Chad cuts military agreement with France

Chad cuts military agreement with France

Chad has said it is terminating a key defence cooperation agreement with France, raising questions about Paris’s waning influence in Africa’s embattled Sahel region. Chadian Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah said it was time for his country to “assert its full sovereignty”. The announcement came just hours after Koulamallah’s French counterpart, Jean-Noel Barrot, met Chad’s President…

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Chad ends a defense cooperation agreement with France, its former colonial ruler

Chad ends a defense cooperation agreement with France, its former colonial ruler

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Chad’s government said it is ending a defense cooperation agreement with France, its former colonial ruler, to redefine the nation’s sovereignty. The decision marks a historic turning point since the Central African nation gained independence more than six decades ago, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Abderaman Koulamallah said in a statement Thursday. It…

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Ukraine fights to keep the lights on as Russia hammers power plants

Ukraine fights to keep the lights on as Russia hammers power plants

Amid the monstrous heaps of twisted metal, pools of congealed oil and walls pockmarked by shrapnel, one incongruous detail catches my eye. Patches of snow. Inside a thermal power station. With another Ukrainian winter arriving, the vast turbine hall is full of activity. Engineers, dwarfed by the enormous scale of the place, repairing what they…

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Childcare worker who abused more than 60 girls jailed for life

Childcare worker who abused more than 60 girls jailed for life

A former childcare worker dubbed “one of Australia’s worst paedophiles” has been sentenced to life in prison for raping and sexually abusing almost 70 girls. Ashley Paul Griffith, 47, confessed to 307 offences committed at childcare centres in the Australian state of Queensland and Italy between 2003 and 2022. His victims were aged between one…

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Xi Jinping’s military purge is bleeding into his elite circle of generals commanding China’s forces

Xi Jinping’s military purge is bleeding into his elite circle of generals commanding China’s forces

A member of China’s highest military body is being slapped with a corruption investigation. Adm. Miao Hua is one of six members of an exclusive commission led by Xi that oversees China’s military. He’s the latest in a string of high-ranking defense officials to be purged from China’s military. A top-ranking admiral in China’s Central…

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Canada sues Google claiming ‘near-total control’ of online ads

Canada sues Google claiming ‘near-total control’ of online ads

Canada’s antitrust watchdog said Thursday it was suing Google over its alleged anticompetitive conduct in online advertisements. Canada’s Competition Bureau said it wants Google to sell off two of its advertisement tech services and pay a penalty, noting that its necessary because an investigation found the company is “unlawfully” tied with its tech tools to…

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Sweden asks China to co-operate over severed cables

Sweden asks China to co-operate over severed cables

Sweden has formally asked China to co-operate with an investigation into damage to two cables in the Baltic Sea after a Chinese ship was linked to the incidents. The cables – one linking Sweden to Lithuania, the other linking Finland to Germany – were damaged in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea on 17…

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Both Israel and Hezbollah accused of ceasefire agreement violations

Both Israel and Hezbollah accused of ceasefire agreement violations

The Israeli military and the Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia both faced accusations on Thursday of violating the ceasefire, just one day after the fragile truce came into force. Netanyahu told the Channel 14 broadcaster on Thursday that he has instructed the military to prepare for an “intensive war” if the ceasefire agreement is breached, without specifying…

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