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Tag: political figures – intl

  • Putin admits sanctions could hurt Russia’s economy | CNN Business

    Putin admits sanctions could hurt Russia’s economy | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    President Vladimir Putin has conceded that Western sanctions designed to starve the Kremlin of funds for its invasion of Ukraine could deal a blow to Russia’s economy.

    “The illegitimate restrictions imposed on the Russian economy may indeed have a negative impact on it in the medium term,” Putin said in televised remarks Wednesday reported by state news agency TASS.

    It is a rare admission by the Russian leader, who has repeatedly insisted that Russia’s economy remains resilient and that sanctions have hurt Western countries by driving up inflation and energy prices.

    Putin said Russia’s economy had been growing since July, thanks in part to stronger ties with “countries of the East and South,” likely referring to China and some African countries. He also stressed the importance of domestic demand to the economy, saying it was becoming the leading driver of growth.

    Russia’s economy has showed surprising resilience to unprecedented sanctions imposed by the West, including an EU ban on most imports of oil products. Preliminary estimates from the Russian government show that economic output shrank by 2.1% last year — a contraction more limited than many economists initially predicted.

    Yet while China has thrown the Kremlin an economic lifeline by buying Russian energy and providing an alternative to the US dollar, cracks are starting to appear.

    The Russian government’s revenue plunged 35% in January compared with a year ago, while expenditures jumped 59%, leading to a budget deficit of about 1,761 billion rubles ($23.3 billion).

    The World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are forecasting contractions of 3.3% and 5.6%, respectively, in 2023. The International Monetary Fund expects Russia’s growth to remain flat this year, but for the economy to shrink by at least 7% in the medium term.

    In response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Western countries have announced more than 11,300 sanctions since the February 2022 invasion, and frozen some $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserves.

    An outspoken Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, said earlier this month that Russia could find itself with no money as soon as next year.

    Separately, Austrian bank Raiffeisen Bank International said Thursday it was looking to sell or spin off its Russian business. In a statement, the bank called market conditions in the country “highly complex” and said it was “committing to further reducing business activity” there.

    Raiffeisenbank Russia made just over $2 billion in profit last year. But due to strict local rules, Raiffeisen is unable to take any profits from its Russian business out of the country.

    — Rob North and Livvy Doherty contributed reporting.

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  • Bolsonaro greeted by small group of supporters on return to Brazil for first time since riots | CNN

    Bolsonaro greeted by small group of supporters on return to Brazil for first time since riots | CNN

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    Brasilia, Brazil
    CNN
     — 

    Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro returned to the country on Thursday for the first time since his election defeat that culminated in thousands of his supporters rioting in protest at the result.

    The far-right politician flew back to Brasilia from Florida, where he stayed for three months in self-imposed exile after he failed to win reelection in last year’s presidential election. Bolsonaro has never formally conceded defeat and filed a petition contesting the result, but it was rejected by the country’s electoral court.

    Military police were on high alert in and around the airport, setting up checkpoints on the main road as about 50 Bolsonaro supporters gathered to welcome him. Authorities had earlier asked supporters to stay away from the airport.

    The small group of supporters at the airport’s international arrival hall all wore yellow and green Brazilian soccer jerseys, some draped in flags.

    One man on a motorcycle carrying a large Brazilian flag was turned away by police at the checkpoint, a CNN team on the ground reported, in line with the tight security plan announced by authorities Wednesday.

    Bolsonaro then traveled to the headquarters of his center-right Liberal Party in Brasilia, where a small group of supporters were waiting outside to greet him.

    He was set to attend a reception hosted by his party before traveling to his residence, CNN Brasil reported.

    Bolsonaro waves from the Liberal Party headquarters in Brasilia on Thursday.

    Bolsonaro, who denies inciting violent attacks in the capital Brasilia on January 8, faces an investigation into his alleged involvement upon his return, among other legal troubles.

    Speaking to CNN affiliate CNN Brasil at Florida’s Orlando airport late Wednesday, Bolsonaro said he would not lead the opposition to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva on his return – despite rallying support from conservative activists and far-right groups during his three-month stay in the United States.

    “You don’t have to oppose this government. This government is an opposition in itself,” Bolsonaro told CNN Brasil.

    Instead, Bolsonaro said he planned to help his party center-right Liberal Party “as an experienced person,” collaborating with “whatever they wish,” CNN Brasil quoted the former president as saying. He added that he will tour the country in preparation for next year’s municipal elections.

    Bolsonaro’s return comes as political divisions run deep in Brazil after he left the country in December last year just days before Lula’s inauguration.

    Though he denounced the invasion of Brasilia by his supporters, in the days following the election he welcomed peaceful demonstrations while his party filed petitions for an audit of voting machines, alleging fraud. He fed his followers crumbs of misinformation about election fraud and made vague comments hinting at a potential coup.

    The attacks in Brasilia bore similarities to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, when supporters of ex-US President Donald Trump – a close ally of Bolsonaro – stormed Congress in an effort to prevent the certification of his election defeat.

    Brazil’s Supreme Court is investigating Bolsonaro’s alleged involvement in the Brasilia riots, particularly to find out who or how far-right mobs that support the ex-leader ended up ransacking the seats of government.

    Bolsonaro is also under scrutiny over jewelry he allegedly received as a gift from the Saudi Arabian government while in office. On Wednesday, he denied any “irregularities,” stating that “the objects were registered,” CNN Brasil reported.

    Brazilian federal prosecutors are also investigating whether Bolsonaro tried to smuggle two sets of diamond jewels into the country without paying import taxes.

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  • Biden and Netanyahu trade barbs over plan to weaken courts as Israel rejects ‘pressure’ from White House | CNN

    Biden and Netanyahu trade barbs over plan to weaken courts as Israel rejects ‘pressure’ from White House | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Israel’s embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu escalated a rare public dispute with US President Joe Biden on Tuesday, rejecting “pressure” from the White House after Biden criticized his controversial efforts to weaken the Israeli judiciary.

    The back and forth thrust into public view a simmering diplomatic dispute that has mostly been kept private over the past several weeks. Biden and other US officials had sought to quietly dissuade Netanyahu from moving ahead with his proposed reforms without creating the appearance of a rift. But now the divide appears to be opening between the two men, who have known each other for decades.

    Biden said on Tuesday that he won’t invite Netanyahu to the White House “in the near term,” and issued an unusually stinging rebuke of Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul after mass protests and strikes brought Israel to a standstill and delayed the legislation.

    “Like many strong supporters of Israel I’m very concerned. I’m concerned that they get this straight. They cannot continue down this road. I’ve sort of made that clear,” Biden told reporters in North Carolina. “Hopefully the prime minister will act in a way that he can work out some genuine compromise,” he said. “That remains to be seen.”

    In separate remarks on Tuesday, Biden added of Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul: “I hope he walks away from it.”

    Netanyahu responded with a statement late on Tuesday evening, in which he noted Biden’s “longstanding commitment to Israel” but added: “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

    The exchange puts an unusual strain on the relationship between the leaders of the two closely allied countries.

    Yair Lapid, Israel’s opposition leader and former premier, said Wednesday that Netanyahu’s efforts have “ruined” the relationship. “For decades Israel was the USA’s closest ally. The most extreme government in the country’s history ruined that in three months,” Lapid tweeted.

    It follows an eruption of anger inside Israel, and within some Jewish communities in the US and around the world, at the Netanyahu government’s attempts to weaken the power of the country’s courts.

    The prime minister finally paused the legislation on Monday after a general strike and mass protests threw Israel into chaos, but he said he planned to return to the effort in the next legislative term. Critics say Netanyahu is pushing through the changes because of his own ongoing corruption trial, which he denies.

    Netanyahu struck a defensive tone in taped remarks to the White House-hosted Summit for Democracy Wednesday morning, acknowledging “public and often painful discourse,” in his nation over the proposed reforms, while expressing hope dissent would “move from protest to agreement.”

    “I want to thank the world leaders and President Biden, who’s been a friend for 40 years for convening this important conference,” he said. “You know Israel and the United States have had their occasional differences, but I want to assure you that the alliance between the world’s greatest democracy, and a strong, proud, and independent democracy – Israel – in the heart of the Middle East, is unshakeable, nothing can change that.”

    Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right firebrand who serves as Netanyahu’s National Security Minister, was less diplomatic in his rebuke. “Both President Biden and all the administration officials in the US should understand that Israel is an independent country, it is not another star on the US flag,” he said on Israel Army Radio Wednesday.

    Ahead of the summit, White House officials defended Israel’s participation despite concerns about democratic backsliding, saying they’d invited all countries who were working toward democratic ideals.

    Biden had so far avoided a direct criticism of Netanyahu’s efforts, with his administration instead saying on Sunday that it was watching the escalating tension with “concern.”

    But his comments on Tuesday marked a rare instance of the US directly weighing in on Israeli domestic affairs.

    It was also announced on Tuesday that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will visit Jerusalem next month, a trip that is certain to inject the likely Republican presidential contender into Israel’s national tumult and its increasingly fraught relationship with the US.

    “At a time of unnecessarily strained relations between Jerusalem and Washington, Florida serves as a bridge between the American and Israeli people,” DeSantis told the Jerusalem Post, which announced details of his planned keynote address at an April 27 event.

    The debate over Netanyahu’s proposals is likely to ratchet up again before then; while he bought himself time on Monday, he has remained determined to see through an overhaul of the judiciary that critics say diminishes Israel’s democracy.

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  • Netanyahu is backed into a corner. Here’s what he may do next | CNN

    Netanyahu is backed into a corner. Here’s what he may do next | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his decision to delay a controversial plan to weaken the country’s judiciary on Monday, he invoked the biblical story of the Judgement of Solomon, where the king had to rule between two women, both claiming to be the mother of a child. Solomon ordered that the child be cut in two, and the woman who protested the ruling was determined to be the real mother.

    Before Netanyahu spoke, supporters of the judicial overhaul had gathered in the streets following calls from right-wing politicians to come out, allowing the prime minister to make his address as protesters from both sides rallied simultaneously for the first time in weeks.

    “Even today, both sides in the national dispute claim love for the baby – love for our country,” said Netanyahu. “I am aware of the enormous tension that is building up between the two camps, between the two parts of the people, and I am attentive to the desire of many citizens to relieve this tension.”

    The timing of the address was likely intentional and was meant to give Netanyahu’s much-delayed speech a favorable backdrop – two competing camps demonstrating their love for the country, said Aviv Bushinsky, a former media adviser for Netanyahu who served the prime minister for nine years.

    Netanyahu’s strategy has always been based on last-minute decisions, Bushinsky said, which sometimes makes it difficult to predict his next move.

    Other analysts say the prime minister’s strategy brings uncertainty to Israel’s future.

    “He is playing the game,” said Gideon Rahat, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “You can never know what will happen, and that’s the problem … There is no certainty in Israel, in the Israeli system, and I am not sure that he’s not happy about this.”

    Bushinsky says that if it was up to Netanyahu he would have pumped the brakes on the judicial overhaul a long time ago, as it wasn’t one of the main leadership goals declared at the start of his sixth term as prime minister.

    He’s standing by it because the survival of his coalition depends on it. But now, analysts say he’s backed into a corner between appeasing protesters and keeping his government intact.

    Before Netanyahu announced the delay, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party broke the news, noting that part of the delay agreement was to establish a National Guard. That caused alarm, with some speculating on social media that Ben Gvir, who has an extremist past, was being allowed to set up his own militia.

    Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Tuesday that putting Ben Gvir in charge of the National Guard is “the equivalent of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.”

    Ben Gvir was quick to address the concerns about the new body. “Let’s put things straight: no private army and no militias,” he said in a statement published on his Telegram page.

    Bushinsky downplayed the significance of the National Guard, saying it is “a comfort prize” for Ben Gvir – “a prize for the losers.”

    The prime minister is now faced with very few options, analysts say. If he sides with his coalition and votes on the overhaul, crippling protests and strikes would resume. If he pulls the brakes, his coalition could collapse.

    The only wiggle room the Israeli leader has, analysts say, is if negotiators reach a moderated judicial overhaul plan bill over the Knesset’s recess period, which ends April 30, and where concessions to his right-wing coalition members need not be too extreme.

    Netanyahu may also be hoping for the reform bill to be shelved for the time being.

    “I think Netanyahu will try to run away from this thing, hoping that things will gradually ease,” said Bushinsky, noting that the ministers who had threatened to resign should the bill not advance have all remained in their posts.

    Analysts say, however, that what could once again unite the fragmented country and have the public rally behind the government is a potential security threat, either from neighboring countries or through conflict with the Palestinians.

    A security crisis would reorient the government’s attention, said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem, whether it arises from conflict with the Palestinians, the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon or others.

    “Some thought that if there was a security crisis, then Netanyahu would be saved by the bell,” said Bushinsky.

    Palestinians are watching the process with unease amid fears that they will pay the price of Netanyahu’s concessions to right-wing coalition members with a history of anti-Palestinian rhetoric.

    “We are seeing that Palestinians are once again paying the price for Israel’s electoral choices,” said Buttu. “There may be calm in the streets of Tel Aviv … but for Palestinians, the reality remains the same.”

    How Netanyahu will act remains uncertain, and not everyone is optimistic that the recess period will yield any kind of consensus or moderation in his position.

    “I have not detected any indication that tells me that the prime minister is actually entering into the negotiations with a keen interest in achieving consensus … including comprises on core aspects of the judicial overhaul,” said Plesner.

    Plesner notes, however, that Netanyahu and his Likud party emerged “politically injured” from the last few months, losing not only legitimacy and support in the eyes of the Israeli people, but also in the eyes of his own Likud voters.

    “(It was) a dramatic erosion of their political power and political posture,” he said.

    Biden, Netanyahu trade barbs over plan to weaken courts; Israel rejects US ‘pressure’

    Israel’s embattled prime minister escalated a rare public dispute with US President Joe Biden on Tuesday, rejecting “pressure” from the White House after Biden criticized Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken Israel’s judiciary. Biden said on Tuesday that he won’t invite Netanyahu to the White House “in the near term,” and issued an unusually stinging rebuke of the Israeli leader’s proposed judicial overhaul. Netanyahu responded late on Tuesday, saying, “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

    • Background: The prime minister finally paused the legislation on Monday after a general strike and mass protests threw Israel into chaos, but he said he planned to return to the effort in the next legislative term. Critics say Netanyahu is pushing through the changes because of his own ongoing corruption trial, which he denies.
    • Why it matters: The back and forth thrust into public view a simmering diplomatic dispute that has mostly been kept private over the past several weeks. Biden and other US officials had sought to quietly dissuade Netanyahu from moving ahead with his proposed reforms without creating the appearance of a rift. But now the divide appears to be opening between the two men, who have known each other for decades.

    Riyadh joins Shanghai Cooperation Organization as ties with Beijing grow

    Saudi Arabia’s cabinet approved on Wednesday a decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as Riyadh builds a long-term partnership with China despite US security concerns, Reuters reported. Saudi Arabia has approved a memorandum on granting the kingdom the status of a dialog partner in the SCO, state news agency SPA said.

    • Background: Formed in 2001 by Russia, China and former Soviet states in Central Asia, the body has been expanded to include India and Pakistan, with a view to playing a bigger role as counterweight to Western influence in the region. The SCO is a political and security union of countries spanning much of Eurasia. Iran also signed documents for full membership last year. Countries belonging to the organization plan to hold a joint “counter-terrorism exercise” in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region in August.
    • Why it matters: Riyadh’s growing ties with Beijing have raised security concerns in Washington, its traditional ally. Washington says Chinese attempts to exert influence around the world will not change US policy toward the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have voiced concern about what they see as a withdrawal from the region by the United States, its main security guarantor, and have moved to diversify partners. Washington says it will stay an active partner in the region.

    US sanctions Syrian leader Assad’s cousins, others over drug trade

    The US on Tuesday imposed new sanctions against six people, including two cousins of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for their role in the production or export of captagon, a dangerous amphetamine, Reuters cited the Treasury Department as saying. The Treasury said trade in captagon was estimated to be a billion-dollar enterprise and the sanctions highlight the role of Lebanese drug traffickers and the Assad family dominance of captagon trafficking, which helped fund the Syrian government.

    • Background: Regional officials say the Iranian-backed Hezbollah as well as Syrian armed groups linked to the Damascus government are behind the surging trade of captagon, smuggled either through Jordan to the south or Lebanon to the west. Assad’s government denies involvement in drug-making and smuggling and says it is stepping up its campaign to curb the lucrative trade. Hezbollah denies the accusations.
    • Why it matters: There is a thriving market for captagon in the Gulf, and United Nations and Western anti-narcotics drug officials say Syria, shattered by a decade of civil war, has become the region’s main production site for a multibillion-dollar drug trade that also exports to Europe.

    Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco will acquire a 10% stake in China’s Rongsheng Petrochemical in a strategic deal worth $3.6 billion that would significantly expand its presence in China.

    Amena Bakr, deputy bureau chief at Energy Intelligence, spoke to CNN’s Becky Anderson about what this means for Saudi-Chinese cooperation.

    She said Saudi interest is in the East as the kingdom does not like “policy that interferes with their internal affairs,” a mantra that China holds sacred.

    Watch the full interview here.

    A Ramadan TV show is in hot water for its offensive depiction of Iraqi women, drawing condemnation from politicians in both Kuwait and Iraq.

    The series, “London Class,” is produced by the Saudi state-backed media conglomerate MBC group and depicts Iraqi women working as maids for Kuwaiti women and being accused of theft.

    The show follows a group of Arab medicine students at a London university in the 1980s. Much of the anger from Iraqis is directed at Kuwait.

    The Kuwaiti Ministry of Information has however said the show has nothing to do with the country and was not shown on any platform there, according to Arabic media.

    One Baghdad-based Twitter user condemned what he said was a repeated “stream of hatred and malice from Kuwaiti shows towards our people.”

    The show was written by Kuwaiti writer Heba Hamada and directed by Egyptian Mohamed Bakir. Hamada responded to the criticism in an Instagram post, saying: “Iraq is the mother of civilization, and all Arabs lean on its shoulder.”

    Mustafa Jabbar Sanad, a member of parliament in Iraq, accused the show of “erasing the value of well-known Iraqi talents … to distort the image of the Iraqi people as a whole, not just women.”

    Hamada was the subject of criticism in 2019 because of a similar show she wrote called “Cairo Class,” which caused strife between Kuwaitis and Egyptians due its portrayal of Egypt. That show is being aired on Netflix.

    The question of honor, particularly that of Iraqi women, has long been a sensitive issue in Kuwaiti-Iraqi relations. Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had accused Kuwait of insulting his country’s women, citing it as a reason for his invasion of the country in 1990.

    In a 2004 court hearing in Iraq, the former president decried being held accountable for the invasion.

    “How could Saddam be tried over Kuwait that said it will reduce Iraqi women to 10-dinar prostitutes?” he asked, referring to himself. “He (Hussein) defended Iraq’s honor and revived its historical rights over those dogs,” Saddam said, referring to the Kuwaitis.

    Iraq made its final reparation payment for that invasion last year, having paid the Gulf nation a total of $52.4 billion.

    By Dalya Al Masri

    A shepherd walks with his goats as trucks move rubble at Samandag, in Turkey's Hatay province on Tuesday, after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on February 6 killed more than 50,000 in southeastern Turkey and nearly 6,000 over the border in Syria.

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  • Ghana’s president softens country’s stance on draconian anti-LGBTQ bill as Kamala Harris visits | CNN

    Ghana’s president softens country’s stance on draconian anti-LGBTQ bill as Kamala Harris visits | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo has said that “substantial elements” of a draconian anti-LGBTQ bill being considered by its parliament “have been modified” after an intervention by his government.

    Akufo-Addo made the disclosure Monday at a joint press conference with US Vice-President Kamala Harris, who’s on a tour of the West African country.

    He pointed out that the proposed legislation, framed in the guise of “family values” – which seeks to introduce some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ laws on the African continent – was not legislation introduced by his government but a private members’ bill. The bill was first introduced in parliament in August 2021.

    “The bill is going through the parliament. The attorney general has found it necessary to speak to the committee (the constitutional and legal committee of parliament) about it regarding the constitutionality … of several of its provisions. The parliament is dealing with it. At the end of the process, I will come in,” the Ghanaian leader said.

    After parliamentary deliberations, a final bill will be sent to the president for assent.

    “My understanding … is that substantial elements of the bill have already been modified as a result of the intervention of the attorney general,” Akufo-Addo said.

    In suggesting that the bill may end up being watered down in the amendment process, Akufo-Addo added that he was convinced the parliament will consider the sensitivity of the bill to human rights issues as well as the feelings of the Ghanaian population “and come out with a responsible response.”

    However, one of the parliamentarians who introduced the bill, Samuel Nartey George, insists that the proposed law remains “rigid and tough.”

    “The bill has not been substantially changed. The bill remains as tough and as rigid as it was,” George told local media in a televised interview.

    He added: “When the bill is laid before the House (of parliament), you will realize that the focus of the bill which has to do with voiding (gay) marriages, preventing them from adopting or fostering children, the clampdown on platforms and media houses that are going to do promotion and advocacy or push those materials still remain enforced.”

    George also implied that restrictions against “expressions, be it lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender are all still there. “So when he (Akufo-Addo) says the bill has been watered down, he doesn’t know what he is talking about.”

    The proposed aw would see LGBTQ Ghanaians face jail time, or be forced into so-called “conversion therapy” – a widely discredited practice debunked by much of the international medical and psychiatric communities.

    Under the bill, advocates of the LGBTQ community would face up to a decade in prison; public displays of same-sex affection or cross-dressing could lead to a fine or jail time, and certain types of medical support would be made illegal.

    The new law would also make the distribution of material deemed pro-LGBTQ by news organizations or websites illegal. It calls on Ghanaians to report those they suspect of being from the LGBTQ community.

    Harris, the US vice-president, said at the press conference she felt very strongly about supporting the freedom and equality of the LGBTQ community.

    “This is an issue that we consider to be a human rights issue, and that will not change,” she said.

    Ghana’s information minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, also told CNN on Tuesday that the outcome of the parliamentary debate on the bill may differ from its original provisions.

    “The bill is now in an enactment process. What will come out in enactment when 275 members get on the floor and start dealing with it clause by clause and voting clause by clause, may end up being different from what was proposed. You propose a bill and parliament … can tweak it and make it harsher or less harsh … it is in the hands of parliament now,” Nkrumah said.

    The minister also insisted however that the Ghanaian government was not under pressure to relax existing legislation on homosexuality.

    “We are not pressured in any way to focus on things that are not essentially within our main priorities. Our priority number one is getting the Ghanaian economy on track and that’s what we’re focused on.”

