The 2023 World Beach Games, scheduled to take place in Bali next month, have been canceled after hosts Indonesia suddenly withdrew from the tournament.

It comes three months after football’s world governing body FIFA stripped Indonesia of its right to host the Under-20 Men’s World Cup on the tourist island after it objected to the participation of Israel.

About 1,500 athletes from 100 countries were set to compete in Bali from August 5 to 15 in the youth-focused tournament featuring sports including beach soccer, surfing, sailing and beach volleyball.

The organizer, the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), said Indonesia had pulled out of hosting duties due to budget constraints and there was not enough time to find a replacement host nation.

“It is with great surprise and extreme disappointment that ANOC has learnt that the Indonesian Olympic Committee (KOI) has withdrawn from its commitment to host the ANOC World Beach Games and the ANOC General Assembly in August 2023,” ANOC said in a statement Tuesday.

“The KOI stated the decision was taken after the budget was not released by the government of the country and there is now not time to deliver the games.”

Indonesia, a Muslim majority nation of more than 270 million people, does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel and supports the cause of the Palestinians.

Anti-Israeli sentiment runs high among conservative Muslims in Indonesia. In March, protesters marched in the capital Jakarta demanding the government ban Israel from playing in the Under-20 Men’s World Cup.

Indonesia’s withdrawal from the World Beach Games at such a late hour caught the organizing body off guard.

“ANOC and the KOI met for weekly coordination meetings, as recently as last week, and at no point did the KOI indicate there were any issues that would lead to such an outcome,” ANOC said in its statement.

On Wednesday, Indonesia’s sports minister Dito Ariotedjo said the government had allotted 446 billion rupiah (about US$29 million) for the games but it was still under review, according to Reuters and Indonesia’s Antara news agency.

In a statement, Indonesia National Olympic Committee spokesperson Raja Sapta Oktohari said the decision to cancel was made with a “heavy heart,” citing a bureaucratic hold up with the budget and not enough time to smooth it out.

“The situation is felt to be getting more difficult because several sponsors of the 2nd ANOC World Beach Games Bali 2023 have also announced their withdrawal,” Raja Sapta said.

Following an investigation, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced the suspension of New York Yankees pitcher Jimmy Cordero for the remainder of the 2023 season, including any postseason games, for violating the league’s Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy.

MLB said Cordero accepted the suspension and the immediate placement on the league’s restricted list. No specific details were disclosed.

The Yankees said the team accepted the punishment levied at Cordero.

“There is no justification for domestic violence, and we stand with the objectives, standards and enforcement of MLB’s Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy,” a team statement read Wednesday.

The right handed reliever has appeared in 31 games for the Yankees this season. The 31-year-old has pitched 32.2 innings with an ERA of 3.86 and 34 strikeouts.

MLB said Cordero will “participate in a confidential and comprehensive evaluation and treatment program” supervised by the MLB and MLBPA approved Joint Policy Board.

The Rio de Janeiro government named an anti-racism law after Real Madrid forward Vinícius Jr. on Wednesday which will see sporting events stopped or suspended in the event of racist conduct.

Brazil forward Vinícius was racially abused by fans when Madrid played Valencia in May, the 10th such incident involving the 22-year-old that LaLiga has reported to prosecutors that season.

Local media said the law was inspired by the player’s response to the incident at Valencia’s Mestalla stadium, where the game was paused for several minutes while the player pointed at those racially abusing him in the stands.

The ‘Vini Jr law,’ unanimously approved by the Rio government in June, includes protocol on how to process complaints of racism and mandatory educational campaigns.

“Today is a very special day and I hope my family is very proud,” said Vinícius during a ceremony at the Maracanã Stadium, where he made his senior debut for Flamengo in 2017.

“I am very young and I didn’t expect that I would be receiving this tribute.”

Vinícius also received awards from Rio’s legislative assembly and city council and his footprints were added to the stadium’s Walk of Fame beside those of Brazilian greats such as Pelé, Garrincha and Ronaldo Nazário.

“Sometimes, I wonder if I deserve so much,” he said. “I didn’t expect so many awards and to receive all this affection at the Maracanã, where I attended and played so many Flamengo matches.”

