PARIS (TIP): France is in discussions with Ukraine to access its mineral wealth, including for military use, Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said February 27.
“We are discussing this question for France’s needs,” he told the Franceinfo broadcaster, a day before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is to meet US President Donald Trump to finalise a deal on US access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth. The French-Ukraine talks started in October and were led by both countries’ defence ministries, Lecornu said.
Unlike Trump, France was not seeking any payback in the form of minerals from Ukraine for aid granted in support of Kyiv’s war against Russia, he said.
“We’re not looking to be reimbursed,” Lecornu said. “But our defence industry will need a certain amount of raw materials that are absolutely key to our own weapons systems. Not next year, but in the coming 30 or 40 years.”
France needed to “diversify” its sources for such commodities, he said, without identifying the minerals he hoped to obtain from Ukraine.
He said Zelensky himself had launched the idea “of including minerals in his plan for victory” last autumn, starting discussions “not just with the United States, but also with France.” (AFP)
Two men publicly flogged 80 times in Indonesia for same-sex relations under Shariah law
BANDA ACEH (TIP): Two men were publicly flogged in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province on February 27 after they were found guilty of sexual relations by a court operating under strict Islamic law.
While gay sex is not illegal elsewhere in Indonesia—the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation—it is outlawed in Aceh, which imposes a version of sharia, the Islamic legal code.
The flogging began before midday at a park in provincial capital Banda Aceh, with one man accused of instigating the relationship lashed 82 times and the second man 77 times. Both were caned with a rattan stick as dozens watched on, according to an AFP journalist present.
The men’s sentences were reduced by three lashes for three months spent in detention.
In November, locals raided a rented room in Banda Aceh and found the two men—both students at a local university—together. They were taken to sharia police for the alleged crime of sexual relations. (AFP)