French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday appointed Education Minister Gabriel Attal, 34, as his new prime minister, to breathe new life into his second term ahead of European Parliament elections.
The move may not necessarily lead to primary political change, but it is a testament to Macron’s preference for trying to move beyond last year’s unpopular pension and immigration reforms and his centrist party’s chances in June’s European elections.
Opinion polls show Macron’s side is the party of far-right leader Marine Le Pen by between 8 and 10 percentage points.
Attal, a close best friend of Macron’s who has become a household call as a government spokesperson during the COVID pandemic, will update outgoing Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.
Attal, one of the country’s top politicians according to the latest opinion polls, has established himself as a shrewd minister who feels at home on the radio and in parliament.
“Dear @GabrielAttal, I know that I can count on your power and commitment to implement the mission of revitalization and regeneration that I have announced,” said Macron, who announced, late last year, that he would announce new political initiatives.
Attal will be France’s youngest Prime Minister.
He and Macron have a combined age just below that of Joe Biden, who is running for a second mandate in this year’s US presidential election.
Macron has struggled to cope with a more turbulent parliament since losing his absolute majority shortly after his re-election in 2022.
“By appointing Gabriel Attal … Emmanuel Macron wants to cling to his popularity in opinion polls to alleviate the pain of an interminable end to his reign,” said Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old leader of Le Pen’s National Rally party.
“Instead, it drags the short-lived Minister of Education with it. “
Other opposition leaders were quick to say they expected a lot from the prime minister’s replacement, and Macron himself took over much of the decision-making process.
“Elisabeth Borne, Gabriel Attal or anyone else, I don’t care, it will just be the same policies,” Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure told France Inter radio.
But MP Patrick Vignal, who belongs to Macron’s Renaissance party, said Attal is “a bit like the Macron of 2017,” referring to when the president first took office as the youngest leader in France’s fashion history, at the time a popular leader. voters.
Attal “is clear, he has authority”, Vignal said.
On Tuesday, the Kremlin declined to comment on U. S. and Ukrainian claims that Moscow fired North Korean missiles at Ukrainian targets, but also accused Kyiv of having Western-produced missiles to strike targets in Russia.
Last week, the White House said Russia had used North Korea’s short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) to expose anti-Ukrainian measures, bringing to light newly declassified intelligence. A senior Ukrainian official later corroborated this claim.
Moscow and Pyongyang have grown closer since the start of the Ukraine conflict and deny reaching any arms deals. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with President Vladimir Putin in Russia’s Far East last September and senior Russian officials made several visits to Pyongyang.
When reporters were asked about the US and Ukrainian accusations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded: “No comment. “
Peskov added that Ukraine continuously attacks civilian targets in Russia with missiles manufactured through “Germany, France, Italy, the United States and other countries. “
Ukraine attacked the city of Belgorod on the Russian border on Dec. 30, killing more than 20 people, adding two children and wounding 111 others, Russian media reported.
The Belgorod region, which adjoins northern Ukraine, has like other Russian border zones suffered shelling and drone attacks all year that authorities have blamed on Ukraine, although none had previously been on such a scale.
Moscow, which sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, with the stated goal of “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” the country, said Western countries, adding that the United States, were responsible. of the consequences of sending arms to this country. Kyiv.
The death toll from the powerful earthquake that devastated parts of central Japan on Jan. 1 topped 200 on Tuesday, and just over 100 people are still missing, the government said.
The 7.5 magnitude quake destroyed and toppled buildings, caused fires and knocked out infrastructure on the Noto Peninsula on Japan’s main island Honshu just as families were celebrating New Year’s Day.
Eight days later, thousands of rescuers were battling blocked roads and bad weather to clear debris and rescue another 3,500 people still trapped in remote communities.
The Ishikawa regional government on Tuesday released figures showing another 202 people were found dead, up from 180 a day earlier, and 102 are missing, up from 120.
On Monday, the government more than tripled the number of missing people to 323 after central databases were updated, with most of the backlog linked to the worst-affected Wajima.
But since then, “many families have let us know that they need to check the protection of the other people (on the list),” Hayato Yachi, head of Ishikawa, told AFP.
