PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron scrapped a fuel tax rise Wednesday amid fears of new violence, after weeks of nationwide protests and the worst rioting in Paris in decades.
Protesters celebrated the victory, but some said Macron’s surrender came too late and is no longer enough to quell the mounting anger at the president, whom they consider out of touch with the problems of ordinary people.
Macron decided Wednesday to “get rid” of the tax planned for next year, an official in the president’s office told The Associated Press. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told lawmakers the tax is no longer included in the 2019 budget.
The decision has ramifications beyond France, since the fuel tax rise was part of Macron’s efforts to wean France off fossil fuels in order to reduce greenhouse gases and help slow climate change. Its withdrawal is both a blow to broader efforts to fight climate change and a warning to other world leaders trying to do the same thing.
The “yellow vest” protests began Nov. 17 over the government plan to raise taxes on diesel and gasoline, but by the time Macron bowed to three weeks of violence and abandoned the new fuel tax, protesters were demanding much more. Many workers in France are angry over the combination of low wages, high taxes and high unemployment that have left many people struggling financially.
On Tuesday, the government agreed to suspend the fuel tax rise for six months. But instead of appeasing the protesters, it spurred other groups to join in, hoping for concessions of their own. The protests took on an even bigger dimension Wednesday with trade unions and farmers vowing to join the fray.
Police warned of potential violence during demonstrations in Paris on Saturday, with one small security forces union threatening a strike.
So after nightfall Wednesday, as parliament debated the 2019 budget, Macron’s government suddenly gave in.
“I have no problem with admitting that on such or such question we could have done differently, that if there is such a level of anger ... it’s because we still have a lot of things to improve,” the prime minister told legislators.
Philippe said “the tax is now abandoned” in the 2019 budget, and the government is “ready for dialogue.” The budget can be renegotiated through the year, but given the scale of the recent protests, Macron is unlikely to revive the added fuel tax idea anytime soon.
Jacline Mouraud, one of the self-proclaimed spokespeople for the disparate yellow vest movement, told the AP that Macron’s concession “comes much too late, unfortunately.”
“It’s on the right path, but in my opinion it will not fundamentally change the movement,” she said.
Three weeks of protests have caused four deaths, injured hundreds and littered central Paris with burned cars and shattered windows.
The sweep of the protests and their wide support by citizens of all political stripes has shocked Macron’s government. In the last few days, Paris saw the worst anti-government riot since 1968, French students set fires outside high schools to protest a new university application system, small business owners blocked roads to protest high taxes, and retirees marched to protest the president’s perceived elitism.
Macron’s popularity has slumped to a new low since the demonstrations began. The former investment banker, who has pushed pro-business economic reforms to make France more competitive globally, is accused of being the “president of the rich” and of being estranged from the working classes.
On Wednesday, France’s largest farmers union said it will launch anti-government protests next week, after trucking unions called for a rolling strike.
Trade unions so far have not played a role in the yellow vest protest movement but are now trying to capitalize on growing public anger. A joint statement from the CGT and the FO trucking unions called for action Sunday night to protest a cut in overtime rates.
The FNSEA farmers union said it would fight to help French farmers earn a better income but would not officially be joining forces with the “yellow vests” — protesters wearing the high-visibility vests that motorists are required to keep in their cars.
French police have cleared most of the fuel depots that protesters blocked earlier in the week, but fuel shortages still hit parts of France on Wednesday, affecting hundreds of gas stations.
Demonstrators also blocked toll booths, letting drivers pass without paying, to press demands that ranged from higher incomes and pensions to the dissolution of the National Assembly, France’s parliament.
At Tolbiac University in downtown Paris, students took over a school building and classes were canceled.
“We need taxes, but they are not properly redistributed,” protester Thomas Tricottet told BFM television.
The high school students’ FIDL union called for “massive” protests Thursday and urged France’s education minister to step down.
One student was injured during protests at a high school in Saint-Jean-de-Braye in north-central France. BFM said he was shot in the head with a rubber bullet. Julien Guiller, a spokesman for the regional school administration, told the AP that the student was expected to survive.
Until he scrapped the fuel tax rise, Macron’s actions after returning from the G-20 summit in Argentina had done little to persuade protesters that he was listening to their concerns.
He has refrained from speaking publicly about the protests and has largely remained in his palace. On Tuesday night, he was jeered as he traveled to a regional government headquarters that was torched by protesters over the weekend.
