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Passengers gather around the departure and arrival boards at the Gare Montparnasse train station in Paris on 26 July, 2024. Photo: THIBAUD MORITZ / AFP France is leaning towards the likelihood that far-left extremists were behind last week's sabotage of the country's SNCF rail network - which coincided with the Olympic Games opening ceremony, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin says. Saboteurs struck France's high-speed train network on Friday with pre-dawn attacks on signal substations and cables at critical points, causing travel chaos hours before the opening ceremony. "We have identified the profiles of several people," Darmanin told France 2 TV, regarding the hunt for those saboteurs. He added that the saboteurs' mode of operation bore the hallmarks of far-left extremists, without pr...

By Ruma Paul, Reuters Soldiers patrolling the streets following a curfew in Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital city, on 22 July, 2024. Photo: AFP/ Syed Mahamudur Rahman Bangladesh said it had restored internet services as conditions return to normal after students called off protests against reforms to job quotas, following unrest that killed nearly 150 people this month. The agitation, which began in universities and colleges last month, flared into nationwide protests that injured thousands as security forces cracked down, leading to curfew, army patrols on the streets and internet suspension to rein in the violence. "The broadband and mobile internet connectivity has been restored with full functionality by now," the foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday. "Other forms of communi...

The County Court in Melbourne. Photo: William West / AFP A Victorian mother has cried and protested her innocence as she became the first person in Australia to be jailed for breaking forced marriage laws. Sakina Muhammad Jan will have to serve a minimum of 12 months jail after being found guilty of pressuring her daughter to marry a man who went on to murder her in 2020. After the wedding, Ruqia Haidari, 21, moved across the country to live with her new husband in Perth. Six weeks later, he had slashed her throat with a kitchen knife. A Western Australian court sentenced Mohammad Ali Halimi to life for the killing. Jan was supported by about 15 family and Hazara community members in Melbourne's County Court on Monday, some of whom wept as Judge Fran Dalziel sentenced her to three years...

Venezuelan President and presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro reacts following the presidential election results in Caracas on 29 July, 2024. Photo: AFP/ Juan Barreto Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in the country's presidential election in the early hours of Monday morning, even as the country's opposition said its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez was the victor and it had the polling to prove it. What happened with the count? The country's electoral authority (CNE) said just after midnight on Monday that Maduro had won a third six-year term with 51 percent of the vote. The authority said Gonzalez won 44 percent, but opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said opposition candidate Gonzalez had secured 70 percent of the vote and that multiple independent exit polls and q...

Telecommunications towers on the Place de la Concorde, one of the main public squares in Paris, in 2023. Photo: AFP/ Joao Luiz Bulcao - Hans Lucas Telecom installations belonging to French companies SFR and Bouygues Telecom have been vandalised, reported Le Parisien newspaper and BFM TV on Monday, citing unnamed sources. SFR and Bouygues did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. The Olympic Games are currently underway at venues across France, with most concentrated in Paris. Millions of spectators are expected to attend events during the programme, which runs until 11 August. The reports said cables in electrical cabinets had been cut in southern France, and that installations in the Meuse region near Luxembourg and the Oise area near Paris had been vandalised, affec...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be part of the meeting in August. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone The foreign and defence ministers of the United States and Australia will meet in the US on 6 August, the country's embassy in Canberra said on Monday. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will co-host their Australian counterparts, Penny Wong and Richard Marles in Annapolis, Maryland as part of the annual Australia-US Ministerial (AUSMIN) dialogue. "Secretary Blinken and Secretary Austin look forward to strengthening our cooperation on the full range of global and regional issues and deepening the US-Australia alliance with their Australian counterparts," the US Embassy said in a statement. Washington and Canberra were close allies, cooperating mo...