Taipei (AFP) – Around 130,000 people attend the 23rd Taiwan Pride Parade in Taipei. This year’s theme, “Super Connection: Overcoming Labels, Embracing Differences,” aims to highlight the importance of diversity and inclusion. “Our love is the same, and it deserves to be embraced and accepted,” says attendee Alan Pan.
San Quentin (United States) (AFP) – Held inside a notorious prison among some of California’s most violent felons, the San Quentin Film Festival is not your typical Hollywood affair. The festival, launched last year, offers inmates a chance to create their own movies and meet mainstream filmmakers from the outside. “If we send people out without having resolved their trauma and have no skill set, no degree, no schooling, they’re more likely to reoffend and cause more victims,” says prison warden Chance Andes.
Dublin (AFP) – Left-wing independent Catherine Connolly vows to be “inclusive” after winning the race to be Ireland’s new president, comfortably beating her centrist opponent in a contest marred by record numbers of spoilt ballots. Connolly, 68, secured more than 63 percent of the votes, well ahead of Heather Humphreys of the Fine Gael party on 29.5 percent, according to the official count.
Roscoff (France) (AFP) – Used fishing nets are collected in Breton ports and sent off from western France to Ukraine, where they will be used to cover roads and military infrastructure with the aim of protecting them from Russian drone attacks. To defend against Russian drones, Ukrainians have been covering roads with nets mounted on poles, stretching for hundreds of kilometres. The fishing nets will “have a second life” and “be able to save lives in Ukraine” says Gerard Le Duff, one of the volunteers behind the project.
New York (AFP) – Zohran Mamdani, Democratic Party candidate for the New York mayor seat, delivers a speech outside a mosque denouncing “Islamophobia” in politics. Mamdani makes reference to outgoing New York mayor Eric Adams and former state governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who is running as an independent. “Anti-Muslim sentiment that has grown so endemic in our city that when we hear it, we know not whether the words were spoken by a Republican or a Democrat,” says Mamdani, who is the frontrunner in the campaign.
Bangkok (AFP) – Around a dozen mourners dressed in black hold portraits of Thailand’s late Queen Sirikit outside the Chulalongkorn Hospital in Bangkok, where she had been receiving medical treatment. The mother of the current King Vajiralongkorn and wife of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch died late Friday at the age of 93, the palace said. Sirikit held a dual reputation as a fashionista and the nation’s caring matriarch, with some Western media featuring her on magazine covers and comparing her to former US first lady Jackie Kennedy.
Strasbourg (France) (AFP) – A Christmas tree over 30 metres tall and 7.5 tons in weight is erected on Place Kleber in Strasbourg, eastern France, ahead of its traditional Christmas market. “It’s a moment eagerly awaited every year,” says Guillaume Libsig, Strasbourg’s deputy mayor.
New Delhi (AFP) – Hindu devotees bathe in India’s sacred but highly polluted Yamuna river to the mark the first day of Chhath Puja, a four-day long festival dedicated to Hindu sun god Surya.
Bogotá (AFP) – “We do not kneel. We will not take a step back,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro tells his supporters at a rally on Bolivar Square in Bogota, as he and his family are placed on a US sanctions list. The US Treasury has blacklisted Gustavo Petro, first lady Veronica Alcocer, his eldest son Nicolas, and Interior Minister Armando Benedetti, banning them from travel to the United States and freezing any US assets they hold. The rupture caps months of personal friction between US President Donald Trump and Petro over US deportations and strikes on suspected drug boats off the coast of South America.
Tokio (AFP) – Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi says she will bring US ties to “new heights” in talks with President Donald Trump, while taking a swipe at China. The comments come three days before Trump, who wants Tokyo and other allies to boost their military spending, is due to visit Japan on his way to crunch talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea.
London (AFP) – Big Ben’s timekeepers are preparing for Sunday’s clock change, one of the busiest nights of the year for parliament’s clock mechanics, who are charged with changing 2,000 clocks. Towering over the UK capital and its parliament, the clock will be stopped briefly to adjust for the switch to winter time — one of only two occasions each year when it is allowed to pause.
Kopenhagen (AFP) – Giant pumpkins are carved with chainsaws to be illuminated in Copenhagen’s annual Halloween competition, with this year’s winner weighing 903.5 kg. The pumpkins are carved in Tivoli Gardens, and will be donated to Copenhagen Zoo after Halloween celebrations end, where elephants and other animals can to eat them.