    “This conversation is not part of our mainstream conversation here in Ghana,” he added.

    Old sodomy laws dating back to 1960 remain on the statute books in Ghana but they are rarely enforced.

    Activist Danny Bediako, who runs the NGO Rightify Ghana, told CNN that living in Ghana would become tougher for the LGBTQ community if the bill passes in parliament.

    “It’s going to make it difficult for the (LGBTQ) community to exist. They are just trying to erase the community through this bill, so it will definitely lead to an increase in attacks,” said Bediako, who added that his organization had documented 27 cases of violent attacks targeted toward the LGBTQ community in the country this year.

    “There have been different types of cases, but the most dominant one is the activities of violent groups and they are widespread. So if this bill is passed, these activities are going to continue and it’s only going to also get worse.”

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  • ‘Historic moment’: Politicians of South Asian descent set to lead Scotland, Britain and Ireland with Yousaf victory | CNN

    ‘Historic moment’: Politicians of South Asian descent set to lead Scotland, Britain and Ireland with Yousaf victory | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    When Humza Yousaf took his oath of allegiance in Scottish parliament in 2016, he wore a gold embroidered sherwani – a traditional South Asian jacket – and a kilt.

    “I, Humza Yousaf, swear with honesty and a true heart,” he proudly said in Urdu, “that I will always be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, so help me God.”

    He is now expected to make history by becoming the first non-White head of the Scottish government, following his election as leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) on Monday.

    The triumph of British-born Yousaf, whose family trace their ancestry to Pakistan, is just the latest reflection of how times have changed as people of South Asian descent occupy leadership roles in the British, Scottish and Irish parliaments.

    Yousaf, 37, joins British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a Hindu, who secured the role last October and whose Indian parents came to the UK from East Africa in the 1960s.

    And across the Irish Sea is the Republic of Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, whose father is an Indian-born doctor.

    India and Pakistan were once the jewel of a British empire that stretched so far across the globe it was often said the sun would never set on it. But 75 years since the end of the British Raj, many commentators have remarked at how history has come full circle.

    Sunder Katwala, director of think tank British Future, called Yousaf “the history maker” in a post on Twitter.

    “The Empire strikes back,” quipped Jelina Berlow-Rahman, a human rights lawyer in Scotland, on the social media platform. “Historic moment for British politics.”

    Yousaf’s father was born in the Pakistani city of Mian Channu, in the country’s sprawling Punjab province that borders India. His mother was born in Nairobi, Kenya, also to a family from Punjabi descent.

    Both migrated to Scotland in the 1960s.

    Since 1999, Scotland has had a devolved government, meaning many, but not all, decisions are made at the SNP-led Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh.

    In a 2018 interview with Scotland’s Holyrood newspaper, Yousaf explained in detail how his mother’s family faced racial discrimination in the East African city for being seen as taking away jobs from the local population. The hardship reached a breaking point when his grandmother was attacked with an axe, he said. She survived, but the family had had enough.

    “It was time to get away and again, it made sense because there was a British call for people from the Commonwealth to come and take on industrial jobs,” Yousaf said.

    Born in Glasgow in 1985, Yousaf was one of two ethnic minority pupils to attend his elementary school.

    Destined by family expectations to be either an accountant, a doctor or a lawyer, Yousaf recalled the “scariest” moment was when he broke the mold by telling his parents about his desire to venture into politics.

    Humza Yousaf speaks after being elected as the new SNP party leader, at Murrayfield on March 27, 2023 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

    “My dad, who really had so much foresight, said that we were living at a time when we [in our community] needed more representation and we didn’t really have anything,” he told Holyrood.

    Yousaf joined the SNP while he was a student at the University of Glasgow and rose through the ranks of the party, becoming a member of parliament in 2011 – the first Muslim and non-White cabinet minister to serve in the Scottish Government.

    He has often noted that his own background is an example of Scotland’s socially liberal and ethnically diverse landscape, even referring to himself as coming from a “bhangra and bagpipes” heritage.

    Bhangra is the traditional folk music of the Punjab while bagpipes are the quintessential instrument of Scotland.

    Yousaf’s party victory was confirmed after a six-week campaign where he and two other candidates squared off against each other.

    On Tuesday, the Scottish Parliament will vote to elect the country’s sixth first minister, a position Yousaf is expected to claim as the head of the party with the most lawmakers.

    He takes over a party with an overriding objective to end Scotland’s three-centuries-long union with England – something his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon wasn’t able to achieve after the British government repeatedly blocked a way to a fresh vote on independence.

    “We will be the generation that delivers independence for Scotland,” he said in a victory speech. “Where there are divisions to heal, we must do so quickly because we have a job to do.”

    News of Yousaf’s victory dominated headlines in Pakistan, with messages and swirling on social media about the historic moment. It comes as most of the 270 million strong population observes Ramadan – Islam’s holiest month, where communities come together to fast, pray and reflect.

    Noor Ahmed, from the Citizen’s Archive of Pakistan, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultural and historic preservation, described the journey Yousaf has taken as a “Pakistani story that is moving and aspirational, and will be lauded locally.”

    “Humza Yousaf’s appointment is part of a wider movement taking shape globally that previously was acknowledged only informally – that members of the Pakistani diaspora have long played a vital role in global history,” she told CNN.

    When Sunak similarly made history by becoming Britain’s first Prime Minister of Indian descent, many in the South Asian nation were quick to congratulate him – with some media channels even claiming him as their own.

    Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar after being nominated as Taoiseach at Leinster House in Dublin, Ireland on December 17, 2022.

    British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak leaves Downing Street on March 8, 2023.

    Just under 10% of the United Kingdom’s population are of South Asian descent, according to government statistics.

    The leader of Scotland’s main opposition, Anas Sarwar, is also the child of Pakistani immigrants. Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman also has Indian roots, while London mayor Sadiq Khan was born to a working-class Pakistani immigrant family.

    But while political representation of minorities in Britain has improved, racism is far from vanquished. Yousaf’s victory was greeted with racist comments on social media by members of the far right.

    Others have noted that Sunak and Yousaf were also both selected by their parties and have yet to face a general election.

    The Indian subcontinent won independence from the British empire in August 1947 and the bloody Partition that followed hastily divided the former colony along religious lines – sending Muslims to the newly formed nation of Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs to newly independent India.

    An estimated 15 million people were uprooted and between 500,000 and 2 million died in the exodus, according to scholars. It remains etched into the memories of many who experienced it, and their descendents.

    Observers have been quick to point out the irony that Yousaf, a Muslim of Pakistani origin, will go against Sunak, a Hindu of Indian origin, to deliver his promise of Scottish independence.

    Young voters cast their vote on Scottish independence in Edinburgh, Scotland, on September 18, 2014.

    In 2014, Scotland voted against independence by 55%. Two years later, Britain voted to leave the European Union when a majority of Scots wanted to stay, setting the country on a path it hadn’t agreed to and re-energizing the fight for independence.

    Last November, Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that Scotland’s government cannot unilaterally hold a second referendum on whether to secede from the UK – a blow to independence campaigners battling against Westminster’s pro-union establishment.

    Shortly after winning, Yousaf tweeted about the messages coming in.

    “From Punjab to Pollok, people from across the world and here at home have been offering me their good wishes,” he wrote.

    But in the meantime he said he had a more pressing immediate task.

    “For now, after a long day I have promised a very sleepy three year old I will be telling her tonight’s bed time story.”

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  • Netanyahu says he will delay his judicial overhaul. But will that be enough for protesters? | CNN

    Netanyahu says he will delay his judicial overhaul. But will that be enough for protesters? | CNN

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    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he would postpone the votes on his planned judicial overhaul, but analysts say that may not be enough to cool the protests.

    The prime minister announced he would delay the second and third votes on the remaining legislation until after the Jewish Passover holiday from April 5-13, “to give time for a real chance for a real debate.”

    Netanyahu nonetheless insisted that the overhaul was necessary. And while he may be trying to buy himself time, it is unclear if his deferment of the vote will silence the huge protests and mass strikes paralyzing the country, experts say.

    Gideon Rahat, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and a member of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the protests may either tail off or resume at a later date following the announcement, but that the demonstrators are nonetheless “ready” for the reform, and can return to the streets at any moment.

    “The protesters now have the infrastructure to take protests out (to the streets) within minutes,” Rahat told CNN, noting that it is not just one protest movement but tens of groups, some of whom may decide to continue to rally despite the deferment.

    “The infrastructure is there, and if there will be a need, there will be a comeback (to the streets),” he said.

    Former head of the Israeli Intelligence Directorate and managing director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Major General Tamir Hayman said that postponing the vote until after the Passover holiday will not end anger on the streets.

    “The protests will continue unless Netanyahu will note publicly that he was mistaken when leading that reform, and (that) he is holding all future motivations to renew the judicial reform,” Hayman told CNN. “This is the only scenario where we will see a complete stop of all the demonstrations.”

    If, however, Netanyahu uses the pause to conduct proper negotiations with all parties, and eventually presents a moderated reform bill that is approved by the opposition, then “maybe, in that case, at the end state, after Independence Day, we will see a remission in the protests,” Hayman said, referring to Israel’s national day on April 25/26.

    During his speech, Netanyahu also reiterated his criticism of the refusal by some reservists to train or serve in the military in protest at the planned changes. The prime minister had earlier fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over his opposition to the planned overhaul.

    “The state of Israel cannot continue with people who refuse to serve in the army,” he the prime minister said. “Refusing is the end of our country.”

    Hayman, from the INSS, said the protests may pose a security threat as some within the military begin to divide into camps for and against the judicial overhaul.

    While it is has not yet happened, said Hayman, the mass movement could cause “the gaps, the rifts inside the (IDF) units … to widen and deepen.”

    Some of the military members Netanyahu is referring to are also serving in very critical units, said Rahat. But since they are mostly volunteers who do so “because they love their country,” Netanyahu must “regain their trust” to bring them back to their posts.

    “This is a problem of legitimacy; this is a problem of trust,” Rahat said.

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  • Netanyahu announces delay to Israel judicial overhaul plans amid huge protests | CNN

    Netanyahu announces delay to Israel judicial overhaul plans amid huge protests | CNN

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    Jerusalem
    CNN
     — 

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday his controversial plans to weaken the judiciary will be delayed after widespread strikes and protests drove the country to a standstill.

    Netanyahu said he would delay the second and third votes on the remaining legislation until after the Knesset’s Passover recess in April “to give time for a real chance for a real debate.”

    Netanyahu added that he is “aware of the tensions” and is “listening to the people.”

    “Out of the responsibility to the nation, I decided to delay … the vote, in order to give time for discussion,” he added.

    But he insisted that the overhaul was necessary, and reiterated criticism of refusal to train or serve in the military in protest at the planned changes.

    “Refusing is the end of our country,” he said.

    Reacting to Netanyahu’s announcement, Arnon Bar-David, the leader of the Histadrut labor union, announced that a planned general strike would now be called off.

    “The general strike stops from this moment,” Bar-David told CNN affiliate Channel 13, although he warned Netanyahu against reviving the legislation.

    “If the prime minister returns to aggressive legislation he’ll find us facing him. Legislation without consent will be met with a general strike.”

    The original proposals would have amounted to the most sweeping overhaul of the Israeli legal system since the country’s founding. The most significant changes would allow a simple majority in the Knesset to overturn Supreme Court rulings; the Netanyahu government also sought to change the way judges are selected, and remove government ministries’ independent legal advisers, whose opinions are binding.

