PARIS: France’s prison population hit a record high on May 1, with 83,681 inmates held in facilities that have a capacity of just 62,570, justice ministry data showed on Saturday.
Over the past year, France’s prison population grew by 6,000 inmates, taking the occupancy rate to 133.7 percent.
The record overcrowding has even seen 23 out of France’s 186 detention facilities operating at more than twice their capacity.
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has called the overcrowding crisis “unacceptable,” has suggested building new facilities to accommodate the growing prison population.
The hard-line minister announced in mid-May a plan to build a high-security prison in French Guiana — an overseas territory situated north of Brazil — for the most “dangerous” criminals, including drug kingpins.
Prison overcrowding is “bad for absolutely everyone,” said Darmanin in late April, citing the “appalling conditions” for prisoners and “the insecurity and violence” faced by prison officers.
A series of coordinated attacks on French prisons in April saw assailants torching cars, spraying the entrance of one prison with automatic gunfire, and leaving mysterious inscriptions.
The assaults embarrassed the right-leaning government, whose tough-talking ministers — Darmanin and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau — have vowed to step up the fight against narcotics.
And in late April, lawmakers approved a major new bill to combat drug-related crime, with some of France’s most dangerous drug traffickers facing detention in high-security prison units in the coming months.
France ranks among the worst countries in Europe for prison overcrowding, placing third behind Cyprus and Romania, according to a Council of Europe study published in June 2024.
France’s prison population reaches all-time high
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France’s prison population reaches all-time high
- Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has called the overcrowding crisis “unacceptable,” has suggested building new facilities to accommodate the growing prison population
Tsunami alert after powerful quakes strike off coast of Russia: USGS
- Earlier 5.0-magnitude and 6.7-magnitude earthquakes did not initially trigger a tsunami alert
MOSCOW: Three powerful earthquakes struck off the coast of Russia’s far east on Sunday, triggering a tsunami alert, the US Geological Survey said.
Earlier 5.0-magnitude and 6.7-magnitude earthquakes did not initially trigger a tsunami alert, but were followed by a 7.4-magnitude quake at 0849 GMT, prompting the USGS to warn that “hazardous tsunami waves are possible” within 300 kilometers (186 miles) of the epicenter in the Pacific, off the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
Russia says it downed 142 Ukrainian drones, including 27 over Moscow region
- The drones were reportedly shot down over a number of regions in the European part of Russia, as well as over the Black Sea
MOSCOW: Russia’s defense ministry and the mayor of Moscow said it had downed 142 drones overnight, including 27 over the Moscow region.
The drones were reportedly shot down over a number of regions in the European part of Russia, as well as over the Black Sea.
The latest attacks included four drones headed toward the Russian capital, which were downed on Sunday morning, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram around 1000 local time (0700 GMT).
According to Russia’s aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia, four major airports serving Moscow – Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovskiy – were affected, resulting in 134 flights being redirected.
By 1000 Moscow time, only two airports remained closed to air traffic – Vnukovo in the Moscow region and Grabtsevo in the Kaluga region.
Heavy rains in South Korea leave 14 dead and 12 others missing
- Since Wednesday, southern regions have received up to about 600-800 millimeters of rain
SEOUL: Torrential rains that slammed South Korea for five days have left 14 people dead and 12 others missing, the government said Sunday.
One person was killed on Sunday after their house collapsed during heavy rain and another person was found dead after being swept by a swollen stream in Gapyeong, a town northeast of Seoul, the Interior and Safety Ministry said.
The ministry said eight people were discovered dead and six others were reported missing in the southern town of Sancheong on Saturday after heavy downpours caused landslides, house collapses and flash floods there.
A ministry report said that six people remain missing in Gapyeong and the southern city of Gwangju.
Earlier last week, three people were found dead in a submerged car, and a person was also killed when their car was buried by soil and concrete after a retaining wall of an overpass collapsed in Osan, just south of Seoul, during heavy rain.
As of 9 a.m. on Sunday, about 3,840 people remain evacuated from their homes, the ministry report said. The rain stopped in most of South Korea on Sunday, and heavy rain alerts have been subsequently lifted throughout the country, ministry officials said.
Since Wednesday, southern regions have received up to about 600-800 millimeters (24-31 inches) of rain, according to the ministry report.
Tearful relatives await news from Vietnam wreck rescue
- The Wonder Sea boat was carrying 48 passengers and five crew members
- Rescue workers saved 11 people, and recovered the dead near the site of the capsizing
HALONG BAY, Vietnam: Relatives anxiously sat beside ambulances on the wharf of one of Vietnam’s most popular tourist sites on Sunday, waiting for news of loved ones who were on a tourist boat that capsized killing dozens.
Fruits and flowers were laid on the coast for the at least 37 killed in the wreckage on Saturday in what some called Ha Long Bay’s worst-ever disaster.
As rescuers worked into Sunday morning to salvage the sunken boat, a handful of people were still missing.
The tourist vessel called “Wonder Sea” had been carrying 53 people, including more than 20 children, around the UNESCO World Heritage Site, according to state media.
Hoang Quang rushed from Hanoi to Quang Ninh province at 2:00 am on Sunday for news of his cousin and her family who were on the boat when it capsized.
The couple – a housewife and fruit seller married to a bus driver – had “tried their best” to afford the trip around the world-famous bay.
“They found the body of (the husband), not my cousin yet,” Hoang said.
He was “so shocked” when he heard news of the incident and immediately went to the wharf with other worried family members.
“Suddenly the victims were my relatives – anyone would be scared. We didn’t know what to do, except to keep waiting,” he said.
