French ministers escalate Spain row over Jewish teens removed from flight
The airline has said it aims "to provide a rigorous and transparent account of the facts".However, accounts of what happened before the incident differ dramatically, and have led to allegations of antisemitism, which have been vehemently rejected by both the airline and Spanish police.Videos on social media showed police holding the female counsellor down on the ground in a corridor while they handcuffed her.The two French ministers, who have both since spoken to the woman, said she had been signed off work for 15 days because of "temporary incapacity"."No act justifies the disembarkation and the excessive and brutal use of force by the Guardia Civil against the young woman," said Bergé and Haddad.Although Óscar Puente later deleted his post describing the teenagers as "Israeli brats", the French ministers said they strongly condemned his statement for "equating French children who were Jewish with Israeli citizens, as if this in any way justified the treatment they were subjected to"."We will never accept the trivialisation of anti-Semitism," the ministers added.Police said the captain had ordered the removal of the group from the Vueling plane after they had ignored instructions from the crew.The airline has given two statements since the events unfolded a week ago.It alleged that the group had "mishandled emergency equipment and actively disrupted the mandatory safety demonstration, repeatedly ignoring instructions from cabin crew".Vueling said that as part of its internal inquiry it had taken witness statements from other passengers who had backed up its account and that of the police. It accused some of the children of adopting "confrontational behaviour"... such as "attempting to loosen life jackets, tampering with overhead oxygen masks and removing a high-pressure oxygen cylinder", violating air safety laws. An anonymous passenger gave a statement to Spain's La Sexta TV appearing to back up Vueling's statement, saying that some of the children had pulled life jackets out and pressed the crew-call buttons.However, other accounts have disputed the airline's version of events.One passenger called Damien, who was at the front of the plane and not part of the young group, told Europe 1 radio that the children had been "very calm, especially for teenagers... there was one who called to his friend for two seconds but everything was perfectly fine".Karine Lamy, the mother of a teenage boy in the group, told i24 TV that "one child sang a song in Hebrew, then he began shouting and the staff on board came up to him and the group leader and warned him immediately that if he carried on singing or making a noise they'd call the police". She said the children then calmed down and five minutes later the police boarded the plane and told the leader and the whole group to disembark.According to Damien, a flight attendant said during the safety demonstration that there was a security issue and that they were going to call police."There was no shouting, no violence," he insisted, adding that he had no idea whether there had been any interruption to the safety demonstration as everyone was paying attention to it at the time.A lawyer for the Club Kineret summer camp group, Murielle Ouknine-Melki, told French TV that some of the children wore a kippah (Jewish skullcap) and she had no other explanation for what happened other than that they were Jewish.Vueling said it categorically denied that its crew's behaviour related to the religion of the passengers. The Guardia Civil said its officers too were not aware they were Jewish.At the weekend, France's foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, contacted Vueling's chief executive, Carolina Martinoli, to express his "deep concern" at what had happened.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
9 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Revealed: How long Real Madrid defender Raul Asencio could face in prison as prosecutors seek sentence - after he allegedly shared explicit video involving a minor
Spanish prosecutors are seeking a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for Real Madrid defender Raul Asencio over claims he shared a sexually explicit video involving an underage girl. Asencio, now 22, was not present during the encounter, does not appear in the footage, and is not accused of recording it. His alleged role came later, when he received the video and showed it to a friend — despite prosecutors saying he knew it had been filmed without consent and that one of the girls involved was a minor. The footage was allegedly recorded by three former Real Madrid youth players during a sexual encounter at a beach club in Gran Canaria in June 2023. One of the girls was under 16, while the other was 18. According to court documents, the recording was made secretly and shared in multiple WhatsApp groups, including one titled 'Whatever Ferran Wants'. Prosecutors say Asencio asked for the footage to be sent to him on June 23 — more than a week after the incident — and received it in a single-view format. He is accused of showing it to a third party while in Las Palmas, despite knowing the victims had requested it be deleted. He has been charged with two offences: disclosure of secrets and child pornography. The public prosecutor is seeking two years, six months and one day in prison, along with a €100 daily fine over 24 months and €10,000 in compensation for the victims. The lawyer representing the underage girl has demanded a tougher sentence. In a separate legal submission, the