PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger traded barbs on Monday as they began a final fortnight of campaigning ahead of a run-off vote set to be much closer than their 2017 contest.
After a first round of voting on Sunday, Macron came top with 27.85 percent, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen finished second at 23.15 percent, final results showed on Monday.
As the top two finishers, they advanced to a second round scheduled for April 24.
Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon came close to qualifying for the run-off after a late surge gave him a score of just under 22 percent.
The Macron-Le Pen duel is a replay of the 2017 election final from which Macron emerged victorious with 66 percent. This time, however, polls suggest it will be a closer contest.
Making an aggressive start to the next phase of the campaign, Macron headed to deprived former mining and steel-making areas of northern France that have become Le Pen strongholds.
“I’m not going to pretend nothing happened, I have heard the message from those who voted for the extremes, including those who voted for Ms Le Pen,” Macron told a scrum of journalists who followed him in Denain.
“I realize that people will vote for me to stop her, but I want to convince people. So I may possibly round out my project” with more social welfare measures, he said.
Macron later said he was prepared to raise the state pension age from 62 to 64 — rather than 65 as his campaign program pledged — to avoid “too many tensions” and “build a consensus.”
In an interview with the Voix du Nord newspaper, he called Le Pen a “demagogue,” saying she was “someone who said to people what they want to hear at the moment they want to hear it.”
Le Pen met with her campaign team Monday morning before heading to visit a cereal farmer in the central Yonne region, which placed her first in Sunday’s vote.
Returning to the main priority of French people — and the focus of all her campaigning — she accused Macron of doing too little to help voters with the rising cost of living.
“Anticipating events is absolutely essential. At the moment, we’re improvising,” she said, before repeating her promises to slash taxes on food and fuel.
The arch-nationalist, 53, also denied that she planned for France to leave the European Union, saying instead she wanted to “change the structure” of the 27-member club.
Polls gauging second-round voting intentions mostly point to around 53 percent for Macron and 47 percent for Le Pen.
But one poll by the Ifop-Fiducial group suggested Macron could have only a razor-thin win with 51 percent versus 49 percent.
While opponents accuse her of being divisive and racist, Le Pen has sought to project a more moderate image in this campaign and has focused on voters’ daily worries over inflation.
Both candidates will now scramble to woo voters of their defeated first-round rivals.
“We’re going to have to win over the French people who didn’t vote for Emmanuel Macron in the first round,” government spokesman Gabriel Attal told the France Inter broadcaster on Monday.
In an early boost for the president, Communist Party candidate Fabien Roussel, Socialist Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot of the Greens and right-wing Republicans candidate Valerie Pecresse said they would vote for him to prevent the far-right leader coming to power.
Melenchon told his supporters not to give a “single vote” to Le Pen, but he stopped short of backing Macron directly.
“If Macron wants to convince our voters, he’s going have to work for it,” said Melenchon’s campaign director, Manuel Bompard.
Meanwhile Le Pen’s far-right rival Eric Zemmour, who garnered just over seven percent on Sunday, threw his weight behind her.
A pivotal moment in the next stage of the campaign will come on April 20 when the two candidates take part in a live TV debate, just like five years ago when a better-prepared Macron won the day.
But this time will be different, said political scientist Brice Teinturier.
Macron, he said, “is no longer the new candidate representing a kind of freshness” while Le Pen “is no longer the person people automatically reject.”
Macron is expected to target her past admiration for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, an explosive issue during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Marine Le Pen is the candidate for depending on Russia,” Macron told the Voix du Nord.
The candidates from France’s traditional parties of government — the Socialists and the Republicans — suffered humiliating defeats.
Sunday’s vote spelled disaster for Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor of Paris, who won only 1.75 percent, a historic low for the party.
The vote for Pecresse’s Republicans collapsed to 4.78 percent from 20 percent in 2017.
On Monday, Pecresse admitted her campaign finances, which included five million euros ($5.5 million) of her own money, were in a “critical” state, and called for donations from supporters.
Public campaign spending reimbursements are drastically reduced for candidates who fail to reach five percent.