While heavy snowfall in some places complicated relief efforts, just about 30,000 more people were living Monday in about 400 government shelters, some of which were overcrowded and could not provide enough food, water and heat.
Almost 60,000 households were without running water and 15,600 had no electricity supply.
Road conditions have been worsened by days of rain that have contributed to an estimated 1,000 landslides.
At a daily disaster-relief government meeting on Tuesday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida instructed ministers to “make efforts of resolving the state of isolation (of communities) and continue tenacious rescue activities”.
Kishida also called for secondary evacuations to other spaces outside the quake-hit area, government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.
In Suzu, Ishikawa prefecture, an elderly woman in her 90s spent five days under the rubble of a collapsed space before being rescued on Saturday.
“Wait!” The woman’s call for rescue was heard, in police footage of the rainy scene published by local media.
Not everyone was so lucky, Naoyuki Teramoto, 52, was inconsolable on Monday after the bodies of 3 of her 4 children were discovered in the city of Anamizu.
“We were talking of plans to go to Izu,” a famous hot spring resort, after his daughter passed her high school entrance exam, he told broadcaster NTV.
Japan reports many earthquakes each year, most of which cause no damage due to strict building codes in place for more than four decades.
But many structures are older, especially in aging communities in rural spaces like Noto.
The country is haunted by the monstrous 2011 earthquake that triggered a tsunami, left an estimated 18,500 people dead or missing and sparked a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant.
At least 21 other people were injured Monday when a fuel leak exploded at the Sandman Hotel in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, the city’s fire branch said.
No one was killed in the blast and the government was investigating the cause.
Video from the scene showed debris in the street between two buildings with first responders on the scene.
Craig Trojacek, a spokesman for the Fort Worth Fire Department, said first responders rescued several people trapped in the hotel’s basement.
Of the other 21 people injured, one user was in critical condition, while four others had serious but non-life-threatening injuries, Trojacek said. The others were injured.
Trojacek said that 26 hotel rooms were occupied by guests. He added that construction was going on in the building at the time, but it was not yet clear if that played any role in the explosion.
Ukrainian shelling injured three people in the Russian region of Belgorod late on Monday and air defenses downed 10 RM-70 Vampir rockets, Russian officials and the defense ministry said.
Belgorod has come under repeated attack by Ukrainian forces in recent weeks. A delayed missile and drone strike last month killed 25 civilians, in addition to five children.
“The city of Belgorod shelled again last night and other people were wounded,” Gladkov said on the Telegram messaging app.
“There are now 3 other people in intensive care, all of whom have undergone surgery. According to the doctors, his condition is solid and serious. “
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Gladkov said the attack blew out the windows of two multi-story buildings and several were damaged.
The Russian Defense Ministry said air defenses shot down 10 rockets fired with the RM-70 Vampir Multiple Launch Rocket (MLRS) formula. Since the beginning of the war, the Ukrainian military has allegedly won several RM-70 Vampir rocket formulas from the Czech Republic.
Gladkov said he had turned to other regions for help in accommodating children from Belgorod and that if necessary, teachers would also be sent out of the region.
Pro-Palestinian protesters blocked several bridges and a tunnel in New York City on Monday to call for a ceasefire in the three-month-old conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Dozens of protesters sat on the sidewalk and chanted slogans as they blocked traffic on the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges that cross the East River, as well as the Holland Tunnel that connects New York to New Jersey via the Hudson River, local media reported.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the Holland Tunnel, said on its site that lanes into New Jersey were closed “due to law enforcement activity. “
A video posted on social media showed protesters chanting, “NYPD, KKK, IDF, they’re all the same,” referring to the NYPD, the Ku Klux Klan and the Israel Defense Forces.
Protesters at the Holland Tunnel carried banners reading “Lift the siege of Gaza, ceasefire now” and “End the occupation. “
The protests were organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, the Palestinian Youth Movement and the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, among other groups, they said on X, formerly called Twitter.
