François Hollande holds emergency meeting after WikiLeaks claims US spied on three French presidents
NSA documents appear to show that American agents spied on Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Hollande, even listening to their phone calls
The French president, François Hollande, is holding an emergency meeting of his country’s defence council after claims that American agents spied on three successive French presidents between 2006 and 2012. According to WikiLeaks documents published late on Tuesday, even the French leaders’ mobile phone conversations were listened to and recorded.
The leaked US documents, marked “top secret”, were based on phone taps and filed in an NSA document labelled “Espionnage Elysée” (Elysée Spy), according to the newspaper Libération and investigative news website Mediapart. The US was listening to the conversations of centre-right president Jacques Chirac, his successor Nicolas Sarkozy, and the current French leader, Socialist François Hollande, elected in 2012.
The recorded conversations, which were handled by the summary services unit at the NSA, were said to reveal few state secrets but show clear evidence of the extent of American spying on countries considered allies. WikiLeaks documents suggest that other US spy targets included French cabinet ministers and the French ambassador to the United States.
Isis in Syria: Militants carry out threat to destroy Unesco-protected historical sites as they are forced to retreat from Palmyra
Workers in Qatar face harsh conditions
In May, Qatar police arrested film crews from the BBC and ARD for filming the living conditions of workers building stadiums for the 2022 Football World Cup. For DW, Reese Erlich was able to get in and out undetected.
The Sailiya Labor Camp houses tens of thousands of workers, mostly from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Driving in a beat-up old sedan so as not to attract police attention, the driver turns onto a paved street that quickly becomes a dirt road with massive potholes.Four Sri Lankans emerge from a tumble-down wooden shack where they live. One worker, who declines to give his name fearing retaliation from his employer, says he earns the equivalent of 290 euros ($330) per month. And the working conditions are tough.
He and his friends work painting steel beams on construction sites in temperatures of 45 degrees Celsius. "When we're working at the sites, it's really hard," he said. During the height of the summer employers allow a long break during the hottest part of the day, but the summer regulations hadn't begun yet.
Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vows to maintain active nuclear program despite accord negotiations
June 24, 2015 - 3:19PMThomas Erdbrink and David E. Sanger
Tehran: With exactly a week left before the deadline for a final agreement to limit Iran's nuclear program, the country's supreme leader appeared to undercut several of the central agreements his negotiators have already reached with the West.
In a speech broadcast live on Iran state television, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, demanded that most sanctions be lifted before Tehran has dismantled part of its nuclear infrastructure and before international inspectors verify that the country is beginning to meet its commitments. He also ruled out any freeze on Iran's sensitive nuclear enrichment for as long as a decade, as a preliminary understanding announced in April stipulates, and he repeated his refusal to allow inspections of Iranian military sites.
US officials said they would not be baited into a public debate with the supreme leader, who has the final word on nuclear matters. But with Western foreign ministers already hinting that the negotiations may go past the June 30 deadline, both US and European officials have said in recent weeks they are increasingly concerned about the possible effects of Ayatollah Khamenei's statements.As refugee numbers soar, Australia touts a controversial response (+video)
The world hasn't seen a refugee crisis on this scale since 1945. Australia's hard-hearted policy of offshore internment camps is criticized by human rights groups, but popular with voters.
The world is experiencing a wave of displacement by violent conflict not seen since World War II. The United Nations estimated that 59.5 million people were displaced at the start of the year, most of them in poorer countries.
Most are within their countries of origin. But millions have also been driven beyond their national borders, living in camps and desperate to find asylum for themselves and their children.
After World War II, there were still a number of prosperous places with open immigration policies, especially for Europeans: Australia, the US, and Argentina, to name a few took on hundreds of thousands of people. But the 21st century has brought far tighter borders, and strong anti-immigrant sentiment in former migrant havens. It doesn't help that today's refugees are far darker-skinned than in 1945.
New Horizons Probe Spots 'Dark Pole' on Charon, Pluto's Biggest Moon
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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has spotted what appears to be a strange dark patch at the pole of Pluto's biggest moon, Charon. The sighting is whetting researchers' appetites ahead of the probe's epic flyby of the dwarf planet system next month.
New Horizons has also detected a rich diversity of terrain types in Pluto's "close approach hemisphere" — the side of the planet New Horizons will zoom past at a distance of just 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) on July 14. The newly resolved features, which New Horizons captured in images taken from May 29 through June 19, are visible in a Pluto-Charon video that NASA released Tuesday.
"This system is just amazing. The science team is just ecstatic with what we see on Pluto's close approach hemisphere: Every terrain type we see on the planet — including both the brightest and darkest surface areas — are represented there. It's a wonderland!" New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement. "And about Charon — wow — I don't think anyone expected Charon to reveal a mystery like dark terrains at its pole. Who ordered that?" [Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons Mission in Pictures]
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