The rare attack, which targeted mostly tourists and left 26 people dead, shocked and outraged Indians, prompting calls for action against Pakistan.

India and Pakistan have cancelled visas for each other's nationals as a diplomatic rift between them widens following Tuesday's mass shooting by militants in the disputed territory of Kashmir.Indian authorities said all visas issued to Pakistani nationals will be revoked from Sunday, adding that all Pakistanis currently in India must leave before their visas expire based on the revised timeline.The country also announced other measures, including cutting the number of diplomatic staff and closing the only functional land border crossing between the countries.Islamabad also reacted angrily after New Delhi suspended a water-sharing treaty on Thursday and blamed Pakistan for the attack, which left 26 people dead.The landmark Indus Water Treaty has survived two wars between the countries, in 1965 and 1971, and a major border skirmish in 1999.The pact was brokered by the World Bank in 1960 and allows for sharing the waters of a river system that is a lifeline for both countries, particularly for Pakistan's agriculture.Pakistan said it had nothing to do with the attack and warned that any Indian attempt to stop or divert flow of water would be considered an "act of war" and met with "full force across the complete spectrum" of Pakistan's national power.In Islamabad and other cities across Pakistan, demonstrators rallied against India's suspension of the treaty, demanding the government retaliate.Pakistan has closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or Indian-operated airlines and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country.Tuesday's attack was the worst assault in years targeting civilians in the restive region that has seen an anti-India rebellion for more than three decades.The rare attack, which targeted mostly tourists, shocked and outraged Indians, prompting calls for action against Pakistan.The Indian government did not publicly produce any evidence of Pakistani state involvement, but said the attack had "cross-border" links to Pakistan.The killings have put pressure on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government to respond aggressively."India will identify, track and punish every terrorist, their handlers and their backers," Modi said at a public rally Thursday."We will pursue them to the ends of the Earth." Pakistan denied any connection to the attack, which was claimed by a previously unknown militant group calling itself the Kashmir Resistance.Pakistan's National Security Committee condemned India's "belligerent measures."It said that while Pakistan remained committed to peace, it would never allow anyone to "transgress its sovereignty, security, dignity and inalienable rights."Government ministers on both sides have hinted that the dispute could escalate to military action.Pakistan's Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told local Dunya News TV channel that "any kinetic step by India will see a tit-to-tat kinetic response."Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh pledged on Wednesay to "not only trace those who perpetrated the attack but also trace those who conspired to commit this nefarious act on our soil" and hinted at the possibility of military strikes.India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety.New Delhi describes all militancy in Kashmir as Pakistan-backed terrorism; Pakistan denies this ,and many Muslim Kashmiris consider the militants to be part of a home-grown freedom struggle.Modi overturned the status quo in Kashmir in August 2019, when his government revoked the region’s semi-autonomous status and brought it under direct federal control.However, relations with Pakistan remained stable as the two countries renewed a previous ceasefire agreement along their border in 2021, which has largely held despite militant attacks on Indian forces in the region.

Greens in Berlin push to abolish the neutrality law, claiming it discriminates against Muslim women wearing headscarves and hampers their careers in public service.

