France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’

France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’
French Prime Minister Michel Barnier attends the French right-wing Horizons party conference for the new political year in Reims, eastern France, on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 12 September 2024
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France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’

France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’

REIMS: France will have a new government next week, recently installed conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier said on Wednesday, as he sounded out candidates to run ministries faced with an unpredictable hung parliament.

“We’re going to do things methodically and seriously,” Barnier told reporters in the eastern city of Reims.

He was “listening to everybody” in a political scene split into three broad camps since July’s inconclusive snap parliamentary elections.

“We’re going to name a government next week,” he said.

Later on Wednesday, his own right-wing Republicans (LR) party announced that they were ready to join his government. The party was reduced to just 47 deputies in the 577-seat National Assembly in July’s elections.

Barnier, who has previously served as the environment, foreign and agriculture ministers and was the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator, was named last week by President Emmanuel Macron as his compromise pick for head of government.

With no longer even a working majority in parliament following his decision to dissolve the National Assembly, Macron delayed picking a PM for weeks over the summer as he tried to find someone who would not suffer an immediate no-confidence vote.

The chamber is fairly equally divided between Macron’s centrist supporters — now loosely allied with Barnier’s rump conservative party — the left-wing NFP alliance and the far-right National Rally (RN).

NFP leaders have vowed to vote no confidence in any government not headed by them after they secured the most seats in the July vote, but fell well short of a majority.

Macron appears to have taken care to find a candidate in Barnier who does not immediately raise the hackles of the RN.

Rumours are swirling in Paris about who might claim key ministries after Barnier said he was open to working with people on the left or right.

“For now, the names in circulation seem to be just wish lists of people wanting to receive a ministerial portfolio,” Politico’s French edition wrote on Wednesday.

One prominent Socialist, Karim Bouamrane, mayor of the Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen, said he had turned down an invitation to serve.

“We have a right-wing prime minister approved of by the RN, a prime minister under supervision,” Bouamrane told Franceinfo radio.

An October 1 deadline to file a draft government budget for 2025 puts Barnier under pressure to get moving and sets him and his new team up for a fierce battle over taxes and spending.

In particular, both the NFP and RN promised ahead of the July elections to overturn last year’s unpopular pension reform that increased the official retirement age to 64 from 62.


Mexican soldiers open fire on migrants, killing six

Mexican soldiers open fire on migrants, killing six
Updated 41 sec ago
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Mexican soldiers open fire on migrants, killing six

Mexican soldiers open fire on migrants, killing six

MEXICO CITY: Mexican soldiers killed six migrants when they opened fire on group of 33 migrants traveling in a pick-up truck that had tried to evade a military patrol, the defense ministry announced in a statement on Wednesday.

Another 10 migrants were injured in the incident on Tuesday evening, the ministry added, from a group of 33 migrants that included Egyptian, Nepalese, Cuban, Indian and Pakistani nationals.


Thousands rally in Armenia, demanding PM’s resignation over his handling of standoff with Azerbaijan

Thousands rally in Armenia, demanding PM’s resignation over his handling of standoff with Azerbaijan
Updated 9 min 51 sec ago
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Thousands rally in Armenia, demanding PM’s resignation over his handling of standoff with Azerbaijan

Thousands rally in Armenia, demanding PM’s resignation over his handling of standoff with Azerbaijan
  • Protesters accused PM Pashinyan of making unnecessary territorial concessions to Baku
  • Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars — in 2020 and the 1990s — over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region

YEREVAN: Thousands rallied on Wednesday in Armenia’s capital, demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation over his handling of the decades-long standoff with Azerbaijan.
Despite a weeks-long wave of protests led in the spring by the charismatic Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, Pashinyan’s position held firm.
Chanting “Nikol (Pashinyan) traitor!” several thousand anti-government protesters rallied Wednesday in Yerevan’s central Republic Square, outside government headquarters, watched by a heavy police presence, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.
The rally was held days after Galstanyan vowed to renew street protests, which he promised would “guarantee” Pashinyan’s departure.

Protest leader Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan addresses demonstrators in Yerevan's Republic Square on Oct. 2, 2024 to demand Prime Minister Pashinyan's resignation. (AFP)

The cleric has accused Pashinyan of making unnecessary territorial concessions to Baku.
“Our struggle will continue as long as evil remains in power in Armenia,” he told the crowd.
“I call on all political forces to join us, as new disasters, new losses lie ahead.”
Protesters then marched toward the offices of Armenia’s public broadcaster, to demand live air time.
Armenia’s interior ministry said in a statement it would use force against protesters should they attempt to break into the broadcaster’s offices.
“It’s not easy getting rid of Pashinyan’s government, but we can’t give up hope,” said one demonstrator, 64-year-old Sveta Sargsyan. “We need a government that will defend every centimeter of Armenian soil.”
Another protester, Karen Hovhannisyan, 55, said: “We can’t put up with Pashinyan’s rule any longer, he is flat-out pushing anti-Armenian policies.”

Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars — in 2020 and the 1990s — over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Baku recaptured last year from Armenian separatists who had controlled it for three decades.
Nearly all its ethnic Armenians — more than 100,000 people — fled Karabakh in the aftermath and in May Pashinyan returned to Azerbaijan control over four border villages that it had seized decades earlier.
Galstanyan has previously sought to launch an impeachment process against Pashinyan, and even temporarily stepped down from his religious post to run for prime minister.
But he is not eligible to hold the office under Armenian law because he has dual citizenship — Armenian and Canadian — and opposition parties do not have enough seats in parliament to launch impeachment procedures.
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have said a comprehensive peace deal to end their long-standing animosity is within reach, but the talks have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough.
 


Prosecutors lay out new evidence in Trump election case, accuse him of having ‘resorted to crimes’

Prosecutors lay out new evidence in Trump election case, accuse him of having ‘resorted to crimes’
Updated 39 min 29 sec ago
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Prosecutors lay out new evidence in Trump election case, accuse him of having ‘resorted to crimes’

Prosecutors lay out new evidence in Trump election case, accuse him of having ‘resorted to crimes’
  • New filing seeks to convince judge that the offenses charged in the indictment are private, rather than official, acts
  • It narrows the scope of the prosecution charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the results of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden
  • New filing follows Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a newly unsealed court filing from prosecutors that lays out fresh details from the landmark criminal case against the former president.
The filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s team offers the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial. Though a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump’s efforts to undo the election, the new filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who while losing his grip on the White House “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”
“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being alerted that his vice president, Mike Pence, was in potential danger after a crowd of violent supporters stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn’t be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.
The filing was submitted, initially under seal, following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office, narrowing the scope of the prosecution charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the results of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
The purpose of the brief is to convince US District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the offenses charged in the indictment are private, rather than official, acts and can therefore remain part of the indictment as the case moves forward. Chutkan permitted a redacted version to be made public.
“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team wrote, adding, “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional” and repeated oft-stated allegations that Smith and Democrats were “hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power.”
“The release of the falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous debate performance is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine American Democracy and interfere in this election.”
The filing includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch the two had on Nov. 12, 2020, in which Pence “reiterated a face-saving option” for Trump, telling him, “don’t concede but recognize the process is over,” according to prosecutors.
In another private lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024.
“I don’t know, 2024 is so far off,” Trump told him, according to the filing.
But Trump “disregarded” Pence “in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states — including those in his own party — who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false,” prosecutors wrote.
Trump’s “steady stream of disinformation” in the weeks after the election culminated in his speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, in which Trump “used these lies to inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification proceeding,” prosecutors wrote.


Nepalese grapple with loss after deadly floods

Nepalese grapple with loss after deadly floods
Updated 02 October 2024
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Nepalese grapple with loss after deadly floods

Nepalese grapple with loss after deadly floods

KATHMANDU: Bishworaj Khadka, a cook in Lalitpur, could hear the Nakhu River becoming louder and louder as he sat with his wife and daughter- in-law in their house situated at the river’s edge. It hadn’t stopped raining for about 12 hours and the swollen river was getting dangerously close.

When they felt the first reverberations through the living room floor, the family rushed out the door. The rest is a blur in Bishow- raj’s mind. He had only managed to stuff some money into his pocket. Barely 15 minutes later, the house caved in before their eyes.

Bishowraj took his family to his brother’s place, farther up from the river’s edge.

It was the morning of Saturday, Sept. 28, and the rain would continue for another day, causing landslides and floods in areas surrounding Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. More than 200 people were dead in the worst flooding to hit the region in five decades. Over 10 inches of rainfall fell in the Kathmandu Valley in two days, nearly 20 percent of the monthly average.

The Bagmati River in Kathmandu inundated low-lying areas, damaging temporary shelters and forcing daily wage squatters to seek safety away from the raging waters. Some of the urban dwellings were covered foot deep in mud and and debris of broken tree limbs and damaged buildings.

By Monday, the sun was out and Bishowraj and his wife Sharmila went back to what remained of their home to try and salvage whatever they could. The damage was extensive and Sharmila tried hard to find some cooking utensils that were intact.


Israel bars UN secretary-general Guterres from entering country

Israel bars UN secretary-general Guterres from entering country
Updated 02 October 2024
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Israel bars UN secretary-general Guterres from entering country

Israel bars UN secretary-general Guterres from entering country
  • Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday

NEW YORK CITY: Israel’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that he was barring UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from entering the country because he had not “unequivocally” condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel.
Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday amid an escalation in fighting between Israel and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Many were intercepted in flight but some penetrated missile defenses.
Guterres on Tuesday issued a brief statement after the missile attack condemning “the broadening of the Middle East conflict, with escalation after escalation.” Earlier on Tuesday, Israel had sent troops into southern Lebanon.
Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said Guterres’ failure to call out Iran made him persona non grata in Israel.
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel, as nearly all the countries of the world have done, does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil,” Katz said.
“Israel will continue to defend its citizens and uphold its national dignity, with or without Antonio Guterres.”
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric described the announcement as political and “just one one more attack, so to speak, on UN staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel.” He said the UN traditionally does not recognize the concept of persona non grata as applying to UN staff.
During a Security Council meeting on Wednesday Guterres said: “As I did in relation to the Iranian attack in April — and as should have been obvious yesterday in the context of the condemnation I expressed — I again strongly condemn yesterday’s massive missile attack by Iran on Israel.”