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French language lovers could celebrate International Francophonie Day on Saturday with a new online interactive dictionary. Rolled out by the French government, it reflects not only the language’s evolution but also the reality that most of today’s speakers are not French.Did you receive a “pourriel” or “throw a camel” today? If you are wondering what these expressions mean, you will not find the answers here in France. In Canadian French, a pourriel — a version of courriel, French for email — means spam mail. When you “lance un chameau” or throw a camel in the Democratic Republic of Congo, you have made a spelling mistake.Both these expressions are included in a new online dictionary sponsored by the French government.French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot says the dictionary is not just for France’s 67 million citizens, but for the 300 million French speakers worldwide. It aims to modernize and enrich the French language, she says, embracing its evolution.President Emmanuel Macron proposed the idea of this Francophones’ Dictionary in 2018. The dictionary already contains about 600,000 terms.It got a new word last week, when Louise Mushikiwabo, who heads the International Organization of la Francophonie, representing French-speaking countries, proposed “techniquer” — which in her native Rwanda means figuring out creative solutions with limited resources.Unlike past dictionaries, which were products of elite French academics, this dictionary is interactive, democratic — and a work in progress. Anybody can propose a word. A group of experts will decide whether it should be added.So, what do non-French francophones think about the new dictionary? A stroll through a multicultural Paris neighborhood provided some insight.Mimi, from Senegal, immediately checked out the dictionary on her smartphone. She couldn’t think of any words to propose right away, but she found the idea interesting.Longtime resident Nicole Sika offered up “go” — which means your female friend in her native Ivory Coast — or “zo” — which means you are smartly dressed.Other French dictionaries have expanded their lexicon. The iconic Le Petit Larousse French dictionary has added words like “taxier” — an Algerian expression meaning, not surprisingly, taxi driver. But this new, interactive dictionary is the first sponsored by France’s government, ending three centuries in which only the elite French Academy determined which words to include.“The French no longer have a monopoly on French,” French magazine L’Express wrote recently, “and that is good news.”
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The founder of BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer in making one of the first coronavirus vaccines to be approved for use, is optimistic that the virus will be under control in most European countries by the end of the summer despite a faltering vaccine rollout.In Germany, owners of shuttered shops and would-be vacationers are increasingly restive over COVID-19 restrictions. Some 20,000 people protested against lockdowns in the central city of Kassel on Saturday.European Union governments are facing criticism over the slow start to their vaccination campaigns, with supply hiccups leaving the bloc lagging far behind countries such as Israel, Britain and the United States.But BioNTech founder Ugur Sahin said he was optimistic the problems would prove temporary, adding it was possible to ensure 70% of Germans were vaccinated by the end of September, at which point he said the virus would pose few problems.’Background noise'”In many European countries and the U.S., we will probably not need lockdowns by summer’s end,” he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. “There’ll be outbreaks, but they’ll be background noise. There’ll be mutations, but they won’t frighten us.”Almost 9% of the German population had received at least one vaccine shot by Saturday. Meanwhile, Britain passed the halfway point with 50% of adults having received at least one dose.Protesters hold up an umbrella with lettering reading “Be free” as they gather for a demonstration to demand provision of basic rights and an end to restrictive coronavirus measures in Kassel, Germany, March 20, 2021.Protesters from across Germany converged on Kassel for a march Saturday that was organized by the “Lateral Thinkers,” an online conspiracy movement.Police used water cannon and pepper spray after the protests against lockdowns and other coronavirus rules turned violent.”Bottles were thrown and there were attempts to break through barriers,” police said on Twitter.In Germany, the sluggish vaccine deployment and continuing restrictions are weighing heavily on the fortunes of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, who are slipping in the polls in an election year even as rising COVID-19 case numbers look set to force authorities to put the brakes on attempts to gradually reopen the economy.Above the limitThe number of newly diagnosed cases is more than 100 cases per 100,000 population over a week, the threshold above which authorities say they must impose stricter distancing rules to stop the health care system from being overburdened.”Many are simply disappointed,” Bavaria’s conservative Premier Markus Soeder, a likely candidate to succeed Merkel in the national election, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.”A false move now risks turning this third wave [of the virus] into a permanent wave,” he said ahead of a meeting on Monday of national and regional leaders at which they are expected to discuss the next stage of coronavirus measures.”We have a tool: the emergency brake. It must be applied strictly everywhere in Germany,” Soeder said, referring to the possibility of halting the easing of restrictions.  