private prosecution is requesting a four-year prison term for Asencio and urging the court to treat him as equally responsible as the players who filmed and circulated the video. The Real Madrid defender is not alleged to have filmed the footage or appeared in it, but is facing charges of disclosing secrets and child pornography While the sentencing requests differ, this is standard in Spain's legal system. The Prosecutor's Office represents the state and proposes sentences based on its interpretation of the law. A private prosecution, acting for the victim, can argue for a harsher penalty if it believes the harm has not been fully addressed. The three players accused of filming and distributing the footage — Ferran Ruiz, Juan Rodriguez and Andres Garcia — face a proposed sentence of four years and seven months, as well as restraining orders and €25,000 in compensation for each of the two victims. None of the men involved have been convicted, and the investigation remains ongoing. Real Madrid have not publicly commented on the case. The three players who allegedly filmed the footage no longer belong to the club.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Why the US is burning $10m worth of birth control
There are few better metaphors for the receding status of American women than one offered up by the Trump administration at a medical waste disposal facility outside Paris this week: rather than distribute nearly $10m worth of birth control, which had been purchased by USAID and was destined to be given to women in low-income countries, primarily in Africa, the Americans decided to burn it. The incinerated contraceptives included 900,000 birth control implants, 2m doses of injectable long-acting birth control, 2m packs of contraceptive pills and 50,000 IUDs. The medicine is just the latest in the far-reaching fallout from cuts made by the so-called 'department of government efficiency,' or Doge, a project in which Elon Musk and a group of his very young, overwhelmingly male acolytes unilaterally slashed congressionally appropriated funding to government programs they did not like. The cuts have been devastating for non-profits that work to improve women's health and safety worldwide. Sarah Shaw, an associate director at the global family planning group MSI Reproductive Choices, says that the cuts will put women at risk as they strain their health with unplanned pregnancies and seek out illegal abortions; other women who are denied access to birth control will lose out on the opportunities for education, professional development or remunerative work that can help them escape abuse, rise out of poverty, pursue their talents and ambitions and better provide for the children they already have. When MSI attempted to buy the contraceptives, the administration would only accept full price, which the organization couldn't afford, she said. Several non-profits, including MSI, had offered to pay to ship and repackage the supplies, according to another representative. But the Trump administration refused, partially due to federal rules the prohibit the US from providing such goods to groups that perform, provide referrals for or offer education about abortions. In addition to the cost of purchasing the contraceptives, American taxpayers will now be on the hook for about $167,000 for the cost of burning them. It's just the latest in a series of signs that the Trump administration is turning against the provision of birth control, particularly the safe, effective and woman-controlled hormonal methods that have been a cornerstone of healthcare policy for decades and which were a precondition of women's advancement in work and education over the past 60 years. In April, the Trump administration abruptly announced that it was suspending a large swath of the domestic service grants distributed under Title X, the program meant to help low-income Americans access birth control, STD treatment and other sexual and reproductive healthcare. Of the 86 Title X grants awarded for fiscal year 2024, nearly 25% were 'temporarily withheld', mostly based on highly suspect allegations that the grant-receiving institutions – including 13 Planned Parenthood affiliates – had failed to comply with Trump executive orders banning things like DEI programs. Eight states now receive zero Title X dollars: California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and Utah. Alaska, Minnesota and Pennsylvania have also lost most of their contraception funding. The domestic cuts – along with the exclusion of Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid reimbursements – mean that American women, too, are now facing dramatically greater obstacles to accessing birth control. Clinics that relied on Title X funding are now set to close: 11 Planned Parenthood clinics already have, including in Democratically controlled states like California. Planned Parenthood says that cumulatively, the cuts could lead the organization to close about 200 of its 600 clinics nationwide – a devastating cut to abortion providers in particular that will make a wide range of reproductive services inaccessible to women regardless of where they live. But the Trump administration is not merely forcing these programs for women's health and dignity go up in flames. They are redirecting them to better suit their preferred cultural outcome: one in which women's lives, ambitions and talents are all subordinated to the task of childbearing. The New York Times reported last month that the White House is redirecting Title X funds that once went to birth control to instead fund an 