Protesters on Thursday gathered in the Ikeja area of Lagos for the #EndBadGovernance rally as the nation marks June 12, which is Nigeria’s Democracy Day.
However, there were two sets of protesters – one against the #EndBadGovernance rally and another in support.
Hundreds of people gathered on the streets of Ballymena in Northern Ireland on Wednesday, facing police armed with riot shields and water cannon on the third night of disorder in the town.
The crowds eventually dispersed without a repeat of the chaotic scenes from the previous two nights, when houses and businesses were torched and 32 police officers were injured.
The violence erupted in the town after the arrest of two teenagers accused of attempting to rape a teenage girl. The pair appeared Monday in court, where they asked for a Romanian interpreter.
Police have not confirmed the ethnicity of the teenagers, who remain in custody, but areas attacked on Monday and Tuesday included neighbourhoods where Romanian migrants live.
Ministers from every party in the province’s power-sharing executive strongly condemned “the racially motivated violence witnessed in recent days”.
Residents had been “terrorised” and police injured, they said in Wednesday’s joint statement, urging people to reject the “divisive” agenda being pushed by a “destructive” minority.
In response to what they termed “racist thuggery”, police deployed riot officers with dogs and have asked forces in England and Wales for help quelling the unrest.
On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the unrest in Ballymena “mindless violence”.
About 20 miles (32 kilometres) southeast of the town, masked men set a leisure centre in Larne on fire, local media reported. The centre was temporarily sheltering people from Ballymena who had been evacuated.
People living in Ballymena described “terrifying” scenes in which attackers had targeted “foreigners” over the previous days.
Some people fixed signs to their houses indicating they were Filipino residents, or hung up British flags.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Fein vice president, called the violence “abhorrent”.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said in a statement that its officers “came under sustained attack over a number of hours with multiple petrol bombs, heavy masonry, bricks and fireworks in their direction”.
Some of the injured officers required hospital treatment.
DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
An Air India plane with more than 200 people on board has crashed shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in western India, officials say.
The airline said in a statement that Flight 171, bound for London Gatwick Airport, had 242 passengers and crew members on board when it crashed after takeoff on Thursday.
The passengers on the Boeing 787-8 aircraft included 169 Indian nationals, 53 British, seven Portuguese and a Canadian.
Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director-general of India’s directorate of civil aviation, told The Associated Press news agency that Air India Flight AI171 crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes after takeoff at 1:38pm (08:08 GMT) on Thursday.
He gave a slightly higher number of people on the plane, saying 244 were on board – 232 passengers and 12 crew.
Footage showed smoke billowing from the crash site near the city’s airport, as well as people being moved on stretchers and taken away in ambulances.
India’s Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said he was “shocked and devastated” about the crash, and sent his “thoughts and prayers are with all those on board and their families”.
“I am personally monitoring the situation and have directed all aviation and emergency response agencies to take swift and coordinated action,” he said in a statement posted to X.
“Rescue teams have been mobilised, and all efforts are being made to ensure medical aid and relief support are being rushed to the site.”
Shocked and devastated to learn about the flight crash in Ahmedabad.
We are on highest alert. I am personally monitoring the situation and have directed all aviation and emergency response agencies to take swift and coordinated action.
Rescue teams have been mobilised, and all…
According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad airport, the aircraft gave a “mayday” call, signalling an emergency, but after that, there was no response, Reuters reported.
Ahmedabad airport said it had suspended all flight operations with immediate effect.
Aviation tracking site Flightradar24 said the plane was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, a widebody, twin-engined plane that is one of the most modern passenger aircraft in service.
This is the first crash ever of a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.
Alex Macheras, an aviation analyst, told Al Jazeera that the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner had been known for its impeccable reputation in terms of safety.
“The 787 has been in service for 15 years – this is a mid to long-haul passenger aircraft, one of the latest from Boeing in terms of the development and the introduction of carbon-fibre aircraft,” he said.
“In fact, in its 15 years of commercial service globally, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner has never been involved in a crash or a hull loss or a fatal accident.”
Michal Probierz has resigned as Poland manager in the wake of Robert Lewandowski saying he would not play for the country under him.
