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The French government is reportedly planning to send a “survival manual” to every household in the country with instructions on how to prepare for an “imminent threat” including armed conflict, a health crisis or a natural disaster.

If approved by François Bayrou, the prime minister, the 20-page booklet will be sent to households before the summer, French media reported.

It will be divided into three parts with advice on how to protect “yourself and those around you”, what to do if a threat is imminent – with a list of emergency numbers, radio channels and a reminder to close doors and windows if the threat is nuclear – and details of how to get involved in defending your community, including signing up for reserve units or firefighting groups.

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Israel will continue its new offensive in Gaza until Hamas releases all hostages and “all threats to residents of the south [of Israel] are removed”, the country’s defence minister said on Tuesday, raising the prospect of many weeks or even months of war in the devastated Palestinian territory.

“Hamas must understand that the rules of the game have changed,” Israel Katz told reporters during a visit to an airbase, adding that “the gates of hell will open and it will face the full might of the IDF in the air, at sea and on land” if remaining hostages were not freed.

The threat came after Israel launched a wave of airstrikes that killed more than 400 people, shattering the pause in hostilities since mid-January in Gaza in the bloodiest single day of violence since the first months of the war in 2023.

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In January, Canadian pollsters and political pundits struggled to find fresh ways to describe the bleak prospects of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party, musing whether it would be a wipeout of existential proportions, or merely a catastrophic blowout.

But fresh polling released by three companies this week shows a stunning reversal of fortunes for the party: newly minted prime minister Mark Carney’s Liberals are projected to secure a majority government.

The outcome has little precedent in Canadian history, reflecting the outsized role played by an unpredictable US president, and it underscores the incentives for Carney to call a snap election in the coming days.

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To hear President Trump describe it, he and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are about to have something akin to their own Yalta moment, great powers determining borders within Europe.

He didn’t explicitly refer to the 1945 meeting, where Churchill, Stalin and a deathly ill Franklin D. Roosevelt carved the continent into the American-aligned West and the Soviet-dominated East, creating spheres of influence that became the battlegrounds of the Cold War.

But talking to reporters on Air Force One while returning from Florida on Sunday night, Mr. Trump made clear that his scheduled phone conversation with Mr. Putin on Tuesday would be focused on what lands and assets Russia would retain in any cease-fire with Ukraine.

He will, in essence, be negotiating over how large a reward Russia will receive for its 11 years of open aggression against Ukraine, starting with its seizure of Crimea in 2014 and extending through the full-scale war Mr. Putin started three years ago.

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On any given day in Kenya, dozens, if not hundreds of women buzz around the Nairobi international airport’s departures area. They huddle for selfies in matching T-shirts, discussing how they’ll spend the money from their new jobs in Saudi Arabia.

Lured by company recruiters and encouraged by Kenya’s government, the women have reason for optimism. Spend two years in Saudi Arabia as a housekeeper or nanny, the pitch goes, and you can earn enough to build a house, educate your children and save for the future.

While the departure terminal hums with anticipation, the arrivals area is where hope meets grim reality. Hollow-cheeked women return, often ground down by unpaid wages, beatings, starvation and sexual assault. Some are broke. Others are in coffins.

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Rodrigo Duterte is expected to make his first appearance at the international criminal court (ICC) on Friday, as the former Philippines president faces crimes against humanity charges over his deadly “war on drugs”.

The court said in a statement late on Thursday that it “considers it appropriate” for Duterte to appear Friday at 2pm local time (1pm GMT).

At the hearing, the 79-year-old will be informed of the crimes he is alleged to have committed, as well as his rights as a defendant.

Duterte stands accused of the crime against humanity of murder over his years-long campaign against drug users and dealers that rights groups said killed tens of thousands of people.

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Syria’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has hailed the start of a “new history” for his country, after signing into force a constitutional declaration regulating its five-year transitional period and laying out rights for women and freedom of expression.

The declaration comes three months after Islamist-led rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s repressive government, leading to calls for an inclusive new Syria that respects rights.

. . .

Sharaa, Syria’s interim president, said on Thursday he hoped the constitutional declaration would mark the beginning of “a new history for Syria, where we replace oppression with justice … and suffering with mercy”, as he signed the document at the presidential palace.

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President Trump is no fan of the European Union. He has repeatedly claimed that the bloc was created to “screw” America, has pledged to slap big tariffs on its cars, and this week enacted global steel and aluminum levies that are expected to hit some $28 billion in exports from the bloc.

But for months, E.U. officials hoped that they could bring the American president around, avoiding a painful trade war. They tried placating the administration with easy wins — like ramped-up European purchasing of U.S. natural gas — while pushing to make a deal.

It is now becoming clear that things won’t be that simple.

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Cybersecurity experts including the United Kingdom's former cybersecurity chief are pouring cold water over Elon Musk’s suggestion that a large-scale cyberattack on his social media site X came from Ukraine.

Musk on Monday said X had been deluged by a “massive cyberattack" involving "either a large, coordinated group and/or a country." The tech mogul and close ally of United States President Donald Trump later told the Fox Business channel that "there was a massive cyberattack to try to bring down the X system, with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area."

But cybersecurity experts were quick to push back.

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The whole system of finding, diagnosing and treating tuberculosis — which kills more people worldwide than any other infectious disease — has collapsed in dozens of countries across Africa and Asia since President Trump ordered the aid freeze on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day.

The United States contributed about half of international donor funding to TB last year and here in Kenya paid for everything from nurses to lab equipment. Trump administration officials have said that other countries should contribute a greater share to global health programs. They say administration is evaluating foreign aid contracts to determine whether they are in the national interest of the United States.

While some of the TB programs may ultimately survive, none have received any money for months.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that Ukraine would have to make concessions over land that Russia had taken since 2014 as part of any agreement to end the war.

Mr. Rubio spoke as he was flying to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for talks with senior Ukrainian officials, and 10 days after a contentious White House meeting between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. The Trump administration halted military aid to Ukraine after the blowup, which centered on Mr. Trump’s refusal to include any security guarantees in a proposed deal involving Ukraine’s natural resources.

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Three Bulgarian nationals accused of spying for Russia have been found guilty of espionage charges in a trial that heard how they were involved in a string of plots around Europe directed by a fugitive based in Moscow.

. . .

The three were convicted for being junior members of a spy ring that was ultimately directed by Jan Marsalek, an Austrian businessman who had fled to Russia in 2020 after a company he helped to run collapsed amid a €1.9bn (£1.6bn) fraud.

Marsalek directed the hostile surveillance of Christo Grozev – an investigative journalist who had helped implicate Russian spies in the poisoning of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny – in Bulgaria, Austria and Spain. All three defendants were involved in the operation.

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