Paris pollution victim sues France for bad air

A Parisian woman is taking the French state to court for failing to protect her health from the effects of air pollution.
Clotilde Nonnez, a 56-year-old yoga teacher, says she has lived in the capital for 30 years and seen her health deteriorate.
However, it became worse than ever when pollution in Paris hit record levels last December.
Her lawyer says air pollution is causing 48,000 French deaths per year.
"We are taking the state to task because we think the medical problems that pollution victims suffer are as a result of the authorities' lack of action in tackling air pollution," François Lafforgue told Le Monde newspaper.
More cases would be brought in the coming weeks, in Lyon, Lille and elsewhere, he added.
Paris has struggled for years to combat high levels of smog and the authorities have introduced fines for any vehicle not carrying a "Crit'Air" emissions category sticker - part of a scheme to promote lower-emitting vehicles.
Several routes in the capital now have restrictions on car use and a 3km (1.8-mile) stretch of the Right Bank of the River Seine has become pedestrianised.
Ms Nonnez says she has led a healthy life, first as a dancer and more recently as a yoga teacher, but has increasingly suffered from respiratory problems, ranging from chronic asthma to pneumonia.
When pollution hit the worst levels for a decade last December, her existing bronchial condition prompted an acute pericarditis attack.
"The doctor treating me says Paris air is so polluted that we're breathing rotten air. She has other patients like me, including children and babies too. My cardiologist says the same," she told the France Info website.

 
 BBC NEWS

Burmese military plane vanishes over Andaman Sea

Hopes are fading for the 120 people on board a Burmese military plane which has gone missing over the Andaman Sea.
The army said the plane was flying between the southern city of Myeik and Yangon (Rangoon). Search and rescue efforts are under way.
"Communication was lost suddenly at about 1:35 pm [07:05 GMT] when it reached about 20 miles west of Dawei town," the army said in a statement.
There were 106 military personnel and family members and 14 crew on board.
The plane, a Y8 transporter made in China, was half an hour into the short routine flight.
Latest reports suggest that debris has been spotted in the sea by some of the military planes or ships dispatched to the area.



There were no reports of bad weather at that time. The plane was purchased from China in March last year and had logged 809 flying hours, the army said.
Myanmar has seen a number of aircraft incidents in recent years.
In February 2016, the five-member crew of an air force plane died when the aircraft crashed in the capital of Nay Pyi Taw. A few months later, three officers were killed when a military helicopter crashed in central Myanmar.
An Air Bagan commercial aeroplane made an emergency landing in 2012 and burst into flames, killing two people.

BBC NEWS

General election 2017: Voters to go to the polls

Millions of people will be casting their vote in the UK general election later.
Polls open at 07:00 BST at more than 40,000 polling stations across the country, with counting starting once voting ends at 22:00 BST.
A total of 650 Westminster MPs will be elected, with about 46.9 million people registered to vote.
That is up from the last general election, in 2015, when there were 46.4 million registered voters.
Some votes have already been cast, through postal voting, which accounted for 16.4% of the total electorate at the 2015 general election.
Overall turnout in 2015, when the Conservatives won 331 out of 650 seats, was 66.4%, up from 2010.


Most polling stations are in schools, community centres and parish halls, but pubs, a launderette and a school bus have been used in the past.
A handful of seats are expected to be declared by midnight, with the final results expected on Friday afternoon.
Unusually, no local elections are taking place at the same time, so results might come through earlier than in recent general elections.
In 2015 the first seat to declare was Houghton and Sunderland South, at 22:48 BST.
To form a majority in the House of Commons one party must win 326 seats - in 2015 a Conservative majority was not confirmed until 13:34 BST.

Coverage

The weather forecast is for some rain in south-west England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales on Thursday, with south-east England remaining cloudy and dry.
Polls close at 22:00 BST, but officials say anyone in a polling station queue at this time should be able to cast their vote.



The BBC's main election programme, fronted by David Dimbleby, starts at 21:55 BST, with live coverage from scores of counts.
Dimbleby, fronting his 10th election night broadcast, will be joined by Mishal Husain, Emily Maitlis, Jeremy Vine.
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will have their own overnight programmes but will join Huw Edwards from 07:00 BST on 9 June.
On the radio, an overnight broadcast by BBC Radio 4 will be hosted by Jim Naughtie and Carolyn Quinn.
On BBC Radio 5 live, the overnight show will be hosted by Stephen Nolan and Emma Barnett.
Full coverage of the results as they come in will be on the BBC politics online live page and front page scorecard, with all the big breaking stories from around the country and analysis by correspondents.

