What's at stake in French Foreign Minister's visit in Kyiv?
21/07/2025
South Syria faces uncertain calm after deadly clashes that killed over 1,100
21/07/2025
Japan PM Ishiba vows to stay on after bruising election defeat
21/07/2025
Ecuador's biggest drug lord 'Fito' extradited to US
21/07/2025
D-Day veteran and TikTok star 'Papa Jake' Larson dies at 102
21/07/2025
Storms hit southern China mainland in wake of Typhoon Wipha
21/07/2025
Gaza civil defence says Israeli fire kills 93 aid seekers
21/07/2025
A million people sign French petition against bringing back bee-killing pesticide
20/07/2025
Astronomer CEO announces resignation after viral kiss cam video at Coldplay concert
Americas
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
13 hours ago
- France 24
Thai, Cambodian troops exchange fire as border tensions spiral
Thailand said at least one civilian was killed amid fresh clashes Thursday in multiple contested border areas with Cambodia after the nations downgraded their diplomatic relations in a rapidly escalating dispute. The Thai army said it has launched airstrikes on ground targets in Cambodia. The Cambodian Defense Ministry said Thailand's army used jets to drop bombs on a road near the ancient Preah Vihear temple. Surasant Kongsiri, a spokesperson for the Thai Defense Ministry, said three other civilians, including a 5-year-old boy, were seriously injured after Cambodia fired shots into a residential area in Thailand's Surin province. Clashes are ongoing in at least six areas along the border, Surasant said. The first clash Thursday morning happened in an area near the ancient Ta Muen Thom temple along the border of Surin and Cambodia's Oddar Meanchey province. Both Thailand and Cambodia accused each other of opening fire first. A livestream video from Thailand's side showed people running from their homes and hiding in a concrete bunker Thursday morning as explosions sounded. Thailand's foreign ministry issued a statement saying the country "is prepared to intensify our self-defense measures if Cambodia persists in its armed attack and violations upon Thailand's sovereignty in accordance with international law and principles." Downgrading diplomatic ties Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Manet said Thailand attacked Cambodian army positions at Ta Muen Thom temple and Ta Krabey temple in Oddar Meanchey and expanded to the area along Cambodia's Preah Vihear province and Thailand's Ubon Ratchathani province. 'Cambodia has always maintained a position of peaceful resolution of problems, but in this case, we have no choice but to respond with armed force against armed aggression,' he said. Earlier Thursday, Cambodia said it was downgrading diplomatic relations with Thailand to their lowest level, expelling the Thai ambassador and recalling all Cambodian staff from its embassy in Bangkok. That was in response to Thailand closing its northeastern border crossings with Cambodia, withdrawing its ambassador and expelling the Cambodian ambassador Wednesday to protest a land mine blast that wounded five Thai soldiers. Relations between the Southeast Asian neighbors have deteriorated sharply since May when a Cambodian soldier was killed in an armed confrontation in another of the several small patches of land both countries claim as their own territory. The Thai army said of Thursday's clash that its forces heard an unmanned aerial vehicle before seeing six armed Cambodian soldiers moving closer to Thailand's station. It said Thai soldiers tried to shout at them to defuse the situation but the Cambodian side started to open fire. 'Unprovoked incursion' Cambodia's Defense Ministry said Thailand started the armed clash and Cambodia 'acted strictly within the bounds of self-defense, responding to an unprovoked incursion by Thai troops that violated our territorial integrity.' Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen posted on his Facebook page, urging people not to panic and have faith in their government and the military. The Thai embassy in Phnom Penh posted on Facebook that there were clashes at several border areas that could continue to escalate. It urged Thai nationals in Cambodia to leave the country if they could and advised others not to travel to Cambodia unless absolutely necessary. On Wednesday, a land mine blast near the border wounded five Thai soldiers, one of whom lost a leg. A week earlier, a land mine in a different contested area exploded and wounded three Thai soldiers when one of them stepped on it and lost a foot. Thai authorities have alleged the mines were newly laid along paths that by mutual agreement were supposed to be safe. They said the mines were Russian-made and not of a type employed by Thailand's military. Cambodia rejected Thailand's account as 'baseless accusations,' pointing out that many unexploded mines and other ordnance are a legacy of 20th century wars and unrest. Nationalist passions on both sides have further inflamed the situation, and Thailand's prime minister was suspended from office on July 1 to be investigated for possible ethics violations over her handling of the border dispute. Border disputes are longstanding issues that have caused periodic tensions between the countries. The most prominent and violent conflicts have been around the 1,000-year-old Preah Vihear temple. In 1962, the International Court of Justice awarded sovereignty over the area to Cambodia and that became a major irritant in the relations of both countries. Cambodia went back to the court in 2011, following several clashes between its army and Thai forces which killed about 20 people and displaced thousands. The court reaffirmed the ruling in 2013, a decision that still rattled Thailand.
