PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday urged moderate politicians from the left and the right to regroup to defeat the far right in the upcoming national legislative elections he had called for after his party’s crushing defeat in the European parliamentary vote.
A somber-looking Macron addressed French voters for the first time since his stunning decision on Sunday to dissolve the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament.
His move triggered an early legislative election that will take place in two rounds on June 30 and July 7, three weeks after the far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen triumphed at the vote for the European Union Parliament.
During a press conference on Wednesday, Macron said he decided on the risky move because he could not ignore the new political reality after his pro-European party was handed a chastening defeat and garnered less than half the support of the National Rally with its star leader, Jordan Bardella.
Unlike in his recent national addresses in which Macron focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine and ways Europe should forge a common defense policy, independent of the United States, and shore up trade protections against China, the French president stuck to his country’s internal issues favored by the surging right, including curbing immigration, fighting crime and Islamic separatism in France.
Macron, who has three years left of his second presidential term, hopes voters will band together to contain the far right in national elections in a way they didn’t in European ones. He called on “men and women of goodwill who were able to say ‘no’ to extremes on the left and the right to join together to be able to build a joint project” for the country.
“Things are simple today: we have unnatural alliances at both extremes, who quite agree on nothing except the jobs to be shared, and who will not be able to implement any program,” Macron said during a press conference in Paris.
While he seemed to project the kind of enthusiasm that helped bring him to the presidency in 2017, analysts say French voters are more pessimistic about their future, and see Macron as increasingly out of touch with real life and pocketbook problems.
Macron acknowledged some faults committed by his pro-business centrist party while harshly criticizing parties on the right for teaming up with Le Pen’s National Rally, which has a history of racism and xenophobia. He scathingly called an alliance formed by parties on the left as “unusual and incoherent” after they included the hard-left France Unbowed of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, Macon said “justified anti-Semitic policies” in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
“We’re not perfect, we haven’t done everything right, but we have results... and above all, we know how to act,” Macron said of his Renaissance party, adding that the “far right (is) the main danger” in the upcoming election.
“The question is who will govern the country tomorrow?” he asked. “The far right and a few associates, or the democratic, progressive bloc? That’s the fundamental question.”
The decision to send to the polls voters who just expressed their discontent with Macron’s politics was a risky move that could result in the French far-right leading a government for the first time since World War II.
Potential alliances and France’s two-round voting system in national elections make the outcome of the vote highly uncertain. Macron was adamant in his faith in the French voters’ intent to refuse to choose the extremes of both sides of the political spectrum. He assured that he was not falling into defeatism and said he would serve out his second presidential term regardless of the outcome of the legislative vote.
“I think the French are intelligent, they see what’s being done, what’s coherent and what’s not, and they know what to do,” Macron said. He added: “I don’t believe at all that the worst can happen. You see, I’m an indefatigable optimist.”
He rebuffed accusations that his move to call snap elections would help the far-right take power in France.
“It’s about allowing political forces chosen by the French to be able to govern,” he said, He added that it’s “awkward to think it has to be the extreme right or political extremes. Or maybe you’ve got the spirit of defeat spread everywhere.”
“If that’s what people are afraid of, it’s time now to take action,” he said.
Opposition parties on the left and right have been scrambling to form alliances and field candidates in the early legislative balloting.
While sharp differences between parties remain on either side of the political spectrum, prominent figures calling for a united front appear to have one thing in common: They don’t want to cooperate with Macron.
Despite their divisions, left-wing parties agreed late Monday to form an alliance that includes the Greens, the Socialists, the Communists and the far-left France Unbowed.
National Rally leader Marine Le Pen is working to consolidate power on the right in efforts to translate the European triumph into a national win and come closer to claiming power. Her party is expected to win the most French seats in the European Parliament, potentially as many as 30 of France’s 81.
French President Macron urges moderate politicians to regroup to defeat the far right in elections
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French President Macron urges moderate politicians to regroup to defeat the far right in elections
- His move triggered an early legislative election that will take place in two rounds on June 30 and July 7
- Macron said he decided on the risky move because he could not ignore the new political reality after his pro-European party was handed a chastening defeat
Unfazed devotees shrug off stampede at India mega-festival
- The disaster, which saw a crowd spill out of a police cordon and trample bystanders, prompted spooked pilgrims to leave festival
- The Kumbh festival attracts tens of millions of Hindu faithful from around India every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj
Prayagraj: Swarming throngs of devotees bathed in rivers at the world’s biggest religious gathering in India on Thursday, undeterred by a stampede a day earlier that killed at least 30 people.