“We think that as we are all here, she knew and she would show up. We are all so anxious... We just wish and pray for her to come back here to us.”
At Ha Long city’s main funeral home, AFP journalists saw bodies wrapped in red cloth being carried in on stretchers, as friends and relatives cried in front of more than a dozen coffins.
A 68-year-old man, who asked not to be named, rushed to the scene at 3:00 am, only to discover that his relatives – a young family of four, including two boys – had died in the capsizing.
“We were all so shocked,” he said tearfully. “This was a very sudden accident. They were just taking the kids out to the bay for summer holidays and it ended up terrible.”
The bodies of the mother and children had been recovered, but he was awaiting news of the father to be able to cremate them together.
“We know there is no hope,” he said.
The friend of another victim, a firefighter who had taken the trip with colleagues, said they had known each other since university.
“He was still single. We brought his body back to (his hometown) for burial early this morning,” the friend said.
He praised the rescue efforts and said provincial authorities had given families 25 million dong ($955) for each victim.
By early Sunday, the wreckage had been towed into the wharf and 11 people had been taken to a nearby hospital, where one more died later in the day.
Security guard Nguyen Tuan Anh spent the night on the wharf where ambulances were waiting to carry the bodies away – a scene he described as “painful.”
“I don’t think I have experienced this scene before. This maybe the worst accident ever in Ha Long Bay,” he said, adding it had been “unpredictable and also I think unpreparable.”
“The whirlwind came so sudden and so big. The wind blew off the framework of a big stage for a grand music show nearby,” he said.
Ha Long Bay is one of Vietnam’s most popular tourist destinations, with millions of people visiting its blue-green waters and rainforest-topped limestone islands each year.
Several hundred rescuers including professional divers, soldiers, and firefighters joined the search for survivors through the night and heavy rain, state media said.
“The whirlwind came just so sudden,” a rescue worker, who asked not to be named, said on Saturday.
“As the boat turned upside down, several people were stuck inside the cabin. Me and other rescuers pulled up two bodies and rescued one,” he said.
“The accident was so devastating.”
Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba faces reckoning in upper house election
- Opinion polls suggest that Shigeru Ishiba’s governing coalition could lose its majority in the upper house
- He was humiliatingly forced into a minority government after the lower house elections in October
TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba faces a reckoning from voters on Sunday with upper house elections that could end his premiership and see a right-wing populist party make inroads.
With many Japanese hurt by rising prices, especially for rice, opinion polls suggest that Ishiba’s governing coalition could lose its majority in the upper house.
This could be the final nail for Ishiba, having already been humiliatingly forced into a minority government after lower house elections in October.
“Ishiba may need to step down,” Toru Yoshida, a politics professor at Doshisha University, said.
Japan could “step into an unknown dimension of the ruling government being a minority in both the lower house and the upper house, which Japan has never experienced since World War II,” Yoshida said.
At one of Tokyo’s polling stations on Sunday, 54-year-old voter Atsushi Matsuura said “Commodity prices are going up, but I am more worried that salaries aren’t increasing.”
Another voter Hisayo Kojima, 65, expressed frustration that the amount of her pension “is being cut shorter and shorter.”
“We have paid a lot to support the pension system. This is the most pressing issue for me,” she said.
Ishiba’s center-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has governed Japan almost continuously since 1955, albeit with frequent changes of leader.
Ishiba, 68, a self-avowed defense “geek” and train enthusiast, reached the top of the greasy pole last September on his fifth attempt and immediately called elections.
But this backfired and the vote left the LDP and its small coalition partner Komeito needing support from opposition parties, stymying its legislative agenda.
“Energy prices have swung sharply in recent months, as the government has flip-flopped between removing aid for household energy bills and adding new supports,” said Stefan Angrick at Moody’s Analytics.
Out of 248 seats in the upper house, 125 are up for grabs on Sunday. The coalition needs 50 of these to keep a majority.
Not helping is lingering resentment about an LDP funding scandal, and US tariffs of 25 percent due to bite from August 1 if there is no trade deal with the United States.
Japan’s massive auto industry, which accounts for eight percent of the country’s jobs, is reeling from painful levies already in place.
Weak export data last week stoked fears that the world’s fourth-largest economy could tip into a technical recession.
Despite Ishiba securing an early meeting with US President Donald Trump in February, and sending his trade envoy to Washington seven times, there has been no accord.
Trump poured cold water on the prospects of an agreement last week, saying Japan won’t “open up their country.”
“We will not easily compromise,” Ishiba said this month.
Ishiba’s apparently maximalist strategy of insisting all tariffs are cut to zero – although this could change post-election – has also drawn criticism.
“How well his government is able to handle negotiations over US tariffs is extremely important, as it’s important for the LDP to increase trust among the public,” Masahisa Endo, politics professor at Waseda University, said.
The last time the LDP and Komeito failed to win a majority in the upper house was in 2010, having already fallen below the threshold in 2007.
That was followed by a rare change of government in 2009, when the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan governed for a rocky three years.
Today the opposition is fragmented, and chances are slim that the parties can form an alternative government.
One making inroads is the “Japanese-first” Sanseito, which opinion poll suggest could win more than 10 upper house seats, up from two now.
The party wants “stricter rules and limits” on immigration, opposes “globalism” and “radical” gender policies, and wants a re-think on decarbonization and vaccines.
Last week it was forced to deny any links to Moscow – which has backed populist parties elsewhere – after a candidate was interviewed by Russian state media.
“They put into words what I had been thinking about but couldn’t put into words for many years,” one voter said at a Sanseito rally.