France 24
17 hours ago
- France 24
Asian markets extend gains on US trade deal hopes
Investors have been on a roll in recent weeks on bets that governments will eventually hammer out pacts with Donald Trump ahead of the US president's August 1 deadline. The mood has been upbeat since news that Japan had reached a deal to lower sweeping tariffs from 25 percent to 15 percent, including those on the country's crucial car sector. The breakthrough fanned hopes that others were in the pipeline. However, there is talk that the European Union is edging towards an agreement. Reports say Brussels could get something similar to Japan, with tariffs cut to 15 percent -- from the threatened 30 percent. The Financial Times said the two would waive tariffs on some products, including aircraft, spirits and medical devices. That came after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said negotiations were making progress, with talks planned later in the day between the bloc's top trade negotiator and his American counterpart. Analysts said a deal with Washington's biggest trading entity would provide a massive boost to equities However, failure to reach a deal, triggering Trump's 30 percent levies on August 1, could cause havoc on markets, analysts warned. France has been loudest in insisting Brussels must show it is willing to deploy its trade weapon, known as the anti-coercion instrument -- allowing officials to take measures such as import and export restrictions on goods and services. Neil Wilson at Saxo Markets warned that would end up "effectively killing trade between the two... the nuclear option is on the table it seems, but for the moment expectation seems to be veering towards a deal". After another record day for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq on Wall Street, Asia picked up the baton and ran. Tokyo piled on two percent, having jumped more than three percent Wednesday on the trade deal, while Hong Kong continued its standout year with another advance. Shanghai, Seoul, Singapore, Wellington, Taipei and Manila also rose. Traders are also keeping an eye on developments in Tokyo after Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba denied discussing his resignation with party elders on Wednesday, as speculation about his future intensified following a weekend election debacle. Despite the saga, the yen extended its gains, briefly hitting 145.86 per dollar as the trade deal allows investors to turn their attention to the Bank of Japan's policy meeting next week hoping for guidance on its next interest rate hike. The unit had been sitting around 147.90 before the deal. Bank officials have held off rocking the boat on the issue amid tariff uncertainty, but observers say the agreement can allow them to reconsider lifting in October. Key figures at around 0230 GMT Tokyo - Nikkei 225: UP 2.0 percent at 41,983.50 (break) Hong Kong - Hang Seng Index: UP 0.3 percent at 25,606.58 Shanghai - Composite: UP 0.2 percent at 3,588.11 Dollar/yen: DOWN at 146.06 yen from 146.47 yen on Wednesday Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1772 from $1.1777 Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3582 from $1.3579 Euro/pound: DOWN at 86.66 pence from 86.68 pence West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.3 percent at $65.47 per barrel Brent North Sea Crude: UP 0.3 percent at $68.71 per barrel New York - Dow: UP 1.1 percent at 45,010.29 (close) © 2025 AFP
France 24
a day ago
- France 24
‘Japanese First': The deep roots of the rising far right
Japan's centre-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed the country almost without interruption since the end of World War II, lost its majority in the country's upper house over the weekend. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba seems determined to remain in office despite calls from both party and public for his resignation. At this point, it's not clear that he can. More surprising than the party's loss of support, though, is where those votes went. Rather than benefitting the established opposition, the LDP instead found itself losing ground to more strident right-wing groups, including the far-right Sanseito party, which seized a record 14 seats. Explicitly inspired by far-right political forces in the US and Europe including US President Donald Trump's MAGA movement, Alternative for Germany and France's National Rally, the 'Japanese First' group has championed severely restricting the number of migrants in Japan – to be capped at 5 percent of the native-born population in each municipality – tightening the rules around naturalisation, encouraging women to leave the workplace to become stay-at-home mothers and preventing any recognition of the female Imperial Line. 02:34 Launched on YouTube in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sanseito gained its first followers with a barrage of videos opposing public health measures put in place by the government to stem the virus's spread, including mask mandates, vaccine requirements and PCR testing. As its audience grew, free videos giving viewers health and well-being advice increasingly gave way to members-only content preaching a global conspiracy by liberal elites to corrode Japan's moral and cultural strength. The group won its first upper house seat in 2022, with 56-year-old leader Sohei Kamiya – a former supermarket manager and reservist in Japan's military Self-Defence Forces – publishing a pamphlet during the campaign claiming that 'international financial capital affiliated with Jews' were pushing for mask mandates to 'incite exaggerated fears of the coronavirus pandemic'. At the heart of this narrative was what the growing ranks of Sanseito cadres called a 'silent invasion' of foreigners, buying up the nation's infrastructure, growing fat on stolen welfare, raising crime rates and dragging down wages for native-born workers. For those who have watched the rise of far-right nativist groups across the world, it's a familiar tale – albeit one that feels somewhat out of place in Japan, a country where immigrants make up just 3 percent of the country's shrinking population. Japan's government loses upper house majority 04:14 Although immigration remains meagre compared to other developed countries, Akira Igarashi, an assistant professor at Osaka University's Faculty of Human Sciences who researches policy and social attitudes towards migrants, said the number of people moving to Japan had risen sharply in the decades since 1989, when the country uneasily opened its borders to migrant labour. 