Ukraine: truce in sight at Mariupol steel plant to evacuate civilians

A three-day unilateral Russian ceasefire is set to take effect Thursday morning around the Mariupol steel plant, the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic port city, but fighting continues in the rest of Ukraine. The capture of this city would be an important victory for the Russians as it would allow them to consolidate their coastal territorial gains along the Sea of Azov by connecting the Donbass region, partly controlled by their supporters, to Crimea that Moscow annexed in 2014.

"Day of Overshoot" of Planetary Resources for France

If all humanity lived like the French, it would have consumed on May 5 all the resources that the planet can renew in a year, WWF announced, estimating that the France could set back this "day of overshoot" by 25 days by 2027. Every year, the American NGO Global Footprint Network calculates the "day of overshoot" for the world -July 29 in 2021-, by crossing the ecological footprint of human activities (land and sea surfaces necessary to produce the resources consumed and to absorb the waste of the population) and the "biocapacity" of the Earth (capacity). (e ecosystems to regenerate and absorb waste produced by humans, in particular CO2 sequestration). This index, which has been deteriorating for decades (with the exception of the year 2020 marked by the Covid-19 crisis) aims to illustrate the consumption of an expanding human population on a limited planet. For 2022, the day of the exceedance for the France falls on May 5, about 5 months earlier than in 1961.

United Kingdom: local elections test for Boris Johnson and decisive for Northern Ireland

The British vote on Thursday in a local election that will give an idea of the damage of the "partygate" scandal for Boris Johnson's Conservative Party and promise to be decisive for Northern Ireland, where Sinn Fein republicans are hoping for a historic victory. The replacement of thousands of seats in local councils in England, Scotland and Wales will allow voters to vote at the polls for the first time after months of revelations about parties held in Downing Street during lockdowns. And could thus, in the event of poor results, convince some wait-and-see MPs of the majority to withdraw their support for Boris Johnson, determined to remain in power despite the fine received, unprecedented for a prime minister in office. Far from the westminster rifts, it is a political earthquake that is looming in Northern Ireland where polls show Sinn Fein at the top of the local Assembly for the first time in the 100-year history of the British province of 1.9 million inhabitants, under tension since Brexit.

IN BRIEF

The elected Parisian ecologists, turbulent allies of the mayor Anne Hidalgo, ask to "preserve all the existing trees" in the capital, after the renunciation Monday of the town hall to cut down about twenty trees at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in front of the controversy aroused.

TikTok announced on Wednesday that it will study the implementation of ad revenue sharing with the platform's most prominent creators, moving closer to the model already in place within the competition.

Immortel Real Madrid! Thanks to the inevitable Karim Benzema, the "King of Europe" signed another extraordinary comeback on Wednesday in his den of Santiago-Bernabéu to overthrow Manchester City 3-1 in extra time (defeat 4-3 in the first leg) and join Liverpool in the final of the Champions League on May 28 at the stadium of France.