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Three human skulls, including one believed to belong to a Madagascan king who was killed by French forces, have been returned to Madagascar after 128 years in a Paris museum.

At a ceremony held on Tuesday at the French Ministry of Culture, it is believed that King Toera and two other Sakalava ethnic people are the subjects of the skull’s ceremonial presentation.

King Toera’s skull was beheaded by French soldiers in an 1897 massacre of locals, which led to his return to France as a trophy and was later deposited in Paris’s national history museum along with hundreds of other remains from the Indian Ocean island.

At the event, French Minister of Culture Rachida Dati stated, “These skulls entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence.”

Volamiranty Donna Mara, the minister’s representative in Madagascar, praised the handover, claiming that the skull removal “has been an open wound in the heart of our island for more than a century, 128 years.”

They are the invisible and indelible link that connects our present and past, according to Mara, not the work of collectors.

Three traditional-clothed boxes were carried in a solemn procession to the handover ceremony in France’s lavish surroundings by video from the event.

According to Dati, a joint scientific committee said it was possible to “presume” that one of the skulls belonged to King Toera, but that it could only be “presume” that it belonged to him.

Since France passed a law allowing the return of such artefacts in 2023, this was the first time human remains were recovered.

Countries like Australia and Argentina have filed their own restitution requests for the return of ancestral remains, with a third of the 30, 000 specimens at Paris’s Musee de l’Homme being skulls and skeletons from around the world.

French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the Madagascan capital Antananarivo in April as a “bloody and tragic” colony of Madagascar, which proclaimed independence in 1960 after more than 60 years of colonial rule.

On Sunday, the skulls will be buried on an Indian Ocean island where they are scheduled to return.

After he urged efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula in a speech in the United States, North Korea has referred to South Korean President Lee Jae-myung as a “confrontation maniac.”

Lee stated in a statement following a meeting with US President Donald Trump on Monday that denuclearization was necessary to “promote the South Korea-US alliance in a “global context” and that it was essential to achieving a permanent peace between the Koreas.

The South Korean leader was attacked by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday, claiming that his speech had revealed his “true colors as a hypocrite to the entire world.”

In an unsigned commentary, the KCNA used the acronyms for South Korea and North Korea’s official names to demonstrate that the ROK’s [Republic of Korea’s] scheme for confrontation with the DPRK]Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] can never change.

Lee Jae-myung, who serves as Pyongyang’s spokesperson, “also gave unwavering evidence that his remarks about “denuclearization” are a pure sophism,” according to the KCNA, which operates as a spokesperson for the country.

We once more remind him of the unavoidable fact that our position as a nuclear weapons state accurately reflects the changing nature of the world security dynamics and the hostile threat from outside.

According to the KCNA, denuclearization is already “extinct theoretically, practically, and physically,” and Lee’s vision is “less than a naive dream, like trying to catch a cloud floating in the sky.”

After years of strained inter-Korean ties under his conservative predecessor, the impeached ex-President Yoon Suk-yeol, Lee, who took office in June, has pledged to improve relations with Pyongyang.

However, North Korea has repeatedly rejected those efforts.

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, lambasted South Korean efforts to calm them down in a scathing statement earlier this month, saying, “We do not care about them and are not interested in them.”

Hamas challenged the Israeli government’s account in a statement released on Wednesday by the Reuters news agency, which claimed six fighters were killed in the attack. The attack, which has been condemned internationally for involving journalists, medical professionals, rescue workers, and civilians, was the subject of international condemnation.

At least two of the six Palestinians who were given Israeli military names were killed at other times and locations, including one who was killed in Khan Younis’ al-Mawasi, which is close to the hospital, according to Hamas.

The Israeli military claimed earlier that Hamas’s “initial investigation” into its own attack on the southern Gaza hospital revealed that the area’s target was a camera that was set up to record Israeli troop movements.

The Israeli army claimed that in light of this, the force attempted to obliterate the camera.

A Reuters news agency live video feed, which cameraman Hussam al-Masri had been watching, abruptly shut down at the time of the initial Israeli attack on Monday. Al-Masri was killed in the attack.

A second strike, which involved four more journalists who had fled the scene of the initial Israeli strike, was captured on camera shortly afterward.

Ahmed Abu Aziz, Mariam Abu Daqqa, Mohammad Salama, and Moaz Abu Taha were the other four journalists who perished in the attack.

In order to reduce casualties, Israeli forces bombed the facility twice before waiting for emergency personnel and journalists to arrive on the scene.

Israel frequently uses the claim that it is attacking Hamas to justify its deadly attacks on civilians in Gaza.

After the premier blamed Tehran for initiating anti-Semitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia has refuted the claim that Israeli actions led to the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to expel Iran’s ambassador to Canberra.

When asked about Israel’s claim to credit Australia’s decision to send Ahmad Sadeghi to Iran, Australian Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke responded to ABC Radio on Wednesday, saying: “Complete nonsense.”

According to Albanese, Australia “arrived to the deeply disturbing conclusion” through “credible intelligence” that discovered that the government of Iran had “directed” at least two attacks against Australia’s Jewish community.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer praised Australia for taking “threats seriously” against the Jewish community, which he claimed had resulted from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “forthright intervention.” In response to a question from the ABC, Mencer addressed the issue of Australia’s allegations against Iran.

Mencer claimed that Netanyahu had “made very directly remarks about the Australian prime minister himself,” which sparked Albanese’s response.

He made those remarks because he did not believe the Australian government’s actions had done enough to address anti-Semitism, Mencer continued.

Mencer’s remarks were included in an article on The ABC titled “The Israeli government claims credit for causing Albanese to expel Iranian diplomats.”

Albanese, who had earlier claimed Australia would formally recognize a Palestinian state in September, was accused by Netanyahu of being “a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews.”

Iran asserted that the accusations against Australia had come after Australia had “limited criticism” of Israel and that it had “absolutely rejected” the accusations.

According to spokesman for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Esmaeil Baghaei, “It appears that this action is taken to make up for the limited criticism the Australian side has directed at the Zionist regime [Israel].”

According to Baghaei, “any inappropriate and unjustified diplomatic action will have a reaction backwards.”

In a post on social media, Ilana Lenk, the head of public diplomacy at Israel’s embassy in Canberra, shared headlines from Australian newspaper front pages like “Iran attacks us” and “Iran targets Bondi deli” with headlines.

We cautioned Iran against joining Israel or the Jewish people. She wrote, “Australia sees the West as next, and that’s not just a slogan.”

The Jewish Council of Australia expressed shock at learning about the Iranian government’s role in planning antisemitic attacks in a statement.

The council said in a statement that the use of the attacks to demonize the Palestine solidarity protest movement shows how careless it was.