Rio de Janeiro’s Secretary for Sports Rafael Picciani said it was an honor to pay tribute to “an idol of Brazilian football, born and raised in Rio de Janeiro.”

“In addition to all his football career achievements, Vinícius has also become a symbol of the fight against racism.”

A cameraman who was hit by an errant throw in Wednesday’s New York Yankees vs. Baltimore Orioles game is “conscious” and “undergoing tests” in the hospital, his network said in an update after the game.

In the fifth inning, Orioles rookie shortstop Gunnar Henderson attempted to throw a ball to first base to get the Yankees’ Anthony Volpe out.

However, Henderson’s throw flew over first baseman Ryan O’Hearn’s head and sailed into a camera positioned behind O’Hearn where it appeared to hit Pete Stendel, a cameraman for YES Network, on the head.

Play stopped for about 17 minutes as medical personnel attended to Stendel with TV cameras showing the concern etched onto the players’ faces.

After a brief pause, Stendel was carted off the field while raising a peace sign to the crowd at Yankee Stadium as he received a standing ovation. The crowd chanted “MVP” as Stendel was carted out of the stadium.

“Every time that a ball goes over the first baseman or even a foul ball from the hitter, you don’t want to see it going towards a fan. It just happened to be in the wrong spot, and I hope he’s doing all right,” Henderson said after the Orioles beat the Yankees 6-3. “My prayers go out to him. I’m just thankful for the guys that rushed over there to him to help him.”

After the game, YES Network provided an update on Stendel’s health saying he was “conscious” and “undergoing tests” at the hospital.

“Definitely praying for him. It was good to see him obviously coherent and obviously raising his hand going off,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said.

“But I saw it pretty well right away, and it was very scary. I didn’t see how he fell back, but I knew what could’ve been possible falling back, on top of the impact from the velocity of the ball hitting him … Obviously, a difficult scene there, and just hoping he’s OK.”

Clean-up efforts are underway at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming after a major windstorm blew across the southern portion of the park Monday, knocking down hundreds of trees, park officials said.

Strong winds and rain bombarded the park’s Lake Village area, though no serious injuries have been reported, according to a news release from the park. Falling trees struck multiple buildings and vehicles, and at least one building and three cabins were evacuated and remain closed for cleanup and repairs.

During the storm, the hotel and clinic lost power for 24 hours, the news release said. Campgrounds and roads had to be cleared of debris.

“Monday night’s storm event hit the Lake area very hard,” Yellowstone superintendent Cam Sholly said. “The National Park Service team and our partners quickly stabilized the situation and got recovery efforts started immediately.”

The “several hundred” trees torn down by the storm were in areas around Lake Hotel, Lake Lodge, Lake Medical Clinic and Lake General Store, as well as near Lake employee housing areas and Bridge Bay Campground and marina, according to the news release.

On Monday night, the National Weather Service reported a 73-mph wind gust in Teton County, which is home to a large portion of the park.

Yellowstone officials estimate that clean-up efforts from the storm damage will continue into next week.

Pondering on the cleanliness of airplanes is not something most of us like to think about when flying.

But while you might think your neighbor using a sick bag is as bad as things can get, one man was confronted by bodily fluids of a different kind when he found his feet on an airplane carpet still wet with a previous passenger’s blood and diarrhea.

Habib Battah was flying from Paris to Toronto on Air France on June 30 when he noticed a strange smell coming from the footwell under his and his wife’s seats shortly after takeoff.

The pair were traveling on the Boeing 777 with their two cats – each in a separate carrier, in the footwell in front of the couple. They were moving temporarily from Lebanon to the US, where Battah, a Beirut-based journalist, will spend a stint as a university lecturer.

“It was our first time traveling with the cats, and I was thinking, ‘Oh god, they’ve had an accident, I’m so embarrassed.’

“Then I thought, maybe it’s someone’s body odor. I was sniffing and sniffing, then said, let me get the cats out.”

He crouched on the floor to check on the animals on his hands and knees. “I looked at the cats – the poor cats were totally fine,” he says.

The gruesome discovery

But what he did notice beneath the cat carriers was a wet stain on the floor – about 20 inches long and wide, he says. He flagged down a passing flight attendant.