'infertility training center' and programs in something called 'restorative reproductive medicine'. If Title X's original aim was to help American women control their fertility so as to build healthier families and to enable them to pursue other aims – like learning or work – in the new administration's version, the program exists mainly to encourage women to have more children. But the switch should not be seen as a genuine investment in infertility, an often devastating condition with which many Americans struggle. Because the new Title X priorities do not, by and large, direct more money to IVF. Trump promised, on the campaign trail, to make IVF free. But the procedure, which has opponents on the Christian right, is not included in the administration's new priority of 'restorative' reproductive medicine, a practice that avoids controversial fertility treatments; instead, doctors seek the 'root cause' of a woman's infertility, which may involve telling them they can conceive with proper diet and exercise. In government, money allocation is a statement of values. With its dramatic cuts to contraceptive funding at home and abroad, the Trump administration is making its values clear. It does not value women's health; it does not value their dignity, their control over their own lives, their aspirations, their earning potential, their desire to be freed from ignorance, or poverty, or the abuse they suffer under the hands of husbands and fathers. It does not value their ability to control their own bodies, and by extension, it does not value their ability to enter the public sphere. It does not value their dreams, their gifts, their hard work or invention or aspiration to anything other than making babies. American women, like women everywhere, depend on birth control to live lives of freedom and to pursue their dreams. But because of the Trump administration, those dreams are going up in smoke. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
The Independent
3 hours ago
- The Independent
Trump administration freezes $339M in UCLA grants and accuses the school of rights violations
The Trump administration is freezing $339 million in research grants to the University of California, Los Angeles, accusing the school of civil rights violations related to antisemitism, affirmative action and women's sports, according to a person familiar with the matter. The federal government has frozen or paused federal funding over similar allegations against private colleges but this is one of the rare cases it has targeted a public university. Several federal agencies notified UCLA this week that they were suspending grants over civil rights concerns, including $240 million from the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health, according to the person, who spoke about internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity. The Trump administration recently announced the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division found UCLA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 'by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.' Last week, Columbia agreed to pay $200 million as part of a settlement to resolve investigations into the government's allegations that the school violated federal antidiscrimination laws. The agreement also restores more than $400 million in research grants. The Trump administration plans to use its deal with Columbia as a template for other universities, with financial penalties that are now seen as an expectation. The National Science Foundation said in a statement it informed UCLA that it was suspending funding awards because the school isn't in line with the agency's priorities. UCLA's chancellor Julio Frenk called the government's decision 'deeply disappointing.' 'With this decision, hundreds of grants may be lost, adversely affecting the lives and life-changing work of UCLA researchers, faculty and staff," he said in a statement. The Department of Energy said in its letter it found several 'examples of noncompliance' and faulted UCLA for inviting applicants to disclose their race in personal statements and for considering factors including family income and ZIP code. Affirmative action in college admissions was outlawed in California in 1996 and struck down by the Supreme Court in 2023. The letter said the school has taken steps that amount to 'a transparent attempt to engage in race-based admissions in all but name,' disadvantaging white, Jewish and Asian American applicants. It also said UCLA fails to promote an environment free from antisemitism and discriminates against women by allowing transgender women to compete on women's teams. Frenk said that in its letter the federal government "claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons' to freeze the funding but 'this far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination.' Earlier this week, UCLA reached a $6 million settlement with three Jewish students and a Jewish professor who sued the university arguing it violated their civil rights by allowing pro-Palestinian protesters in 2024 to block their access to classes and other areas on campus. UCLA initially had argued that it had no legal responsibility over the issue because protesters, not the university, blocked Jewish students' access to some areas. The university also worked with law enforcement to thwart attempts to set up new protest camps. The university has said that it's committed to campus safety and inclusivity and will continue to implement recommendations. ___ Rodriguez reported from San Francisco and Binkley from Washington.
