Paris: The two frontrunners in the French presidential election, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron, were staging rival rallies in Paris Monday, seeking to stay ahead of a fast-chasing pack just days before the vote.
After weeks of twists and turns, the unpredictable race has narrowed dramatically, with surveys suggesting four candidates are in contention to win one of the top two spots in the April 23 vote and progress to the run-off election a fortnight later.
Scandal-hit conservative Francois Fillon and radical leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon are steaming up behind the two frontrunners, and with around one in three of the French electorate still undecided, candidates are scrapping for every vote.
Le Pen and Macron, who have both scored as high as 25 percent in voter surveys, stood at 22 percent in the latest IPSOS poll, while Melenchon has surged to 20 percent and Fillon stands at 19.
Melenchon’s late surge — and the possibility he could square off against Le Pen in the May 7 decider — has sparked alarm over the future of the EU, as both candidates advocate withdrawing from the bloc for different reasons.
Outgoing President Francois Hollande weighed in on Saturday, saying Europe has “protected us against war” in the decades since World War II.
“Let us preserve it instead of scapegoating it,” he said at a World War I centenary event in northern France.
Macron plans his biggest rally yet at the Bercy sports and concert hall, a venue with a capacity of 20,000.
The location near the economy ministry serves as a reminder that the relatively inexperienced Macron held the key economy portfolio for two years under his mentor Hollande.
The 39-year-old former Rothschild banker quit the Socialist government last year to form his “En Marche” (“On the Move“) party and launch his bid for power as a candidate “neither of the left nor of the right.”
En Marche says it has planned “1,000 events a day” including 163 public rallies until the official end of campaigning at midnight on Friday.
An aide to Macron said he would use Monday’s event to hit back at Le Pen’s accusation he is soft on Islamists.
“With Mr.Macron, it would be Islamism on the move,” Le Pen, 48, said on Saturday in response to revelations that one of Macron’s top campaigners had criticized the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly for publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.
Le Pen’s own rally will be at the 6,000-capacity Zenith concert hall in northeast Paris, with activists saying they plan protests outside the venue.
A protest is also expected in the southern port of Marseille on Wednesday where Le Pen plans another large rally.
Melenchon, 65, plans a quirky event that will see him board a barge in a northeast suburb of the French capital and float down a canal, making five stops along the way to meet and greet supporters.
The voyage lasting more than five hours will end up at the Francois Mitterrand Library, a nod to the Socialist leader of the 1980s and early 1990s whom Melenchon references frequently in his stump speech as an icon of the left.
The founder of “La France Insoumise” (“Unbowed France“) plans another form of multiple appearances on Tuesday, where he will hold a rally in central Dijon while his hologram will speak for him in six other cities.
For his part Fillon, dogged by a fake jobs scandal that has seen him charged with abuse of public funds, is vowing to pull off a victory that will “surprise the microcosm” arrayed against him.
He believes a small coterie of detractors mounted a campaign to smear him with the revelations that he put his wife Penelope on the public payroll with jobs that earned her hundreds of thousands of euros (dollars).
Fillon, who led the race for weeks before the scandal broke in late January, spent Easter weekend wooing the Catholic and conservative vote.
Conspicuous by his absence at the height of the scandal, the 63-year-old former prime minister has revved up his campaign appearances in the past week.
Frontrunners Le Pen, Macron hold rival Paris rallies
Frontrunners Le Pen, Macron hold rival Paris rallies
Floods displace 122,000 people in Malaysia
- The number surpassed the 118,000 displaced during one of the country’s worst floodings in 2014
Kuala Lumpur: More than 122,000 people have been forced out of their homes as massive floods caused by relentless rains swept through Malaysia’s northern states, disaster officials said Saturday.
The number surpassed the 118,000 displaced during one of the country’s worst floodings in 2014, and disaster officials feared it could rise further as there was no let-up in torrential downpours.
The death toll remained at four recorded across Kelantan, Terengganu and Sarawak.
Kelantan state bore the brunt of the flooding, accounting for 63 percent of the 122,631 people displaced, according to data from the National Disaster Management Agency.
There were nearly 35,000 people evacuated in Terengganu, with the rest of the displacements reported from seven other states.
Heavy rains, which began early this week, continued to hammer Pasir Puteh town in Kelantan, where people could be seen walking through streets inundated with hip-deep waters.
“My area has been flooded since Wednesday. The water has already reached my house corridor and is just two inches away from coming inside,” Pasir Puteh resident and school janitor Zamrah Majid, 59, told AFP.
“Luckily, I moved my two cars to a higher ground before the water level rose.”
She said she allowed her grandchildren to play in the water in front of his house because it was still shallow.
“But if the water gets higher, it would be dangerous, I’m afraid they might get swept away,” she added.
“I haven’t received any assistance yet, whether it’s welfare or other kinds of help.”
Muhammad Zulkarnain, 27, who is living with his parents in Pasir Puteh, said they were isolated.
“There’s no way in or out of for any vehicles to enter my neighborhood,” he told AFP.
“Of course I’m scared... Luckily we have received some assistance from NGOs, they gave us food supplies like biscuits, instant noodles, and eggs.”
Floods are an annual phenomenon in the Southeast Asian nation of 34 million people due to the northeast monsoon that brings heavy rain from November to March.
Thousands of emergency services personnel have been deployed in flood-prone states along with rescue boats, four-wheel-drive vehicles and helicopters, said Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who chairs the National Disaster Management Committee.