“I said it smells like merde – s**t. She handed me wet wipes. I started wiping and it was red – blood red. And it kept coming up red. I was like, ‘What the hell is this?’ I just wanted to see what it was. After a while, one of the flight attendants said, ‘You’d better go wash your hands, and here are some gloves.’”

As Battah was cleaning, the flight attendant had passed the message on to her coworkers, and the captain was radioing Paris, asking what on earth was the blood red stain under seats 30A and 30B.

The news came back from Air France HQ: it was human blood. The day before, on a Paris -Boston flight, a male passenger had suffered what Battah says the crew called a “hemorrhage.”

The passenger had survived, and the captain of that flight had requested that the area be cleaned for the aircraft’s next flight back to Paris – but seemingly the cleaners had forgotten about the floor.

“I didn’t know it was blood until a flight attendant said, casually, ‘Oh, we heard another passenger had a hemorrhage’,” says Battah. “Then I noticed the cat carrier was stained as well.” The blood had soaked through to the carrier, which doubles as a backpack.

In a frenzy, he wanted to clean the bag – the cat still inside it. He moved to the galley area to keep cleaning, “trying to furiously get rid of this awfulness. I used a whole pack of wet wipes.”

He says that only one flight attendant seemed “angry [on Battah’s behalf], he was apologizing” but the others didn’t react. “It’s also a threat to the flight crew. I asked, what’s your protocol for this, but they said nothing. I’m pretty sure there is none.”

‘I thought I’d seen it all… until now’

It was a long flight for the couple, who say they were offered “two small bottles of Evian water” as recompense, and were given two blankets from business class to put on the floor, with powder to soak up the blood. The flight was full and they couldn’t be moved. “We had to sit there smelling the blood for the next seven hours,” he says. “The smell of rotten blood is like manure. I’d taken my shoes off at the start of the flight, and there was blood on my socks.”

Actually, it was manure, kind of. Three days later, he was called by Air France and told that the blood had been mixed with feces.

“As per procedure in this type of situation, a complete clean-up of the area was requested and the row of seats was made unavailable on the return flight [from Boston to Paris],” the statement said.

“A customer travelling on the next flight from Paris (CDG) to Toronto (YYZ) reported residual traces of blood on the floor, soiling his personal belongings. The crew immediately assisted him in cleaning his belongings, providing him with suitable equipment such as sterile gloves and disinfectant wipes.

“As the flight was fully booked, it was not possible to move the passenger.

“An internal investigation has been launched to understand the reasons for this situation.”

Air France said it “understands and regrets the inconvenience caused by this situation” and that it was in touch with Battah.

“The risk of exposure to residual traces of blood on the carpet is low, if not non-existent.”

Battah says: “I’ve been covering Beirut for 20 years as a journalist. I’ve lived through wars, airstrikes, seen assassinations, car bombs, and narrowly survived the port explosion. I thought I’d seen it all. I didn’t expect to find more blood than I’ve seen in Beirut on an Air France plane.”

‘I brought that blood home’

In a “state of shock” on arrival, and unable to remove the cats, he’d picked up the carrier, slung it on his back as a backpack, and taken it with him to Toronto, where the pair are currently visiting Anna’s family.

“I brought that blood home. They sent me home with a biohazard. They never stopped me and said, ‘Hey, we don’t know what this patient had [wrong with him].’ It was so negligent,” he says.

“[The incident] was two flights before ours, so in Boston the clean-up didn’t happen. The plane returned to Paris, this bloody, dirty, sh**ty plane. And we got on it. That means other passengers were also exposed to it. I think they endangered their passengers’ wellbeing.

“I started to ask, ‘How do you not check? What are the protocols for biohazards?’ I couldn’t get them to tell me. It was as if there were none.”

It did not confirm whether the initial cleaning was done in Boston, or in Paris – after the plane flew back to France following the incident. However, it added that “the cleaning has been done, and the seat cushions had to be removed, resulting in the decommercialization of the row of seats” – suggesting that the plane was initially cleaned in Boston, with the cushions replaced in Paris. At neither point did cleaning crew notice that the floor was also soaked.

‘Clearly it was an error’

Is a carpet drenched in blood and feces really a low-to-nonexistent risk to passengers? Not according to Dr Richard Dawood, specialist in travel medicine at London’s Fleet Street Clinic.

