Tara John

French voters have denied newly re-elected centrist President Emmanuel Macron an absolute majority in parliament, limiting his hand in a second term.

Britain’s Conservative leadership contest kicked off this week, a weeks-long process that will result in the country’s next prime minister. Besides the standard pledges of tax cuts or a slimmed down state, there has also been an enthusiastic promotion of anti-trans positions, potentially marking an intensification of the current government’s “war on woke.”

An ordinary red-brick library in the southern English town of Reading is an unlikely backdrop for the latest front in the battle for equality for the LGBTQ+ community. But last week – in scenes later repeated across the country– Covid-19 conspiracists and far-right supporters lobbed homophobic and transphobic slurs at parents and children to try to stop the kids from meeting drag queens.

Some 27 ships loaded with grain have left Ukraine’s Black Sea ports since August 1 under an export deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, which has laid “the groundwork for a permanent peace environment,” Turkey’s Defense Minister said in a speech on Saturday.

When human rights activist Ziv Stahl was awakened to the booms of rocket fire on October 7, while staying at her sister’s home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, she did not for a moment anticipate the scale of the terrorist attack unfolding around her. Nor did she imagine the horror she would feel when she later called the police, who “basically told me no one is coming.”

A senior doctor at Kamal Adwan Hospital, a northern Gaza health facility that has been encircled and under fire for days, told CNN that numerous medical staff were taken away by the Israeli military to an unknown location as global health leaders plead for some respite for the Palestinian enclave’s barely functioning healthcare system.

Pope Francis has called for a universal ban on surrogacy, calling the practice “deplorable” in a speech in Vatican City on Monday.

The move to ban gender-inclusive language in all official documents and public administration comes as the far-right libertarian continues to implement his socially conservative agenda.

The Israeli military has been using artificial intelligence to help identify bombing targets in Gaza, according to an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call, citing six Israeli intelligence officials involved in the alleged program – who also allege that human review of the suggested targets was cursory at best.

Mexico has elected its first female president, with preliminary results showing Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and Mexico City’s former mayor, is on track to win the country’s largest election in history.