    But months of sustained protests over the plans drew global attention and rocked the country. The political crisis deepened on Sunday when Netanyahu’s office announced the firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in a one-line statement, after he became the first member of the cabinet to call for a pause to the controversial plans.

    In the hours that followed, Israeli society ground to a halt as anger at the bill mounted. Netanyahu was also condemned by his opponents and a host of former Israeli prime ministers.

    “We’ve never been closer to falling apart. Our national security is at risk, our economy is crumbling, our foreign relations are at their lowest point ever, we don’t know what to say to our children about their future in this country. We have been taken hostage by a bunch of extremists with no brakes and no boundaries,” former Prime Minister Yair Lapid said at the Knesset.

    As he fought to push ahead with his effort last week, Netanyahu’s government also passed a law making it harder to oust prime ministers that was condemned by critics as a self-preservation tactic.

    By a 61-to-47 final vote, the Knesset approved the bill that states that only the prime minister himself or the cabinet, with a two-thirds majority, can declare the leader unfit. The cabinet vote would then need to be ratified by a super majority in the parliament.

    Netanyahu, who is the first sitting Israeli prime minister to appear in court as a defendant, is on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery. He denies any wrongdoing.

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  • ‘I am not scared’: Disqualified Gandhi will continue questioning Modi | CNN

    ‘I am not scared’: Disqualified Gandhi will continue questioning Modi | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday he had been disqualified from parliament because he has been asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi tough questions about his relationship with Gautam Adani, founder of the Adani conglomerate.

    Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party responded saying Gandhi had been punished under the law for a defamatory comment he made in 2019 and it had nothing to do with the Adani issue.

    Gandhi, a former president of India’s main opposition Congress party who is still its main leader, lost his parliamentary seat on Friday, a day after a court in the western state of Gujarat convicted him in a defamation case and sentenced him to two years in jail.

    The court granted him bail and suspended his jail sentence for 30 days, allowing him to appeal.

    The defamation case was filed in connection with comments Gandhi made in a speech that many deemed insulting to Modi. Gandhi’s party and its allies have criticized the court ruling as politically motivated.

    “I have been disqualified because the prime minister is scared of my next speech, he is scared of the next speech that is going to come on Adani,” Gandhi told a news conference at the Congress party headquarters in New Delhi.

    “They don’t want that speech to be in parliament, that’s the issue,” Gandhi said in his first public comments since the conviction and disqualification.

    Gandhi, 52, the scion of a dynasty that has given India three prime ministers, did not elaborate on why Modi might not like his next speech.

    Gandhi’s once-dominant Congress controls less than 10% of the elected seats in parliament’s lower house and has been decimated by the BJP in two successive general elections, most recently in 2019.

    India’s next general election is due by mid-2024 and Gandhi has recently been trying to revive the party’s fortunes.

    “I am not scared of this disqualification … I will continue to ask the question, ‘what is the prime minister’s relationship with Mr Adani?’,” Gandhi said on Saturday.

    Modi’s rivals say the prime minister and the BJP have longstanding ties with the Adani group, going back nearly two decades when Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat. Gautam Adani is also from Gujarat.

    The Congress party has questioned investments made by state-run firms in Adani companies and the handover of the management of six airports to the group in recent years, even though it had no experience in the sector.

    The Adani group has denied receiving any special favors from the government and government ministers have dismissed such opposition suggestions as “wild allegations”, saying regulators would look into any wrongdoing.

    Congress, and its opposition allies have called for a parliamentary investigation.

    “The life of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an open book of honesty,” BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad told a news conference called in response to Gandhi’s statements on Saturday.

    “We don’t have to defend Adani, BJP never defends Adani, but BJP doesn’t target anyone either,” Prasad said, accusing Gandhi of habitually lying.

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  • World Athletics regulations on transgender women athletes risk human rights violations, rights groups say | CNN

    World Athletics regulations on transgender women athletes risk human rights violations, rights groups say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Trans rights advocates have warned sports governing bodies that “blanket bans” on transgender women from competing in women’s categories risk “violating fundamental human rights principles.”

    This follows World Athletics (WA) President Sebastian Coe’s announcement of new regulations around transgender women athletes on Thursday, which come into force on March 31 and prohibit athletes who have gone through what WA called “male puberty” from participating in female world rankings competitions. WA said the exclusion would apply to “male-to-female transgender athletes.”

    “Such policies risk violating international human rights principles of non-discrimination, which require such policies to start from a place of inclusion unless an exclusion can be justified as proportionate to any risks identified,” Anna Brown, CEO of Equality Australia, said in a statement.

    “World Athletics has failed to meet that standard.”

    Meanwhile, retired Australian transgender athlete Ricki Coughlan said she was “disappointed” by what she feels is a “fundamentally discriminatory” decision.

    “When leaders make decisions which divide and exclude us, we see this reflected in community,” Coughlan wrote on Twitter.

    “The voices of hate are amplified on one side and fear on the other. Our communities become divided and we miss the opportunity to achieve what we can only achieve when we come together, each of us working in a spirit where we can all strive to reach our full potentials.”

    Coe said the decision had been made to “maintain fairness for female athletes above all other considerations.”

    He explained that WA – the global governing body for track and field – would set up a working group to evaluate the issue of transgender inclusion over the next 12 months.

    “We’re not saying no forever,” Coe said.

    In a statement to CNN on Friday, WA said: “The science shows that anyone who has gone through male puberty retains male anatomical differences that provide an athletic advantage.

    “The World Athletics Council was unwilling to compromise the integrity of the female category without evidence that these male advantages can be ameliorated.

    “We currently do not have any transgender athletes in elite international competition; therefore, the time is right to consult more widely on this subject. We hope that any transgender athletes who are planning to enter our sport at an elite level come forward and contribute to our new Working Group.”

    In recent years, some opponents of trans women and girls’ participation in sport have turned the issue into a political flashpoint. In January, a small group of demonstrators gathered outside the NCAA Convention in San Antonio to protest the inclusion of transgender women athletes in women’s college sports.

    Advocates of banning transgender women from women’s sport have argued that transgender women have a physical advantage over cisgender women in sports.

    But the mainstream science does not support that conclusion. A 2017 report in the journal Sports Medicine that reviewed several related studies found “no direct or consistent research” on trans people having an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers, and critics say the bans add to the discrimination trans people face.

    Debate in the scientific community about whether androgenic hormones like testosterone serve as useful markers of athletic advantage remains ongoing.

    A World Athletics document obtained by CNN earlier this year states that trans women “retain an advantage in muscle mass, volume, and strength over cis women” after 12 months of gender affirming hormone therapy, while acknowledging that there is “limited existing experimental data” on the matter.

    The new policy follows similar regulations introduced by swimming governing body World Aquatics last year, which say that male-to-female transgender athletes will only be eligible to compete in the women’s categories in World Aquatics competitions if they transition before the age of 12 or before they reach stage two on the puberty Tanner Scale.

    Some athletes welcomed World Athletics’ decision, including British runner Emily Diamond, who called it “a big step for fairness and protecting the female category.”

    Writing on Twitter, Diamond added: “Hopefully this will be the rule across all levels now, not just elite ranking events.”

    Save Women’s Sport Australasia, a group campaigning against transgender athletes in women’s sport, also welcomed the move from WA.

    “It’s not a ban, it just actually moves to protect the female category to female competitors and it was an excellent decision,” spokeswoman Ro Edge told Reuters.

    “So it’s really reassuring to hear (WA) president Seb Coe come out and say they’ve got to maintain fairness of female participation above all other considerations.”

    Coe said the decision came after deliberation with groups including World Athletics member federations, the Global Athletics Coaches Academy and Athletes’ Commission and the IOC, as well as representative transgender and human rights groups.

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  • Opinion: Why France is fuming at Macron | CNN

    Opinion: Why France is fuming at Macron | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Catherine Poisson is an associate professor of Romance Languages at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Her research has focused on literature and culture of France from the 19th century to the present. The views expressed in this article are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    As a native of France who has lived in America for many years, I never fail to be shocked at the sight of older workers packing groceries at the supermarket. It suggests to me a deplorable lack of social supports that could allow aged people to enjoy a dignified retirement.

    While it’s true that some people choose to work past retirement, most of us in this country, at some point or the other, have seen elderly people hard at work in occupations that people many years younger would find taxing.

    And yet, many Americans somehow seem to be puzzled by the recent protests over retirement benefits that are roiling the country of my birth.

    For the past three months, a spasm of demonstrations has gripped France over moves by the government to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. In recent days, French indignation led to a no-confidence vote that President Emmanuel Macron only narrowly survived. A new round of mass protests called by organized labor took place on Thursday — the ninth day of strikes since the bill was introduced in January.

    Schools are closed because teachers are on strike. Transportation, including France’s usually reliable train service, is suddenly erratic because of the work stoppages. On top of all this, Parisians have seen their city’s streets strewn with tons of trash, after sanitation workers launched a labor action in solidarity.

    I return to France for several weeks each year, but have lived in the United States some 30 years and know both countries well. One thing that seems clear to me is that the kind of upheaval playing out in the country of my birth would be almost unthinkable in America. Americans seem not to be able to understand the source of the boiling national rage felt by the French over the planned increase in the retirement age.

    The closest analogy in the United States to anything like what my compatriots are experiencing would be the decision four decades ago to raise the age at which Social Security benefits are doled out.

    And that’s exactly what happened: The US government announced in 1983 that it would gradually raise the age for collecting full Social Security retirement benefits from 65 to 67 over a 22-year period, beginning in 2000. Of course, older Americans care deeply about Social Security — and often cast their votes accordingly. Still, it’s hard to imagine such a change going over quite so easily in France.

    For the most part, the demonstrations in France haven’t awakened Americans’ sense of empathy or solidarity. Instead, it has elicited expressions of sheer befuddlement. What on earth, my friends and acquaintances here ask, do the French have to complain about?

    Life in France is not perfect. But French citizens have a generous health care system, which means workers pay next-to-nothing out of pocket for medical care. University education is nearly free. Unemployment benefits allow laid-off workers to sustain a reasonable quality of life while they look for their next jobs.

    Yes, French workers have all of that. It is, in short, part of their birthright as citizens of France.

    After World War II, both the retirement system and the National Health care system were introduced in France, and though there have been limitations over the last twenty years, social benefits still make it among the most envied countries in Europe in terms of its social programs.

    If Americans are baffled by the French willingness to fight to hold onto these hard-won benefits, it is in part because the two countries have very different ideas about what it means to be a worker. In the United States, work is an identity. You are what you do.

    For those of us raised in French culture, work refers to a finite period of life lasting roughly 40 years. And when that work is done, you are still young enough and fit enough to enjoy the best of what life has to offer. It’s the norm that retirement years — or decades actually — are spent traveling, caring for grandchildren or picking up new hobbies.

    It’s part of our social compact: The French work hard during their most productive years during which time they pay what most Americans would consider usuriously high taxes. But then comes the much anticipated “Troisieme Age” — the “third age.” It’s a concept French people grow up with and cling to fervently for their entire lives.

    The “first age” is childhood. During life’s “second age,” many of us are saddled with responsibilities of work and raising children. The third age however promises a good, healthy retirement free from want and worry — the kind of retirement many in the United States cannot even dream of. It is no wonder that people are willing to take to the streets to protect it.

    The ongoing protests are also seen as a pushback against Macron’s imperious governing style. Years ago, he earned the nickname “Jupiter” — after the king of the Roman gods — as he was derided by some for his highhanded approach to governing — imposing his will, in the eyes of his critics, as if he were a sovereign rather than elected.