“I don’t agree with that,” he says. “This is a very unhygienic situation, and we don’t know what the passenger was suffering from, or whether it was infective.

“It could have been blood and diarrhea from an infection, or from something like colitis, but either way, in a hospital setting this would have been treated as contamination and a biohazard.

“There are lots of blood-borne viral infections – hepatitis B, C, HIV – but mostly they require contact with broken skin, or a penetrating injury. All these things are of low incidence in the population, so the starting position is that the risk is relatively small, and the chances of it going through intact skin is incredibly small. But that’s not the point – it shouldn’t have happened.”

What’s more, he says that the way passengers behave on a plane could have added to the risk. “There lots of things passengers do on planes that involve eating and using their hands, and it’s not very easy to wash hands on a plane, it’s crowded, and it’s very easy for people to contaminate surfaces.”

In fact, the diarrhea may have been more hazardous than the blood. Dawood says that cleaning diarrhea without disinfecting it – as Battah ended up doing in the galley, near the food preparation area – can “aerosolize” its particles.

“The airline may only be considering the blood hazard, but mixed blood and stool is nasty, it gets everywhere. It’s easy to contaminate people’s hands and surfaces – I’d regard it as hazardous.”

“The plane should have been taken out of service until properly cleaned. Obviously they took the seats out of service, so they knew there was a problem and it should have been acted upon on the ground. Airlines should be good at this – clearly there was an error.”

However, as long as Battah and his wife remain symptom-free, he wouldn’t expect them to be tested for possible diseases.

Mind your hands onboard

Has the idea of what Battah went through put you off flying? Dawood says we should all be minding our hand hygiene in the air.

“People often think about the risks on a plane, but the process of getting to the airport – holding onto handles on public transport, touching surfaces, going through security, taking your shoes off and getting the bus to the plane… by the time you board, your hands are pretty filthy, and the first thing everyone wants to do after the ordeal of going through an airport is to relax into their seat, and be offered something to eat or drink.”

He suggests washing or sanitizing hands once you sit down.

Meanwhile, Battah – who is currently talking to lawyers, and posted gruesome photos in a Twitter thread – says Air France called him three days after the flight, offered to have the cats washed and suggested a $500 voucher. He declined their offer.

“I don’t think it’s right, I think it’s a serious biohazard and should be investigated thoroughly. I don’t want to be shushed with some change. Our airfare cost $2,500 – is a 20% discount worth sitting in blood and feces for? I think it was gross negligence and someone should be held accountable.

“Incidents happen – we’re human, we bleed – but once that plane lands, you’ve got to clean the aircraft. It’s egregious that it didn’t happen.”

More than 400 people were arrested across France on Thursday as a wave of protests swept the country for a third night following the fatal police shooting of a teenage boy that was captured on video.

France’s elite police force, the RAID, were deployed to the cities of Bordeaux, Lyon, Roubaix, Marseille and Lille, to help contain the protests.

Confrontations flared up between protesters and police in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre – where the 17-year-old named Nahel was killed days before – and in the southern port city of Marseille.

Amid burning debris, “vengeance pour Nael” appeared to be spray painted on a wall in Nanterre, which translates to “revenge for Nael” in reference to the slain teenager and using an alternative spelling of his name, according to footage from the suburb.

A bank was set on fire in Nanterre, according to photographs from the scene, and 15 people have been taken in for questioning by police after a march held in memory of the teenager turned violent.

At least 421 people were arrested in the protests across France from Thursday night into Friday morning, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told BFMTV.

More than half of those arrests took place in the Paris region, in the departments of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne, BFMTV reported, citing Paris police.

Earlier, Darmanin said police were instructed to “intervene systematically” and expressed support for the police officers and firefighters who “are doing a courageous job.”

President Emmanuel Macron will hold a crisis meeting Friday for the second day in a row following Thursday night’s violence, BFMTV reported.

Authorities had hoped to avoid a repeat of the scenes that played out Wednesday night, when police stations, town halls and schools were set alight in various cities and about 150 people were arrested. The Interior Ministry earlier said it planned on deploying 40,000 police officers across the country Thursday – including 5,000 in Paris – to quell any potential unrest.

