“You need the work,” one woman said, “so you shut your mouth.” #MeToo may have helped change the landscape for women in Hollywood and in the boardroom, but cleaners, secretaries and supermarket workers who have suffered sexual violence at work say it has yet to do much for them.Yasmina Tellal, 42, spent six years picking and packing fruit and vegetables in the south of France. “From the start” her bosses “established a system of fear”, she told AFP. “They would come to kiss us during breaks, touch us and try to make us take 300 euros ($350) to sleep with them. “One day while I was in the car with my supervisor, he stopped at a rest area, grabbed my hand and placed it on his thing,” she said, struggling to get the words out, even a decade on.Tellal arrived in France from Spain in 2011 with a promise of work through a Spanish temp agency. She thought she was getting a one-year contract at the French minimum wage — around 1,800 euros per month — with accommodation and meals provided.But that is not how it turned out. “I was paid around 400 euros, sometimes less. I had to figure out the rent on my own, and working conditions were inhumane,” she said.”When you don’t have money, you’re trapped, forced to stay and keep quiet,” she said. Then her body began to give.The dizziness and paralysis started in 2015. Doctors diagnosed multiple sclerosis, which she puts down to the stress and trauma.”They ruined my life,” Moroccan-born Tellal told AFP. But she used her anger to drive her fight for justice — “I had nothing left to lose.”The Spanish couple who ran the agency were eventually jailed for five years in 2021 — three of them suspended — for breaching labour laws. But they were not charged with human trafficking, as Tellal’s lawyer, Yann Prevost, had demanded.Nor did the labour court address the sexual violence she suffered.After a long and protracted fight, the former farm worker finally won 32,000 euros in damages in 2023, a sum upheld on appeal in June.While Prevost hailed her as a standard-bearer and “whistleblower”, hers is a rare story of a low-paid victim standing up against the odds.Six out of 10 women questioned in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain said they experienced sexism or harassment at work in a major 2019 study by the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS).More than one in 10 said they were victims of “forced” or “non-consensual” sexual relations.- From sexist jokes to rape -Marie, a medical secretary, was raped and harassed by one of the doctors she worked for in a Paris suburb. But for months the 42-year-old mother could not quite believe what was happening to her.She had moved to the area after a difficult break-up, and the doctor had assured her that “there was a great atmosphere in the office, that they often went out together after work. As a small-town girl, I was delighted,” she said.But soon came “the sexist jokes, wandering hands and then my bra being opened through my clothes.”I knew it wasn’t normal but I said to myself, ‘It’s no big deal’. I was in denial.” Until the day of the rape, which she is still unable to talk about five years later.The breaking point came when a much younger colleague began to be the target. “I realised that if I didn’t speak up, I was effectively complicit in everything happening at the clinic,” she said.Marie finally went to the police last year. “It took me a long time because I was afraid of not being believed. How could I be taken seriously when I myself had not been able to recognise what happened to me?”- ‘So normalised’ -Women like Marie — whose name we have changed at her request — and Yasmina “are not the kind of people who usually turn to lawyers”, said Jessica Sanchez, who specialises in social law in Bordeaux, in southern France. Taking a case to court “requires a crazy amount of courage… and you have to have the means to be able to risk losing your job,” she said.”The first question they ask themselves is, ‘How can I pay the rent or feed my kids?'” said Tiffany Coisnard, a legal expert with the AVFT, a European campaign group against workplace violence.”Sexual harassment at work is so normalised as a risk of the job that many women struggle to even label it,” she added.They are often in precarious financial positions, with single parents or those whose immigration status depends on their job particularly vulnerable.Foreigners working without papers run even higher risks of “having to reveal themselves” to the authorities and risk being deported, said Pauline Delage, a gender violence specialist at French research centre CNRS. Only “a very small minority of workplace harassment victims break the wall of silence that paralyses older women in particular,” the FEPS study found. Even when women in lower-paid jobs speak out, they are “much less heard in the media” than actors, writers or journalists, said the AVFT.”Very few” cases make it to the police, never mind court, a French police source told AFP, even if he insisted the way officers deal with victims has “evolved”.”Now we take care to reassure them… There is a guide with things not to say and not to do.” But even he admitted that some police officers, both men and women, are “boorish”, with “no compassion”.