Новости за 20.08.2018

Colonel Sean Ryan is the spokesman of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) group. In an interview with FRANCE 24, Ryan details the coalition’s plans to militarily defeat the IS group in Iraq and in Syria, but warns that “we’re still fighting a very brutal enemy”. Ryan says many IS group fighters are now hiding underground – making them extremely difficult to quantify – and many of them “only come out at night”. He also explains how they use civilians as human shields.

As Greece officially emerged from an eight-year-long bailout programme on Monday few see reasons to celebrate, with one in five Greeks unemployed, incomes down by a third and taxes skyrocketing.

More than 50 cows, sheep and horses have died in France’s most serious outbreak of anthrax in two decades, according to officials who have warned of a vaccine shortage.

Revelations that Italian actress and director Asia Argento agreed to pay $380,000 to a young actor who accused her of sexual assault has sent shockwaves through the global #MeToo movement, of which she is a leading figure.

Pope Francis issued a letter to Catholics around the world Monday condemning the crime of priestly sexual abuse and its cover-up and demanding accountability, in response to new revelations in the US of decades of misconduct by the Catholic Church.

In Venezuela, the government has knocked five zeroes off the refurbished Bolívar in a desperate attempt to control hyperinflation. The Bolívar Soberano is anchored to a crypto-currency that was launched earlier this year. In May 2018, Nicolas Maduro was re-elected president in a vote deemed unfair by both the European Union and the United States. Maduro promised to focus on boosting the economy, but Venezuelans are yet to see their lives improve. Report by FRANCE 24's Claire Paccalin.

More than 200,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia overnight from August 20 to 21, 1968, to halt a blossoming political and cultural liberalisation, bringing an abrupt end to the Prague Spring and tightening the Kremlin's grip.

Mali's Constitutional Court on Monday declared Ibrahim Boubacar Keita president after the 73-year-old incumbent won elections that his opponent, former minister Soumaila Cisse, 68, said were marred by fraud.

An assault on a police station near Barcelona by a knife-wielding man who was shot dead by an officer in northeastern Spain is being treated as a "terrorist attack", police said Monday.

French energy giant Total has officially quit its multi-billion-dollar gas project in Iran, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said on Monday, following the reimposition of US sanctions.

Afghan forces launched a lightning operation in northern Afghanistan on Monday, rescuing 149 people, including women and children, abducted by the Taliban. Operations to free another 21 were still underway.

The Taliban ambushed three buses in northern Afghanistan, taking more than 100 passengers hostage, local officials said Monday, as the government awaited a response to its truce offer during the Eid al Adha festival.

Paris Saint-Germain pulled ahead of their main title rivals at the weekend as newly-promoted Nimes thrashed Marseille and fellow newcomers Reims dispatched Lyon to maintain their fairytale start to life back in Ligue 1.

Dozens of elderly South Koreans crossed the heavily fortified border into North Korea on Monday for heart-wrenching meetings with relatives most haven't seen since they were separated by the turmoil of the Korean War.

Brazil's President Michel Temer called an emergency meeting of key ministers Sunday after ordering troops to the border with Venezuela as regional tensions build over the exodus from its crisis-hit neighbor.