The unrest broke out Tuesday, hours after a police traffic stop in Nanterre resulted in the killing of Nahel. Over the course of a chaotic night, 40 cars were burned and 24 police officers injured, French authorities claimed. The police officer was put under formal investigation for voluntary homicide and placed in preliminary detention, BFMTV reported Thursday.

On Thursday, an estimated 6,000 people, according to BFMTV, joined a march to honor Nahel led by his mother in Nanterre.

Many wore shirts emblazoned with “justice for Nahel,” while others shouted the slogan. Some were seen holding signs saying “the police kill.” A lawyer for the family on Thursday confirmed the spelling of the boy’s name as Nahel; he was initially identified as Naël.

Buses and tramways in Lille shut down after 8 p.m. local time, according to BFMTV, and a couple of Parisian suburbs have installed curfews.

The violent scenes seen over the past two days have raised concerns that Nahel’s death could lead to a level of unrest and rioting not seen since 2005, when the deaths of two teenage boys hiding from police sparked three weeks of rioting and prompted the government to call a state of emergency.

Anger at police brutality

The video of Nahel’s killing has sparked a similar level of shock and anger across France, touching a particular nerve among young men and women of color who feel that they have been discriminated against by police. A 2017 study by the Rights Defenders, an independent human rights watchdog in France, found that young men perceived to be Black or Arab were 20 times more likely to be stopped by police than their peers.

“People know and have been speaking about police brutality and have not been heard,” she said.

The Algerian Foreign Ministry on Thursday extended its condolences to Nahel’s family, saying in a statement their “grief and sorrow are widely shared in our country” and that it will “closely follow the developments of this tragic case.”

The ministry said it trusts the French government to “carry out their duty to protect, assure peace of mind and security which Algerian nationals are entitled to in their host country.”

French media have reported that the teenager was of Algerian descent.

Video of the shooting in Nanterre surfaced on social media shortly after the incident took place Tuesday morning. The clip shows two police officers standing on the driver’s side of a yellow Mercedes AMG, one near the door and another near the left front fender. As the car attempts to drive away, one officer is seen firing his sidearm.

The bullet that hit Nahel pierced his arm and chest. After fleeing the scene, the car crashed into a stationary object at a nearby plaza. Nahel was in the car with two others at the time of the incident. One passenger in the vehicle was taken into custody and later released, while another, who is believed to have fled the scene, is missing, authorities said.

The local Nanterre prosecutor, Pascal Prache, said Thursday that the officers testified both drew their weapons and pointed them at the driver to dissuade him from restarting the engine. The officer who fired his weapon said, according to the prosecutor, that he was scared the boy would run someone over with the car. However, Prache said it is believed the officer accused of shooting and killing Nahel may have acted illegally in doing so.

Prache said that Nahel had been known to authorities for a previous “breach of rules,” but it is not clear what law or orders that pertains to. The teen was expected to appear before a juvenile court in September.

Laurent-Franck Lienard, the lawyer of the officer accused of shooting Nahel, told French radio station RTL that his client acted in “compliance of the law.”

In another interview with BFMTV, he said that any accusations his client lied in a statement were false as he had never made a written statement and that his verbal testimony did not contradict the facts.

He claimed his client’s prosecution was “political” and being used as a way to calm the violent tensions.

As to the deadly incident, Lienard said police officers had “struggled for 30 seconds” to detain the driver while the car had stopped. He added that his client feared for the safety of the public as the car had nearly hit pedestrians before the start of the video.

Lienard said his client was not the person in the video who shouted, “I’ll put a bullet in your head,” while also suggesting that might not have been what was said.

He added that his client was “devastated” by Nahel’s death and he did not want to kill him. “He committed an act in a second, in a fraction of a second. Perhaps he made a mistake, justice will tell,” Liénard said.

Questions of racism

Macron and other government officials, including Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, have called for patience to allow the criminal justice system to run its course.

“We need calm for justice to carry out its work,” Macron said Wednesday. “We can’t allow the situation to worsen.”

Rallying public support and goodwill, however, is likely to be difficult for Macron’s government given how much political capital it spent in the first half of 2023 pushing through unpopular pension reforms, which sparked months of mostly peaceful mass protests.