Lewandowski, who is Poland’s record goalscorer with 85 goals in 158 appearances, quit his national team on Sunday after Probierz replaced him as captain with Piotr Zielinski.
Probierz’s decision to resign also follows Poland suffering a 2-1 loss in Finland in a World Cup qualifier on Tuesday.
The defeat left Poland third in their group on six points after three games, with the Netherlands second on six points after two games and Finland top on seven points having played four games.
“I have come to the conclusion that in the current situation the best decision for the good of the national team will be my resignation from the position of coach,” Probierz said in a statement.
“Performing this function was the fulfilment of my professional dreams and the greatest honour in my life.”
Probierz, 52, took over as coach in September 2023 but his side finished bottom of their group at Euro 2024 and were the first country to be knocked out of the tournament.
In his 21 matches in charge he won nine, drew five and lost seven.
He added: “Thank you, of course, to all the footballers I have had the pleasure of meeting along the way.
On May 31, a Saturday, Hichem Miraoui was at his home in southeastern France on a video call with his sister Hanen, who lives nearby, and his mother in Tunisia.
It was late morning in Puget-sur-Argens, his village near the French Riviera.
Suddenly, Hanen heard him exclaim. The phone then dropped to the floor and the line went silent.
Two hours later, Mouna Miraoui, his cousin, was at the Draguignan police station a few kilometres north, identifying his body.
Miraoui had been shot five times and killed in what French investigators – in a first – are identifying as a possibly racially motivated act of domestic terrorism.
“It’s a living hell, it’s unbearable,” Mouna told Al Jazeera by phone. “It was a shock for everyone. His sister fainted. Imagine if that day I had been invited to his house for dinner or a drink. I have young kids, what would have happened then?”
French investigators have opened a terrorism investigation in the murder case in which another victim was injured. A man identified as Christophe Belgembe has been arrested.
The suspect regularly reposted content from France’s far-right National Rally party. He has admitted to shooting Miraoui but pleaded not guilty to the racially motivated nature of the crime.
In several videos uploaded to Facebook, which have since been deleted, the suspect appeared to have congratulated himself for “getting rid of 2-3 pieces of junk”, the French news site 20 Minutes reported. According to one of Miraoui’s sisters, Belgembe was well known among residents for his xenophobic views, in particular a “hatred of Arabs”.
Family members have told various media outlets that Miraoui, who was in his forties, had felt increasingly threatened by Belgembe, the legal owner of several guns as a member of a shooting sports club, in the days and weeks leading up to the alleged murder.
A hairdresser who was close to his five sisters, Miraoui had been planning to return to Tunisia to visit his sick mother for the first time in eight years.
The alleged murder led to protests across France and brought to light what antiracism groups are calling an “ambient climate” of anti-Arab hate and xenophobia.
Between January and March of 2025, 79 Islamophobic hate crimes took place across France, an increase of more than 70 percent relevant to that same period in 2024, according to the latest statistics from France’s interior minister.
On Sunday, several thousand people gathered in the southern French city of Marseille and Miraoui’s hometown to protest against rising hate crimes, raising signs reading “racism has killed again” and “rest in peace, Hichem”.
“Hichem’s death is the fruit of an increasingly hardline atmosphere that has been rising for several months and years and that sets in a bit more every day,” the family’s lawyer, Mourad Battikh, said in a statement.
Over the past year, three men have been killed in what appear to be racially motivated hate crimes but Miraoui’s is the first to be investigated by the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office, or PNAT.
According to Zelie Heran, legal head of the antiracism watchdog SOS Racisme, the opening of a terrorism investigation means more resources and a potentially fast-tracked trial. She questioned why the PNAT had not been activated in other similar and recent cases.
“While we can certainly commend the [PNAT] for taking up this case because it is a case where there is a desire to disrupt public order and spread terror on the part of this person who encouraged others to kill foreigners, we can still be surprised and critical of the fact that this is the first time [they] have taken up this type of case,” said Heran.
She suggested that French politicians, including Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, have allowed a hateful climate to fester.
Retailleau has previously repeated debunked claims about being “flooded” by migrants and recently introduced a law to ban headscarves from public universities.