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A volcano erupted Friday night on Iceland’s southwestern Reykjanes peninsula, following small daily earthquakes in recent weeks.The eruption lit the night sky and could easily be seen from the outskirts of the capital, Reykjavík, about 30 kilometers away.Aerial footage, posted on Facebook by the Icelandic Meteorological Office, showed a small eruption spewing red lava down in two directions.The eruption began at Fagradalsfjall in Geldingadalur at about 8:45 p.m. GMT Friday, according to a statement by meteorological office, which monitors seismic activity.“The eruption is considered a small one and the eruption fissure is about 500-700 meters long. The lava is less than 1 square kilometer in size,” the statement said.In this still image captured from a handout video filmed by the Icelandic Coast Guard, lava flows from the erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano some 50 kilometers west of the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, on March 19, 2021.Iceland’s Emergency Management Department said the area is uninhabited and the eruption was not expected to present any danger. However, authorities urged the public not to go near the active volcano.Reykjavik’s Keflavik International Airport, which is a few kilometers away from the volcano, was not closed and flights were not suspended.Friday’s volcanic activity was the first in that area in about 800 years.
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A volcano erupted near Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, on Friday, shooting lava high into the night sky after thousands of small earthquakes in recent weeks.The eruption occurred near Fagradalsfjall, a mountain on the Reykjanes Peninsula, around 30 kilometers southwest of the capital.Some four hours after the initial eruption at 2045 GMT — the first on the peninsula since the 12th century — lava covered about 1 square kilometer or nearly 200 football fields.”I can see the glowing red sky from my window,” said Rannveig Gudmundsdottir, resident in the town of Grindavik, only 8 kilometers from the eruption.”Everyone here is getting into their cars to drive up there,” she said.More than 40,000 earthquakes have occurred on the peninsula in the past four weeks, a huge jump from the 1,000-3,000 earthquakes registered each year since 2014.The eruption posed no immediate danger to people in Grindavik or to critical infrastructure, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO), which classified the eruption as small.In this still image captured from a handout video filmed by the Icelandic Coast Guard, lava flows from the erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano some 50 kilometers west of the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, on March 19, 2021.A fissure 500 to 750 meters long opened at the eruption site, spewing lava fountains up to 100 meters high, Bjarki Friis of the meteorological office said.Residents in the town of Thorlakshofn, east of the eruption site, were told to stay indoors to avoid exposure to volcanic gases, Iceland’s Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management said. The wind was blowing from the west.Unlike the eruption in 2010 of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which halted approximately 900,000 flights and forced hundreds of Icelanders from their homes, this eruption is not expected to spew much ash or smoke into the atmosphere.Located between the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates, among the largest on the planet, Iceland is a seismic and volcanic hot spot as the two plates move in opposite directions.The source of the eruption is a large body of molten rock, known as magma, which has pushed its way to the surface over the past weeks, instigating the earthquakes.The number of quakes had slowed down in recent days, however, leading geologists to say that an eruption would be less likely.Reykjavik’s international Keflavik airport was not closed following the eruption, but each airline had to decide if it wanted to fly or not, IMO said.Arrivals and departures on the airport’s website showed no disruptions.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pulled Turkey out of an international accord designed to protect women, the country’s official gazette said Saturday, despite calls from advocates who see the pact as key to combating rising domestic violence.The Council of Europe accord, forged in Istanbul, pledged to prevent, prosecute and eliminate domestic violence and promote equality. Turkey, which signed the accord in 2011, saw a rise in femicides last year.No reason was provided for the withdrawal, but officials in Erdogan’s ruling AK Party had said last year the government was considering pulling out amid a disagreement over how to curb growing violence against women.”The guarantee of women’s rights are the current regulations in our bylaws, primarily our Constitution. Our judicial system is dynamic and strong enough to implement new regulations as needed,” Family, Labour and Social Policies Minister Zehra Zumrut said on Twitter, without providing a reason for the move.Many conservatives in Turkey say the pact undermines family structures, encouraging violence. They are also hostile to the principle of gender equality in the Istanbul Convention and see it as promoting homosexuality, given its principle of non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.Critics of the withdrawal from the pact have said it would put Turkey further out of step with the values of the European Union, which it remains a candidate to join. They argue the deal, and legislation approved in its wake, need to be implemented more stringently.Other countries have moved toward ditching the accord. Poland’s highest court scrutinized the pact after a cabinet member said Warsaw should quit the treaty, which the nationalist government considers too liberal.Erdogan has condemned violence against women, including saying this month that his government would work to eradicate violence against women. But critics say his government has not done enough to prevent femicides and domestic violence.Turkey does not keep official statistics on femicide. World Health Organization data has shown 38% of women in Turkey are subject to violence from a partner in their lifetime, compared with about 25% in the rest of Europe.Ankara has taken measures such as tagging individuals known to resort to violence and creating a smartphone app for women to alert police, which has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.Erdogan’s decision comes after he unveiled judicial reforms this month that he said would improve rights and freedoms and help meet EU standards. Turkey has been a candidate to join the bloc since 2005, but access talks have been halted over policy differences and Ankara’s record on human rights.