Abstention on Sunday hit 26 percent, a sharp increase from the first round in 2017.
France’s Macron, Le Pen trade barbs ahead of run-off
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France’s Macron, Le Pen trade barbs ahead of run-off
Legendary drug lord Fabio Ochoa is deported to Colombia after spending two decades in US prisons
- Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade
BOGOTÁ, Colombia: One of Colombia’s legendary drug lords and a key operator of the Medellin cartel has been deported back to the South American country, after serving 25 years of a 30-year prison sentence in the United States.
Fabio Ochoa arrived in Bogota’s El Dorado airport on a deportation flight on Monday, wearing a grey sweatshirt and carrying his personal belongings in a plastic bag.
After stepping out of the plane, the former cartel boss was met by immigration officials in bullet proof vests. There were no police on site to detain him — an indication he may not have any pending cases in Colombian courts.
In a brief statement, Colombia’s national immigration agency said Ochoa should be able to enter Colombia “without any problems,” once he is cleared by immigration officers who will check for any outstanding cases against the former drug trafficker.
Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers amassed a fortune when cocaine started flooding the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to US authorities, to the point that in 1987 they were included in the Forbes Magazine’s list of billionaires.
Living in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel once headed by Pablo Escobar. Escobar died in a shootout with authorities in Medellin in 1993.
Ochoa was first indicted in the US for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of Barry Seal, an American pilot who flew cocaine flights for the Medellin cartel, but became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Along with his two older brothers, Juan David and Jorge Luis, Ochoa turned himself in to Colombian authorities in the early 1990s under a deal in which they avoided being extradited to the US
The three brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again three years later for drug trafficking and was extradited to the US in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami naming him and more than 40 people as part of a drug smuggling conspiracy.
He was the only suspect in that group who opted to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and a 30-year sentence. The other defendants got much lighter prison terms because most of them cooperated with the government.
Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade.
But the former member of the Medellin cartel was recently depicted in the Netflix series Griselda, where he first fights the plucky businesswoman Griselda Blanco for control of Miami’s cocaine market, and then makes an alliance with the drug trafficker, played by Sofia Vergara.
Ochoa is also depicted in the Netflix series Narcos, as the youngest son of an elite Medellin family that is into ranching and horse breeding and cuts a sharp contrast with Escobar, who came from more humble roots.
Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant US attorney who was on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, said authorities were never able to seize all of the Ochoa family’s illicit drug proceeds and he expects that the former mafia boss will have a welcome return home.
“He won’t be retiring a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregorie told The Associated Press earlier this month.
Bill Clinton is hospitalized with a fever but in good spirits, spokesperson says
- “He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Urena said
WASHINGTON: Former President Bill Clinton was admitted Monday to Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington after developing a fever.
The 78-year-old was admitted in the “afternoon for testing and observation,” Angel Urena, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, said in a statement.
“He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Urena said.
Clinton, a Democrat who served two terms as president from January 1993 until January 2001, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this summer and campaigned ahead of November’s election for the unsuccessful White House bid of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Greek lawyers call for further investigation into 2023 deadly shipwreck
- “The case file contains serious gaps and omissions,” they said in a statement, adding that the captain and the crew of the coast guard vessel monitoring the migrant ship had been summoned by the court, but not the coast guard officials supervising them
ATHENS: Greek lawyers representing the survivors and victims of a deadly 2023 shipwreck said on Monday a naval court needed to examine more evidence after a preliminary investigation failed to shed light on the case.
Hundreds died on June 14, 2023, when an overcrowded fishing trawler, monitored by the Greek coast guard for several hours, capsized and sank in international waters off the southwestern Greek coastal town of Pylos.
A local naval court, which opened a criminal investigation last year, has concluded a preliminary investigation and referred the case to a chief prosecutor, the lawyers said on Monday, adding they had reviewed the evidence examined by the court so far.
“The case file contains serious gaps and omissions,” they said in a statement, adding that the captain and the crew of the coast guard vessel monitoring the migrant ship had been summoned by the court, but not the coast guard officials supervising them.
