PARIS (AP) — A teacher was stabbed to death Wednesday in southwestern France by a high school student, according to French authorities and media reports. The student has been arrested by police, the prosecutor of Bayonne said. A top government official, speaking anonymously because he was not allowed to discuss the issue publicly, said first elements communicated by police suggest the attacker has severe mental health issues. French media reported that the student, born in 2007, said he heard voices telling him to kill the 53-year-old teacher of Spanish at the private Catholic school in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Education Minister Pap Ndiaye headed to the school later Wednesday.

 

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LONDON (Reuters) - Ambulance staff and other health workers who are a part of Britain’s Unison trade union will take strike action on March 8 in an ongoing pay dispute, the union said on Wednesday. “We have just announced more strike dates in the NHS. The promise of talks alone won’t be enough for us to suspend these,” Unison General Secretary Christina McAnea said on Twitter. While nurses have paused strike action to enter talks with the British government over pay, the state-run National Health Service still faces a planned walk out next month by tens of thousands of junior doctors in England.

 

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BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Nearly 1 million people applied for international protection in the European Union in 2022, according to data published Wednesday, bringing the number of asylum requests to a level not seen since the refugee crisis of 2015-2016. The EU agency for asylum said 966,000 asylum applications were made in the 27 EU countries as well as in Norway and Switzerland last year, up 50% from 2021. That doesn’t include more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees who were granted temporary protection in the EU, a special mechanism activated to avoid collapsing already backlogged asylum systems.

 

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MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Ten people were killed in an attack in Somalia’s capital claimed by the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group, which said it was targeting military officials and militia fighters involved in an offensive against it. The Tuesday attack began with a car bomb blast followed by a gun fight that went on for hours at a house in Mogadishu where several lawmakers were believed to be staying, a witness told Reuters. Somalia’s information ministry said late on Tuesday that 10 civilians were killed, but did not say who was targeted. Security forces killed the four militant gunmen involved in the assault, it said. Al Shabaab has stepped up attacks in a show of resurgence since President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s government launched an offensive against the group in August.

 

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BRASILIA (Reuters) - The death toll from heavy rains that devastated coastal areas of Brazil’s southeastern Sao Paulo state rose to 46 on Tuesday, with more precipitation expected. The city of Sao Sebastiao bore the brunt of the human toll, with 45 of the reported deaths. Massive rainfall has caused landslides and flooding, displacing almost 2,500 people. Rescue work is ongoing, according to the Sao Paulo state government.