media.

The Leopard 2 heavy tank, which Ukraine has been demanding for months from Germany and the West, is a world-renowned weapon with the potential to have a "significant" impact on the battlefield, according to experts. Designed by German manufacturer Krauss-Maffei and mass-produced from the late 1970s onwards to replace the American M48 Patton tank and then the Leopard 1 tank, the Leopard 2 combines firepower, mobility and protection.

Finland and Poland ready to do it

In Berlin, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Wednesday morning that he had "expressly encouraged partner countries that have Leopard tanks ready for deployment to train Ukrainian forces on these tanks".

So far, Finland and Poland have said they are ready to do so. Warsaw, which wants to create a "coalition of countries supporting Ukraine with Leopard 2″ tanks, has officially sent a request to this effect, the receipt of which was confirmed by Berlin on Tuesday.

"We will deal with the request as a matter of urgency in accordance with the procedure laid down", a German government spokesman said on Tuesday.

20min.ch

More than 1,200 people arrested since protests began

The protest movement continues unabated and has already claimed the lives of 41 people. It began on 16 September, after the death of a young woman for "wearing inappropriate clothing".

The authorities have arrested 450 new demonstrators in northern Iran, where more than 700 people have already been arrested for taking part in protests against the death of a young woman detained by the morality police, official media reported on Monday.

Protest movement

"During the unrest of recent days, 450 rioters have been arrested in Mazandaran," said the province's attorney general, Mohammad Karimi, quoted by the official Irna agency. On Saturday, the authorities reported that 739 demonstrators had been arrested, including 60 women in Guilan, Mazandaran's neighbouring province in the north of the country.

The demonstrations began on 16 September, the date of the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested three days earlier in Tehran for "wearing inappropriate clothing" in the Islamic Republic, where the dress code for women is strict, in particular the wearing of the Islamic veil.

The protest movement spread to several cities in the country, where demonstrators shouted anti-government slogans, according to local media. "Over the past few days, rioters have attacked government buildings and damaged public property in some parts of Mazandaran under the direction of foreign agents", he said.

No leniency

On Sunday, the head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeï, threatened to show "no leniency" towards the demonstrators and called on the security forces to act "firmly" against "those who undermine security".

According to a non-detailed official report, including demonstrators and police, 41 people have been killed in ten days of protests. But the toll could be higher, with the Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) reporting that at least 57 demonstrators have been killed.

On Monday, the Tasnim news agency published around 20 photos of demonstrators, including women, in various streets of Qom, an important Shiite holy city around 150 km south of the capital. The military and security institutions published these images of the "riot leaders" and called on residents to "identify them and inform the authorities", the agency added.

Flood in Pakistan: global warming has triggered a chain reaction

With a third of Pakistan under water, many scientists claim that the floods have been devastating for a number of reasons, starting as early as April.

They are the worst floods that Pakistan has ever known. Tens of millions of people have already been evacuated, without any resources, and more than 1,200 people have died, while a third of the country is under water. The death toll is set to rise in the coming days, as for the moment the entire country is under water and the extent of the damage is still difficult to assess. But what caused such flooding ? According to researchers, it's a combination of climatic events that have set off a chain reaction, starting with global warming.

An extraordinary drought from April and May onwards

From April onwards, the temperature in Pakistan was well above the seasonal norm of around 30-35°C, and for several days exceeded 40°C in many places. Worse still, in the city of Jacobabad, the mercury a rose to 51°Cthe first of its kind in theNorthern hemisphere until this year! "These were not waves of heat normal, it was the worst in the world. We had the hottest place on Earth in Pakistan.explains Malik Amin Aslam in a press release from Natureformer Minister for Climate Change, based in Islamabad.

And these extreme heat waves do not bode well. L'air warmer, less dense air than cold air, can therefore retain more moisture. This stored water can then be released into the air.atmosphere once the rainy season had begun. As a result, above-normal rainfall levels were already forecast. What's more, the dryness of the air will naturally lead to a soil drought. These then become more compact, absorbing much less water than when they are inactive. weather soil. As a result, the water that reaches these soils tends to run off instead of infiltrating deep into the earth.

But the drought has also had other consequences. Visit high mountain glaciers in the north of the country melted, much more than usual due to the heat waves. Water was already flowing from the mountains into the Indus, the country's largest river, which crosses it from north to south, when the floods came. This river supplies towns and agricultural installations throughout Pakistan. And according to Zia Hashmi, a water resources engineer at Global Change Impact Studies Centreand flow rates high levels of muddy water in the Hunza river, which feeds the Indus, were observed in July. An observation that suggests a cast iron rapid and more intense than usual, and the possibility that some glacial lakes may have broken their dams.

Flooding so bad that a new lake has been created!

But that's not all! These floods also coincide with the arrival of an area of intense low-pressure in the Arabian Sea to the south of the country, causing heavy rainfall. heavy rains in Pakistan from June. "We rarely have large-scale depression systems happening out there".explains Athar Hussain, climatologist at the University of Islamabad. All these events, combined with a monsoon which started at the end of June helped to produce twice as much rainfall than average during the rainy season. Five times, in the southern provinces. So much so that a new lake has been created, even though the rains are now over!