Evidence, including the record of communications between the officials involved in the operation, was not included in the case file, they added.
“The absence of any investigation into the responsibilities of the competent search and rescue bodies and the leadership of the Greek coast guard is deafening,” they said.
The chief prosecutor will decide if and how the probe will progress.
Under Greek law, prosecutors are not allowed to comment on ongoing investigations.
The vessel, which had set off from Libya, was carrying up to 700 Pakistani, Syrian and Egyptian migrants bound for Italy. Only 104 people were rescued and 82 bodies found.
Greece’s coast guard has denied any role in the sinking, which was one of the deadliest boat disasters in the Mediterranean Sea.
Mozambique death toll from Cyclone Chido rises to 120
- The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population
MUPATO: The death toll from Cyclone Chido in Mozambique rose by 26 to at least 120, the southern African country’s disaster risk body said on Monday.
The number of those injured also rose to nearly 900 after the cyclone hit the country on December 15, a day after it had devastated the French Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte.
The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population.
Thousands of people who have entered the island illegally bore the brunt of the storm that tore through the Indian Ocean archipelago. Authorities in Mayotte, France’s poorest territory, said many avoided emergency shelters out of fear of deportation, leaving them, and the shantytowns they live in, even more vulnerable to the cyclone’s devastation.
Still, some frustrated legal residents have accused the government of channeling scarce resources to migrants at their expense.
“I can’t take it anymore. Just to have water is complicated,” said Fatima on Saturday, a 46-year-old mother of five whose family has struggled to find clean water since the storm.
Fatima, who only gave her first name because her family is known locally, added that “the island can’t support the people living in it, let alone allow more to come.”
Mayotte, a French department located between Madagascar and mainland Africa, has a population of 320,000, including an estimated 100,000 migrants, most of whom have arrived from the nearby Comoros Islands, just 70 kilometers away.
The archipelago’s fragile public services, designed for a much smaller population, have been overwhelmed.
“The problems of Mayotte cannot be solved without addressing illegal immigration,” French President Emmanuel Macron said during his visit this week, acknowledging the challenges posed by the island’s rapid population growth,
“Despite the state’s investments, migratory pressure has made everything explode,” he added.
The cyclone further exacerbated the island’s issues after destroying homes, schools, and infrastructure.
Though the official death toll remains 35, authorities say that any estimates are likely major undercounts, with hundreds and possibly thousands feared dead. Meanwhile, the number of seriously injured has risen to 78.
Zelensky says North Korea could send more troops, military equipment to Russia
- More than 3,000 North Koreans killed and wounded, Kyiv says
- North Korean soldiers fighting in Russia’s Kursk region
- Zelensky warns of more N.Korean troops, weapons supplies to Russia
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed and wounded in Russia’s Kursk region and warned that Pyongyang could send more personnel and equipment for Moscow’s army.
“There are risks of North Korea sending additional troops and military equipment to the Russian army,” Zelensky said on X after receiving a report from his top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi.
“We will have tangible responses to this,” he added.
The estimate of North Korean losses is higher than that provided by Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), which said on Monday at least 1,100 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded.
The assessment was in line with a briefing last week by South Korea’s spy agency, which reported some 100 deaths with another 1,000 wounded in the region.
Zelensky said he cited preliminary data. Reuters could not independently verify reports on combat losses.
Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Koreans on its side. Pyongyang initially dismissed reports about the troop deployment as “fake news,” but a North Korean official has said any such deployment would be lawful.
According to Ukrainian and allied assessments, North Korea has sent around 12,000 troops to Russia.
Some of them have been deployed for combat in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine still holds a chunk of land after a major cross-border incursion in August.
JCS added that it has
detected signs
of Pyongyang planning to produce suicide drones to be shipped to Russia, in addition to the already supplied 240mm multiple rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled howitzers.
Kyiv continues to press allies for a tougher response as it says Moscow’s and Pyongyang’s transfer of warfare experience and military technologies constitute a global threat.
“For the world, the cost of restoring stability is always much higher than the cost of effectively pressuring those who destabilize the situation and destroy lives,” Zelensky said.