'Nowadays it's almost 3 percent out of the total population, while about 10 years ago, it was more like 1.5 or 1.6," he said. Having long relied on its vast rural workforce and mass-mechanisation of heavy industry, Japan began in the 1980s to attract more and more migrant workers from across Asia and the Japanese diaspora in Latin America. These workers were largely drawn to the country's small- and medium-scale manufacturers and service industries, meeting a demand that has only grown more acute as Japan's population ages and its birthrates drop. Paired with Japan's long-stagnant economy, the weakening yen has led to a sense of economic decline compounded with a global cost-of-living crisis that has hit the nation hard. 'The combination – economic decline and the drastic increase in the migrant population – makes a political opportunity for the anti-migrant party, the radical Sanseito party,' Igarashi said. He said that Sanseito and similar right-wing populist parties in Japan had consciously adopted the rhetoric adopted by far-right forces in the US and Western Europe. 'I think they studied quite a lot of the case of the US and European societies,' Igarashi said. 'They evoke the threat from migrants – although of course, it's not there – but they evoke and they agitate the threat of migrants.' For example, he said these groups falsely claim that immigrants have increased the crime rate or are given preferential access to welfare benefits, or that 'Japanese society and the country's economic situation has declined' because of them. Blaming immigrants 'sounds very convincing' in a social environment such as Japan's, which he noted is a 'relatively ethnically and culturally homogeneous country'. 05:52 But although Sanseito's self-consciously MAGA-style rhetoric may have the ring of a foreign import, Japan is no stranger to more home-grown ultranationalist movements. Karin Narita, a research associate in Japanese politics and international relations at the University of Sheffield, said that the right wing of the LDP had long harboured figures with revisionist views of Imperial Japan's own legacy of racial supremacy. 'There's a real turn in the early 1990s, where there's a re-emergence [of] much more culturalist exclusionary, nationalist politicians – like former prime minister [Shinzo] Abe and his supporters, who would have had much more kind of anti-Asian sentiment at an ideological level,' she said. 'So there was a lot of support around nationalist educational movements, a lot of issues around voting rights for non-citizen special residents – who are primarily post-colonial Korean and Chinese communities that are in Japan because of the legacy of World War II and imperialism.' Japan is home to hundreds of thousands of ethnic Korean and Chinese people whose families arrived in the country as colonial subjects before and during World War II. Many of whom still lack legal citizenship despite having lived in the country for generations. In the last two to three decades, Narita said, there has been 'a lot of shifting within the conservative party that accommodates much more reactionary ideological sentiments'. Abe was, like many LDP members, part of the ultranationalist Nippon Kaigi group, accused of lobbying for negationist policies aimed at rehabilitating the legacy of fascist Imperial Japan. While prime minister, Abe publicly and repeatedly denied state involvement in the systematic sexual enslavement of Korean and Chinese women – known as 'comfort women' – during Imperial Japan's expansionist campaigns across Asia. The premier also downplayed Japanese atrocities in the Chinese city of Nanjing, visited a memorial shrine that included tributes to war criminals and tried to revise Japan's pacifist post-war constitution to allow the country to launch offensive military actions abroad. Igarashi said that the LDP had also helped promote anti-migrant sentiment through its efforts to head off Sanseito's assault on its right flank. 'On one hand, the LDP became more anti-migrant during the election campaign – I think this is quite similar to the US and European society – because the radical right Sanseito party made the migrant issue more central in Japanese society,' he said. 'And the LDP and the other parties tried to catch up on that issue – and the LDP especially, because they are more conservative.' 'They tried to establish a new institution to observe migrants, their lives and behaviours, and they called migrants illegal,' he said. 'So they became more anti-migrant during the election campaign, and evoked the threat to Japanese citizens even more.' Kamiya has roundly rejected the idea that his party is xenophobic. 'There is a real, very acute understanding, broadly speaking, that with the aging population there is a real, pragmatic economic need for a source of labour,' Narita said. 'And so in many ways, this sort of anti-foreign sentiment hasn't necessarily been as politicised to the same extent towards migrant communities who are very clearly filling that economic need. It's more subtle in the sense that what is being fostered … isn't necessarily about an overtly racist rhetoric as much as it's about a necessity of protecting Japanese culture.' But scratch the surface, she said, and it becomes clear that the party's vision of Japanese society remains rooted in racialised ideals of blood and belonging. In one of Sanseito's proposed policies, she said, the party would explicitly prohibit foreigners from having voting or civic rights, and it would not allow naturalised citizens to be able to hold public office until they had been naturalised for three generations. 'So, on one hand, in public discourse there's a lot of dancing around the issue … it's about 'Japaneseness' and Japanese sentiment,' she said. 'But if you really get down to what the upshot is public policy-wise, what they would do – it's this incredibly racialised, hierarchical understanding of Japaneseness.'