This lake will recede once the weather dries up, but could well remain for a few days to a few weeks. Just like the water flowing across the country, which has already destroyed 240 bridges, 5,000 kilometres of roads and millions of homes. For this country, the worst is not yet over. Particularly representative of the effects of the global warmingIn a few years' time, such events could become the norm in Pakistan.

Text by futura-sciences.com

"Partygate: Boris Johnson under fire despite new apology

The British Prime Minister made an "unreserved" apology to Parliament, without convincing the opposition.

UNITED KINGDOM - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologised "unreservedly" to Parliament on Tuesday 19 April after being fined for breaching anti-Covid restrictions, without convincing the opposition, which has once again called for his resignation.

Boris Johnson said it "did not occur to him at the time or subsequently" that his attendance at a brief birthday rally in Downing Street in June 2020 "might constitute a breach of the rules" then in force. "That was my mistake and I apologise unreservedly".

Boris Johnson is the first serving British head of government to be fined for breaking the law, and he faces further fines as part of the investigation into "partygate", the name of the scandal surrounding the parties organised in the circles of power during the confinements put in place to combat the pandemic.

The Conservative leader was addressing MPs for the first time since being fined £50 (€60) a week ago for attending the surprise birthday party for his 56th birthday on 19 June 2020. An event lasting "less than 10 minutes", according to him, which also earned his wife Carrie and his finance minister Rishi Sunak a fine.

"I respect the conclusions of the police investigation, which is still ongoing", added the Prime Minister.

On Tuesday, however, he tried to play down the scandal that is infuriating the British people by spending a few minutes talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

"I know many people are angry and disappointed and I feel an even greater obligation to respect British priorities and respond to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's barbaric attack on Ukraine.

A second wind

For a time on an ejector seat, "BoJo" got his second wind by highlighting his role in the front line of Western sanctions against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. Many MPs who had called for him to step down now see little point in ousting him from Downing Street in this context.

However, Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer said on Tuesday that the Conservative leader was "dishonest and incapable of change". Boris Johnson is "a man without shame", he said, urging the Conservatives to get rid of their leader and restore "decency, honesty and integrity" to British politics.

The head of government also came in for sharp criticism from within his own camp, with Conservative MP Mark Harper saying he was no longer "fit" to be Prime Minister.

The soap opera seems far from over. The London police, who have already handed out 50 fines, are continuing their investigations and British MPs will be debating on Thursday whether Boris Johnson knowingly misled Parliament - synonymous with resignation under the ministerial code of conduct - by repeating that all the rules had been respected.

The Prime Minister will also have to face up to the conclusions of senior civil servant Sue Gray, who has already criticised "errors of leadership and judgement" in a pre-report. He must also face the verdict of the ballot box in local elections on 5 May.

According to the press, Boris Johnson faces further fines for at least five other festive events.

Downing Street was keen to deny this after new details emerged in the Sunday Timeswho described him serving drinks and giving a speech to mark the departure of his head of communications on 13 November 2020.

According to a survey published on Monday, 72% of those polled had a negative view of the Prime Minister, with the most common term being "liar".

Text by AFP huffingtonpost.fr

Emmanuel Macron is unlikely to visit Kiev before the second round

Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Emmanuel Macron to visit Ukraine. It won't be for a while yet," moderates Clément Beaune.

UKRAINE - Will Emmanuel Macron travel to Ukraine like British Prime Minister Boris Johnson or European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen? "Not in the next few days", replied Clément Beaune on Sud Radio on Monday 18 April.

Although the Head of State has had numerous telephone conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he has not visited Ukraine, unlike some of his European counterparts. But for the Secretary of State for European Affairs, a visit before the second round of the presidential election on Sunday 24 April "would no doubt be misinterpreted".

But Emmanuel Macron is expected to be there. In an interview broadcast on Sunday by CNN, Volodymyr Zelensky said that he had invited his French counterpart to meet him in Ukraine. This invitation follows Emmanuel Macron's reluctance to describe what has been happening in the country since the Russian invasion on 24 February as "genocide".

Emmanuel Macron in Ukraine "if it's useful".

"I told him that I wanted him to understand that this is not a war, that this is nothing other than genocide. I invited him to come when he had the chance," said Volodymyr Zelensky. "He will come, and he will see, and I am sure he will understand."

For his part, Clément Beaune stated that "the President of the Republic, as President of the Republic, has always been very clear: he may go, if it is useful (...) We cannot make a visit that is merely symbolic, it must be a visit that has an impact". In the meantime," says Clément Beaune, "our support is very, very clear, and involves military and humanitarian aid.

Speaking to CNN, the Ukrainian president also said that he would like US President Joe Biden to come to Ukraine, after his surprise claim that Russian forces were committing "genocide". "The decision is his, of course, it depends on the security situation. But I think he is the leader of the United States and for that he should come and see."

Text by Le HuffPost