Acknowledging the government’s massive unpopularity, Macron gave himself 100 days to heal and unite the country. That deadline is up on July 14, France’s national day.

Addressing allegations of institutional racism in France is particularly challenging given the country’s unique brand of secularism, which seeks to ensure equality for all by removing markers of difference, rendering all citizens French first. In practice, however, the vigorous adherence to French Republicanism often prevents the government from doing anything that would appear to differentiate French citizens on the basis of race, including collecting statistics.

Racial and religious data, where available, typically comes from private institutions, and extra care is typically taken by politicians to avoid circumscribing racial motives to state institutions.

“On a general level, people tend to think there is no racism in France. And it’s one of the reasons people are so angry, because they feel and experience racism on a daily basis,” said Diallo, the anti-racism activist. “Despite that, they still face institutions, public discourse, and media which still say that there is no racism and that the race debate does not belong in France. And that’s the reason people are so angry and so outraged.”

Government officials have so far not broached questions of racism in the police. Leaders of opposition left-wing parties have focused their criticisms on police violence rather than racism. Government spokesman Olivier Veran told BFMTV that anger against the state itself, however, is unjustified.

“It is not the republic that killed this young man,” Veran said. “It is one man who must be judged if the justice system deems it necessary.”

You may have thought all the major royal moments of the year were over… but hold your horses because one more is coming up. Scotland will celebrate the accession of King Charles III with its own festivities on Wednesday.

The ceremonial events are part of Holyrood Week – also known as Royal Week – which takes place annually and customarily sees the monarch travel to various regions in the country celebrating Scottish culture, achievement and community.

King Charles and Queen Camilla will be joined by Prince William and Kate, who go by their Scottish titles of the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay when north of the border.

“Scotland will welcome the new King and Queen in July with a series of events to mark the Coronation. A People’s Procession, a Royal Procession, a National Service of Thanksgiving and a Gun Salute will take place in Edinburgh,” First Minister Humza Yousaf said in a statement ahead of the event on July 5.

Yousaf said individuals representing various communities and organizations would take part and said there would be opportunities for the public to join the fun too.

The Thanksgiving Service will be held at St. Giles’ Cathedral – which many will remember as a stop on the Queen’s final journey back to London from Balmoral last year. There the Scottish Crown Jewels will be presented to the King.

The most important pieces of the regalia are the crown, scepter and sword – which date back to around the early 16th century.

Known as the Honours of Scotland, the items are made of gold, silver and precious gems and are the oldest crown jewels in Britain. The crown was first worn by James V at the coronation of Queen Mary of Guise in 1540.

Where the solid silver scepter came from is more mysterious though. Some believe it was a papal gift from Innocent VIII to James IV in 1494. The items were first used together at the coronation of the nine-month-old Mary, Queen of Scots in 1543.

The precious regalia is kept at Edinburgh Castle – but the crown jewels were once spirited from their home for protection from Oliver Cromwell’s army, between 1651 and 1660. Much of the English regalia of the time was obliterated during these years and new items had to be commissioned following the restoration of the monarchy.

After the Act of Union in 1707, when English and Scottish Parliaments united, the Honours were locked away in a chest until their rediscovery in 1818 by famous novelist Walter Scott, who also found a mysterious silver wand.

Another item that will be present will be the Stone of Scone or Stone of Destiny – which some keen royal fans will know featured in the Westminster Abbey coronation in early May. The stone, which had been used as a seat in the coronation of Scottish kings for centuries, is now kept in Scotland but was carried down to London for Charles’ first big day.

The Honours will move from Edinburgh Castle to St. Giles’ in a grand People’s Procession featuring 100 individuals representative of Scottish life and escorted by the King’s Body Guard for Scotland, the Royal Company of Archers and an honor guard of Armed Forces personnel, as well as the Royal Regiment of Scotland Shetland pony mascot Corporal Cruachan IV. As they file down the Royal Mile, music will be provided by cadet musicians from the Combined Cadet Force Pipes and Drums, 51 Brigade Cadet Military Band.

There will also be a royal procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to the cathedral, supported by the Royal Marine Band (Scotland) and the Pipes, Drums and Bugles of the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland (2 SCOTS). A 21-gun salute from the 12 Regiment Royal Artillery will sound at the end of the service before the royal procession returns to Holyroodhouse.