- Even unions affected -In theory, victims should be able to report abuse to their employers or their union.But sometimes union representatives are conflicted about supporting victims when it means getting a “colleague fired, even if they’ve been accused of sexual harassment”, said Coisnard.But French unions FO and CGT, which have themselves been hit with abuse and harassment cases within their branches, insist things have changed.”A few years ago there was probably the idea that union advocacy outweighed individual cases,” said Beatrice Clicq, a sexual violence officer for FO.The union was fined nearly a quarter of a million euros in February over sexual harassment in one of its branches in Brittany, in western France.”What could have been tolerated 15 years ago is no longer acceptable,” insisted Myriam Lebkiri, who holds the same position at the CGT.- Hotel cleaners revolt -A marathon strike by cleaners at an Ibis hotel in Paris made headlines around the world when one of the housekeepers, Rachel Keke, was elected to parliament in 2022.But the cases of sexual violence raised during the 22-month dispute got little traction, even though Keke herself revealed that a guest had touched her breasts.”We talk openly about it between ourselves,” Keke told AFP — “a guest opened the door naked, another exposed his buttocks, or offered money to sleep with him… But quickly we were made to understand that it was pointless” to make a complaint, she said. “The client is always protected.” As far as management was concerned, “what happened to us was not a big deal”, the 51-year-old added.”These kinds of situations end the same way, with a mere apology from the management and that’s it,” sighed Sylvie Kimissa, one of Keke’s former colleagues, after a long day of making beds, cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming. A Congolese single mother, she said she has witnessed several sexual assaults. “We have no choice but to keep working.”The hotel’s owner, Accor, said the management had recently been changed and “no case of harassment or assault has been reported in recent months.”- DSK scandal -Very little has changed in the 14 years since the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, experts say, when the head of the International Monetary Fund and favourite to be the next French president, nicknamed “DSK”, was accused of sexually assaulting housekeeper Nafissatou Diallo in the Sofitel hotel in New York.”All levels of the hotel trade are affected,” said Maud Descamps, a trainer in sexual harassment prevention in the industry, but it is particularly problematic at the luxury end.”The more upmarket, the more ‘touchy’ it gets to handle cases involving customers with extremely high purchasing power,” she said.”It continues to be minimised because it’s a massive thorn in the side.””A hotel room is a place of risk,” Descamps said, “and what fuels that is very precarious working conditions, and the contracting out of staff which further waters down responsibility.”The DSK case was closed at the end of 2012 with a confidential financial agreement between him and the Guinean-born housekeeper.While the #MeToo movement has since happened, “the social pressure on victims is still very hard to bear and the mechanism of shame and guilt remains pervasive,” said lawyer Giuseppina Marras.She represented a supermarket worker from Flixecourt in northern France who tried to kill herself in 2016, despairing at her colleagues defending the boss who had raped and sexually assaulted her on numerous occasions.The manager was finally jailed for 10 years in March.But there has been some progress, Marras insisted, with a “clear difference in the judicial handling of these cases compared to a decade ago”.When she defended a boss accused of raping employees back then, he “walked away with a suspended sentence”.

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel had his biggest audience in a decade when he returned to US TV screens a week after pressure from Donald Trump’s government saw him forced off the air, Disney said Wednesday.The comedian was benched by the entertainment giant’s ABC network after officials threatened to yank broadcast licenses, purportedly over comments Kimmel made in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.But after a public outcry and complaints from usually reliable Trump allies that this was a government attempt to chill free speech, the suspension was reversed and Kimmel was back on the air on Tuesday, delivering a biting monologue attacking censorship.”A government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American,” Kimmel told viewers.”The president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”Early figures showed more than six million people tuned in to the broadcast, even as the show remained unavailable to almost a quarter of American households because of a boycott by companies that own local TV stations, Disney said.By comparison, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” drew an average of 1.42 million viewers across its full 2024/2025 season — meaning the audience increased more than threefold Tuesday.It was the show’s best performance in 10 years, Disney added. A further 26 million people watched Tuesday’s monologue on social media, it said.Trump, who frequently complains about negative media coverage and regularly targets Kimmel and other late-night comedians with invective, had celebrated when he was taken off the air, calling it “Great news for America.”Before the show’s return, Trump told reporters Kimmel had “no talent… he had no ratings.””Well,” quipped Kimmel on Tuesday night’s show. “I do tonight.””He tried did his best to cancel me. Instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show. That backfired bigly,” he added to wild studio applause.