    Macron says retirement reform is necessary because the system is near collapse. There’s some disagreement about that, however. The budget appears to be balanced for the next dozen years, although it’s true that falling birth rates and increasing longevity pose a problem that will have to be addressed.

    Still, there are less draconian ways to fix problems posed by a future retirement fund shortfall. For starters, Macron might reverse his move to abolish the wealth tax. He might also reconsider corporate tax breaks that have benefited big business handsomely.

    His administration’s use last week of a constitutional maneuver to bypass a vote in the National Assembly and raise the retirement age is an example of his imperial style. It’s an approach to governing that Macron has used multiple times, including when he passed a budget late last year. And as the protests wear on, there’s been another sign of government heavy-handedness: Macron now has resorted to the “requisition” of some striking workers — in short requiring them to return to their places of employment or risk losing their jobs.

    Such moves are, in my view, an admission of political impotence rather than strength. The president has failed to see politics as the art of persuasion and is instead ruling by fiat. The brutal police crackdown on demonstrators protesting pension reforms led to hundreds of arrests in recent days, another sign that he lacks political deftness. The unions meanwhile show no sign of backing down, and are continuing to organize massive protests urging workers to stand firm and remain off the job.

    So what’s next? Surely the French will continue to take to the streets, something they always do with great gusto. Beyond this, it’s hard to say how this upheaval ends.

    There’s no question that the French are slow to embrace change. I am and will always remain staunchly French, although after many years in the US, I can see that my compatriots need to show greater flexibility. They hold on too long to obsolete aspects of their cherished way of life. It’s time for the French to abandon their “c’est tout ou rien” (“all or nothing”) approach as we negotiate what French society will look like in the future.

    But then I read about the latest moves to raise the US retirement age to 70, and think that my protesting countrymen have a thing or two that they can teach workers in America when it comes to protecting the sanctity of their golden years.

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  • French airports, schools and oil refineries hit by national strike over pension age increase | CNN Business

    French airports, schools and oil refineries hit by national strike over pension age increase | CNN Business

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    Paris
    CNN
     — 

    French transport networks, oil refineries and schools were hit by widespread disruption Thursday as workers staged a national strike to protest an increase in the retirement age that was pushed through parliament without a vote.

    Though sporadic demonstrations had popped up in Paris and other cities after the French government forced the bill through last week, Thursday marked the first day of coordinated action since then. It is the ninth day of strikes since the bill was introduced in January.

    Only two out of 14 metro lines in Paris were operating a normal service. RER train services, which run in the city and its suburbs, were severely reduced and only half of high-speed TGV trains were working. The nationwide strike has also affected air traffic, with 30% of flights impacted at Paris Orly airport.

    Unionized workers blockaded a major oil refinery in Normandy and another one in Fos-sur-Mer in the south of France, according to a government spokesperson.

    “We are intervening in a targeted manner to unblock oil storage tanks that are blocked by demonstrators,” the minister of energy transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacherin, said in a statement.

    “If the strike is a fundamental constitutional right, blockading is not one… The police is mobilized in difficult conditions and has my full support.”

    The government renewed its requisition order requiring workers to go back to work at the two blockaded refineries, the government spokesperson said.

    The government’s plan to raise the retirement age for most workers by two years was opposed by huge numbers of people. But despite protests that drew more than a million people onto streets across the country, President Emmanuel Macron’s government did not back down. It rammed the legislation through the French National Assembly last week using a constitutional clause that allows the government to bypass a vote.

    The country’s generous pension system and early retirement have long been a point of pride since they were enacted after World War II. Under the new law, the retirement age for most workers will be 64, still one of the lowest in the industrialized world.

    As a result of the refinery strikes, kerosene stocks at Charles De Gaulle airport, which serves Paris, were “under pressure,” and those at Orly airport were being monitored, according to the civil aviation authority.

    Earlier in the day, around 70 protesters blocked terminal one at Charles de Gaulle airport, an airport spokesperson told CNN.

    About 20% of teachers in public education also took part in the strikes, according to France’s education ministry.

    A protester stands near burning garbage bins during a demonstration as part of protests against the pension reform, in Nantes, France, March 23, 2023.

    Macron and his government have defended the retirement reform as necessary to keep the pension system funded. Taxes on current workers pay for the benefits of retirees, and as people live longer — and more baby boomers retire — the system would otherwise eventually go bankrupt, though the threat is not immediate.

    When the proposal was unveiled in January, the government said the reforms were necessary to prevent a projected 13.5 billion ($14.7 billion) euro hole opening up in the pension system in 2030.

    During an interview with two of France’s main television networks Wednesday, Macron said the bill should be enacted by the end of this year. He also defended the decision to push through the reform as financially necessary, no matter how unpopular it was.

    “It’s in the greater interest of the country. Between opinion polls and the national interest, I chose the national interest,” Macron said.

    — CNN’s Joseph Ataman and Olesya Dmitracova contributed to this report.

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  • Biden to highlight US-Canadian unity in first presidential trip to Ottawa | CNN Politics

    Biden to highlight US-Canadian unity in first presidential trip to Ottawa | CNN Politics

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    Ottawa, Canada
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden will make a long-awaited trip to America’s northern neighbor Thursday evening, a 24-hour whirlwind visit where he will press to elevate a concerted effort to repair a bilateral relationship as the two nations confront growing geopolitical challenges.

    Despite the brief nature of the trip, White House officials say the crowded agenda underscores the relationship’s importance – and the substantial shift away from the fractures that developed during former President Donald Trump’s time in office. Still, they acknowledge there are a series of economic, trade and immigration challenges that must be navigated between the two governments.

    Biden’s visit includes a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, an address to the nation’s parliament in Ottawa, and a cozy reception at an elaborate gala dinner. For Biden, who last traveled to Ottawa shortly after Trump was elected in 2016, the visit will also mark a moment to underscore close ties and the critical role Canada has played in the Western alliance that has supported Ukraine since Russia’s invasion more than a year ago.

    “This visit is about taking stock of what we’ve done, where we are, and what we need to prioritize for the future,” said White House National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby.

    The two leaders and political allies are expected to discuss North American supply chains and critical minerals, climate change, the opioid crisis and critical defense cooperation – including efforts to modernize the North American Aerospace Defense Command. And while no major breakthroughs are expected, thornier issues like the deteriorating situation in Haiti, immigration and trade are also expected to be on the agenda.

    “We’re going to talk about our two democracies stepping up to meet the challenges of our time. That includes taking concrete steps to increase defense spending, driving a global race to the top on clean energy, and building prosperous and inclusive economies,” Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.

    Biden will “reaffirm the United States’ commitment to the US-Canada partnership and promote our shared security, shared prosperity, and shared values,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote in a statement announcing the trip earlier this month.

    The two men are also expected to discuss Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Trudeau, the longest-serving leader in the G7, has been an ally to Biden in providing military and financial assistance to the country during the Kremlin’s invasion.

    “This is a meaningful visit. Canada is one of the United States’ closest allies and friends and has been now for more than 150 years,” Kirby added.

    Vincent Rigby, a former national security and intelligence adviser to Trudeau and current senior adviser at CSIS, told CNN that as Biden travels to Ottawa with “the world on his mind,” the current geopolitical environment in the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Europe means that Canadian security contributions will be a key topic in Friday’s bilateral meeting.

    “I think the big question is going to be, OK, Canada, where do you stand on all this? And I would suggest that Canada has been struggling to match some of its allies over the last number of years in responding to this unstable security environment. So it will probably be the elephant in the room to a certain extent,” he told CNN.

    Rigby noted that while efforts to increase Canadian defense spending, modernize NORAD or contain China are not new, it’s an issue that has garnered a greater public profile the last few months following the Chinese spy balloon’s incursion into North American airspace and recent allegations about Beijing attempting to interfere in Canadian elections.

    While Canada has announced $3.8 billion in spending to help upgrade NORAD and has recently purchased F-35s, Canada’s overall percentage of GDP spent on defense remains well below the 2% asked of NATO members.

    “I think that the prime minister needs to reassure the president that he’s going to do what’s necessary to have a military in Canada that’s ready to respond to these kinds of threats, particularly on the international stage,” Rigby added. “This isn’t just about blindly following the United States’ lead. It’s about doing what’s right for Canada and Canada’s national interest.”

    Preparations for the president’s visit were already well-underway on Wednesday with American and Canadian flags draped along Wellington Street across the way from the Parliament complex, and Canadian security services – buttressed by police units from neighboring cities like Toronto – conducting practice runs for expected motorcade routes.

    Biden’s travel agenda will kick into gear from the moment he lands at Ottawa International Airport on Thursday night, when he will hold a bilateral meeting with the governor general of Canada – the country’s apolitical and ceremonial head of state – followed by a meet and greet at Trudeau’s official residence.

    On Friday, Biden makes the short trip from his hotel to Parliament Hill where will have a bilateral with Trudeau, an expanded meeting with their respective staff, and then Biden’s address to Parliament. The two leaders will then hold a joint news conference in the afternoon before Friday evening’s dinner ahead of a late evening flight back to the US.

    First lady Dr. Jill Biden – who is accompanying her husband in Ottawa – will also take part in additional events with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the prime minister’s wife.

    Despite being fellow liberals and political allies who are closely aligned on many issues, Prime Minister Trudeau and President Biden have had their share of disagreements. Early on in Biden’s administration, Trudeau expressed disappointment over the president’s unwillingness to back off his decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and the Canadians have previously raised concerns over the impact of “Buy American” measures on trade between the two countries.

    And while Friday’s meetings will heavily feature areas of cooperation between the two countries, there will also be discussions on more complicated issues like immigration, trade and Haiti.

    As both leaders face an influx of migrants and mounting political pressure, they will be pressed to finalize changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement. Trudeau has been facing blowback domestically over hundreds of migrants crossing Roxham Road, a remote street that connects Champlain, New York, with Hemmingford, Quebec.

    “The only way to effectively shut down, not just Roxham Road but the entire border, to these irregular crossings is to renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement,” Trudeau said at a news conference last month, pointing to the thousands of kilometers of shared unguarded border between the US and Canada and adding that people will cross elsewhere even if the Roxham Road access point is closed.

    Signed in 2002, the agreement applies to people transiting through a country where they could have claimed asylum because it’s deemed safe. It means that anyone entering a land port of entry could be ineligible to make a claim and therefore returned to the US. But Roxham Road is not an official crossing, meaning that people who transit there could still seek protections in Canada even though they passed through the US.

    Biden and Trudeau have previously touted their relationship on a slew of issues, including in accepting refugees, and CNN reported earlier this month that it’s unlikely the latest migration trend along the northern border will damage that bond.

    Kirby, a top White House official, said Wednesday the US is “well aware” of Canadian concerns regarding migration and that he has “no doubt” the two leaders will discuss it.

    “We’ll be talking about issues of migration, which affects us both. There are more people on the move in this hemisphere than there have been since World War Two and that affects both our countries,” he said.

    Fueling the increase in immigration this year and also expected to be brought up in Friday’s talks are discussions on the ongoing crisis in Haiti where the government is edging closer to becoming a failed state as criminal gangs in the capital become increasingly violent and the country faces interlocking health, energy and security crises.

