On the eighth day of a strike by cleaners demanding wage increases and job guarantees, rubbish is piling up at Marseille’s Saint-Charles train station and in the aisles of the metro, a journalist told the newspaper on Tuesday. AFP.

“We are called invisible. Well there, see you,” said Abdeleza Salmi, Cleanliness Officer for the Metropolitan Transport Network (RTM), pointing to the overflowing garbage cans and the heaps of rubbish among which tourists and residents of France’s second largest city find themselves.

When they do not have exactly the same requirements, the cleaners in these two places focus their complaints on their common employer, the private company Laser Propreté, to which SNCF and RTM subcontract the cleaning.

AFP

Metro’s cleanliness officers accuse Laser Propreté of wage deductions.

“Little by little, we started checking our payslips and found that there were discrepancies,” said one striker, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

Another of his colleagues claimed that his salary had recently been reduced by 250 euros.

The company Laser could not be reached.

AFP

In general, all strikers are demanding more consideration for their “dirty”, “difficult” and “sometimes dangerous” work.

Your colleagues at the Saint-Charles train station fear for their 31 jobs. They fear that the next time the cleaning company calls for tenders in 2026, the SNCF will call on an association that is not affiliated with the cleaning collective agreement. The SNCF had done this in 2022 at the Aix-en-Provence station.

At the request of AFP, the SNCF indicated that “no action has yet been taken” regarding the next procurement, adding that “the public procurement rules will of course be strictly observed”.

AFP

For its part, the RTM, in a press release on Tuesday, assessed that, like its customers, it was “victim of a movement that is beyond their borders” and assured “to take all possible measures together with its service provider to ensure a return to normality to reach”. be effective in the coming hours.

Evan Gershkovich will appear in court in April. Source: Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images

A Moscow court on Thursday rejected an appeal by Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who sought an end to his pre-trial detention in Russia, where he was detained 12 weeks ago and charged with espionage.

Mr Gershkovich, an American journalist who has lived in Russia for almost six years, was arrested in late March and charged with espionage, which he denies. Last month his detention was extended to August 30. Although Russian prosecutors have not produced any evidence, he was held for 12 weeks in Moscow’s maximum-security Lefortovo prison, run by the KGB’s successor and known for its harsh prison conditions and extreme isolation.

The court denied his attorneys’ motion. The American Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracey was in attendance, as were Mr Gershkovich’s parents, Ella Millman and Mikhail Gershkovich.

The United States government and The Journal have vehemently denied the allegations. The White House declared that Mr. Gershkovich was “wrongly imprisoned,” which amounts to a political prisoner. The naming changes Washington’s approach to detaining an American abroad, usually based on assumptions that the prisoner was detained on arbitrary grounds or with no expectation of legitimate charges or a fair trial.

The Interfax news agency reported that Russia said on Thursday that it had received and is considering a request from the United States for a consular visit to the reporter. “There is no decision yet, but it is being considered,” the agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov as saying. Although Russia granted such a visit in April, it declined other similar requests.

Press freedom in Russia has plummeted under President Vladimir V. Putin, as he took authoritarian measures against journalists, as well as opposition and dissidents. Mr Putin had focused on local journalists, particularly since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, allowing foreign correspondents to work with a sense of freedom.

But that all changed on March 29, when Mr. Gershkovich was arrested while on a reporting trip in the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg, becoming the first Western journalist since the Cold War to be charged with espionage. If convicted, he faces 20 years in prison in a Russian penal colony.

The House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution on June 13 calling on the Russian government to release Mr. Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former US Marine who is serving a 16-year sentence after a 2020 espionage conviction.

Dmitri A. Muratov, the Russian journalist who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, praised Mr Gershkovich’s work during a media forum in Bonn, Germany, on Tuesday.

“I know him well – practically all of Moscow knows him well,” Mr Muratov said in an address to the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum. “He loves the country he works in. He is an incredible journalist and in no way a spy.”

show more

The fire broke out around 11:30 p.m. when the two children were inside and their mother was outside. She tried in vain to break into the accommodation to save her children. Firefighters managed to extricate the two small victims, who were taken to hospital but eventually succumbed to their injuries during the night.

Grootvader Stefaan kapot van verdriet na brand waarbij Kyara (4) and Kyano (8) omkwamen: “Hun mama weet nog noch niet eens dat ze dood zijn” https://t.co/lGrYxELYWi

— Nieuwsblad.be (@Nieuwsblad_be) June 19, 2023

The father of the suspected children

The mother was also seriously injured and taken to the hospital in serious condition. An investigation was immediately launched to determine the circumstances of the fire. Suspicion quickly fell on the children’s father, who recently divorced the mother.

The editors will advise you

According to witnesses from the neighborhood, the man has regularly molested his ex-partner and her children since the separation. He was arrested on Monday 19 June and held in police custody until the next day on suspicion of arson causing death.

The suspect was brought before the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office on Tuesday, June 20, a prosecutor told local media Het Laatste Nieuws. His lawyer confirmed the facts and made it clear that his client firmly denied any involvement in the drama.