Americans exhausted by the firehose of news in 2025 were being offered a brief respite Wednesday, as Fat Bear Week got under way in Alaska.The annual tongue-in-cheek contest pits bears against each other as they stuff themselves with salmon to prepare for months of hibernation.The unwitting competitors — known only by their numbers — battle it out in a series of head-to-head votes, with hundreds of thousands of people around the world expected to cast a ballot.The winner at the end of the week will be the bear voters judge to have piled on the most pounds.The online contest began in 2014 with just a few thousand people voting, but has now turned into an outsize exercise in democracy.Organizers said that around 1.2 million votes were cast from more than 100 countries in Fat Bear Week 2024.”Like a bear’s body mass in late summer, anticipation for the tournament continues to grow,” said a statement from Katmai Conservancy and Explore.org, who organize the contest.”Last year, 128 Grazer won her second Fat Bear Week championship and became the first mother bear to win. Does she have the size and story to earn a three-peat?”Voters compare before-and-after pictures of the enormous animals in Katmai National Park, Alaska to see which one looks best equipped to thrive in the lean months of hibernation.The aim is to raise awareness of brown bears and their habitat in Alaska, and the risks they face from human activity.Around 2,000 bears in the park start chubbing up in late summer and early fall. They can eat up to 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of salmon a day as they prepare for five months of hibernation.During the deep sleep, the animals rarely wake to eat, drink or even go to the toilet, emerging famished — and a lot thinner — in the spring.Voting in this year’s poll — at explore.org/fat-bear-week — closes at 5:00 pm Tuesday in Alaska (0100 GMT Wednesday).

US President Donald Trump mocked Joe Biden Wednesday by putting a picture of a so-called “autopen,” instead of his likeness, in a new gallery of presidential portraits in the White House.Republican Trump has alleged, without evidence, that Biden’s use of the automated technology to sign pardons and other documents was part of a cover-up of the Democrat’s cognitive decline.Now he has doubled down on the allegation by putting a picture of Biden’s signature and the device, in place of his portrait, in a new “Walk of Fame” located in the colonnade that runs along the White House Rose Garden.”The Presidential Walk of Fame has arrived on the West Wing Colonnade. Wait for it…” Trump’s Communications Advisor Margo Martin posted on X along with a video of the new display.The camera pans along a line of black and white, gold-framed presidential portraits, hanging along the colonnade in chronological order, before it  reaches the picture of the autopen representing Biden.The White House separately posted a photo of Trump himself — whose portraits as the 45th and 47th US president are on either side of Biden’s — looking at the new addition.The Biden autopen portrait will be visible by guests attending a dinner later Wednesday in the Rose Garden, where Trump has recently replaced the grass with a patio.Trump had previewed the move in an interview with the conservative Daily Caller earlier this month, saying: “We put up a picture of the autopen.”The 79-year-old almost obsessively bashes his now 82-year-old predecessor, seeking to blame him for a host of ills including inflation and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.The Biden autopen portrait is meanwhile the brashest step yet in billionaire property developer Trump’s revamp of the more than 200-year-old presidential residence in Washington.Trump notably has covered the Oval Office with gold decorations, installed huge flagpoles and is now building a giant ballroom.He has also moved a painting of Democrat Barack Obama from its original position and, breaking with precedent, hung several paintings of himself in the White House.

