More than 250,000 people took to the streets in Paris on Sunday to express their opposition to ‘anti-family’ proposals in France, including plans to legalise medical procedures that will allow same-sex couples to have children. Alan Craig of the GayMarriageNoThanks campaign, who was invited to represent the UK by organisers, La Manif Pour Tous, said: ‘The youthfulness of the protesters was noticeable. Overwhelmingly the participants were in their twenties and thirties, and teenagers were conspicuous by their noisy enthusiasm and, often, street dancing too. ‘As in the UK, the government is ignoring the people as it drives through its anti-family proposals. But, clearly, at the grass-roots the traditional natural family is alive and well and full of youthful support in France.’ On Sunday, contributions were made by delegates from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Slovakia, as well as GayMarriageNoThanks from the UK.
A ceasefire may still be officially in place in eastern Ukraine, but try telling that to the owners of burning homes in Donetsk. Battles are raging unabated between Ukrainian forces and separatist fighters, mainly around the city’s airport and nearby neighbourhoods are often caught in the crossfire. Resident Valentina Kovaleva told reporters: ‘All the balconies were damaged by shrapnel, everything burning. Can you imagine, if we hadn’t sent away the children, they would be dead now. Every day there is shooting. More than 3,500 people have been killed since fighting began between pro-Russian separatists and government troops’. Raisa Kozlova, a 75-year-old Donetsk resident injured by shelling, said: ‘What truce? You call that a truce? They might make agreements and talks, but it changes nothing. We’re still being bombed.’
Belgian prosecutors have begun the country's biggest-ever terrorism trial, accusing 46 men of being members of a terrorist organisation that indoctrinated young men to fight in Syria. Nine of those charged were present in court in Antwerp on Monday, including the alleged ringleader Fouad Belkacem. The others were allegedly still in Syria, with many possibly dead in the fighting there. Prosecutors said the accused belonged to Sharia4Belgium, a group disbanded two years ago, which prosecutors say was led by the 32-year-old Belkacem. The court heard that members approached young men and a few teenage women in Antwerp and Vilvoorde, north of Brussels, to invite them to their centre in Antwerp where they were indoctrinated and readied for their trip to Syria. ‘The clear aim was to prepare them for armed combat,’ Luc Festraets, a prosecutor, told the court.
Around 60 towns in the south of France have been officially declared natural disaster sites following severe flooding caused by torrential downpours, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced on Tuesday. Flood waters inundated roads and highways, engulfing cars after the Lez river, which flows by the coastal city of Montpellier and burst its banks. More than 4,000 people across the rain-soaked region spent the night in emergency centres, schools, train stations or the airport, the local government said in a statement. According to the authorities, emergency workers were called out more than 1,200 times, backed by three helicopters. ‘We will put in place natural disaster measures for about 60 towns,’ Cazeneuve told local media, adding he would head to the flood-hit region later on Tuesday. Rains were expected to ease by Tuesday and meteorologists downgraded the maximum red alert to orange in the region
Ukranian officials have said that government troops and pro-Russian rebels are withdrawing forces and artillery from frontline positions in eastern Ukraine in line with a peace agreement. Monday's withdrawal leaves a 30km buffer between the two sides as part of a nine-point memorandum signed on Saturday. The agreement came after a truce signed on September 5 was hampered by violations, leading to the deaths of 39 Ukrainian troops and civilians. However, reduced fire from pro-Russian rebels in recent days has allowed Ukranian forces to begin to pull back troops, said Anriy Lysenko, a Ukranian military spokeswoman. Although the withdrawal has begun, it is ‘not as large as expected’, added Lysenko. ‘We are seeing a trend that [the rebels] are reducing their use of heavy armed weaponry.’ Neither side has completed their withdrawal. The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, said that a continued Ukrainian offensive risked alienating support from the US and other Western governments.
The Belgian Justice Department has leads that jihadists from The Hague have plans to attack the office of the European Commission in Brussels. In August, a man and a woman of Turkish origin were arrested at Brussels airport where they had returned from Turkey. They had most probably been in Syria. Apparently the Belgian Justice Department is searching for additional jihadists in the Netherlands. All of these jihadists are Dutchmen of Turkish descent who are suspected of having connections to jihadist networks.
Traffickers are accused of ramming a boat carrying more than 500 migrants sailing from Egypt, causing it to sink in the Mediterranean off the coast of Malta, an inter-governmental agency reports. The account is based on reports from two survivors who were rescued and taken ashore in Sicily after spending a day and a half in the water clinging to flotation devices. The two Palestinian men, aged 27 and 33, were picked up by a Panamanian merchant ship. They told staff from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) that they had fled Gaza through Egypt and were requesting asylum. They said that the migrants were forced to change boats several times, but resisted moving to a boat that they did not think was safe or big enough to carry them. When they refused to cooperate, the traffickers, in a separate boat, reportedly rammed the boat the migrants were in, causing it to sink 300 miles southeast of Malta on September 10.
Ukraine's parliament has granted self-rule to parts of eastern regions held by pro-Russian rebels, as well as an amnesty for the fighters themselves. A senior Ukrainian rebel leader has told the BBC that a new law granting self-rule to parts of the east will not sway the demand for independence. Andrei Purgin said there were no plans to develop any political relationship, federal or otherwise, with Ukraine. But he said there were ‘positives’ in the move by MPs to grant self-rule and an amnesty to pro-Russian rebels. He said it could be used as the basis for dialogue but rebels would not give up on a desire for ‘the Russian world’. The new law, which affects Donetsk and Luhansk regions and is in line with the 5 September ceasefire, was condemned by some Ukrainian MPs as ‘capitulation’. The truce halted months of conflict between separatists and government forces. It has held despite sporadic fighting between the two sides over the past 12 days.