One activist said Wednesday that he fears more deaths if Saturday’s yellow vest demonstration in Paris goes ahead and urged Macron to speak out and calm the nation.
“If not there will be chaos,” said Christophe Chalencon.
Chalencon, a 52-year-old blacksmith from southern France, told the AP the French public needs Macron to “admit he made a mistake, with simple words ... that touch the guts and heart of the French.”
In a disparaging tweet, US President Donald Trump claimed that Macron’s decision Tuesday to delay the gas tax hike showed that the French leader doesn’t believe in the 2015 Paris global climate accord.
The Trump tweet came as thousands of climate experts were meeting in Poland to work out national responsibilities in the fight to reduce emissions and slow global warming.
Macron scraps French fuel tax hike amid violent protests
Macron scraps French fuel tax hike amid violent protests
- Many workers in France are angry over the combination of low wages, high taxes and high unemployment that have left many people struggling financially
- Instead of appeasing the protesters, Macron's decision has spurred other groups to join in, hoping for concessions of their own
India evacuates students from Tehran as Israel hits civilian sites
- About 6,000 Indian students are enrolled in Iranian universities
- So far 110 studying in Urmia have left the country through Armenia
NEW DELHI: India’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it was moving Indian students out of Tehran, as many sought safety after their universities were shut down amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes.
Israeli attacks on Iran started on Friday, when Tel Aviv hit more than a dozen sites — including key nuclear facilities, residences of military leaders, and of scientists — claiming they were aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Daily attacks have been ongoing for the past five days after Iran retaliated with ballistic missile strikes against Israel.
As the Israeli military intensified its bombing of civilian targets, hitting Iran’s state broadcaster on Monday, stranded foreigners — including 6,000 Indian students — have been struggling to leave.
“Most of the students here were living in apartments, including me and my friend. The first blast in Tehran happened in Sa’adat Abad district, where me and my friend were living,” Hafsa Yaseen, a medical student at Shahid Beheshti University, told Arab News.
“One of our university’s nuclear scientists was martyred in these blasts. Situation is really bad.”
According to the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, at least 224 people have been killed and 1,481 wounded in Israeli attacks since Friday. Most of the casualties have been reported in Tehran.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs confirmed in a statement that it was moving those studying at universities in the Iranian capital “out of the city for reasons of safety.”
Yaseen was among a group of a few hundred students moved on Monday to Qom, 140 km south of the capital city.
“Me and my friend were frightened, and we just thought it’s our turn now to die. We were literally calling our parents and telling them goodbye,” she said.
“We are not even safe here, because we are still in Iran (and) anything can happen ... We are in constant fear that we might die and our families are more stressed than us. I just want to request the government of India to evacuate us from here as soon as possible.”
A group of 110 Indian students from Urmia University of Medical Sciences in northwestern Iran has already been assisted by the Indian authorities to leave through the land border with Armenia.
“All the Indian students who had crossed the Iran-Armenia border have now safely reached the capital city, Yerevan. This includes around 90 students from Kashmir Valley, along with others from various Indian states,” said Nasir Khuehami, national convenor of the Jammu and Kashmir Students Union.
“Their flight from Armenia to Delhi is scheduled for tomorrow, with all necessary arrangements being facilitated in coordination with the Indian authorities. This comes as an immense relief to the families.”
The families of those remaining in Iran have been pleading with Indian authorities to also bring them home.
“Please save my daughters. My two daughters study (at) Shahid Beheshti University. They are in great panic — the situation in Tehran is so bad that students are in great panic,” one of the mothers, Mubeena Ali, told Arab News through tears.
“They have been shifted to Qom but they feel afraid ... They are greatly distressed. They want to be evacuated.”
Trump mulls extending travel ban to 36 more nations: source
- The Washington Post said it reviewed the internal memo and reported it was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to diplomats who work with the countries
- The ban at first did not include Egypt, although the proposed follow-up list does
WASHINGTON: The United States is considering extending its travel ban to 36 more countries, a person who has seen the memo said Monday, marking a dramatic potential expansion of entry restrictions to nearly 1.5 billion people.
The State Department early this month announced it was barring entry to citizens of 12 nations including Afghanistan, Haiti and Iran and imposing a partial ban on travelers from seven other countries, reviving a divisive measure from President Donald Trump’s first term.
But expanding the travel ban to three dozen more nations, including US partners like Egypt along with other countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific, appears to escalate the president’s crackdown on immigration.