US President Donald Trump demanded an investigation Wednesday into what he called “triple sabotage” after an escalator, teleprompter and sound system malfunctioned as he addressed the United Nations.The UN has said the events that happened while Trump was at its headquarters in New York on Tuesday were accidental, and partly blamed them on White House staff.But in a long, angry social media post, Trump described the string of mishaps as “very sinister,” called for people to be arrested and said the Secret Service was also probing.”This wasn’t a coincidence, this was triple sabotage at the UN. They ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.”I’m sending a copy of this letter to the Secretary General, and I demand an immediate investigation. No wonder the United Nations hasn’t been able to do the job that they were put in existence to do.” Footage showed the 79-year-old president and First Lady Melania Trump getting on the escalator at UN headquarters on Tuesday before it stopped with a lurch, forcing them to walk up.Then, as he began his speech, he noted his teleprompter was not working.He spent much of the rest of the speech bashing the world body, accusing it of funding illegal migration that was turning Western countries into “hell” and failing to support his peace efforts in Gaza and Ukraine.But while Trump struck a mostly joking tone about the escalator, his mood hardened a day later.”A REAL DISGRACE took place at the United Nations yesterday. Not one, not two, but three very sinister events!” he wrote.Trump said the escalator stop could have been a “real disaster.””It’s amazing that Melania and I didn’t fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first,” he said.Trump then complained that his teleprompter for his speech was “stone cold dark” for the first 15 minutes, and that the sound in the UN auditorium was “completely off.”The US president called for the security tapes for the escalator to be saved, adding: “The Secret Service is involved.”- UN points to White House -UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Tuesday issued a statement addressing the uproar, saying a videographer from the US delegation “may have inadvertently triggered the safety function” on the escalator.”Regarding the teleprompter, we have no comment since the teleprompter for the US president is operated by the White House,” he said.A Secret Service official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP the agency was “looking into what the UN said to corroborate it.”Reached for comment after Trump’s post on Wednesday, a UN official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed to Dujarric’s earlier statement.Regarding the alleged sound issues, the official said: “The sound system was designed to allow people at their seats to hear speeches being translated into six different languages through earpieces.”Mike Waltz, the newly installed US ambassador, said on X that he had formally demanded the “complete results” of the UN’s probe of the escalator incident, as well as a “detailed explanation of the teleprompter failure’s root cause, along with immediate plans to implement robust preventive measures.””The United States will not tolerate threats to our security or dignity at international forums. We expect swift cooperation and decisive action,” Waltz added.

The United States said Wednesday it was in talks with Argentina on a $20 billion program of economic support, buoying the South American nation’s markets and embattled leader Javier Milei.The right-wing Milei, a close ally of US President Donald Trump, has been struggling to ease market jitters ahead of midterm elections, which could determine the future of his austerity agenda.The battered peso rebounded after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced his department was negotiating with Argentine officials on “a $20 billion swap line.”Argentina’s currency rose 1.8 percent to 1360 pesos to the dollar on the announcement, which came a day after Bessent and Trump held talks with Milei in New York.Since Friday, the peso has gained over 10 percent.Bessent added that Washington was also ready to buy Argentina’s dollar bonds, among other measures.”As President Trump has stated, we stand ready to do what is needed to support Argentina,” he wrote on X.Milei thanked the US president and Bessent for their “support and confidence.”In a later address to the UN General Assembly in New York, he lavished praise on Trump for saving the United States and the world from “catastrophe,” citing the Republican president’s migration and trade policies.”We are not…the only ones making the difficult decisions demanded by this historical moment,” he said. “President Trump, in the United States, also understands that it is time to reverse a dynamic that was leading the United States to a catastrophe, and we know that a catastrophe in the United States is a global catastrophe,” he added.- ‘Inherited a mess’ -Swap lines are transactions that usually involve two central banks agreeing to swap their currencies at a set exchange rate for a specified period.It is unclear, however, whether the talks with Argentina involve the US Federal Reserve.Bessent also said Washington was prepared to deliver “stand-by credit” from the Treasury’s exchange stabilization fund.Milei on Wednesday also met Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with which Argentina concluded a $20 billion loan agreement in April.”Very constructive meeting,” she wrote on X afterward.”We stand with Argentina as it implements policies to safeguard stability, reduce inflation, rebuild reserves, and boost growth prospects,” she added.During his talks with Milei on Tuesday, Trump had sought to downplay his ally’s woes, promising “help” while saying: “I don’t think they need a bailout.””He, like us, inherited a mess and what he’s done to fix it is good,” Trump told reporters.- Top Democrat against ‘bailout’ -Milei’s election was cheered by investors in 2023 but he has begun to hemorrhage support after two years of biting austerity and a corruption scandal involving his sister.His party was beaten by the center-left Peronist movement in Buenos Aires provincial elections on September 7.The vote, which sent the peso into a tailspin, was seen as a litmus test for national legislative elections scheduled for October 26.Milei has accused the opposition of deliberately stoking “panic” to weaken him.The Trump administration’s plans to use Treasury funds to smooth his path to the elections raised eyebrows domestically. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, wrote a letter dated Monday to Bessent seeking further information about a potential “bailout” of Argentina.”It is deeply troubling that the president intends to use significant emergency funds to inflate the value of a foreign government’s currency and bolster its financial markets,” she said.Bessent shot back at Warren’s criticism, saying she and others “failed to act when presented with a historic opportunity to stabilize Latin America economically and geopolitically during the Obama years.”