👋 Shlamalokhoun!*
Welcome to Monday, where the world reacts to Vladimir Putin’s unsurprising reelection, Israel raids Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital where it says “senior Hamas terrorists” are hiding and Iceland declares a state of emergency after another major volcano eruption. Meanwhile, Jessica Berthereau in Paris-based daily Les Echos takes stock of how the conversation around menopause in France has evolved.
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[*Assyrian, Syria]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
“No will to maintain peace.” Bogota-based El Espectador dedicates its front page to the end of the truce with armed rebels of the Central General Staff (EMC) in three departments in the country: Narino, Cauca and Valle del Cauca. This suspension of ceasefire, signed a year ago between President Gustavo Petro's administration and the dissident faction of the FARC group, follows a series of violent attacks from the guerrillas in these regions, including a strike on an Indigenous group that left one woman dead.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• West blasts Putin “pseudo” election win: Vladimir Putin’s landslide (88% of the vote) election victory for another six-year term as president was widely denounced by Western officials, with Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky adding that the Russian leader “is doing everything to rule forever.” The German MFA called the election a “pseudo-election,” and a White House spokesperson said it was “obviously not free or fair.” Thousands of Alexei Navalny supporters arrived at polling stations in unison at noon on Sunday to protest Putin. Follow Worldcrunch’s coverage of the Russian elections here.
• Israel launches overnight raid on Gaza hospital: Israel Defense Forces carried out an operation to attack “senior Hamas terrorists” that it says regrouped inside Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital. IDF chief spokesperson Read Adm Daniel Hagari told patients and staff they did not have to evacuate, but eyewitness accounts called the raid “catastrophic.” The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry denounced the operation as a violation of international humanitarian law. Follow Worldcrunch’s coverage of the Middle East here.
• Taliban retaliates against Pakistan military airstrikes: Afghanistan’s Taliban-run government said Monday that Pakistani airstrikes killed five women and three children at the country’s eastern border. Afghan security forces launched heavy weapons in retaliation at the Pakistani military, the Taliban’s defense ministry stated. The strikes follow a recent series of militant attacks in Pakistan, mostly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
• North Korea fires ballistic missiles during Blinken visit to Seoul: North Korea fired short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea, apparently to coincide with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Seoul Monday for a conference on democracy. South Korea called North Korea’s actions “a clear provocation,” and the U.S. State Department and Japanese defense ministry condemned the launches.
• The EU pledges €7.4 billion in aid to Egypt: The European Commission announced a major funding package Sunday in Cairo, with a goal of addressing migrant flows into Egypt from crises affecting other countries in the region. Human Rights Watch said the EU is “rewarding authoritarianism” by working with Egypt, which HRW has accused of mistreating migrants. Follow Worldcrunch’s coverage of the EU and migration.
• Cubans protest shortages: Rare protests broke out this weekend in Santiago de Cuba over electricity and food shortages. Cuba has faced blackouts since the beginning of March because of maintenance to the island’s main thermoelectric plant, leaving some areas without power for up to 14 hours a day. Cuban citizens protested the blackouts and food shortages, which Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said “enemies of the revolution” aimed to exploit. Read more about the Cuban subsidy program on Worldcrunch.
• Berlin music scene becomes UNESCO World Heritage site: The German Commission for UNESCO designated Berlin’s techno music scene as a site of intangible cultural heritage on the German national registry. The capital city’s club music scene, which began in the early 1990s and embodied post-Cold War optimism, has become an established economic contributor to the city. For more from Berlin-based daily Die Welt: Germany's Legendary Clubbing Culture Crashes Museum Space.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
7.68 million
For the first time in almost a decade, the number of new marriages in China has increased. According to data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, 7.68 million Chinese tied the knot in 2023 — a 12.4% rise compared to the previous year. This jump can partly be explained by the fact that many couples delayed their nuptials during the COVID-19 pandemic.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
La ménopause: how French women are breaking taboos about age and the female body
Long hidden and even seen as shameful, menopause is finally making its way into the public sphere in France, and elsewhere. Celebrities, journalists and sociologists are now talking about it openly, and brands are offering solutions to help reimagine what this physical and psychological change means to some women, reports Jessica Berthereau in Paris-based daily Les Echos.
💬 For some time now, other cultural productions (essays, comics, plays) have been helping French women to “make the menopause visible in the public sphere, outside of just the medical world,” sociologist Cécile Charlap observes. “These are new discourses where women themselves are speaking and giving the floor to other women." In the wake of this, many brands have seized the subject, whether cosmetics, thalassotherapy (the therapeutic use of seawater) or yoga retreats.
⚖️ Having gone through this period herself, author Elise Thiébaut says that she experienced moments of trial and difficulty but also of joy, freedom and opportunity. Incidentally, the latest data from France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) shows that menopause is far from difficult for all women: between a fifth and a quarter of women suffer from severe symptoms that affect their quality of life.
👩 “For me, the menopause does not exist because there is a different menopause for every woman,” says Sophie Kune, who created the Instagram account @menopause.stories in early 2020, four years after she was put into artificial menopause. “Each woman lives through menopause in her own way, according to her culture, her heritage and what she has experienced in her life,” Kune says.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📣 VERBATIM
“One candidate is too old and mentally unfit to be president. The other one is me.”
— U.S. President Joe Biden joked about his opponent Donald Trump in the presidential race during a speech at the Gridiron Club dinner, a Washington traditional event on Saturday night, as a way of responding to the concerns about his own age.
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• Navalny's "Protest Noon" Crashes Putin Victory On Final Day Of Russian Election — VAZHNYYE ISTORII/IMPORTANT STORIES
• Macron, From "Don't Humiliate Russia" To West's No. 1 Hawk On Ukraine War — FRANCE INTER
• García Márquez's Final Novel And The Eternal Beauty Of The Unfinished — EL ESPECTADOR
✍️ Newsletter by Katrina Scalise and Laure Gautherin
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