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Farc weapons handover begins in Colombia, Timochenko announces

Farc rebels in Colombia say they have handed over 30% of their arms to United Nations (UN ) monitors, under the terms of last year's peace agreement.
They will hand over another 30% of their arms next Wednesday, with the remainder due to be surrendered in a fortnight's time.
The weapons are to be stored at 26 locations around the country.
After five decades of war and years of negotiations, Farc and the government came to a peace agreement last year.
Farc, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is the country's biggest rebel group.
There are 7,000 fighters handing over their rifles and pistols and the group will become a political party.
Farc leader Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, who is better known as Timochenko, made the announcement on social media on Wednesday.
The timeline will see them meet a 20 June deadline, which has been extended from the start of the month.
The decades-long conflict between rebel groups, state forces, paramilitaries and drug gangs killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than seven million.
The peace deal was initially rejected in a referendum, then reworked and implemented. Since it came in to force the national army has been granted access to areas that were once occupied by the Farc and former rebels have been rejoining civilian life.
But in a move that threatened the process, a rebel was arrested in contravention of the deal's terms. President Juan Manuel Santos put the arrest down to "confusion" and the man was released.
For his efforts to reach peace with the Farc, Mr Santos was awarded last year's Nobel Peace Prize.

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North Korea fires anti-ship missiles, says South Korea

North Korea has fired several anti-ship cruise missiles off its east coast, South Korea's military says.
Authorities said they appear to be short-range "surface-to-ship" missiles, launched on Thursday morning from the city of Wonsan.
They flew about 200km (125 miles) before landing in the water.
Repeated missile tests by the North this year - not all of them successful but all a breach of UN sanctions - have sparked international alarm.
Anti-ship missiles are guided missiles and most of them skim the water. North Korea has previously unsuccessfully tested anti-ship ballistic missiles, experts believe.
On 29 May the North fired a Scud-type ballistic missile from the same location, which flew about 450km.
Last Friday the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a new US resolution to impose targeted sanctions on certain North Korean officials and state entities.
The US has also ramped up its military presence in the region in response to these missile tests. Two US aircraft carriers have recently been carrying out naval exercises in the Sea of Japan, reported Reuters news agency citing the US military.
However, South Korea said on Wednesday it was suspending the further deployment of a controversial US anti-missile defence system called Thaad, until an environment assessment is complete.
Pyongyang has been testing its missiles at an unprecedented pace. Experts fear the tests indicate progress towards Pyongyang's ultimate goal of putting a nuclear warhead on a missile that could strike continental US. 

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Comey to testify Trump told him: 'I expect loyalty'

Ex-FBI chief James Comey will tell Congress on Thursday President Donald Trump wanted a "patronage relationship" and asked for his "loyalty".
According to his opening statement, Mr Comey will also testify the president asked him to drop an inquiry into fired National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.
He says Mr Trump called the Russian probe "a cloud" over him.
Mr Comey also says he had told Mr Trump three times he was not under scrutiny, confirming the president's account.
Reacting to the prepared testimony on Wednesday evening, Mr Trump's private legal counsel on the Russia inquiry, Marc Kasowitz, said the president was "pleased" Mr Comey had confirmed he was not in investigators' crosshairs.
"The president feels completely and totally vindicated," said the attorney.
Two national security officials, NSA Director Mike Rogers and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, earlier testified to senators that they never felt pressured by the White House to do anything illegal.
But in Thursday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Mr Comey will detail how Mr Trump made him uncomfortable during a series of encounters leading up to the FBI director's firing on 9 May.
It is one of several congressional panels that, along with the Justice Department, is investigating US intelligence assessments that Russian hackers meddled in last November's presidential election in an effort to help Mr Trump beat Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
The inquiries are also investigating whether any Trump campaign officials colluded with the alleged Kremlin plot, which Moscow has repeatedly denied.
According to seven pages of prepared testimony, Mr Comey will say his first meeting with the president occurred on 6 January in a conference room at Trump Tower, where Mr Comey briefed him alone on "salacious and unverified" allegations about him.
A dossier compiled by a former British intelligence official had claimed the Russian security services possessed compromising material on Mr Trump, including that he had been recorded consorting with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel.
Mr Comey's statement says the president "expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them" during a subsequent meeting.
That denial came in a one-to-one dinner on 27 January at the White House, Mr Comey will say, adding that he had a "very awkward conversation" with the president that evening.

