July 2025

PARIS – Parisians rushed for a dip within the Seine on Saturday as authorities opened the river to public swimming for the primary time since 1923 after an in depth clean-up operation spurred on by it getting used final yr as a venue within the Paris Olympics.

Three websites alongside the banks of the Seine within the metropolis will be capable to welcome over 1,000 swimmers each day till August 31, native officers mentioned, to the delight of the Parisians and guests who have been among the many first to make the leap.

“Very nice, I am impressed, shocked,” mentioned 24-year-old Victoria Cnop, a Brazilian who lives in Paris. “I by no means imagined being within the water near the Eiffel Tower.”

“The water is clear, it is heat, it is clear. There’s a little bit of algae, however that is regular,” mentioned 51-year-old Karine. “Come right here all people, it is nice!.”

The reopening of the Seine for public swimming follows efforts by authorities to enhance its water high quality so it might be used for Olympic occasions final summer time.

Investments included connecting tens of hundreds of houses to the sewer system, upgrading water remedy services, and setting up massive rainwater storage reservoirs to stop sewer overflow throughout heavy storms.

Whereas delays, triggered by the well being impression of heavy rains, impacted some Olympic coaching classes and the boys’s triathlon occasion, competitions within the Seine ultimately went forward, bolstering confidence within the river’s security for public swimming.

Every day water high quality checks will probably be carried out through the swimming season, with inexperienced and purple flags – just like seaside security programs – indicating whether or not swimming areas are open or closed.

“It is great,” mentioned John Drummond, a 54-year-old customer from Canada. “It is nice for the atmosphere, it is nice for the town, it is nice for the those that dwell right here. So superb initiative.”

In addition to the three websites inside Paris, 14 swimming areas exterior the capital’s boundaries will probably be arrange on the Seine and the Marne rivers. Two of these already opened on the Marne in June. — Reuters

KYIV – Russia pummeled Kyiv with the most important drone assault of the conflict, killing one particular person, injuring not less than 23 and damaging buildings throughout the capital hours after US President Donald Trump spoke to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, officers stated on Friday.

Air raid sirens, the whine of kamikaze drones and booming detonations reverberated from early night till daybreak as Russia launched what Ukraine’s Air Pressure stated was a complete of 539 drones and 11 missiles.

Households huddled in underground metro stations for shelter and acrid smoke hung over town heart. Kyiv’s navy administration chief stated on Friday afternoon a physique had been discovered within the wreckage of one of many strike websites.

Outdoors a high-rise condo block broken by a drone, residents stood round surveying the scene because the clean-up job started. Some cried. Others regarded on silently.

“I woke as much as the sound of explosions, first the Shahed drones began buzzing, after which the explosions started,” stated 40-year-old resident Maria Hilchenko.

“Then folks began screaming exterior. The explosions from the Shaheds stored coming.” Shahed drones are an Iranian design, a variant of which is now manufactured in Russia.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy referred to as the assault “intentionally huge and cynical”, noting the primary sirens blared as information got here in of Putin and Trump’s name.

In a while Friday Zelenskiy spoke to Trump and the pair agreed to work on growing Kyiv’s functionality to “defend the sky”.

He added they mentioned joint protection manufacturing, in addition to joint purchases and investments. The US has paused some deliveries of missiles amid considerations about low stockpiles.

Kyiv officers stated the assault broken about 40 condo blocks, passenger railway infrastructure, 5 colleges and kindergartens, cafes and plenty of vehicles in six of Kyiv’s 10 districts. Poland stated the consular part of its embassy was broken in central Kyiv, including that employees have been unhurt.

Ukrainian International Minister Andrii Sybiha stated a Chinese language part had been present in one of many Shahed drones attacking Kyiv, including it had been discovered shortly after China’s consulate within the southern metropolis of Odesa suffered minor harm in a separate strike.

“What an irony,” Sybiha wrote on X.

Russian airstrikes on Kyiv have intensified in current weeks and included a few of the deadliest assaults of the conflict on town of three million folks.

Russia’s Protection Ministry stated drone factories, a navy airfield and an oil refinery have been amongst targets it struck in Kyiv with what it referred to as high-precision weapons. Ukraine didn’t give particulars of any militarily useful targets.

Name for sanctions 

Trump stated that the decision with Putin on Thursday resulted in no progress in any respect on efforts to finish the conflict, and the Kremlin reiterated that Moscow would maintain pushing to resolve the battle’s “root causes”.

The choice by Washington to halt some shipments of crucial weapons to Ukraine prompted warnings by Kyiv that the transfer would weaken its capacity to defend in opposition to intensifying airstrikes and battlefield advances. Germany stated it’s in talks on shopping for Patriot air protection techniques to bridge the hole.

On Friday, Zelenskiy referred to as for elevated strain on Moscow to alter its “dumb, harmful habits”.

“For each such strike in opposition to folks and human life, they have to really feel acceptable sanctions and different blows to their economic system, their revenues, and their infrastructure,” he stated.

