Politics
Meet Ali Akbar, the last newspaper hawker in Paris

Ali Akbar knows everyone, and everyone knows him. The last newspaper hawker in Paris zigzags each day from cafe to cafe, shouting humorous headlines in the heart of the French capital.
“France is getting better!” he cries, just one of the headlines he invents to sell his wares around the upmarket streets of Saint-German-des-Pres.
“(Eric) Zemmour has converted to Islam!” he shouts, referring to the far-right candidate in the 2022 presidential elections.
Locals and tourists on the Left Bank, the intellectual and cultural heart of Paris, look on amused.
“Even the walls could talk about Ali,” smiled Amina Qissi, a waitress at a restaurant opposite the Marche Saint-Germain, who has known Akbar for more than 20 years.
Now 73, Akbar, a slim, fine-featured “character” with newspapers tucked under his arm, is a neighbourhood legend, she added.
“Even regular tourists ask where he is if they don’t see him,” she told AFP.
Hard life
French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to soon make Akbar a knight in the national order of merit in recognition of his “dedicated service to France”.
“At first, I didn’t believe it. Friends must have asked him (Macron) or maybe he decided on his own. We often crossed paths when he was a student,” said Akbar.
“I believe it’s related to my courage, because I’ve worked hard,” he added.
Akbar, who wears round spectacles, a blue work jacket and a Gavroche cap, mainly sells copies of the French daily Le Monde.
When he arrived in France at the age of 20, hoping to escape poverty and send back money to his family in Pakistan, he worked as a sailor, then a dishwasher in a restaurant in the northern city of Rouen.
Then in Paris, he bumped into Georges Bernier, the humourist also known as Professeur Choron, who gave him the chance to sell his satirical newspapers Hara-Kiri and Charlie Hebdo.
Akbar has been homeless, experienced extreme poverty and had even been attacked—but despite the hardships, he said he has never given up.
“Emmanuel Macron is going to put a bit of antiseptic on my wounds,” he told his son Shahab, who at 30 is the youngest of his five children.
Shahab, who describes himself as “very proud” of his father, enjoys cataloguing the numerous profiles dedicated to his father in the foreign press.
When he started out as a hawker in the 1970s, Akbar focused on the Left Bank of the river Seine, which was a university area “where you could eat cheaply”, he said.
On the rue Saint-Guillaume in front of the prestigious Sciences Po university, he recalled learning French from interactions with students like former prime minister Edouard Philippe and “many others who became ministers or lawmakers”.
‘A good mood’
Paris used to have about 40 newspaper hawkers—street vendors without a fixed newsstand— who were posted at strategic locations such as the entrances to metro stations.
Akbar stood out by choosing to walk around, selecting the Latin Quarter. In the 1980s, he started inventing sensational headlines.
“I want people to live happily. I do it to create a good mood, that’s all,” he said.
But he admitted that he is finding it increasingly difficult to come up with good jokes.
“Everything is such a mess,” he added.
Akbar, who receives a pension of 1,000 euros ($1,175) a month, still works from 3 pm until 10 pm each day.
When AFP met him on a recent afternoon, clients were few and far between. On average, he sells about 30 newspapers every day, compared to between 150 and 200 when he started.
“As long as I’ve got the energy, I’ll keep going. I’ll work until I die,” he joked.
On the terrace of one cafe, Amel Ghali, 36, said Akbar was “inspiring”.
“It’s good to see it in the digital age,” he said. “Unfortunately, our children won’t experience the pleasure of reading a newspaper with a coffee.”
Politics
Netanyahu says he was successfully treated for prostate cancer

- Netanyahu does not disclose when treatment occurred.
- Delayed release of medical report by two months: Israeli PM.
- Move aimed at preventing Iran from spreading “propaganda”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said that he had received successful treatment for early-stage prostate cancer, without specifying when the treatment took place.
In a statement on social media, as his annual medical report was released, Netanyahu, 76, said an early stage malignant tumor had been discovered during a routine checkup. He said “targeted treatment” had removed “the problem” and left no trace of it.
According to the medical report, which otherwise said the prime minister was in good health, Netanyahu was treated with radiation therapy for early-stage prostate cancer.
Neither the medical report nor Netanyahu said when the treatment occurred.
Israel’s longest-serving prime minister said that he had delayed the release of the medical report by two months to prevent Iran from spreading “false propaganda against Israel”.
In March, during the fighting with Iran, rumors that circulated on social media and aired on Iranian state media claimed that Netanyahu had died.
The Israeli leader recorded a video of himself visiting a Jerusalem cafe in March to refute the claims.
Netanyahu underwent surgery on his prostate in 2024 after he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection resulting from a benign prostate enlargement. In 2023, he was fitted with a pacemaker. Elections are due to be held in Israel by October.
Politics
Strategic Assertion or Legal Breach? Deconstructing India’s Indus Waters Doctrine