Who do you believe? Anthony Zurcher, BBC News

It's like a sneak preview of a blockbuster movie - this opening statement should be preceded with a "Spoiler Alert!" warning.
Mr Comey is going to largely confirm all the reports that were circulating in the media about what took place during his private meetings with the president - the talk of loyalty, the pressure on the FBI to ease off its Flynn investigation, the multiple requests for public confirmation that the FBI was not targeting Mr Trump himself.
While Mr Comey casts the president in a less-than-flattering light, he does shy away from directly accusing the president of obstruction of justice. Much will be made of how the two men may have interpreted the phrase "honest loyalty" differently. In addition, Mr Comey viewed the president's Flynn request as only relating to his conversations with the Russian ambassador and not the investigation as a whole.
That may not matter much, however.
Large portions of the former director's account is in direct contradiction to Mr Trump's version of their meetings. It sets up a "he-said, he-said" situation - but Mr Comey has memos and conversations with other FBI officials to buttress his case.
What's more, if recent polls are any indication, the American public trusts him more than the president. Mr Comey's performance under questioning - particularly if Mr Trump responds angrily via Twitter - could further sour the public mood.

Mr Trump asked the FBI director during the discussion in the Green Room whether he wanted to stay in his job, Mr Comey will testify.
He will say he found this "strange" because Mr Trump had already told him twice in earlier conversations that he hoped he would not step down.
The former FBI director will testify the question "concerned me greatly" because he felt the dinner was an effort to "create some sort of patronage relationship".
The former FBI director will say: "A few moments later, the president said, 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.'
"I didn't move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence."
In testimony, the former FBI director will detail his next encounter with Mr Trump, during a meeting attended by intelligence chiefs at the White House on 14 February.


The president asked Mr Comey to stay at the end of the Oval Office meeting and told him: "I want to talk about Mike Flynn."
Mr Trump accepted Mr Flynn's resignation as national security adviser just 24 days into the job after he misled the White House about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.
Mr Comey will say Mr Trump told him: "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy."
The former FBI director will testify that he offered no such assurance.
Mr Comey will also say the president phoned him on 30 March and said the Russia investigation was "a cloud that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country".
The former FBI director will testify that Mr Trump "said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia".
Mr Comey will say he assured Mr Trump during their discussions on 6 January, 27 January and 30 March that the president himself was not under investigation.
He will testify that Mr Trump told him during the 30 March phone call: "We need to get that fact out."
The former FBI director will say Mr Trump phoned him again on 11 April to press him on this matter. It was the last time they spoke.
Mr Comey will say he told the president the White House should contact the Department of Justice.
The former FBI director notes that he spoke with President Barack Obama only twice during the more than three years that their time in office overlapped.
But he can recall nine one-on-one conversations with Mr Trump in four months, three in person and six on the phone.

BBC NEWS

Uber 'obtained rape victim's medical records'

An Uber executive obtained the medical records of a rape victim in India, according to a report.
Eric Alexander, who ran Uber's business in Asia, is said to have shared the records with the company's chief executive, Travis Kalanick, over a year ago.
Uber confirmed to the BBC that Mr Alexander no longer worked at the firm - but offered no further comment.
Technology news site Recode said Mr Alexander was fired only after the publication contacted the company about the story.
It said as well as Mr Kalanick, the records were seen by the company's senior vice president, Emil Michael.
The news is the latest in a series of high-profile scandals greatly affecting Uber's reputation. On Tuesday, the company announced it had fired 20 employees as part of an investigation into sexual harassment and other misconduct at the company.

Delhi ban

In December 2014 a 26-year-old Delhi woman was raped by Uber driver Shiv Kumar Yadav. Yadav was sentenced to life in prison.
At the time Uber said "sexual assault is a terrible crime and we're pleased he has now been brought to justice", adding it had improved security due to "lessons we learned from this awful case".
But the ride-sharing service was consequently banned from operating in Delhi (the ban was lifted in June 2015).
Behind the scenes, Uber executives reportedly doubted the authenticity of the woman's claim, and questioned whether Ola, an Uber competitor in India, was behind the incident as part of a sabotage attempt.
As well as the criminal case, the woman sued Uber. It was settled out of court.
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Apple to scan iPhones for child sex abuse images

  Apple has announced details of a system to find child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on customers' devices. Before an image is stored on...