The Washington Post said it reviewed the internal memo and reported it was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to diplomats who work with the countries.
A person who has seen the document confirmed its accuracy to AFP.
It reportedly gives the governments of the listed nations 60 days to meet new requirements established by the State Department.
The countries include the most populous in Africa — Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania — as well as Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, Saint Lucia, South Sudan, Syria and Vanuatu.
Should the ban expand to include all countries cited in the memo, nearly one in five people worldwide would live in a country targeted by US travel restrictions.
The 19 countries facing full or partial entry bans to the United States, combined with the 36 cited in the latest memo, account for 1.47 billion people, or roughly 18 percent of the global population.
The State Department declined to confirm the memo, saying it does not comment on internal deliberations.
But it said in a statement that “we are constantly reevaluating policies to ensure the safety of Americans and that foreign nationals follow our laws.”
When the initial ban was announced this month, Trump warned it could be expanded to other countries “as threats emerge around the world.”
The ban at first did not include Egypt, although the proposed follow-up list does.
Trump said the initial measure was spurred by a recent “terrorist attack” on Jews in Colorado.
US officials said that the attack’s suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national according to court documents, was in the country illegally having overstayed a tourist visa, but that he had applied for asylum in September 2022.
Overnight Russian attack on Ukraine kills 15 and injures 156
- At least 14 people were killed as explosions echoed across the Ukrainian capital for almost nine hours
- Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said
KYIV: An overnight Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed 15 people and injured 156, local officials said Tuesday, with the main barrage demolishing a nine-story Kyiv apartment building in the deadliest attack on the capital this year.
At least 14 people were killed as explosions echoed across the Ukrainian capital for almost nine hours, Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said, destroying dozens of apartments.
Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, calling the Kyiv attack “one of the most terrifying strikes” on the capital.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said 139 people were injured in Kyiv. Mayor Vitalii Klitschko announced that Wednesday would be an official day of mourning.
The attack came after two rounds of direct peace talks failed to make progress on ending the war, now in its fourth year.
Russia steps up aerial attacks
Russia has repeatedly hit civilian areas of Ukraine with missiles and drones. The attacks have killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations. Russia says it strikes only military targets.
Russia has in recent months stepped up its aerial attacks. It launched almost 500 drones at Ukraine on June 10 in the biggest overnight drone bombardment of the war. Russia also pounded Kyiv on April 24, killing at least 12 people.
The intensified long-range strikes have coincided with a Russian summer offensive on eastern and northeastern sections of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where Ukraine is short-handed and needs more military support from its Western partners.
Uncertainty about US policy on the war has fueled doubts about how much help Kyiv can count on. Zelensky had been set to meet with US President Donald Trump at a G7 summit in Canada on Tuesday to press him for more help. But Trump returned early to Washington on Monday night because of tensions in the Middle East.
Ukraine tries to keep the world’s attention
Zelensky is seeking to prevent Ukraine from being sidelined in international diplomacy. Trump said earlier this month it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace, but European leaders have urged him to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into accepting a ceasefire.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday it is unclear when another round of talks might take place.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia’s attacks during the G7 summit showed Putin’s “total disrespect” for the US and other countries.
“Russia not only rejects a ceasefire or a leaders’ meeting to find solutions and end the war. It cynically strikes Ukraine’s capital while pretending to seek diplomatic solutions,” Sybiha wrote on social media.
Ukrainian forces have hit back against Russia with their own domestically produced long-range
drones.
The Russian military said it downed 203 Ukrainian drones over 10 Russian regions between Monday evening and Tuesday morning.
Russian civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia reported briefly halting flights overnight in and out of all four Moscow airports, as well as those in the cities of Kaluga, Tambov and Nizhny Novgorod as a precaution.
Overnight Russian drone strikes also struck the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, killing one person and injuring 17 others, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the regional administration.
Putin “is doing this simply because he can afford to continue the war. He wants the war to go on. It is troubling when the powerful of this world turn a blind eye to it,” Zelensky said.
Russian attack demolishes apartment building
The Russian attack delivered “direct hits on residential buildings,” the Kyiv City Military Administration said in a statement. “Rockets — from the upper floors to the basement,” it said.
A US citizen died in the attack after suffering shrapnel wounds, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko told reporters.
Thirty apartments were destroyed in a single residential block after it was struck by a ballistic missile, Klymenko said.