India’s unilateral suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty under the pretext of security concerns constitutes a flagrant violation of international law , devoid of any legal basis within the Treaty framework. By invoking unsubstantiated claims surrounding the Pahalgam incident , India advances a dangerous doctrine that legitimizes treaty erosion and the coercive weaponisation of shared resources.
The Indus Waters Treaty is a binding bilateral instrument that contains no provision permitting unilateral suspension , reinterpretation, or conditional compliance, thereby rendering India’s decision to hold it in abeyance legally untenable and inconsistent with the principle of pacta sunt servanda. The attempt to justify this breach through allegations linked to the Pahalgam incident remains entirely unsubstantiated in international fora, exposing the claim as a politically motivated pretext rather than a lawful justification. By conflating disputed security narratives with treaty obligations, India not only undermines the integrity of a long-standing water-sharing regime but also sets a pernicious precedent that threatens the stability of transboundary agreements and the broader rules-based international order.
India’s unilateral move to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance is not a policy shift, it is a shameless act of legal defiance , openly violating the most basic rule of international law; pacta sunt servanda.
The weaponization of a water-sharing treaty exposes the dangerous ideological imprint of the RSS mindset , where majoritarian extremism overrides legal commitments India’s attempt to justify its conduct through the Pahalgam incident collapses under scrutiny even after a year; no evidence, no accountability, no credibility, only a politically convenient narrative weaponized to rationalize treaty violations.
Dragging terrorism allegations into a binding water treaty is not strategy, it is blatant and reckless escalation , dismantling decades of carefully insulated cooperation and replacing it with instability and mistrust.
By sidestepping proceedings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, India has revealed a pattern of selective legality , embracing international law when convenient and abandoning it when constrained. Moreover, India yet remains silent to the UN Special Rapporteurs queries even after 130 days.
The weaponisation of water by an upper riparian state is nothing short of hydro-political terrorism , targeting the economic and agricultural lifeline of millions and crossing the line from governance into coercion.
This conduct represents a shameful erosion of treaty sanctity , sending a chilling message to the world that binding agreements can be hollowed out by power politics and ideological rigidity.
Pakistan’s position remains unequivocal; treaties are not conditional favors but binding obligations, and no state has the authority to unilaterally rewrite or suspend them under the guise of security narratives.
The growing international concern surrounding India’s actions underscores a simple reality: Unilateralism is isolating, destabilizing, and fundamentally incompatible with a rules-based order.
At its core, this doctrine of “blood and water cannot flow together” is not a principle of justice, it is a dangerous precedent, legitimizing collective punishment and transforming a historic instrument of peace into a tool of strategic pressure.
Politics
India rebukes Trump for sharing ‘hellhole’ remarks on birthright citizenship

- Trump shares commentary on birthright citizenship on his social media.
- Conservative talk show host called China, India ‘hellhole’ places.
- India says inappropriate comments do not reflect reality of India-US ties.
India has dismissed as “uninformed” comments shared by US President Donald Trump that described the country as a “hellhole”, saying they were inappropriate and inconsistent with the strong relationship between the two countries.
The comments were made by conservative commentator Michael Savage in an episode of The Savage Nation talk radio show. Trump posted a transcript of the show on his Truth Social account on Thursday without any comments.
“A baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring the entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet,” Savage said, according to the transcript.
“That there’s almost no loyalty to this country amongst the immigrant class coming in today, which was not always the case. No, they’re not like the European Americans of today and their ancestors.”
Reuters could not immediately contact Savage.
Trump has issued a directive seeking to restrict birthright citizenship in the United States, a move that has been challenged in the US Supreme Court. Earlier this month, he attended a hearing on the issue in a historic visit to the court.
India’s foreign ministry late on Thursday reacted strongly to the comments.
“The remarks are obviously uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, said in a statement.
“They certainly do not reflect the reality of the India-US relationship, which has long been based on mutual respect and shared interests.”
The US embassy in New Delhi said: “The president has said ‘India is a great country with a very good friend of mine at the top’.”
China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
India’s main opposition Congress party called the “hellhole” remark “extremely insulting and anti-India. It hurts every Indian”.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi should take up this matter with the US President and register a strong objection,” the party said on X.
Indian government data shows nearly 5.5 million people of Indian origin live in the United States. Indian Americans and Chinese Americans are the two biggest groups of Asian origin in the US.
Trump and Modi enjoyed warm ties during Trump’s first term, but relations cooled after India was hit last year with some of the highest US tariffs, many of which were rolled back this year. India and the US are now working on a trade deal aimed at preventing any renewed increase in tariffs and boosting sales to each other.
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