“The siege of Gaza will have to end and I am in a position to put my body on the line to end it,” one protester said as a police officer led her away with his hands behind his back, according to a video.
Israel’s Hamas-led crusade in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, while Israel says Hamas has more than 100 hostages out of the 240 captured in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people.
Israel accuses Hamas of operating among civilians and has released videos and photographs that affirm that claim. Hamas, which has vowed to destroy Israel, denies the allegation.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday that most European Union countries were not delivering enough weapons to Ukraine to fight a Russian invasion, and called on allies to step up their efforts.
With American military assistance to Ukraine stalled in the US Congress, Scholz insisted on the need for Europe to step up, repeating his mantra that the German government would support Kyiv for as long as necessary.
Germany itself had been the subject of many complaints in the early months of the Russian invasion for its inability to interfere and provide Kiev with the leadership and army expected of one of Europe’s major powers.
However, it is now one of the main suppliers of weapons and monetary aid. Late last year, it agreed to double the country’s military aid to Ukraine by 2024, to 8 billion euros ($8. 8 billion).
“No matter how big Germany’s contribution is, it will not be enough to ensure Ukraine’s security in the long term,” Scholz told a press convention in Berlin.
“That is why I call on the European Union’s allies to step up their efforts in relation to Ukraine. The planned deliveries of weapons to Ukraine through the highest EU member states are not enough,” he said. Added.
Scholz said Berlin had asked the EU to check with member states what deliveries they were planning, as they would possibly not all be known.
The chancellor said he was confident the bloc would agree its proposed 50 billion-euro aid package for Ukraine at an upcoming emergency summit on Feb. 1. The EU failed to agree on the deal at an EU summit in December due to opposition from Hungary.
US President Joe Biden is not considering firing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the Pentagon chief’s failure to disclose a hospitalization for days, a White House official said on Monday.
Austin, who sits just below Biden in the U. S. military’s most sensible chain of command, for several days hid his New Year’s Day hospitalization from the president and the public.
Asked if Austin had been unconscious since Jan. 1 and if the White House had been informed, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he did.
Officials revealed Sunday that Austin’s hospitalization has remained far more secret than previously thought, adding his deputy to a long list of others, including Biden, who have remained in the dark for days.
Austin’s duties require him to be available at all times to respond to any national security crisis. On Saturday, he said he took “full responsibility” for the secrecy surrounding his hospitalization.
It is unclear what physical condition factor led to Austin’s hospitalization.
Tokyo’s Haneda Airport nearly resumed general operations on Monday by reopening the runway a week after a fatal collision between a Japan Airlines plane and a coast guard plane believed to have been caused by human error.
The collision occurred Tuesday night when JAL Flight 516, carrying 379 passengers and its crew, landed on the same runway only the Coast Guard plane preparing for takeoff, either on fire. All occupants of the JAL Airbus A350-900 aircraft were safely evacuated within 18 minutes. The captain of the much smaller Coast Guard Dash-8 bomber was burned, but all five members of his crew were killed.
At the coast guard base in Haneda, colleagues of the five team members covered themselves and waved to mourn their deaths as black cars with their bodies drove past them. The bodies of the victims were due to be returned to their families on Sunday after police autopsies. , as part of its separate investigation into possible negligence.
Haneda reopened three runways the night of the crash, the last runway remained closed for investigation, debris cleanup and repairs.
The Department of Transportation said the runway reopened early Monday and the airport was in a condition to fully operate. Television footage showed domestic flights taking off as usual from the coastal runway.
The collision led to the cancellation of more than 1,200 flights, affecting about 200,000 passengers during the New Year’s holiday period. The airport was packed with passengers on Monday. All scheduled flights have resumed except for 22 JAL flights canceled as of Tuesday.
The investigation focuses on what led to the Coast Guard’s traffic control team getting the green light for takeoff, even though the traffic control transcript showed no clear confirmation between them and traffic control. The traffic control corps of workers assigned to the runway allegedly missed an alert formula when they indicated unplanned access by the Coast Guard.
Haneda Airport’s traffic section added a new runway station on Saturday to tighten security measures.
