JULIAN ASSANGE: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today launched a criminal complaint against the Nobel Foundation, accusing it of facilitating the commission of war crimes by awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to far-right Venezuelan politician Maria Corina Machado.

Mr Assange said that by honouring Ms Machado, the Nobel Foundation has turned the organisation from “an instrument of peace into an instrument of war.”

FRANCE: Employees at the Louvre voted today to extend a strike that has disrupted operations at the world’s most visited museum.

Workers are taking action against chronic understaffing, building deterioration and recent management decisions — pressures intensified by a brazen crown jewels robbery in October.

SPAIN: Police in north-east Spain began carrying out eviction orders otday to clear an abandoned school building where hundreds of mostly undocumented migrants were living in a squat north of Barcelona.

The squat was located in Badalona, a working-class city that borders Barcelona. Many sub-Saharan migrants, mostly from Senegal and Gambia, had moved into the empty school building since it was left abandoned in 2023.

SOUTH AFRICA: A centre in South Africa processing applications for the United States refugee programme was raided by immigration and law enforcement officers and seven Kenyan nationals were arrested for working there illegally, South Africa’s Home Affairs Ministry said today.

The centre in Johannesburg was processing applications by white South Africans under the Trump administration’s new programme giving them priority for refugee status in the US.

The Kenyans were working at the centre alongside US officials despite entering South Africa on tourist visas which did not allow them to work.