The Greens party's group in the Berlin House of Representatives has made a motion calling for the abolition of the so-called Neutrality Act, a law that prohibits civil servants from visibly wearing or displaying religious symbols while at work.The 2005 law, which affects teachers, police and judicial officers, among others, has already been brought to court several times. Since then, there have been further complaints, particularly in connection with the wearing of headscarves by Muslim civil servants. The law also bans Jewish men from wearing a yarmulka, yet allows the wearing of crucifixes.Supporters of the law, however, argue that the act does not target a particular group and is solely concerned with separating public office from religion or ideology and keeping it secular. However, the Berlin Greens parliamentary group says that the neutrality law "hinders the access of women who have chosen to wear a headscarf to professions in the public service, and in some cases, makes this impossible.""Highly qualified women are not allowed to practise their profession because they wear a headscarf. That is a problem," Green Party politician Tuba Bozkurt told Tagesspiegel newspaper, calling it a "de facto professional ban".The Greens believe their initiative would enable women to work as civil servants in the administration of justice, the prison system and the police, even if they wear a headscarf.The centre-right CDU and centre-left SPD parties, which have agreed on a ruling coalition after the federal elections in February, are not expected to want to change the existing law.The current coalition agreement, which still needs to be agreed upon by the two parties, states the Neutrality Act is to be reworked "in a court-proof manner to reflect the current case law of the Federal Constitutional Court."How did the Neutrality Act come to be? In 2015, the German Federal Constitutional Court issued a landmark judgment, ruling that a general ban on headscarves would not be compatible with the constitution, as it would disproportionately restrict fundamental rights. The ruling further stated that such a ban could be justified only if a headscarf posed a threat to school peace or state neutrality.The Berlin education administration only relented in 2023, years after the judgment. Previously, the state authorities had to pay compensation to a teacher of Muslim faith in 2018 because she was not hired due to her wearing a headscarf. The teacher received around €5,200 in compensation under the General Equal Treatment Act due to what the labour court deemed to be religious discrimination.As a result, the Berlin Senate Administration issued a letter to all schools stating that, in the future, it would cease the "literal application of the Neutrality Act" and follow the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling. However, what constitutes a threat to school peace remains undefined.The Neutrality Act is based on another Federal Constitutional Court ruling in 2003, when Fereshta Ludin brought the case to court, stating she wanted to work as a teacher in Baden-Württemberg after completing her studies, but was prohibited from practising her profession because of her headscarf.The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the decision of the competent authority and the rulings of the lower courts violated the teacher's fundamental rights — in particular her freedom of religion and the right to equal access to public office.Furthermore, the court found that there was no legal basis for such a ban in Baden-Württemberg at the time. However, the court confirmed that wearing a headscarf could come into conflict with state neutrality. According to German law, it is up to the individual federal states to decide whether teachers are allowed to wear a headscarf in schools. As a result, Berlin and seven other federal states introduced the Neutrality Act.

France is in the midst of a long-running debate on expanding the definition of rape to include the absence of consent.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has sided with three French women who said they were raped when they were aged 13, 14 and 16 and that French authorities did not do enough to protect them.The ruling, which was handed down on Thursday, is set to add pressure to France's national debate on the inclusion of consent in the law for sexual offences that was reignited last year by the trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men for the repeated rape of Pelicot's drugged wife, Gisèle.France has taken steps to toughen punishment for rape and sexual misconduct, including setting the age of consent at 15, but the definition of rape in the country's criminal law still does not include the lack of consent.In all three cases examined by the ECHR, the applicants argued that their age and their vulnerability at the time should have been considered by the authorities. The court ruled that neither those who investigated the alleged crimes nor the French courts did enough to protect the women who said they were raped. The court also said that in two of the cases, criminal proceedings were not handled quickly or carefully enough.The court condemned France for violating articles of the European Convention on Human Rights that prohibit torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, as well as the women's right to respect for their private lives."The court considered that the domestic courts had not properly assessed the impact of all the circumstances surrounding the events; nor had they taken sufficient account, in evaluating whether the applicants had been capable of understanding and of giving consent, of the particularly vulnerable situations in which they had found themselves, particularly in view of their ages," the ECHR said in its ruling.The court also noted the "lack of promptness and diligence in the conduct of the criminal proceedings" in two of the three cases.Duty of care neglectedThe first case concerned a teenager who complained that she had been raped in 2009 by two 21-year-old men who were firefighters stationed in barracks near her home.The girl described herself as psychologically fragile and a victim of school bullies, and said she taken medication and been hospitalised in a children's psychiatric ward on several occasions.She stated that she had sexual relations with one of the firefighters on several occasions. She added that her contact details had subsequently been "circulated" among other firefighters at several fire stations, who had contacted her by text or Facebook.A second plaintiff reported being raped by two men aged 21 and 29 when she was 14. The third woman reported being raped at the age of 16 by an 18-year-old man at her home after a party.In the case of the girl who said she was assaulted by firefighters, the court also found that French authorities failed "to protect the applicant's dignity, by permitting the use of moralising and guilt-inducing statements, which propagated gender stereotypes and were capable of impairing victims' confidence in the justice system".The court said it had not been asked to decide whether the people who were accused of committing the crimes were guilty, and that its findings cannot be taken as verdicts in the cases concerned.The way rapes are defined and prosecuted in criminal law still varies widely across Europe. Although some countries use consent-based definitions, many others still require demonstration that perpetrators used physical force or threats.As things stand, French law considers that rape can be considered to have occurred when "an act of sexual penetration or an oral-genital act is committed on a person, with violence, coercion, threat or surprise."