Ukraine’s Air Pressure stated it destroyed 478 of the air weapons Russia launched in a single day. Airstrikes have been recorded in eight areas, with 9 missiles and 63 drones, it added.

Social media movies confirmed folks operating to hunt shelter, firefighters preventing blazes at midnight and ruined buildings with home windows and facades blown out.

Either side deny focusing on civilians within the conflict that Russia launched with its full-scale invasion in February 2022. 1000’s of civilians have been killed within the battle, the overwhelming majority of them Ukrainian. Many extra troopers are believed to have been killed on the entrance line, however neither aspect releases navy casualty figures.

Late on Thursday, Russian shelling killed 5 folks in and close to the jap Ukrainian metropolis of Pokrovsk, Ukraine stated. — Reuters

GENEVA — A UN knowledgeable on Thursday referred to as on states to impose an arms embargo and lower off commerce and monetary ties with Israel, which she alleged is waging a “genocidal marketing campaign” in Gaza.

In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council, UN Particular Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese mentioned: “The scenario within the occupied Palestinian territory is apocalyptic.”

“Israel is accountable for one of many cruelest genocides in fashionable historical past,” she added, in a speech that was met with a burst of applause from the Geneva council.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Albanese’s speech.

Israel has rejected accusations of genocide in Gaza, citing its proper to self-defense following the lethal October 7, 2023, Hamas assault. Its delegate was not current within the room consistent with a brand new coverage to disengage with the council which Israel says has an antisemitic bias.

Albanese, one in all dozens of impartial UN-mandated consultants to doc abuses around the globe, was presenting her newest report which named over 60 corporations she mentioned have been concerned in supporting Israeli settlements and army actions in Gaza.

“What I expose isn’t an inventory, it’s a system, and that’s to be addressed,” she advised the council.

“We should reverse the tide,” she added, calling for states to impose a full arms embargo, droop all commerce agreements and guarantee corporations face authorized penalties for his or her involvement in violations of worldwide legislation.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva earlier this week mentioned Albanese’s newest report was “legally groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of her workplace.” — Reuters

WASHINGTON —US President Donald Trump has stepped up arrests of immigrants within the U.S. illegally, cracked down on illegal border crossings and stripped authorized standing from a whole bunch of hundreds of migrants since January 20.

Arrests

Trump received again the White Home promising report numbers of deportations. A Trump administration finances doc printed in June mentioned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement aimed to deport 1 million immigrants per yr.

ICE has forged a wider web than beneath former President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, selecting up extra non-criminals and folks with last deportation orders, together with these coming to ICE places of work for routine check-ins.

ICE arrested greater than 100,000 individuals suspected of violating immigration regulation from January 20 to the primary week of June, in accordance with the White Home. The determine quantities to a mean of 750 arrests per day – double the typical over the previous decade.

Nonetheless, the tempo of arrests stays far wanting what Trump would wish to deport tens of millions of individuals.

Prime White Home official Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, pressed ICE to escalate operations in late Might. Miller set a quota for not less than 3,000 arrests per day and instructed ICE management they need to goal anybody with out authorized standing.

The elevated enforcement led to protests in Los Angeles and different cities. ICE in June ordered officers to typically chorus from immigration sweeps at farms, accommodations, eating places and meatpacking vegetation, however the Trump administration then rescinded the steerage.

Detention

ICE statistics present the variety of individuals arrested by ICE with no different felony prices or convictions after which detained rose from about 860 in January to 11,800 as of June 15 – a rise of practically 1,300%.

These arrested and detained with felony prices or convictions additionally rose, however at a decrease fee of 101%.

ICE had greater than 56,000 immigrants in custody as of June 15, properly past its funded capability of 41,500.

A sweeping tax and spending invoice that Republicans intention to deliver to last passage within the U.S. Home of Representatives this week would commit an estimated $170 billion to immigration enforcement. The large funding increase would cowl a White Home request for 100,000 detention beds, in accordance with an evaluation of the laws by the pro-immigration American Immigration Council.

Deportations

The Trump administration has struggled to extend deportation ranges even because it has opened new pathways to ship migrants to nations apart from their house nation, comparable to sending Venezuelans to Mexico, El Salvador or Panama.

Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, mentioned in late Might that the administration had deported round 200,000 individuals over 4 months. The overall appeared to lag deportations throughout an identical interval beneath Biden, whose administration had 257,000 deportations from February-Might 2024, in accordance with Division of Homeland Safety statistics.

Biden’s administration confronted a lot larger ranges of unlawful immigration and rapidly deported a lot of these crossing illegally, boosting deportation totals.

DHS stopped issuing detailed statistical experiences on immigration enforcement after Trump took workplace, which makes it more durable to gauge the scope of the crackdown.

Stripping authorized standing

The Supreme Courtroom in Might allowed the Trump administration to proceed with terminating Short-term Protected Standing for about 350,000 Venezuelans, paving the best way for Trump to terminate it for different nations.

