Demonstrators took to the streets across Syria on Tuesday to protest the burning of a Christmas tree, two weeks after the dramatic toppling of dictator Bashar Assad. The protests emerged after a video spread on social media showing two masked men setting a Christmas tree on fire on Monday evening in the in the main square of the Suqaylabiyah, a Christian-majority town in the province of Hama. “We demand the rights of Christians,” protesters chanted as they marched through the streets of Damascus. “If we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then…
Author: Elena Giordano
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German carmaker Volkswagen’s deal with unions — that would see 35,000 future job cuts in Germany — is “good news” for the company, its CEO said Sunday. The decision is part of a series of significant changes to Volkswagen’s German operations, including substantial capacity reductions, agreed between the manufacturer and workers’ unions Friday in a last-ditch agreement to prevent widespread strikes. The deal came after months of tension with workers, sparked by the carmaker’s threat to close plants in Germany for the first time in its 87-year history and cut pay — a plan that led some 100,000 Volkswagen workers to…
The Syrian military announced on Saturday a temporary withdrawal of its troops in the northwestern city of Aleppo to prepare for a counteroffensive, after rebel groups launched a surprise attack against the government’s forces for the first time in years. “The large numbers of terrorists and the multiplicity of battlefronts prompted our armed forces to carry out a redeployment operation aimed at strengthening the defense lines in order to absorb the attack, preserve the lives of civilians and soldiers, and prepare for a counterattack,” the army said in a statement. The statement marks the first public acknowledgment by the Syrian…
Maria Rosaria Boccia, the woman at the heart of a scandal that led to the resignation of Italy’s Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, was banned from entering the Italian parliament on Tuesday. The influencer said she wore a pair of Ray-Ban Stories glasses, a pair of Meta-powered spectacles equipped with a tiny camera and microphone, to film inside the parliamentary chamber — footage she then posted to her Instagram account. According to a statement from the Chamber of Deputies, the Montecitorio Security Committee took the decision to ban Boccia due to her unauthorized filming in “particularly sensitive sites, including the Gallery of…
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Russian students about the dangers of vaping on Monday, saying that electronic cigarettes harm reproductive function and can lead to infertility. “There needs to be an understanding of what bad habits lead to. A lot of people — especially young people — don’t think about it. It seems that it’s fashionable, that it’s cool to smoke e-cigarettes,” Putin told students at a school in Kyzyl, near the Mongolian border. “And in young people reproductive function is reduced. Both in men and women. That is, the possibility of having children in the future is reduced,” Putin…
Russia is pretty chill about the mpox threat. Anna Popova, the head of Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian consumer protection watchdog, said there is no risk of mpox spreading in Russia, hinting that’s because incidence is higher among gay people. “Considering the specifics of how mpox is spread, I am absolutely sure that in Russia with its traditional values this disease, which is an epidemic disease, is not something we need to be afraid of,” Popova said in a video published Monday by Russian Telegram channel Shot. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has cracked down on LGBTQ+ rights by making gender-affirming surgery illegal…