An appalling video showing a student in a French school threatening a teacher with a dummy 'gun' in class has shocked France. Questions are being raised about the regularity of such incidents and the authorities' response.

The viral footage, initially distributed on Snapchat, shows a class in a school in Creteil commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris. A male student stands in the middle of the classroom and threatens the teacher with an object that looks like a gun, and demands that she write 'present', not 'absent' in the attendance list. In the background, there is another student making obscene gestures at the camera.

French media report that the gun was "an airsoft type" ball gun or a toy gun - which wouldn't be capable of hurting the teacher. In spite of the shocking situation, the teacher seems unperturbed, as though it's not the first time this has happened.

Following the incident, the teacher filed a complaint and two 16-year-old students were taken into custody, according to French media. The student who made the obscene gestures was soon released, while the main perpetrator is in custody and will stand before a juvenile court on Sunday.

The Environment Agency (EA) is investigating suspected widespread abuse and fraud within Britain's plastics recycling industry. It will deal with complaints that firms and organized crime are abusing the system.

Data from the EA showed that six UK exporters of plastic waste have had their licenses suspended or cancelled in the last three months over concerns of high contamination rates.

The EA said it was pursuing "several lines of enquiry," including allegations that the waste was not recycled but was left to leak into rivers and oceans. The investigation will also look into UK firms accused of shipping contaminated waste when non-recyclable items are mixed in with recyclables items.

Britain sends about two-thirds of its plastic packaging waste abroad every year. It includes plastic bottles, yoghurt pots and other items. The export industry is reportedly worth £50 million ($65 million) per year.

One migrant died as around 200 stormed a fence separating Morocco from a Spanish enclave in North Africa on Sunday. Three others were injured during the push to cross into Spanish territory.

Video footage shared on social media shows people pouring over the fence and onto a road on the Spanish side of the border at Melilla. The group was reportedly taken to a local reception center for identification.

One man was treated by Spanish emergency services but died of suspected cardio-respiratory arrest.

Florida police have defended the manner of their arrest of a 14-year-old girl in which a male officer repeatedly punched her in the side as she lay on the ground after allegedly resisting arrest at a Coral Springs mall.

Short video footage taken by a bystander shows the black teen being held face-down on the ground by a female police officer; a male officer kneeling on the girl's back punches her twice in the side. The clip was provided anonymously to the Miami Herald.

The Coral Springs Police Department issued a statement defending the officer's actions, saying the footage doesn't show the whole context of the incident, and claiming the teen was part of an unruly group that returned to the mall after being previously asked to leave for harassing other patrons. The police force also said the officer did not use excessive force, based upon the teen's "stature and aggressive behavior."

One person is missing after a Mexican Navy helicopter crashed into the Gulf of Santa Clara, Baja California, with 12 people on board. Two people have been hospitalized.

The MI-17 helicopter was monitoring illegal fishing when the crash happened on Saturday, according to a statement from the Ministry of the Navy. Video footage of the crash shows the helicopter apparently struggling to maintain control in the air before nose-diving into the sea.

Imagine the perfect political and intellectual weapon. It would disable your adversaries by preoccupying them with their own vanities and squabbles, a bit like a drug so good that users focus on the high and stop everything else they are doing.

Such a weapon exists: It is called political correctness. But it is not a weapon against white men or conservatives, as is frequently alleged; rather, it is a weapon against the American left. To put it simply, the American left has been hacked, and it is now running in a circle of its own choosing, rather than focusing on electoral victories or policy effectiveness. Too many segments of the Democratic Party are self-righteously talking about identity politics, and they are letting other priorities slip.