A team from Japan’s Transport Safety Bureau asked traffic officials on Monday as part of their investigation. So far, the six-member team has interviewed members of the JAL flight team and recovered flight information and voice recorders from both planes, which are critical in determining what caused the collision.
Ukraine was the target of intense Russian missile strikes on Monday that hit near frontlines in the east as well as the central and western regions of the country, killing one user and wounding at least 30 others.
The highest death toll was recorded in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where a woman was killed in a missile strike on the outskirts of the city of Kryvy Rih and 24 others were wounded in an attack on the city of Novomoskovsk. In Kryvy Rih itself, more than 20 houses and a grocery mall were destroyed by a missile strike, regional governor Serhii Lysak said.
At least four missiles hit Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, wounding one person, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov also said two other people were wounded and two others were trapped under the rubble after an attack in the village of Zmiiv.
In Zaporizhzhia, a major city along the Dnipro River, two people were injured in a missile strike on a residential district, said regional governor Yurii Malashko.
In the past 24 hours, Russian troops carried out 131 artillery strikes in the Kherson region, killing two more people and wounding five, according to Governor Oleksandr Prokudin.
The city of Kherson and the surrounding region have been systematically targeted since Russian forces withdrew from the city east of Dnipro in the fall of 2022.
At least six explosions rocked the central Khmelnytskyi region on Monday morning, but details on casualties or damage are not yet known.
The Ukrainian military said on Monday that Russian forces had tried unsuccessfully to advance over the past day in several areas, including around Lyman in the Kharkiv region, as well as in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Authorities in the Khmelnytskyi region said at least six explosions were heard in the morning missile attack, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko, a man wounded in a missile strike on Jan. 2, died Monday in a Kyiv hospital. Another man wounded in the same attack was killed in Kharkiv on Monday, SyniehubovArray
Iran has seen widespread outrage over authorities’ decision to flog an activist for wearing the hijab on Mother’s Day, according to human rights activists.
The Iranian judiciary has sentenced Kurdish activist Roya Heshmati to lashes.
The Mizan news agency, which is affiliated with the judicial authority, said the movements were carried out in accordance with the law.
Iranians expressed anger, at least because it coincided with Mother’s Day in Iran, which fell on Jan. 4.
The Al-Shargh newspaper reported that Heshmati was arrested last April after publishing a photo of herself without a head covering, which is mandatory for women in Iran, the German news agency reported.
She was arrested in April “for posting a photo on social media without a headscarf,” her lawyer, Maziar Tatai, told Shargh Daily.
He said the appeal against a 13-year sentence had been successful. However, the penalty of flogging for ethical offences remained in force.
Later, photographs circulated of the torture lines appearing in the frame of a veiled woman. But Heshmati wrote on her now-closed Facebook account that the alleged photos of her were not of her. She claimed the whippings were weak enough to cause those injuries.
Heshmati announced his verdict in October of the year.
Tatai said the court sentenced her to 13 years and nine months in prison, plus a fine and 148 lashes, but the appeals court upheld the fine and gave her 74 lashes.
Heshmati described the courtroom where the sentence was carried out as a fully equipped medieval torture chamber.
Some female politicians, including dissident Zahra Rahnavard, objected to the young woman being whipped for her hijab.
“You who rule! You whip Roya Heshmati’s body, but she, the one with the alert and resilient conscience, bitterly mocks you. I hate it when you rule,” Rahnavard, who has been under space arrest since 2011 with her husband. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, he said in a message.
Azar Mansoori, who heads the Reform Front and the Popular Unity Party of Islamic Iran, sentenced him.
Mansoori said to be Muslim and keep quiet about the flogging of Heshmati for her hijab.
Iranian sociologist Mohammad Fazli wrote on Platform X that the law aims to preserve human dignity so that they can live in peace and tranquility, and break hearts upon learning of the flogging of a fellow citizen on Mother’s Day.
Iran witnessed massive protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman after morality police arrested her.
His death last year sparked decades-long protests in Iran, which were brutally suppressed by authorities.
Since then, an increasing number of Iranian women have been seen in public places without wearing hijab or following the rules.