The Ukrainian president held talks with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria before leaving the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has cut short a visit to South Africa as a result of Russia’s deadly overnight attack on Kyiv. Zelenskyy, who only landed in the country on Wednesday evening, said he would leave after a meeting with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria on Thursday morning. The move came in response to a large-scale Russian missile and drone strike which killed nine and injured more than 70 in Ukraine’s capital. The Ukrainian leader had travelled to South Africa, which currently holds the presidency of the G20, in an attempt to “bring a just peace closer”. Ramaphosa has billed himself as a possible mediator in negotiations to end Russia’s all-out war in Ukraine. South Africa's president has said that he is one of the only world leaders with the ability to speak to both sides, as his country has ties with Moscow through the BRICS bloc of developing nations. As part of his efforts, the South African president spoke to Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Monday, with both leaders saying they were “committed to working together towards a peaceful resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict”. This week, Ramaphosa has also discussed Moscow's war in Ukraine with US President Donald Trump. Trump rebuked Zelenskyy on Wednesday, accusing him of jeopardising US-led peace negotiations by saying that Ukraine will not cede Russian-occupied Crimea, the peninsula Moscow unilaterally annexed in 2014. “There is nothing to talk about. It is our land, the land of the Ukrainian people,” Zelenskyy said earlier this week. In response, Trump lambasted the Ukrainian president on social media, writing that his statement “will do nothing but prolong the ‘killing field'". US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Washington will abandon its push for peace in Ukraine if progress is not made soon. Rubio decided not to attend talks in London on Wednesday between US, European and Ukrainian officials.

François Bayrou denies knowing about abuse allegations at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram during his time as education minister in the 1990s.

The daughter of French Prime Minister François Bayrou has claimed that she was physically abused as a child at the Catholic school which is at the centre of the political storm rocking his premiership. French media reported that Bayrou was in shock after learning that Hélène Perlant, 53, the eldest of his six children, was among the alleged victims at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram school, located near his hometown in southwest France. Hundreds of its former pupils have filed legal complaints over the last year, saying they suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the institution’s staff between 1957 and 2004. Bayrou has been accused of knowing about abuse allegations at the school but failing to act on them during his time as education minister in the 1990s, something he strongly denies. In an interview published this week by Paris Match, his daughter Perlant said she was targeted by one of the school’s priests while attending a summer camp in the Pyrenees.Perlant, who was 14 at the time of the attack, said the group was unpacking their sleeping bags when the priest “suddenly grabbed me by the hair, dragged me along the ground for several metres and punched and kicked me all over my body, especially in the stomach”. The incident left her “covered in bruises” and suffering “severe tinnitus”, she added.Bayrou’s daughter made the revelation ahead of the publication on Thursday of The Silence of Bétharram, a book authored by fellow victim Alain Esquerre, which contains testimonies from Perlant and others. “I kept quiet for 30 years,” Perlant told Paris Match. “I may have wanted to protect my father, unconsciously, I think, from the political blows he was taking locally.” Perlant said the school “was organised like a sect or a totalitarian regime exerting psychological pressure on students and teachers to keep quiet”.The 53-year-old also insisted that her father did not know what was happening at the school. “Obviously, one might think he had all the information,” she said. “But I put him on the same level as all parents. The more involved you are, the less you see, the less you understand.”Bayrou, who became prime minister in December, said in February that he would take legal action against Mediapart over its claim that he must have known about abuse at the school during the 1990s.“I was never informed of this sexual violence,“ he told the National Assembly.The French prime minister is due to testify in parliament on 14 May as part of an inquiry into violence in schools.