TPS supplies deportation reduction and work permits to individuals already within the U.S. if their house nations expertise a pure catastrophe, armed battle or different extraordinary occasion.

The Trump administration rolled again a Biden-era extension of TPS for 521,000 Haitians, however that transfer was blocked by a federal decide on Tuesday, pushing the termination not less than to February 2026. The administration additionally ended the standing for hundreds of individuals from Afghanistan and Cameroon, strikes that take impact within the coming days and weeks.

The Supreme Courtroom in June let the Trump administration proceed with stripping authorized standing from half 1,000,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who entered beneath a Biden-era “parole” program.

Trump mentioned in March that he was weighing an identical transfer to revoke parole for Ukrainians.

The administration in April started notifying individuals who entered legally beneath Biden utilizing an app often called CBP One which their standing had been revoked.

Border safety

Trump issued a sequence of govt orders when he returned to the White Home, implementing a broad ban on asylum for migrants encountered on the southern border and sending in troops to help border safety efforts.

His measures constructed on some initiatives already beneath means by the tip of Biden’s tenure, together with a comparable asylum ban and a push to enhance Mexican enforcement. The insurance policies seem to have efficiently lowered site visitors.

U.S. Border Patrol arrested 6,070 migrants on the southern border in June, in accordance with preliminary figures launched by the Trump administration, a brand new month-to-month low that fell past the earlier low in March. Month-to-month figures will not be accessible previous to 2000.

Migrant arrests are sometimes used as a proxy to estimate unlawful crossings though some migrants enter undetected.

The arrest totals since Trump took workplace have been far beneath these beneath Biden, which peaked at 250,000 in December 2023. —Reuters

Jimmy Swaggart, who was certainly one of America’s most influential televangelists within the Nineteen Eighties earlier than an affair with a prostitute introduced his profession crashing down, has died on the age of 90.

Jimmy Swaggart Ministries confirmed his demise on Fb and his household thanked medical workers at Baton Rouge Normal Medical Heart in Louisiana. It didn’t share particulars of the reason for demise.

In his heyday as a fundamentalist Pentecostal preacher, Swaggart had an estimated world viewers of 200 million. Then got here the prostitute scandal in 1988. With tears gushing down his cheeks, Swaggart admitted to his congregation that he had sinned—with out offering particulars—and begged forgiveness.

Swaggart, born March 15, 1935, grew up within the rough-and-tumble and racially segregated Louisiana backwater of Ferriday with two cousins who additionally would turn out to be well-known—rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and nation singer Mickey Gilley.

As a boy, Swaggart was surrounded by the fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal model of Christianity he would later take to the airwaves. His father, a grocer and a tricky disciplinarian, preached himself sometimes and Swaggart was solely 9 when he claimed he was first “referred to as” to the ministry.

“You’ll preach my Gospel everywhere in the world. You’ll even take it to Africa,” was the command that Swaggart stated God gave him.

Swaggart dropped out of college, chopped cotton and hauled gravel for a dwelling. On the age of 17 he married 15-year-old Frances Anderson after a three-month courtship.

He watched as preachers reminiscent of Oral Roberts scooped up souls and money with enormous revival conferences in tents.

A tall, muscular man with chiseled options, Swaggart was an imposing determine as he started his personal profession preaching on road corners and at rural Pentecostal conferences, crammed with singing, hand-waving and talking in tongues.

By 1969 he was profitable sufficient to begin “The Camp Hour Assembly,” a radio broadcast, and his star rose greater when he took his sermons to tv in 1973.

An arch-conservative who generally criticized Catholics and Jews, Swaggart turned a drive within the early days of the US non secular proper within the Nineteen Eighties—a motion searching for to redraw public coverage alongside biblical traces.

He took his preaching to Africa in addition to Latin America, changing into a celeb in unlikely locations such because the South African township of Soweto.

The New York Occasions stated Swaggart’s relationship with a prostitute in New Orleans was revealed by Marvin Gorman, a rival preacher who supplied incriminating images and stated Swaggart had unjustly accused him of a sequence of adulterous affairs.

In February 1988, a weeping Swaggart stood earlier than the congregation at his Baton Rouge Household Worship Heart and begged for forgiveness.

Swaggart was defrocked by the Assemblies of God nationwide group for refusing to just accept its punishment of suspension.

In 1991, he was stopped for a site visitors violation by police in Indio, California, with a prostitute in his automobile. He stated he would step down from his ministry however modified his thoughts and advised his congregation that “the Lord advised me it is flat none of your small business.”

Earlier than his downfall, Swaggart continuously lashed out at pornography and conduct he portrayed as sexual immorality. He was closely criticized in 2004 after saying on his tv present that if a homosexual man ever made a sexual advance on him, “I will kill him and inform God he died”—a remark he later stated was a joke.

Swaggart’s affect waned significantly after the scandals. His ministry survived in a a lot diminished kind, however he nonetheless appeared on cable tv sometimes.

Swaggart and Frances, who caught with him by means of his scandals, had one youngster, Donnie, who took a key function within the ministry. — Reuters