    United Nations officials are warning that the situation “continues to spiral out of control,” and in the first two weeks of March, the gang violence has killed 208 people, injured 164 others and led to 101 kidnappings, according to the UN. Last year there were 2,183 homicides and 1,359 kidnappings in Haiti, which nearly doubles the statistics from the previous year, according to the UN.

    Late last year the United States drafted a UN Security Council resolution, following calls from the Haitian government for outside intervention, to support the deployment of a rapid action force to Haiti to help the government’s national police wrest back control of the crisis-ridden country.

    While the US has no plans to lead such a force, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in January that Canada had “expressed interest in taking on a leadership role.” Although Kirby on Wednesday said that they’re not yet at a point where all the players involved can make any definitive decisions and that the two leaders will continue their discussions.

    “We have continued to stand with the people of Haiti, and we will continue to. Obviously, this current situation is heart wrenching and we need to continue to be there for the people of Haiti. But we need to make sure that the solutions are driven by the people of Haiti themselves,” Trudeau said in January, pointing to the military and financial support Canada and the US have already provided.

    Part of the calculus for Canada, according to Rigby, is that any sort of military intervention could potentially become a “quagmire” and would require distinct objectives and goals. But also, as Canada’s top general has publicly acknowledged, the Canadian armed forces may lack the capacity to lead such a mission.

    “It might be a bridge too far for them to go into Haiti. So that’s why I think you’re seeing a little bit of reluctance on the part of the Canadian government to engage on Haiti as much as I think they’d like to help,” Rigby told CNN.

    American presidents typically visit Canada as one of their first trips abroad, but the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine at the beginning of Biden’s administration complicated matters and delayed Biden’s first visit North. Instead, the newly minted US president in early 2021 opted for his first phone call and virtual bilateral meeting to be with Trudeau.

    “When we work together, as the closest of friends should, we only make each other stronger,” Biden said at the time.

    Since then, the Bidens have hosted the Trudeaus at the White House and the two men have met repeatedly in other international fora and on the sidelines of other multilateral settings, including most recently in January at a summit of North American leaders.

    Biden and Trudeau have known each other for years and describe their relationship as a close one that has only grown more critical in the year since Russia’s invasion.

    One of Biden’s final trips as vice president was to attend a state dinner held in his honor in Ottawa; during his toast, Biden recounted the call he received from Trudeau’s father Pierre – then serving as prime minister – when his first wife and daughter died in a car accident.

    It’s a personal element that helped animate a level of warmth Biden attempted to convey at the time despite the trepidation among US allies about what the next administration would mean for relations.

    “The friendship between us is absolutely critical to the United States, our well-being, our security, our sense of ourselves,” Biden said at the time.

    But he also implicitly framed what would become a turbulent four years ahead – and pointed directly to the younger Trudeau as someone who would become a critical player during that period.

    “The world’s going to spend a lot of time looking to you, Mr. Prime Minister, as we see more and more challenges to the liberal international order than any time since the end of World War II,” Biden told Trudeau at the time.

    Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump visited Canada only once for a Group of 7 summit in Quebec. The two leader’s bad blood was on full display afterward when Trump revoked his signature from a joint statement and called Trudeau “very dishonest and weak” on Twitter.

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  • UN and US join chorus of condemnation against Uganda’s hardline anti-LGBT bill | CNN

    UN and US join chorus of condemnation against Uganda’s hardline anti-LGBT bill | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The United Nations and United States on Wednesday added to international outrage over a hardline bill passed by Ugandan lawmakers that criminalizes simply identifying as LGBTQ+, prescribes a life sentence for convicted homosexuals and a death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.”

    The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights asked Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni not to sign the bill passed by lawmakers on Tuesday. Volker Türk called the Anti Homosexuality Bill 2023 “draconian,” saying it would have negative repercussions on society as a whole and violates the nation’s constitution.

    “The passing of this discriminatory bill – probably among the worst of its kind in the world – is a deeply troubling development,” said a statement from Türk’s office.

    “If signed into law by the President, it will render lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Uganda criminals simply for existing, for being who they are. It could provide carte blanche for the systematic violation of nearly all of their human rights and serve to incite people against each other.”

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken slammed the bill, which would “undermine fundamental human rights of all Ugandans and could reverse gains in the fight against HIV/AIDS,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “We urge the Ugandan Government to strongly reconsider the implementation of this legislation.”

    US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield spoke twice this week with Museveni to express “deep concern” about the legislation, a US official told CNN Wednesday.

    The new legislation constitutes a further crackdown on LGBTQ+ people in a country where same-sex relations were already illegal – punishable by life imprisonment. It targets an array of activities, and includes a ban on promoting and abetting homosexuality as well as conspiracy to engage in homosexuality.

    According to the bill, the death penalty can be invoked for cases involving “aggravated homosexuality” – a broad term used in the legislation to describe sex acts committed without consent or under duress, against children, people with mental or physical disabilities, by a “serial offender,” or involving incest.

    The bill must now go to Museveni for assent. Last week he derided homosexuals as “deviants.”

    Uganda made headlines in 2009 when it introduced an anti-homosexuality bill that included a death sentence for gay sex.

    The country’s lawmakers passed a bill in 2014, but they replaced the death penalty clause with a proposal for life in prison. That law was ultimately struck down.

    The new bill has wide public support in the highly conservative and religious East African nation, where anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment is deeply entrenched.

    But it has drawn strong criticism from civil society groups and LGBTQ+ activists. “It is another way of using the law to punish people who cause no harm but for being who they are,” said a tweet from Pan Africa ILGA.

    “As a community, partners and allies, we’ll do everything to ensure that the constitutional rights that are given to the LGBTI community are met and the legal provisions that are available for us will definitely be looked into if the president assents to this bill and it gets to be law,” activist Richard Lusimbo told CNN.

    Pepe Onziema, a transgender LGBTQ rights activist and program director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a non-governmental organization for LGBTQ rights, whose operations were shut by authorities last year, told CNN members of the community were now living in fear.

    “We’ve been having quite excruciating anxiety from the threats of the bill. And now that it has actually passed in Parliament, the (LGBTQ) community is quite in fear,” Onziema said. “There’s a large community of LGBTQ persons in the country, so we can’t just give up. We’ll find different ways of working. We might not be as visible as we’ve been because there are attacks online as well.”

    African Rainbow Family, a UK-based charity that supports LGBTQ+ Africans seeking refuge in the UK, described the bill as an “assault” and “persecution” of Uganda’s LGBTQ community.

    “African Rainbow Family condemns in its entirety, the passing of the Ugandan ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023’ into law. The law is a violation of the fundamental human rights of LGBTIQ people in Uganda.

    “African Rainbow Family sees this law as again, an assault and added layer of State and non-State agents’ persecution of Ugandan LGBTIQ community,” it told CNN.

    Feminist writer and Human Rights Activist Rosebell Kagumire told CNN the new legislation could have other consequences beyond human rights violation.

    “Seeking to strip LGBTQIA persons of their whole humanity, it extends to deny them housing, education and health care. In a country where AIDS is still an epidemic and men who have sex with men and trans women (and) sex workers are still faced with higher incidence, this law will criminalize health care provision and defeat the whole struggle to end AIDS,” Kagumire said.

    For human rights lawyer Sarah Kihika Kasande, “If President Museveni assents to the bill, it will authorize state-sanctioned attacks and persecution against LGBTQ persons.”

    Seeking refuge elsewhere might be the “last resort” for some members of Uganda’s LGBTQ community, Onziema says.

    “Asylum is sort of a last resort for us, but for people who are really under a lot of threat and feel that they can’t live here anymore, as a leader in this community, I would definitely support them to seek refuge elsewhere.

    “But it’s difficult to seek asylum, especially as a Black queer person. Your chances are sort of narrowed down even further. But I believe that the few people who are looking at that as an option, we are hoping that the countries that they choose to go to for refuge will actually accept them and not further marginalize them,” he told CNN.

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  • Stephen Smith’s death is being investigated as a homicide, law enforcement says, 2 years after Murdaugh case prompted a fresh look | CNN

    Stephen Smith’s death is being investigated as a homicide, law enforcement says, 2 years after Murdaugh case prompted a fresh look | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The death of Stephen Smith, whose body was found in the middle of a road in 2015, is being investigated as a homicide, a spokesperson for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division told CNN on Tuesday.

    The development comes almost two years after the murders of Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh brought renewed scrutiny to the fate of the 19-year-old nursing student.

    Smith’s body was discovered lying on a Hampton County road on July 8, 2015 and his death was deemed a hit-and-run in an initial incident report and by a medical examiner’s report. The report cited the cause of death as blunt head trauma sustained from being hit by a vehicle.

    But the SLED spokesperson on Tuesday confirmed there was no indication in the investigation that was actually the case.

    Attorneys for Smith’s family welcomed the news, which follows SLED’s announcement in June 2021 it was opening the investigation into Smith’s death based on information learned while probing the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh earlier that month.

    The agency has not provided details about what was found in that investigation, and authorities have not announced a connection between Smith’s death and the Murdaugh family, whose patriarch, Alex Murdaugh, was found guilty earlier this month and sentenced to life in prison for killing Maggie and Paul, on the night of June 7, 2021. Murdaugh has appealed his convictions.

    The case file from the initial South Carolina Highway Patrol investigation into Smith’s death – released by the patrol to CNN – shows the Murdaugh name was mentioned dozens of times by both witnesses and investigators, including the name of Alex Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster.

    In one audio recording of a witness interview, then-Trooper Todd Proctor is heard saying, “Buster was on our radar. … The Murdaughs know that.” But why he was on investigators’ radar is unclear. Neither Buster Murdaugh nor anyone else has been charged in the case.

    Buster Murdaugh, a former classmate of Smith’s, released a statement Monday – his first on the matter – denying any involvement in Smith’s death and “requesting that the media immediately stop publishing these defamatory comments and rumors about me.”

    “This has gone on far too long,” his statement said. “These baseless rumors of my involvement with Stephen and his death are false.”

    An incident report from the state highway patrol indicated Smith had suffered blunt force trauma to the head.

    While a pathologist cited in a SLED report said Smith appeared to have been hit by a vehicle, the responding officer referenced in a report by the highway patrol’s Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team noted there was “no vehicle debris, skid marks, or injuries consistent with someone being struck by a vehicle.”

    Smith’s shoes were also both on and loosely tied, the report added, and investigators saw no evidence suggesting he was struck by a vehicle.

    Notes from investigators in the case file say that “according to family, Stephen would never have been walking in the middle of the roadway” and that he was “very skittish.”

    Smith had injuries to his left arm, hand and head, according to notes taken by a SLED investigator at the scene.

    His vehicle was found about three miles away, that report said, with the gas tank door open and the gas cap hanging out on the side of the car. The vehicle’s battery was functional but the car wouldn’t start, the report added.

    Attorneys for Smith’s family praised the decision to classify Smith’s death as a homicide, which came on the heels of an announcement by Smith’s mother and her legal team that they would seek to exhume her son’s body and pursue a private autopsy.

    “We have a chance to right eight years of wrongs, and we intend to do just that,” attorney Eric Bland said in a news release Tuesday.

    Smith’s family has raised more than $86,000 through a GoFundMe page for what Sandy Smith hopes will be “a new, unbiased look at his body and an accurate determination of his cause of death based on facts.”

    Smith’s mother and her attorneys said they will petition a court to proceed with exhuming Smith’s body, which requires a judge’s permission.

    “Our job is not to find out who did it,” Bland told reporters in a virtual news conference Monday. “That’s not what we do, we’re not law enforcement, we’re not doing a criminal case … What we’re really trying to do is give a mother answers.”