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Members of the European Parliament have warned of a “chilling” environment for Slovenia’s media, with verbal assaults from senior officials and attempts to cut funding for the state-owned news agency.The session on media freedom came amid heightened concerns by the European Parliament that declining conditions in Slovenia, Hungary and Poland represent a threat to democracy and could lead to authoritarianism. Slovenia is due to take over the six-month European Union presidency in July.An increase in pressure on Slovenia’s media, including its public broadcasters, has been reported since the center-right government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa took power last year.The prime minister and his supporters FILE – Franc Bogovic of the Slovenian People’s Party takes part in a televised debate ahead of elections in Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 26, 2014.“It is clear that about 80% of internal policy editorial offices of the Slovenian media, including the public RTV [radio and television channel], favors center-left political parties,” said Franc Bogovic, a Slovenian politician and EPP member.Ahead of the debate, the Slovenian state-run news agency STA published what it said were extracts from an internal document prepared by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.STA reported that the document included a table of attacks on media from Jansa and other government officials, and highlighted apparent political influence in Slovenia through media ownership and financing by Hungarian companies affiliated with Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz Party.When asked for comment on the debate, Slovenia’s Ministry of Culture referred VOA to an earlier statement in which it said the country’s media “are predominantly left wing and fiercely anti-government.”In the same statement, the ministry said Hungarian investments accounted for less than 1 percent of the Slovenian media landscape.The ministry added that an earlier European Parliament hearing included “factually inaccurate information,” which it responded to in its statement.Media biasThe state-funded STA and RTV have found themselves at the center of allegations of government interference and left-wing bias since Jansa returned to power.STA, which gets about half of its income from the government, was established when Slovenia declared independence. It is bound by legislation to be “independent and unbiased” and to produce accurate and objective news.The government alleges that the STA supports leftist political views, a claim the agency has denied.The government stopped financing the STA earlier this year, saying the news agency had failed to supply documents required for its government contract. And Jansa called on its director, Bojan Veselinovic, to resign, calling him “a political tool of the far left” and saying the STA often “sells lies for the truth.”Veselinovic refused, saying there was no basis for the accusations. He has said the government wants to financially drain the independent agency.RTV Slovenia and STA can sometimes appear biased, Siol journalist Jancic said, citing coverage of anti-government protests this month that, he said, appeared to tone down threats.The pressure on the STA led 15 academics from Ljubljana University’s Faculty of Social Sciences to issue a public letter in support of the news outlet.The letter said the “the hostile destruction of such an important” organization “borders on insanity.”The government also attempted to replace Igor Kadunc, head of RTV, in October.Jancic said that when a left-wing government coalition was in power in 2018, it also tried unsuccessfully to oust the head of RTV.    
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The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization warns of growing hunger and loss of lives and livelihoods if nations do not find ways to reduce the impact of natural disasters on global food production.A new FAO report said the world’s food production is facing unprecedented threats. They include fires, droughts, floods, unusually large desert locust swarms and emerging biological threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic.An aerial view shows dead spruce trees suffering from drought stress in a forest near Iserlohn, western Germany, on April 28, 2020.The report notes the annual occurrence of natural disasters is now three times greater than it was in the 1970s and ’80s. FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero says this surge of natural disasters is having a devastating impact on agriculture and livelihoods and inflicting severe economic damage.“We found that drought turns out to be the most destructive force for agriculture,” Torero said. “Drought caused an estimated $37 billion in crop and livestock production loss [from 2008 to 2018] in the least-developed countries and low-and-middle-income countries. … Floods and storms are the next most relevant loss in agriculture.”During this same period, Torero said, the impact of disasters cost the agricultural sectors of developing countries more than $108 billion in lost crop and livestock production. He said Asia was hardest hit, followed by Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean.The FAO said 2.5 billion people, about 60% in developing countries, depend on agriculture for their daily food, their income and their survival. It warned that fragile societies would experience greater food insecurity and increased destitution if they failed to invest in disaster prevention measures.The director of the FAO Liaison Office in Geneva, Dominique Burgeon, said early warning systems and risk reduction strategies can prevent a threat from turning into a disaster. For example, he said, U.N. agencies acted early to control a swarm of locusts that was threatening to destroy crops in East Africa.As a result, 4 million tons of crops were saved, Burgeon said. “This is enough to feed about 34 million people in the Horn of Africa and Yemen, with a value of about $1.5 billion.”Burgeon said smart investments would pay great dividends. He said investing $1 in good practices would save $3.70 in crop losses.
