TV News LIES

A hospital founded by an award-winning gynaecologist to treat rape victims has accused the Congolese government of “hounding” it after tax authorities seized its accounts.

Panzi hospital in Bukavu, set up in 1999 by Dr Denis Mukwege, said it could no longer withdraw money or pay December wages to its 500 employees.

Mukwege survived an assassination attempt in 2012 and recently spoke out about insecurity and bad governance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has failed to lift millions out of poverty despite vast mineral resources.

French economist Thomas Piketty has spurned the Legion of Honour, the country’s highest distinction, on the grounds that the government should not decide who is honourable.

Piketty, author of the bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which has become compulsory reading for world leaders, added: “They’d be better off concentrating on boosting growth in France and Europe.”

At least 35 people have been killed in a stampede during new year’s celebrations in downtown Shanghai, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency has reported. The report, citing the Shanghai government, said a further 42 people had been injured.

The deaths and injuries occurred at Shanghai’s popular Bund riverfront area, which can be jammed with spectators for major events.

HarperCollins, one of the world's largest publishing houses, sells English-language atlases to schools in the Middle East that omit Israel.

Collins Middle East Atlases show Jordan and Syria extending to the Mediterranean but do mark the position of the West Bank.

“The publication of this atlas will confirm Israel’s belief that there exists a hostility towards their country from parts of the Arab world. It will not help to build up a spirit of trust leading to peaceful co-existence,” said Bishop Declan Lang, the chairman of the Bishops' Conference Department of International Affairs, to The Tablet.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has signed documents necessary for joining international organisations including the International Criminal Court (ICC) at a meeting in Ramallah.

President Abbas signed the documents on Wednesday, a day after a UN Security Council failed to pass a resolution that had aimed to set a deadline for Israel to end its occupation of territories sought by the Palestinians.

Freelance photographer Lazar Simeonov watched from his Gaza apartment window on the afternoon July 16 as three Israeli shells struck a shack at the edge of a beach where seven young boys played. When the dust settled, four of them — all members of the Bakr extended family — lay dead, apparently victims of a mistake by the Israeli military on the ninth day of its Operation Protective Edge in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Simeonov and a number of other foreign journalists staying nearby ran to the beach. He was horrified by the scene he found there: Four children lay dead on the sand and nearby dock, their lifeless bodies torn apart by the blasts.