    The investigation will also involve looking at Smith’s life, Bland added, and what kind of communication the teen had and who he was associating with in the days before his death. Anything learned, Bland said, would be shared with law enforcement.

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  • Boris Johnson faces high-stakes ‘Partygate’ grilling by UK lawmakers | CNN

    Boris Johnson faces high-stakes ‘Partygate’ grilling by UK lawmakers | CNN

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Boris Johnson will on Wednesday hit back at claims he deliberately misled parliament while serving as British prime minister.

    The former UK leader will give evidence to a parliamentary committee that is investigating Johnson’s claim that Covid-19 rules and guidelines were followed “at all times” during his time in 10 Downing Street.

    Johnson has already admitted in written evidence submitted Monday that he accepts the comments, made to parliament in December 2021, were misleading, but denies that he made them intentionally and claims that at the time he had been given assurances by trusted aides that no rules were broken.

    Subsequently, London’s Metropolitan Police have issued more than 100 fines to people who worked in Downing Street for breaches of pandemic regulations at times the country was under varying degrees of lockdown.

    Some of these breaches took place at gatherings where people were drinking alcohol, hence the nickname for the whole scandal, “Partygate.” Johnson, who resigned last July following a series of ethics scandals, was fined for attending one such gathering, where he was presented with a birthday cake.

    Central to Johnson’s denial is his rebuttal of the committee’s suggestion that it would have been “obvious” to the former prime minister that guidelines and rules were being ignored.

    The committee’s most recent report on the investigation says that the evidence “strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr. Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings.”

    Johnson hit back that if it had been obvious to him, then it would have been obvious to everyone else in the photos of said events that the committee has published as part of its evidence. He also noted that many of the pictures were taken by the official Downing Street photographer.

    “Four of the five photographs relied upon by the Committee are photographs from the official No. 10 photographer. A suggestion that we would have held events which were ‘obviously’ contrary to the Rules and Guidance, and allowed those events to be immortalised by the official photographer is implausible,” Johnson said in his written evidence.

    Johnson also claimed that the committee and its reports on the matter have been biased, saying it’s “important to record my disappointment at the highly partisan tone and content of the Fourth Report.”

    Johnson’s written evidence, 52 pages in total, is peppered with additional claims and evidence that he believes proves that he could not have known of any illegality in Downing Street when he made the misleading statement to parliament.

    The crucial question will be whether or not the committee believes it is plausible that Johnson – who was pictured at events where guidelines were clearly not being followed – sincerely believed that nothing wrong had happened.

    This is not an investigation into whether or not rules were broken: They were, Johnson has admitted so. It is not an investigation into whether Johnson made an incorrect statement to parliament: He has accepted he did and corrected the record.

    The key issue is whether or not he truly believed no rules or guidelines had been broken when he told parliament that was the case.

    It is an opaque question that will ultimately never have a conclusive answer, short of an open admission from Johnson. And to some extent, it doesn’t actually matter if Johnson can convince the committee members one way or the other. What will ultimately matter is how badly the committee chooses to punish Johnson, should it find him guilty.

    If he is found guilty, it is generally accepted that there are three possible sanctions.

    The first is that Johnson gives an apology to parliament. The second is that Johnson is suspended for fewer than 10 sitting days. The third is the Johnson is suspended for more than 10 sitting days.

    An apology would be embarrassing but have few consequences beyond his humiliation. The suspensions are where things get complicated. Both would require a vote in parliament, but the longer suspension could also mean a recall election, at which Johnson could very realistically lose his seat.

    A vote on Johnson’s fate could lead to a bitter argument within the governing Conservative party. Some (though a minority) on the Conservative benches still swear loyalty to Johnson. Others wish he would just go away.

    The committee of seven lawmakers is comprised of four Conservatives and three opposition members of parliament (MPs). The Conservative majority, if sufficiently persuaded by his evidence, could aim for a softer recommended sanction. Johnson might also hope his evidence packs enough of a punch that the opposition MPs lean toward a softer sanction to temper claims of a partisan witch hunt.

    The committee will not give its final report for at least a month.

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  • These are the deaths and investigations connected to the Murdaugh family | CNN

    These are the deaths and investigations connected to the Murdaugh family | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced former South Carolina attorney, was sentenced to life in prison earlier this month after he was found guilty of murdering his wife and son – the most serious and grisliest of the allegations faced by the scion of what was once one of the state’s most influential dynasties.

    The murder convictions, which Murdaugh has appealed, came almost two years after he called police to report he had found his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and his grown son, Paul Murdaugh, shot dead at their rural estate. Murdaugh said he found the bodies after returning from a visit to his mother.

    But the deaths weren’t the only ones to which the Murdaugh family name was tied. And as yearslong mysteries surrounding the family are garnering fresh attention, so are several other deaths.

    Alex Murdaugh called 911 on June 7, 2021, to report he found his wife Margaret, 52, and son Paul, 22, shot dead outside their Islandton home about an hour from Hilton Head Island, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, said.

    Murdaugh denied involvement in their killings, even as he was buried under an avalanche of charges related to alleged financial crimes. But he was eventually indicted in July 2022 with two counts of murder and two weapons charges – to which he pleaded not guilty.

    Prosecutors argued during the trial that Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from and delay investigations into his alleged misdeeds, which included stealing millions of dollars from his clients and his law firm – crimes Murdaugh generally admitted to when he took the stand to testify in his own defense.

    The defense team, in the meantime, argued Murdaugh was a loving father and husband and painted a picture of a sloppy investigation.

    In the end, it did not convince the jury, which was shown a video in which Murdaugh’s voice could be heard at the scene of the killings minutes before they happened – an indication, the state said, that he had lied about his whereabouts when they were shot.

    He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Murdaugh has since appealed the convictions.

    Weeks after Murdaugh’s conviction, the family of Stephen Smith – whose body was found in the middle of a Hampton County road on July 8, 2015 – announced it would petition a court to have his body exhumed for a private autopsy as part of an effort to reexamine his death.

    “We think that he did not die on that road that fateful night,” Eric Bland, an attorney for Smith’s family, told reporters in a news conference. “We think that there was other reasons and other causes that caused his death.”

    “Our job is not to find out who did it,” he added. “That’s not what we do, we’re not law enforcement, we’re not doing a criminal case. … What we’re really trying to do is give a mother answers.”

    Authorities have not detailed any connection between Smith’s death and the Murdaugh family.

    On June 22, 2021, SLED announced it was reopening an investigation into the 19-year-old’s death based on information gathered while investigating the double homicide of Margaret and Paul Murdaugh.

    SLED has not specified what that information was but confirmed in a statement to CNN it had “made progress” in the investigation into Smith’s death. The inquiry remained “active and ongoing,” the agency said.

    According to an incident report from the South Carolina Highway Patrol’s Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team, or MAIT, Smith’s body was found in the road with blunt force trauma to the head.

    While a pathologist cited in a SLED report states that Smith appeared to have been hit by a vehicle, the responding officer referenced in MAIT’s report cited “no vehicle debris, skid marks, or injuries consistent with someone being struck by a vehicle.”

    Smith’s shoes were also both on and loosely tied, the report added, and investigators saw no evidence suggesting he was struck by a vehicle.

    Notes from investigators in the case file say that “according to family, Stephen would never have been walking in the middle of the roadway” and that he was “very skittish.”

    According to notes taken by a SLED investigator at the scene, Smith had injuries to his left arm, hand and head.

    His vehicle was found about three miles away, that report said, and added the gas tank door was open and the gas cap was hanging out on the side of the car. The vehicle’s battery was functional but the car wouldn’t start, it added.

    Smith’s death remains unsolved, but his family hopes a private autopsy will provide them a “new, unbiased look at his body and an accurate determination of his cause of death based on facts,” according to a GoFundMe page that raised more than $60,000.

    Mallory Beach was one of six people in the boat when it crashed.

    Mallory Beach was a 19-year-old woman killed in a February 24, 2019, boat crash.

    Beach was ejected from the boat – along with a male – when the boat struck a bridge, according to an affidavit from an officer who was supervising the scene.

    According to a report from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, a doctor who treated Paul Murdaugh after the boat crash reported that Murdaugh was “clearly intoxicated” and slurring his speech.

    Beach’s body was found about a week after the crash by volunteer searchers, according to a Department of Natural Resources accident report.

    Three people who were on the boat told investigators that Paul Murdaugh was driving, but another passenger named a different person who was also aboard that night as the driver, according to the affidavit.

    At the time of his death, Paul Murdaugh was facing charges including boating under the influence, causing great bodily harm, and causing death in connection to the boat crash.

    Gloria Satterfield died in February 2018.

    SLED has also announced it was opening a criminal investigation into the February 26, 2018, death of the Murdaughs’ longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, 57, and the handling of her estate.

    Satterfield was the Murdaugh family housekeeper for more than two decades before dying after what was described as a “trip and fall accident” at the Murdaugh home, according to Bland, the attorney, who is also representing her estate.

    Investigators open criminal investigation into 2018 death of Murdaugh family’s housekeeper

    SLED opened its investigation based on a request from the Hampton County coroner that highlighted inconsistencies in the ruling of Satterfield’s manner of death, the agency said in September 2021, as well as information gathered during SLED’s other ongoing investigations involving Alex Murdaugh.

    Satterfield’s death was “not reported to the coroner at the time, nor was an autopsy performed,” the coroner’s request to SLED said. Additionally, her manner of death was ruled “natural,” which was “inconsistent with injuries sustained in a trip and fall accident,” the coroner said.

    SLED announced in December 2022 it would seek to exhume Satterfield’s remains, saying it had sought and received the permission of the housekeeper’s family.

    In December 2021, Murdaugh agreed to a $4.3 million settlement with Satterfield’s family, stemming from the alleged misappropriation of funds they should have received after, according to affidavits released by SLED, Murdaugh coordinated with the family to sue himself and seek an insurance settlement.

    In the aftermath of Satterfield’s death, a $500,000 wrongful death claim was filed against Alex Murdaugh on behalf of her estate, Bland said. But the estate did not receive any of the $500,000 owed as the result of a wrongful death settlement in 2018, Bland added.

    Bland has told CNN he does not believe Satterfield was murdered, but he does not want to rule anything out.

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  • Trump and Le Pen backed these Dutch farmers — now they’ve sprung an election shock | CNN

    Trump and Le Pen backed these Dutch farmers — now they’ve sprung an election shock | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A farmers’ protest party in the Netherlands has caused a shock after winning provincial elections this week just four years after their founding. Could their rise have wider implications?

    The Farmer-Citizen Movement or BoerburgerBeweging (BBB) grew out of mass demonstrations against the Dutch government’s environmental policies, protests that saw farmers using their tractors to block public roads. The BBB is now set to become the largest party in the Dutch senate.

    The developments have thrown the Dutch government’s ambitious environmental plans into doubt and are being watched closely by the rest of Europe.

    The movement was powered by ordinary farmers but has become an unlikely front in the culture wars. Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen have voiced support, while some in the far right see the movement as embodying their ideas of elites using green policies to trample on the rights of individuals.

    On Wednesday, the Farmer-Citizen Movement landed a large win in regional elections, winning more seats in the senate than Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD party.

    The first exit poll showed the party was due to win 15 of the Senate’s 75 seats with almost 20 per cent of the vote. Meanwhile Rutte’s ruling VVD party dropped from 12 to 10 seats – leaving it without a Senate majority. Results on Thursday showed the BBB party had won the most votes in eight of the country’s 12 provinces.