“We have 27 locations that were attacked by the enemy. We currently have over 2,000 people working there, rescuers, police, municipal services and doctors,” he told reporters at the scene of one attack.
Olena Lapyshniak, 49, was shaken from the strike that nearly leveled her apartment building. She heard a whistling sound and then two explosions that blew out her windows and doors.
“It’s horrible, it’s scary, in one moment there is no life,” she said. “There’s no military infrastructure here, nothing here, nothing. It’s horrible when people just die at night.”
People were wounded in the city’s Sviatoshynskyi and Solomianskyi districts. Fires broke out in two other city districts as a result of falling debris from drones shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, the mayor said.
Moscow escalated attacks after Ukraine’s Security Service agency staged an audacious operation targeting warplanes in air bases deep inside Russian territory on June 1.
Spain says April power outage caused by ‘overvoltage’
- Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen said the system “lacked sufficient voltage control capacity” that day
- Authorities have been scrambling to find answers after the April 28 outage
MADRID: A major power outage that struck the Iberian Peninsula in April was caused by “overvoltage” on the grid that led to “a chain reaction,” according to a government report released Tuesday.
The blackout had “multiple” causes, Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen told reporters following a cabinet meeting, adding the system “lacked sufficient voltage control capacity” that day.
Overvoltage is when there is too much electrical voltage in a network, overloading equipment. It can be caused by surges in networks due to oversupply or lightning strikes, or when protective equipment is insufficient or fails.
When faced with overvoltage on networks protective systems shut down parts of the grid, potentially leading to widespread power outages.
Authorities have been scrambling to find answers after the April 28 outage cut Internet and telephone connections, halted trains, shut businesses and plunged cities into darkness across Spain and Portugal as well as briefly affecting southwestern France.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced the formation of an inquiry commission led by the Ecological Transition Ministry shortly after the blackout, urging residents not to speculate until detailed results were available.
He had warned that the probe’s conclusions could take several months, given the complexity of the incident.
Aagesen singled out the role of the Spanish grid operator REE and certain energy companies she did not name which disconnected their plants “inappropriately... to protect their installations.”
She also pointed to “insufficient voltage control capacity” on the system that day, due in part to a programming flaw, stressing that Spain’s grid is theoretically robust enough to handle such situations.
Due to these misjudgments “we reached a point of no return with an uncontrollable chain reaction” that could only have been controlled if steps had been taken beforehand to absorb the overvoltage problems, she added.
UK slaps new sanctions on Russia shadow fleet
- Security analysts say the fleet of aging vessels is used by Russia to circumvent international sanctions that ban it from selling oil
- Hundreds of vessels have now been sanctioned by the European Union and the UK
LONDON: The UK on Tuesday tightened its sanctions on Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, slapping bans on 20 more ships and blacklisting 10 other people or bodies involved in energy and shipping.
Security analysts say the fleet of aging vessels is used by Russia to circumvent international sanctions that ban it from selling oil.
Hundreds of vessels have now been sanctioned by the European Union and the UK since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The UK’s new additions to its assets freeze list include the Orion Star group and Rosneft Marine (UK), both said to be significant to Russia’s energy sector, as well as the deep-sea research unit at the Russian defense ministry.
Although Russia’s economy has not collapsed under the sanctions, officials insist they are having an impact.
“Russia’s economy is slowing and the Kremlin has been forced to make increasingly painful trade-offs to support its war effort,” Downing Street said in a statement.
It claimed the sanctions imposed in the last three years “have deprived Russia of at least $450 billion.”
“By one estimate, that’s equivalent to around two more years of funding for the invasion,” it added.
The UK alone has sanctioned over 2,300 individuals, entities and ships since the start of the
invasion.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he wanted to hone the new sanctions with Britain’s other G7 partners meeting this week in Canada.
“We should take this moment to increase economic pressure and show President Putin it is in his — and Russia’s interests — to demonstrate he is serious about peace.”
With peace talks stalling, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had hoped to press US counterpart Donald Trump to step up sanctions on Russia at the G7 summit.
But as the conflict between Iran and Israel escalated, Trump left the summit early without meeting Zelensky, saying he had “big stuff” to do in Washington. And he has proved reluctant about new sanctions.
The EU has imposed 18 rounds of sanctions on Russia.
Downing Street said “new information” showed Western were creating “significant challenges” for Russian state enterprises, including funding shortfalls, delays in major projects, and growing debt due to high interest rates.