This “obsession with Islam and foreigners has translated into actions by the population”, including the snatching of headscarves from women’s heads and verbal abuse, Heran said.
Statistics shared with Al Jazeera support these claims.
In the first five months of 2025, SOS Racisme documented a 44 percent increase in calls to its anti-discrimination hotline compared with the same period a year ago.
This rise is even sharper regarding anti-Arab and Islamophobic incidents, which have increased by 68 percent year on year.
In some incidents, callers have described damage to property, including at mosques. In more urgent cases, physical violence has been reported.
In April, Aboubakar Cisse, a Malian man in his early twenties, was stabbed 57 times as he prepared his mosque for prayer in La Grand-Combe, also in southern France.
Though the attacker allegedly voiced a statement deemed incredibly offensive to Muslims as he killed Cisse, the crime is not being investigated as an act of terrorism but as a race-based assassination.
The killing of Cisse followed the August 2024 murder of Djamel Bendjaballah, a Tunisian man who was run over by the driver of an SUV in a crime his family has tried, unsuccessfully, to qualify as a hate crime. The suspect was a member of a far-right survivalist group and the ex-husband of Bendjaballah’s partner.
On Wednesday, the body of Hichem Miraoui was returned to Tunisia – tragically reuniting him with his ailing mother.
Mouna Miraoui hopes that his death will be a catalyst for change. She wears a headscarf and said that she no longer feels safe in France.
“I get the feeling that there’s a generalised hatred that’s building,” she told Al Jazeera. “We expect justice to be done. We expect this man’s conviction to set an example for everyone, so that people don’t think this is normal and trivialise it.”
Trooping the Colour is just around the corner, with Buckingham Palace and the Royal Family preparing to celebrate the King’s official birthday.
During the event, which is a landmark event in the royal calendar, the family join together on the famous Buckingham Palace balcony to marvel in the Royal Air Force flypast. While this part of the day’s celebration is often the most memorable, it is not always smooth sailing for the royals. Several years ago, back in 2016, one member of the royal family was ‘scolded’ by the late Queenfor an unexpected reason. Prince William seemed to irk his late grandmother while standing on the balcony during the flypast, earning him a stern word from the monarch.
As Princess Charlotte, who was making her Trooping the Colour debut just after her first birthday, was being held by Kate, young Prince George was being looked after by William.
Standing at the front of the balcony, George – who was just three years old at the time – peered over the ledge to wave to the thousands of people gathered around the Palace. As William crouched down to speak to his young son and explain the flypast, he was temporarily out of sight from the huge crowd of onlookers.
The Queen was clearly unimpressed that the crowds would not have been able to see him, Her Majesty appeared to berate her grandson by saying: “stand up William. Don’t crouch.” Of course, the prince did as he was told and rose immediately, looking rather sheepish.
The telling off during the fly past was not the first occasion the monarch has put her foot down with her grandson, as William explained in a Sky News documentary to mark the Queen’s 90th birthday in 2016.
At the time, the Prince of Wales spoke candidly about an incident in his childhood that landed him in hot water with his grandmother, as he and his cousin Peter Philips were caught misbehaving while riding a quad bike at Balmoral.
He said: “We were chasing Zara around who was on a go-kart, and Peter and I managed to herd Zara into a lamppost and the lamppost came down and nearly squashed her.”
“I remember my grandmother being the first person out at Balmoral running across the lawn in her kilt. She came charging over and gave us the most almighty b******ing, and that sort of stuck in my mind from that moment on.”
As heir to the throne, William made his Trooping the Colour balcony debut before his first birthday in 1984. In 2011, newly married William took part in his first Trooping the Colour parade and rode on horseback , which he is expected to do again this year.
The Trooping the Colour event, which takes place every year in June, has been held to mark the sovereign’s official birthday since the accession of King George IV in 1820, except during the world wars and a national strike in 1955. In 2020, a scaled-back version of the celebration was held at Windsor Castle due to the Covid pandemic.
Trooping the Colour 2025, officially known as The King’s Birthday Parade, will take place on Saturday June 14, in London.