A school assistant was to go on trial in Paris on Tuesday accused of sexual mistreatment of young children in his care.

It is the latest case in a year-long scandal that has shaken the school system in the French capital, where some 15,000 such assistants – known as animateurs – are employed as non-teaching staff.

Currently enquiries are under way at nearly 100 Paris crèches, kindergartens and junior schools where animateurs have been accused of inappropriate, aggressive or sexualised behaviour.

Trials in three other cases are to take place over the summer, and a verdict is due in a fourth which was held earlier this month. More are likely to follow.

Last week police detained 16 people after a swoop at three schools in the 7th arrondissement or district. Three people were subsequently charged with sexually inappropriate behaviour to children.

Tuesday’s case centres on the Alphonse Baudin junior school in the 11th arrondissement, where the animateur is accused of sexualised touching with five children.

One man told the BBC that in April 2025 he had already spotted unusual signs in his four-year-old daughter when another parent reported that their child had been molested.

“My wife took our daughter into the garden and asked her if she had been touched in after-school time, and she said ‘Yes, David touches me and gives me cuddles.’

“My wife said, ‘Show me’, and my daughter started stroking her back in a bizarre way. That’s when we knew something was wrong.”

The scandal has created a climate of mistrust and fear among parents of young children in Paris, many of whom accuse the City Hall – which employs the animateurs – of failing initially to take the complaints seriously.

According to after-school association SOS-Périscolaire, the main problem has been the low quality of animateurs, who are poorly paid and at most need only a basic certificate in child management to get a job. Sometimes the pressure to recruit is so great that even that requirement is waived.

Elisabeth Guthmann, who founded the association in 2021, said it was in response to the growing number of stories circulating among parents about teasing, taunting and other types of low-level abuse by animateurs.

She cited a case of four animateurs at a junior school in the 16th arrondissement who “set up a fight-club with the other children standing around shouting ‘Hit him!'”.

The new mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, has vowed to reform the recruitment system with €20m (£17.2m) for training and monitoring. He also said animateurs would be automatically suspended after a single complaint had been lodged. Since the start of the year nearly 80 have been suspended.

[BBC]

Cambodia’s ​former opposition leader Kem Sokha, who was serving a 27-year sentence for treason, has been pardoned, the country’s former prime minister said.

Hun Sen, ​who is currently Cambodia’s acting head of state, said he signed a decree pardoning Sokha on behalf of King Norodom Sihamoni.

Sokha, the former leader of the now-dissolved Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), was first arrested in 2017 over a video where he said he had received support from US pro-democracy groups.

He has been held under house arrest since he was found guilty of treason in 2023. The charges have been widely derided as politically motivated by human rights groups.

Hun Sen posted on Facebook that Sokha had been “pardoned”, alongside a photo of the royal decree signed by him.

The pardon came after an appeal against Sokha’s sentence was rejected last month. But it did not include overturning a ban on the politician leaving Cambodia for five years.

Hun Sen, who ruled Cambodia for nearly four decades, has been accused of weaponising the country’s courts to target his opponents. He stepped down as prime minister in 2023 and handed power to his eldest son, Hun Manet.

However, Hun Sen still wields immense power in Cambodia and is acting head of state while King Norodom Sihamoni receives medical treatment abroad.

Sokha’s CNRP party came close to securing a shock victory in the 2013 general election victory over Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).

The opposition leader was arrested in 2017, less than a year ahead of the next general election, which the CNRP was banned from contesting.

[BBC]

At least four people have been killed and 17 are missing after a building under construction collapsed in the Philippines, authorities say as search and rescue efforts are under way.

Rescuers retrieved at least three people on Monday from the rubble of the nine-storey building in the city of Angeles, north of the capital, Manila.

One of the victims had a pulse when he was retrieved but later died while another suffered cardiac arrest while still trapped, Maria Leah Sajili, an information officer at the Bureau of Fire Protection, said in a phone interview with the Reuters news agency.

Crews pulled the body of another person from the rubble, but it was not immediately clear if the unidentified body belonged to a person listed among the missing, rescuers said in an updated toll.

Due to that uncertainty, authorities said about 17 people were still considered missing, mostly construction workers who were sleeping at the building site when the disaster struck on Sunday.

The fourth person killed was a Malaysian tourist trapped in a budget inn, part of which was hit by an avalanche of debris from the collapsed building. Another guest at the inn was injured but managed to dash out, officials said.

At least 26 people have been rescued from the site.

Reporting from Angeles, Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Lo said hopes of finding more survivors were beginning to fade.

“Authorities are still saying the operation is a search and rescue. They will be using thermal detectors to try and find more signs of life, but if they don’t, they’re saying they will start using heavy equipment to clear the debris and retrieve people they believe are trapped under the rubble,” he said.

Officials said up to 70 people were employed at the construction site although most had gone home for the weekend.

[Aljazeera]