George Gross, a visiting research fellow in theology at King’s College London, said it would be a “poignant moment” for Charles, who stood vigil over his mother’s coffin in the same space less than a year ago.

“This service of thanksgiving is a complex and important event for the monarchy that must as always stand above politics, all the more so in an era of devolution and with the SNP in charge of government at Holyrood,” he said.

“How to combine and respect traditions and symbols of Scottish nationalism, from the Honours of Scotland to the Stone of Destiny, in a service of thanksgiving, whilst avoiding the politics of independence, will be an intricate task.”

The documents, obtained by the Russian investigative Dossier Center, showed that Surovikin had been assigned a personal VIP Wagner registration number in 2018.

Surovikin is listed along with at least 30 other senior Russian military and intelligence officials, who the Dossier Center said are also VIP Wagner members. The identities of those officials has not been revealed.

There is no evidence that Surovikin was on Wagner’s payroll but the VIP membership for so many senior figures implies an overly close relationship between the Russian military and the mercenary group.

This suspicion of divided loyalty between Wagner and the Russian military, which could have played a role in allowing the group’s fighters to take a key base in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don with little resistance, may fuel a purge of top military leaders.

Surovikin has not been seen in public since last Saturday, when he released a video in which he held a machine gun and nervously pleaded for Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin to stop his insurrection. His whereabouts are unknown since then.

The New York Times reported the Russian general “had advance knowledge” of Prigozhin’s revolt, which represented the most serious challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s tenure in his 23 years in power.

Surovkin called on Prigozhin to stop the rebellion soon after it began but he appeared to be stammering as though reading from a script, prompting speculation about his state of mind.

Prigozhin was last spotted leaving Rostov-on-Don Saturday, after abruptly calling off his troops’ march on Moscow.

He released an audio message Monday, explaining his decision to turn his troops back. The Kremlin and the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Saturday that Prigozhin agreed to leave Russia for Belarus, although there has been no verifiable confirmation of his arrival.

After a weekend of chaos, Putin tried to reassert his authority in a display of unity, making rare public appearances and telling his troops they “stopped a civil war” by refusing to join with Wagner fighters.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov rejected suggestions that Wagner’s failed mutiny jeopardized Putin’s grip on power, saying Prigozhin’s abrupt withdrawal demonstrated “the level of unity within society around the president.”

Surovikin – nicknamed General Armageddon for his ruthless tactics – has been a trusted Kremlin military commander, who oversaw Russian military campaigns in Syria and Ukraine. But there are now questions in Russia over whether the Kremlin trusts him still.

The mother of a 17-year-old killed by French police said she blames only the officer who shot her son for his death, a tragedy that has sparked three consecutive nights of destructive unrest and revived a heated debate about discrimination and policing in low-income, multi-ethnic communities.

The boy, Nahel, was shot dead during a traffic stop Tuesday morning in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Footage of the incident filmed by a bystander showed two officers standing on the driver’s side of the car, one of whom fired his gun at the driver despite not appearing to be in any immediate danger.

The officer said he fired his gun out of fear that the boy would run someone over with the car, according to Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache.

“I don’t blame the police, I blame one person, the one who took my son’s life,” Nahel’s mother, Mounia, told television station France 5 in an on-camera interview.

Prache said that it is believed the officer acted illegally in using his weapon. He is currently facing a formal investigation for voluntary homicide and has been placed in preliminary detention.

Protests flare overnight

Despite calls from top officials for patience to allow time for the justice system to run its course, a sizable number of people across France remain shocked and angry, especially young men and women of color who have been victims of discrimination by police.

That anger has, for three nights in a row, given way to violent protests across the nation.

Ahead of another expected night of unrest, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 45,000 policemen would deploy across France on Friday, and that he is also mobilizing more special units, armored vehicles and helicopters.

Some 917 people were detained following overnight violence on Thursday, including 13 children, Darmanin told French TV channel TF1.

The death of the young man “cannot justify the disorder and the delinquency,” the minister added.

Confrontations flared between protesters and police in Nanterre on Thursday, where a bank was set on fire and graffiti saying “vengeance pour Nael” (using an alternative spelling of his name) was spray painted on a wall nearby.