China coast guard says it conducted patrols around Scarborough Shoal in South China Sea
- Tensions between China and the Philippines over disputed areas of the South China Sea have escalated throughout the year, particularly over the Scarborough Shoal
BEIJING: China’s coast guard said it had conducted patrols around the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on Saturday to safeguard China’s territorial rights.
The coast guard has continued to strengthen law enforcement patrols in the territorial waters and surrounding areas of Scarborough Shoal since the beginning of November, and “resolutely safeguarding the country’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests,” it said in a statement.
Tensions between China and the Philippines over disputed areas of the South China Sea have escalated throughout the year, particularly over the Scarborough Shoal.
13 more killed in Pakistan sectarian fighting
- Fresh fighting broke out last Thursday when two separate convoys of Shiite Muslims traveling under police escort were ambushed, killing more than 40
Peshawar: Sectarian feuding in northwest Pakistan killed 13 more people, a local government official said Saturday, as warring Sunnis and Shiites defied repeated ceasefire orders in recent conflict claiming 124 lives.
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country, but Kurram district — in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, near the border with Afghanistan — has a large Shiite population and the communities have clashed for decades.
Fresh fighting broke out last Thursday when two separate convoys of Shiite Muslims traveling under police escort were ambushed, killing more than 40.
Since then 10 days of fighting with light and heavy weapons has brought the region to a standstill, with major roads closed and mobile phone services cut as the death toll surged.
A Kurram local government official put the death toll at 124 on Saturday after 13 more people were killed in the past two days.
Two were Sunni and 11 Shiite, he said, whilst more than 50 people have been wounded in fresh fighting which continued Saturday morning.
“There is a severe lack of trust between the two sides, and neither tribe is willing to comply with government orders to cease hostilities,” he told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Police report that many people want to flee the area due to the violence, but the deteriorating security situation makes it impossible,” he added.
A seven-day ceasefire deal was announced by the provincial government last weekend but failed to hold. Another 10-day truce was brokered Wednesday but it also failed to stymie the fighting.
A senior security official in the provincial capital of Peshawar, also speaking anonymously, confirmed the total death toll of 124.
“There is a fear of more fatalities,” he said. “None of the provincial government’s initiated measures have been fully implemented to restore peace.”
Police have regularly struggled to control violence in Kurram, which was part of the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas until it was merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 79 people had been killed in the region between July and October in sectarian clashes.
The feuding is generally rekindled by disputes over land in the rugged mountainous region, and fueled by underlying tensions between the communities adhering to different sects of Islam.
Schools shut as heavy storm approaches India coast
- Cyclonic storm Fengal is forecast to make landfall in Tamil Nadu state with sustained winds of 70-80 kilometers an hour
- The forecast urged fishing crews to stay off the water and predicted surging waves of one meter that posed a flood risk
BENGALURU: Schools in India’s south were shut and hundreds of people moved inland to storm shelters ahead of a powerful cyclone storm set to hit the region on Saturday.
Cyclonic storm Fengal is forecast to make landfall in Tamil Nadu state with sustained winds of 70-80 kilometers an hour (43-50 mph) in the afternoon, India’s weather bureau said.
The forecast urged fishing crews to stay off the water and predicted surging waves of one meter (three feet) that posed a flood risk to low-lying coastal areas.
Schools and colleges in numerous districts across Tamil Nadu were shut and at least 471 people had been moved to relief camps, the Economic Times newspaper reported.
Cyclones — the equivalent of hurricanes in the North Atlantic or typhoons in the northwestern Pacific — are a regular and deadly menace in the northern Indian Ocean.
Fengal skirted the coast of Sri Lanka earlier this week, killing at least 12 people including six children.
Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world heats up due to climate change driven by burning fossil fuels.
Warmer ocean surfaces release more water vapor, which provides additional energy for storms, strengthening winds.
A warming atmosphere also allows them to hold more water, boosting heavy rainfall.
But better forecasting and more effective evacuation planning have dramatically reduced death tolls.
Thailand flooding kills nine, displaces thousands
- ‘Very heavy rain’ could continue to affect some areas of the country’s south through next week
- The government has deployed rescue teams to assist affected residents
BANGKOK: Flooding driven by heavy rains in southern Thailand has killed nine people and displaced more than 13,000, officials said Saturday, as rescue teams using boats and jet skis worked to reach stranded residents.
Local media footage showed residents wading through murky, chest-deep water and cars submerged in flooded streets.
“Flooding across eight provinces in southern Thailand has affected 553,921 households and claimed nine lives, prompting agencies to mobilize urgent assistance,” the country’s disaster agency said on its official Facebook page.
More than 13,000 people had been forced to flee their homes, with temporary shelters set up in schools and temples, it added.
Nampa, a resident of coastal Songkhla province, told state broadcaster Thai PBS she was concerned about the dwindling food supplies.
“We are doing fine now, but I am not sure how long can we stay in this condition,” she said.
Two hospitals in nearby Pattani province suspended operations to prevent floodwaters from damaging medical facilities.
In neighboring north Malaysia, the rains have forced the evacuation of at least 80,000 people to temporary shelters this week, with disaster officials there saying at least four people have been killed.
The Thai Meteorological Department has warned that “very heavy rain” could continue to affect some areas of the country’s south through next week.
The government has deployed rescue teams to assist affected residents and designated 50 million baht ($1.7 million) in flood relief for each province.
Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said Friday on social media platform X that the goal was to “restore normalcy as quickly as possible.”
While Thailand experiences annual monsoon rains, scientists say man-made climate change is causing more intense weather patterns that can make destructive floods more likely.
Widespread flooding across the country in 2011 killed more than 500 people and damaged millions of homes.