    Wednesday’s election win is significant as it means the party is now set to be the largest in the Upper House of Parliament, which has the power to block legislation agreed in the Lower House – throwing the Dutch government’s environmental policies into question.

    As the election results emerged overnight on Wednesday, BBB leader Caroline van der Plas told domestic broadcaster Radio 1: “Nobody can ignore us any longer.

    “Voters have spoken out very clearly against this government’s policies.”

    Newspapers described the election outcome this week as a “monster victory” for the Farmer-Citizen Movement, which has enjoyed support from sections of society who feel unsupported by Rutte’s VVD party.

    For Arjan Noorlander, a political reporter in the Netherlands, the provincial election results this week have made the country’s political future very hard to predict. “It’s a big black hole what will happen next,” he told CNN.

    “They don’t have a majority so they would have to negotiate to form a cabinet and we have to wait and see what the impact will be.”

    Tom-Jan Meeus, a journalist and political columnist in the Netherlands, believes Wednesday’s result is reflective of a “serious dissatisfaction” with traditional politics in the country.

    “This party is definitely part of that trend,” he told CNN.

    “However, it’s new in that it has a different agenda from previous anti-establishment parties but it fits in the bigger picture that has been around here for 25 years now.”

    Meeus believes that the shock rise in support for the BBB party largely comes from those living in small, rural villages who feel disillusioned by government policies.

    “Although it’s a small country, there’s this perception that people living in the western, urbanized part of the country are having all the goods from government policies, and people living in the countryside in small villages believe that the successful people in Amsterdam, in the Hague, in Utrecht are having the goods, and they suffer from it.

    “So the feeling is that the less successful, less smart people are trapped by a government who doesn’t understand what their problems are.”

    Noorlander agrees the main topic they’ve been talking about recently is the position of the farmers in the Netherlands, because of “the pollution and environmental rules mainly made in Brussels by the EU, they were pushing against that.”

    “They want farmers to have a place in the Netherlands. That’s their main topic but it became broader in these last few months. It’s become the vote of people living in these farming areas, outside the big cities, against the people in the big cities making the policies and being more international.”

    The Farmer-Citizen Movement was established four years ago in response to the government’s proposals for tackling nitrogen emissions.

    The Dutch government launched a drive to slash emissions in half by 2030, pointing the finger at industrial agriculture for rising levels of pollution that were threating the country’s biodiversity.

    The BBB party has fought back against the measures – which include buying farmers out and reducing livestock numbers – instead placing emphasis on the farmers’ livelihoods that are at risk of being destroyed.

    Farmers have protested against the government’s green policies by blocking government buildings with tractors and dumping manure on motorways.

    Meeus believes that this week’s election win for the BBB means the agenda to tackle the nitrogen crisis is now in “big trouble.”

    “This vote obviously is a statement from a big chunk of the voters to say no to that policy,” he said.

    According to Ciarán O’Connor, a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, says the BBB have built a platform off the back of the protest movement for their party being the representative of the ‘true people.’

    The BBB, he says, “have been one of the leading driving forces behind getting people out to protest but also shaping the ideologies and beliefs that power a lot of the movement; rejecting or disputing climate change or, at least, measures that would negatively impact farmers livelihoods and businesses; wider EU skepticism; burgeoning anti-immigration and anti-Islam views too.”

    Former US President Donald Trump has promoted the protest at various points during his speeches in the past year. At a rally in Florida last July, he told crowds: “Farmers in the Netherlands of all places are courageously opposing the climate tyranny of the Dutch government.”

    The Farmer-Citizen Movement has also won support from the far-right.

    A report from The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism describes how what began as local protests got the attention of extremists and conspiracists, in particular seeing it as proof of the so-called “Great Reset” theory of global elites using the masses for their own benefit.

    According to O’Connor, the movement aligns with a populist viewpoint of climate action as a new form of tyranny imposed by out-of-touch governments over ordinary citizens.

    “One of the tactics used by the Dutch farmers’ protest movement has been using tractors to create blockades. International interest in the farmers’ protest movement, and this method of protest, really grew in 2022 not long after the Canadian trucker convoy that was organized and promoted by a number of far-right figures in Canada, the US and internationally too,” he said.

    “For many far-right figures, this movement was viewed as the next iteration of that ‘convoy’ type of protest and they viewed it as a people’s protest mobilising against tyrannical or out-of-touch governments.”

    For some analysts, however, for the far right to claim the Dutch protests is premature.

    “I wasn’t incredibly impressed by that,” Meeus said. “Generally the perception of the problem that was in the heads of the far-right people from Canada and the United States was pretty far off, as far as I’ve seen.

    “It remains to be seen whether the Farmer-Citizen Movement will present itself as a far-right party.”

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  • Defiant Putin visits occupied Mariupol, symbol of Ukrainian resistance | CNN

    Defiant Putin visits occupied Mariupol, symbol of Ukrainian resistance | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Vladimir Putin has visited Russian-occupied Mariupol, in an apparently defiant move reported by the Kremlin just days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him.

    Putin was flown into Mariupol by helicopter and toured districts around the city in a car, according to a Kremlin statement issued on Sunday.

    It said the Russian leader had stopped to speak to residents in the city’s Nevsky neighborhood and claimed he was invited into a resident’s home. It did not make clear when the visit took place.

    News of the visit comes after the ICC issued arrest warrants on Friday for Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova for an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

    The visit is likely to be seen as particularly provocative to Ukrainians as Mariupol was long a symbol of resistance that has witnessed some of the most intense fighting since Russia launched its invasion last year.

    The Kremlin said Putin also examined the coastline of Mariupol, visiting a yacht club and theater building.

    Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin spoke in detail to Putin about “ongoing construction and restoration work” in the city.

    The Kremlin added that Putin held a meeting at the command post of the special military operation in Rostov-on-Don.

    Putin heard reports from the Chief of the General Staff – First Deputy Minister of Defense Valery Gerasimov, and a number of military leaders, the statement continued.

    Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, is located in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast and has been under direct Russian control since May 2022.

    It was in Mariupol that Russian forces carried out some of their most notorious strikes, including an attack on a maternity ward last March and the bombing of a theater which forced hundreds of civilians to seek refuge.

    Mariupol became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance during weeks of relentless Russian attacks last year. Famously, even when most of the city had fallen, its defenders held out at the Azovstal steel plant for weeks before the stronghold finally fell.

    Defense analysts previously told CNN that Russian forces tried to flatten Mariupol to make the city “easier to control.”

    Of the 450,000 people who lived in the city before the war, more than a third have already left.

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  • French workers may have to retire at 64 and many are in uproar. Here’s why | CNN

    French workers may have to retire at 64 and many are in uproar. Here’s why | CNN

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    Paris
    CNN
     — 

    Impromptu protests broke out in Paris and across several French cities Thursday evening following a move by the government to force through reforms of the pension system that will push up the retirement age from 62 to 64.

    While the proposed reforms of France’s cherished pensions system were already controversial, it was the manner in which the bill was approved – sidestepping a vote in the country’s lower house, where President Emmanuel Macron’s party crucially lacks an outright majority – that arguably sparked the most anger.

    And that fury is widespread in France.

    Figures from pollster IFOP show that 83% of young adults (18-24) and 78% of those aged over 35 found the government’s manner of passing the bill “unjustified.” Even among pro-Macron voters – those who voted for him in the first round of last year’s presidential election, before a runoff with his far-right adversary – a majority of 58% disagreed with how the law was passed, regardless of their thoughts about the reforms.

    Macron made social reforms, especially of the pensions system, a flagship policy of his 2022 re-election and it’s a subject he has championed for much of his time in office. However, Thursday’s move has so inflamed opposition across the political spectrum, that some are questioning the wisdom of his hunger for reforms.

    Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne conceded in an interview Thursday night with TF1 that the government initially aimed to avoid using Article 49.3 of the constitution to crowbar the reforms past the National Assembly. The “collective decision” to do so was taken at a meeting with the president, ministers and allied lawmakers mid-Thursday, she said.

    For Macron’s cabinet, the simple answer to the government’s commitment to reforms is money. The current system – relying on the working population to pay for a growing age group of retirees – is no longer fit for purpose, the government says.

    Labor minister Olivier Dussopt said that without immediate action the pensions deficit will reach more than $13 billion annually by 2027. Referencing opponents of the reforms, Dussopt told CNN affiliate BFMTV: “Do they imagine that if we pause the reforms, we will pause the deficit?”

    When the proposal was unveiled in January, the government said the reforms would balance the deficit in 2030, with a multi-billion dollar surplus to pay for measures allowing those in physically demanding jobs to retire early.

    For Budget Minister Gabriel Attal, the calculus is clear. “If we don’t do [the reforms] today, we will have to do much more brutal measures in the future,” he said Friday in an interview with broadcaster France Inter.

    “No pensions reform has made the French happy,” Pascal Perrineau, political scientist at Sciences Po university, told CNN on Friday.

    “Each time there is opposition from public opinion, then little by little the project passes and basically, public opinion is resigned to it,” he said, adding that the government’s failure was in its inability to sell the project to French people.

    They’re not the first to fall at that hurdle. Pensions reform has long been a thorny issue in France. In 1995, weeks-long mass protests forced the government of the day to abandon plans to reform public sector pensions. In 2010, millions took to the streets to oppose raising the retirement age by two years to 62 and in 2014 further reforms were met with wide protests.

    An anti-pension reform demonstrator writes

    For many in France, the pensions system, as with social support more generally, is viewed as the bedrock of the state’s responsibilities and relationship with its citizens.

    The post-World War II social system enshrined rights to a state-funded pension and healthcare, which have been jealously guarded since, in a country where the state has long played a proactive role in ensuring a certain standard of living.

    France has one of the lowest retirement ages in the industrialized world, spending more than most other countries on pensions at nearly 14% of economic output, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

    But as social discontent mounts over the surging cost of living, protesters at several strikes have repeated a common mantra to CNN: They are taxed heavily and want to preserve a right to a dignified old age.

    Macron is still early in his second term, having been re-elected in 2022, and still has four years to serve as the country’s leader. Despite any popular anger, his position is safe for now.

    However, Thursday’s use of Article 49.3 only reinforces past criticisms that he is out of touch with popular feeling and ambivalent to the will of the French public.

    Politicians to the far left and far right of Macron’s center-right party were quick to jump on his government’s move to skirt a parliamentary vote.

    “After the slap that the Prime Minister just gave the French people, by imposing a reform which they do not want, I think that Elisabeth Borne should go,” tweeted far-right politician Marine Le Pen on Thursday.

    Members of Parliament of left-wing coalition NUPES (New People's Ecologic and Social Union) hold placards as French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne addresses deputies to confirm the force through of the pension law without a parliament vote on Thursday.

    The leader of France’s far-left, Jean-Luc Melenchon was also quick to hammer the government, blasting the reforms as having “no parliamentary legitimacy” and calling for nationwide spontaneous strike action.

    For sure, popular anger over pension reforms will only complicate Macron’s intentions to introduce further reforms of the education and health sector – projects that were frozen by the Covid-19 pandemic – political scientist Perrineau told CNN.

    The current controversy could ultimately force Macron to negotiate more on future reforms, Perrineau warns – though he notes the French President is not known for compromise.

    His tendency to be “a little imperious, a little impatient” can make political negotiations harder, Perrineau said.

    That, he adds, is “perhaps the limit of Macronism.”

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