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Kenya drops terror charge on activist Boniface Mwangi
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Inside Gaza: A journalist's account of famine and humanitarian crisis
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Retailleau criticizes Macron's political legacy as 2027 succession race heats up
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France 24
8 hours ago
- France 24
Milan wins crash-marred sprint as Tour approaches Alpine end game
Overall leader Tadej Pogacar and his closest rival Jonas Vingegaard (4min 15sec behind) finished safely despite a mass fall 800m from the finish line at Valence at the foot of the Alps. On the rain-slick roads at Valence once one rider had fallen his interminable slide across the tarmac sent riders flying like skittles leaving only 10 to contest the sprint. "It was chaotic but incredible. I was expecting a bit of rain. We placed as best as we could and the guys put me in the best spot just before the fall," said Milan. This was a second stage win for Milan, who won Italy's first stage since 2019 on stage eight. The 24-year-old Lidl Trek rider now has 312 points, and is in a powerful position to win the battle for the green jersey in Paris as Pogacar is second at 240 with only two possible sprints left at 50pts each. Alpine peaks loom large As the remaining 164 riders embarked from the sleepy Provence village of Bollene, the collective will of the peloton made for a slow approach of the Alps. Billed as a sprinters stage on an unusually mild (22C) day the riders were also spared the 50kph winds that had been forecast. But the rain deprived the stage of a full bunch sprint due to the horrid fall. Attention now turns to three massive climbs culminating with the ascent to the 2304m altitude Col de la Loze on stage 18 will sort the wheat from the chaff on Thursday's Queen stage. Team UAE rider Pogacar seemed unperturbed. "We can't get arrogant, we need to keep it simple and stay quiet," said the 26-year-old. "I'm really looking forward to it. I have been beaten there before but I have good legs and maybe I'll get my revenge," he said. After 10 opening days of rolling terrain in the north and west of France where Pocacar and Vingegaard kept a watchful eye on each other as emerging riders stole the headlines, week two was where the real fight began. The defending champion Pogacar attacked the Dane Vingegaard on the first mountain, smacking over two minutes into him on one climb as things looked grim for the Slovenian's rivals. The following day on a regular bike on a time-trial Pogacar whacked another 40sec into the Visma star who has however taken over four minutes off the Slovenian on a single stage to win the 2023 Tour. While Friday's hellishly-designed five mountains of madness on stage 19 sound the final call for any pretender to knock Pogacar off his high perch. Unless that is the three ascents of the cobbled roads to the Sacre Coeur Basilica in old Montmartre descend into chaos on Sunday. Another Slovenian rider Matej Mohoric of Bahrain Victorious said he was confident Pogacar would close out his fourth Tour de France win. "He was born with a machine inside him, and he was born with the brain to use that machine," Mohoric said.
France 24
8 hours ago
- France 24
Lebanese militant says 'struggle' helped him endure French prison
A court last week ordered the 74-year-old -- who was jailed over the 1982 killings of two foreign diplomats in Paris -- be released from the Lannemezan prison in southern France on Friday. Abdallah is one of the longest-serving prisoners in France, where most convicts with life sentences are freed after less than 30 years. Between his bed, desk and microwave corner, Abdallah had decorated the yellow walls of his 11-square-metre cell with the flag of the Argentine Marxist revolutionary, but also a map of the world and postcards. An office chair near his bed was piled high with newspapers. "If I'm alive in front of you today, it's because I've kept up the fight -- otherwise 40 years (in jail) would turn your brain to mush," said the prisoner, whose hair and beard have turned grey. AFP visited his cell on July 17, along with a hard-left member of parliament, Andree Taurinya, who used her right as a lawmaker to visit detention centres to see him on the day the court ordered his release. Dressed in a red sleeveless t-shirt and beige shorts, he greeted her warmly and they posed together for a selfie. Abdallah said that for more than 40 years he had continued to be a "militant with a struggle" -- even if it was in very "particular" conditions behind bars. He said he did not foresee a "radical change in (his) struggle outlook" after leaving France and flying home to Lebanon -- the condition for his release. Birthday calendar Next to his computer, he had pinned up images of flowers, including poppies and cherry blossom, as well as Palestinian flags and a picture of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. "Forty years is a lot but you don't feel them go by when you keep up the struggle," he said. Many of his fellow militants have died over the years however, he said. "On my computer I have a calendar to keep track of every day: dead comrades, that's in brown, orange is for visits, and green is for birthdays," he explained. But these days, "the colour brown is taking up more and more space." Abdallah was detained in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for his involvement, which he denies, in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris. After his arrest, French police discovered submachine guns and transceiver stations in one of his Paris apartments. 'Pampered' Lebanese of Maronite Christian heritage, Abdallah has always insisted he is a "fighter" who battled for the rights of Palestinians, and not a "criminal". Before the decision to release him, he had been eligible for release for 25 years. But the United States -- a civil party to the case -- had consistently opposed him leaving prison. The Israeli embassy in Paris objected to the decision to release Abdallah, saying "such terrorists, enemies of the free world, should spend their life in prison". Abdallah, who considers himself to be a "political prisoner", said he had been "pampered" compared to "what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank, especially for comrades in prison". His release comes as Israel wages war against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip for a 22nd month, with aid and rights groups warning of mass starvation for civilians trapped in the besieged Palestinian territory. Deadly Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have also become commonplace. Abdallah, who founded a now dissolved Marxist anti-Israel militant group in his youth, endorsed recent protests in the West calling for a Gaza ceasefire. © 2025 AFP