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A crackdown on Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish political party appears to be broadening following Friday’s detention of a leading member of the country’s human rights movement. The arrest comes in the face of growing concern from Turkey’s western allies.Ozturk Turkdogan, co-chair of Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD), was arrested in an early morning raid by anti-terror police. The detention drew swift condemnation nationally and internationally.”Outrageous.  This is an attack on Turkey’s oldest human rights group,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch.   “He [Turkdogan] is a very respected figure in the human rights movement and an old friend, a lawyer. It is an outrageous attack on all of Turkish civil society to arrest Turkdogan,” added Sinclair-Webb.No details have been released on why Turkdogan was detained, other than that he was being held under Turkey’s wide-ranging anti-terror legislation. Under the law, Turkdogan is denied access to a lawyer for the first 24 hours of detention.This month, the Turkish interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, accused Turkdogan’s Human Rights Association of being linked to terrorism.Meanwhile, Turkish security forces are carrying out a crackdown on Turkey’s second largest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party [HDP].  On Friday, at least three HDP senior members were detained in dawn raids as part of a sweep targeting 35 people. On Wednesday, prosecutors opened a case against the HDP.The HDP is accused of having links to the Kurdish separatist group the PKK, which is fighting the Turkish state. The United States and the European Union designate the PKK as a terrorist organization.Wednesday also saw lawmakers vote to strip prominent HDP deputy Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu of his parliamentary immunity after he was convicted of spreading terrorist propaganda for a tweet.Since 2019, 48 of the 65 elected HDP mayors in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish regions have been removed from office by the Interior Ministry, citing “terror” investigations.Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, a human rights advocate and lawmaker from the People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, center, reacts after the parliament stripped his parliamentary seat, in Ankara, Turkey, March 17, 2021.Western allies concerned at crackdownBut Turkey’s western allies are pushing back over the latest escalation in the crackdown on the HDP.”We are also monitoring the initiation of efforts to dissolve the People’s Democratic Party, a decision that would unduly subvert the will of Turkish voters, further undermine democracy in Turkey, and deny millions of Turkish citizens their chosen representation,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Smith on Thursday.In a statement, the European Union said it was “deeply concerned,” adding Turkey “needs to respect its core democratic obligations, including respect for democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”The HDP closure case and the latest waves of arrests come weeks after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged a new era in human rights while unveiling his human rights action plan.”It seems the human rights action plan is a code word for human rights violation plan,” said Sinclair-Webb, “because everything that has happened since then has been worse and worse and the attacks on democracy.”People protest in support of pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party in Istanbul, March 18, 2021. The EU criticized Turkish authorities’ moves to shut down the party, saying the steps add to concerns over the “backsliding of rights” in Turkey.Turkey has a long history of closing political parties, in particular those deemed pro-Kurdish. But the government rejects criticism over the current crackdown, insisting it’s fighting terrorism.”It is an indisputable fact that HDP has organic ties to PKK,” tweeted Wednesday Fahrettin Altun, Turkey’s presidential communication director. The HDP denies any links to the PKK.The German government appears receptive to Ankara’s stance while calling for “Turkey to comply with the most stringent democratic rule-of-law.” In a statement released Thursday it added, “We call on the HDP to clearly distance itself from the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization also in the EU.”Observers and human rights activists have accused European leaders and the EU of softening its criticism of Turkey’s deteriorating human rights record.Turkey and the EU are currently discussing the renewal of a refugee deal that sees Ankara act as Europe’s gatekeeper in controlling migrants and refugees in exchange for billions of dollars in aid.”It’s the biggest leverage Turkey has,” said Sezin Oney, a columnist for Turkey’s Duvar news portal. “Because of the refugee deal, European countries, in a way, lack any kind of pressure or any kind of leverage they might have over Ankara.”Next week European leaders are due to discuss Turkey at an EU summit, but it’s predicted calls for a tough stance against Ankara by some members will be ignored.With Turkey’s EU membership bid is frozen, Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul-based Centre for Economics & Foreign Policy Studies, says any inaction by Brussels is mostly because it has little political influence. “The refugee deal is a factor that lowers the level of criticism in the EU about Turkey’s track record in democratic and fundamental rights. But the other factor is that the EU now has very little leverage on Turkey, given that there are very few avenues of positive engagement,” said Ulgen.
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Emergency officials in the Moscow suburb of Khimki Friday say a gas leak caused an explosion and fire that killed at least three people and injured four others in a residential building.The Moscow Region Emergency Ministry Directorate told Russian news agencies the explosion occurred early Friday on the eighth floor of a nine-story building and the resulting fire swept through five apartments. Officials say the victims include two adults and a child.  They said four others, including one person in serious condition, have been hospitalized.The news agencies say residents of the building were evacuated, and the gas supply was cut off in 36 apartments. Officials will continue to investigate the incident.
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