The Daily Populous

PARIS, Dec 9 (Reuters) - France will not follow the lead of some other Western governments and launch a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing although human rights abuses in China must be condemned, the education minister said on Thursday.

"As for a diplomatic boycott...France will not do it," Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said on BFM TV.

Sports Minister Roxana Maracineanu would attend the Beijing Olympics, he said. »

Nine-year-old Mahmud Qassoum remains in intensive care with a serious head injury after being hit by a US drone strike targeting a suspected Al-Qaeda-linked militant in Syria.

Al-Rami (Syria) (AFP) – Ahmad Qassum was driving home with his family when a US drone targeting an Al-Qaeda-linked militant in Syria struck and left all six of them wounded.

They include a drone strike on Friday that the Pentagon said killed a "senior leader" of the Al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen faction. »

It claimed that Xi had brought China “closer to the center of the world stage than it has ever been.

At the People’s Congress, Xi exuded the self-confidence of a leader convinced that the world is there for China’s taking.

No map of China would be acceptable to Xi, however, if it did not reflect mainland Chinese control over Taiwan. »

Eagerly awaited results of the largest-ever study of psilocybin were announced Tuesday, with Compass Pathways revealing the psychedelic drug was highly efficacious as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression.

The Phase 2b study is the largest randomized, controlled, double-blind trial of psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms.

There were three suicides in studies of esketamine, the only psychedelic currently approved for treatment-resistant depression, he pointed out. »