Overseas French territories have also witnessed protests. A man was killed by a “stray bullet” in Cayenne, capital of French Guiana, during riots on Thursday.

Scars from three days of protests were clear in the suburb on Friday, as was the acrid smell left behind by burning detritus, which was being removed. Streets remained charred where burning cars used to be, with patches of graffiti calling on justice for Nahel and insulting the police. Near the site of a pitched battle with police, a smattering of dug-up bricks, tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and metal barriers remain splayed about.

Across the country, 200 government buildings were vandalized on Thursday night, according to the French Interior Ministry.

All “large-scale events” in France have been banned as of Friday afternoon, and bus and tram services across faced a nationwide shutdown ordered for 9 p.m. on Friday evening.

In Britain, authorities issued a travel warning due to “violent” riots targeting “shops, public buildings and parked cars.” They also cautioned disruptions to road travel, local transportation and the implementation of curfews.

The German government expressed “concern” over the nationwide protests in France, adding there was no indication that Macron would cancel an upcoming state visit to Berlin.

Macron flies back from summit

The violence has prompted President Emmanuel Macron to hold a crisis meeting the second day in a row, BFMTV reported, as his government tries to avoid a repeat of 2005. The deaths of two teenage boys hiding from police that year sparked three weeks of rioting and prompted the government to call a state of emergency.

He had returned from a European Council summit on Thursday in Brussels to convene the crisis meeting.

The French president called for calm and asked parents to take responsibility for their children amid the unrest. He said the situation is “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable, especially when the violence is targeting public building.”

A third of the almost 900 people detained overnight are young, Macron told reporters at the Interior Ministry. Authorities will be investigating the role of social media in inciting the riots, and there will be further “measures” announced in the coming hours, he added.

Continued unrest would be a major blow to the government’s agenda. Macron and his ministers have spent much of the year dealing with the fallout of pushing through extremely unpopular pension reforms that were divisive enough that the government felt it necessary to launch a 100-day plan to heal and unite the country.

That deadline is up on July 14, France’s national day.

Macron attended an Elton John concert in Paris on Wednesday, even as the demonstrations boiled over.

Elton John’s husband, David Furnish posted a picture on Instagram on Thursday of himself and Elton John smiling backstage with the French president and his wife, Brigitte Macron after the show at the Accor Arena.

If Macron’s government is to address allegations of institutional racism in response to Nahel’s death, it will be a tough balancing act.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on France to address “deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement’ on Friday, a statement the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs described as “totally unfounded.”

The ministry described law enforcement in France as subject to various levels of “judicial control that few countries have.

“France, and its police forces, fight with determination against racism and all forms of discrimination. There can be no doubt about this commitment,” the ministry added. “The use of force by the national police and gendarmerie is governed by the principles of absolute necessity and proportionality, strictly framed and controlled.”

‘He saw an Arab face … and wanted to take his life’

Race and discrimination are always tricky political issues, but in France they are particularly challenging due to the country’s unique brand of secularism, which seeks to ensure equality for all by removing markers of difference, rendering all citizens French first.

In practice, however, that vigorous adherence to French Republicanism often prevents the government from doing anything that would appear to differentiate French citizens on the basis of race, including collecting statistics.

Mounia, like other activists, believes her son’s race was a factor in his killing. French media have reported that Nahel was of Algerian descent, and the country’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday issued a statement extending its condolences to Nahel’s family.

“He saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life,” she said, referring to the police officer who fired their weapon.

“Killing youngsters like this, how long is this going to last?” she added. “How many mothers are going to be like me? What are they waiting for?”

While the government’s approach has so far been cautious, left-wing politicians and some activists have called for police reform, including abolishing a 2017 law that allowed police greater leeway in when they can use firearms.

Laurent-Franck Lienard, the lawyer of the officer accused of shooting Nahel, told French radio station RTL that his client acted in “compliance of the law.” He claimed his client’s prosecution was “political” and being used as a way to calm the violent tensions.

He added that his client was “devastated” by Nahel’s death and he did not want to kill him.

“He committed an act in a second, in a fraction of a second. Perhaps he made a mistake, justice will tell,” Lienard said.