African-American politics are, it is often supposed, monolithic. Since the late 1960s, following the signing of landmark civil rights legislation by a Democratic president, the Democrats support of The Great Society, the anti-Civil Rights Act campaign of a Republican presidential nominee in 1964, the adoption of the "Southern Strategy" by Republican operatives in the latter part of the decade, and the decline of the Northeastern liberal wing of the GOP, black voters have emerged as the most reliably partisan voting bloc in American politics. They are the cornerstone of the Democratic coalition. This near monopoly of African-American party affiliation however does serve to obscure broad and diverse fissures within the philosophical landscape of the black community. There is wide-ranging discontent with the status quo of African-American politics and relatively little passion for the establishment liberalism that guides it. The question is, could this diversity of opinion allow for the realignment of political forces within the black community? Or are these dispersed frustrations inalterably resistant to meaningful coalitional rearrangement?

On October 11 2018, rapper Kanye West visited Republican president Donald Trump in the Oval Office. He was joined by Jim Brown, an NFL legend who has been revered in and beyond the black community as an icon of the civil rights era. During that meeting, West launched into a series of abstract policy musings and philosophical flourishes (punctuated with some profanity, swipes at liberal critiques, and effusions for President Trump) that left many fans and observers upset and bewildered. That Kanye West, erstwhile arguably America's most popular African-American artist, could wholeheartedly support a president whose politics and rhetoric seemed to fly in the face of the perceived interests and sensibilities of the black community has mystified many in the commentariat. Indeed, West may have reasons for supporting the president that are inscrutable.

But one plausible explanation for his support also serves to illustrate the basis upon which a broader axis of contrarian sentiment towards the institutional mainstream of black political culture persists. That is the simple fact that the trend of social and economic progress in the black community during the decades of this hegemony has been, relative to all other ethnic groups, scantly positive and, in certain keys areas, dramatically negative. One does not have to spend any great amount of time reminding people where the black community resides on the scales of topline social statistics. African-American men constitute roughly 35 percent of the prison population while representing 7 percent of the total population. They average a life expectancy roughly 5 years below the average of all other American males. African-Americans graduate high school at a mere 69 percent nationwide and do so at the lowest rate of all four major racial groups in America in all but 11 states (where they slightly exceed Latinos).

At least 11 people, including six children, have been killed as a result of an explosion in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar on Sunday, on the second day of parliamentary elections in the country, spokesperson for the provincial governor said in a statement obtained by Sputnik.

"A total of 11 Afghans, including one woman and six children, have been killed as a result of the explosion of a car that was laden with an improvised explosive device," the statement said.

The attack was carried out in the province's Achin district, which is believed to be the main stronghold of the Daesh terrorist group in the east of the country.

Nations across the globe are beginning to suffer from waste build-up, after China stopped importing recyclable garbage this year. Japan has become the latest country reporting severe recycling industry overload.

China's ban on imports of 24 types of solid waste materials, such as soda bottles, mixed paper, recycled steel and newsprint, has impacted the recycling chain across the globe. Japan, which last year exported about half of its 1.5 million tons of annual plastic waste, is now piled higher and deeper in its own garbage, with many local governments struggling to cope with the problem.

About a quarter of 102 local governments surveyed reported seeing accumulated plastic waste, which in some cases overreached sanitary norms, Environment Ministry data showed this week. At least 34 municipalities noted that they are failing to find new destinations to outsource their plastic after domestic costs of processing waste shot up.

China's refusal to accept more garbage is overstretching the Japanese recycling industry, with 34.9 percent of companies limiting or considering restricting the quantities of plastics they can accept. To deal with the problem, the Japanese ministry said it will expand domestic capacity to process plastic waste. The government also wants to introduce measures to prevent illegal dumping and expand the use of bioplastics, which are biodegradable.

Sabo, a conservative street artist, replaced a photo of killer Michael Myers with one of the congresswoman.

A billboard advertising the new Halloween movie opening Friday was altered after a street artist swapped out an image of serial killer Michael Myers and replaced it with one of Maxine Waters.

The gigantic billboard at Pico Boulevard in West Hollywood remains intact, only the congresswoman is now holding the sharp butcher knife in her right hand, looking ready to plunge it into an unsuspecting victim. The phrase "#Uncivil Democrats" has also been added.