The Kumbh Mela attracts tens of millions of Hindu faithful from around India every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj but has a woeful record of deadly crowd incidents.
Wednesday’s pre-dawn disaster, which saw a surging crowd spill out of a police cordon and trample bystanders, prompted some spooked pilgrims to leave the festival.
But many more were still arriving in the stampede’s aftermath to participate in what they said was a matter of religious obligation.
“We’ve obviously heard about the stampede,” 21-year-old Naveen Pradhan, who arrived at the festival with his family hours after the disaster, told AFP.
“But this is a holy thing, a religious thing, something we should do as Hindus, and my family wouldn’t have missed this no matter what.”
The six-week Kumbh Mela is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and Wednesday marked one of the holiest days in the festival, coinciding with an alignment of the Solar System’s planets.
Despite the early morning disaster, saffron-clad holy men continued with the day’s rituals hours later, leading millions into a sin-cleansing bath by the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.
“The journey was challenging — the trains were packed, the train stations were packed,” pharmacist Padmabati Dam, who traveled by train for more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) to reach the festival, told AFP.
“We were tired after such a long journey but as soon as we took a dip in the river we just felt so fresh and happy. It was as if all that inconvenience was really worth it.”
The Kumbh Mela is rooted in a mythological Hindu battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.
Organizers have likened the scale of this year’s festival to a temporary country, forecasting up to 400 million pilgrims would visit before the final day on February 26.
Authorities waited nearly 18 hours after Wednesday’s stampede to give an official death toll, an apparent effort to minimize disruption to the day’s events.
Even before the latest incident, attendees have fumed over what they said was poor crowd management.
Reserved pathways and cordoned-off areas reserved for eminent attendees have been a source of vehement complaint at the festival for reducing the amount of space for common pilgrims.
Police this year installed hundreds of cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the sprawling encampment, mounted on poles and a fleet of overhead drones.
The surveillance network feeds into an artificial intelligence system at a command and control center meant to alert staff if sections of the crowd get so concentrated that they pose a safety threat.
More than 400 people died after they were trampled or drowned at the Kumbh Mela on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.
Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in Prayagraj.
American Airlines jet collides with helicopter near Washington’s Reagan Airport
- A web camera shot from Kennedy Center in Washington showed an explosion mid-air across the Potomac around 2047 ET with an aircraft in flames crashing down rapidly
- There has not been a fatal US passenger airplane accident since February 2009, but a series of near-miss incidents in recent years have raised serious safety concerns
WASHINGTON: An American Airlines regional passenger jet and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed into the Potomac River after a midair collision near Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night, officials said.
The Washington Post said multiple bodies had been pulled from the water. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on social media that “we know there are fatalities,” though he did not say how many.
An American Airlines source told Reuters that 60 passengers, along with two pilots and two crew members were scheduled to be on the flight. Three soldiers were aboard the helicopter, a US official said.
There has not been a fatal US passenger airplane accident since February 2009, but a series of near-miss incidents in recent years have raised serious safety concerns.
NBC reported that four people had been pulled alive from the Potomac River.
A web camera shot from the Kennedy Center in Washington showed an explosion mid-air across the Potomac around 2047 ET with an aircraft in flames crashing down rapidly.
The US Federal Aviation Administration said a PSA Airlines regional jet collided midair with the helicopter while on approach to Reagan.
PSA was operating Flight 5342 for American Airlines, which had departed from Wichita, Kansas, according to the FAA.
Police said multiple agencies were involved in a search and rescue operation in the Potomac River, which borders the airport.
Dozens of police, ambulance and recuse units, some ferrying boats, staged along the river and raced to positions along the tarmac of Reagan airport. Live TV images showed several boats in the water, flashing blue and red lights.
The airport said late on Wednesday that all takeoffs and landings had been halted as emergency personnel responded to an aircraft incident.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was gathering more information on the incident.
American Airlines said on social media that it was “aware of reports that American Eagle flight 5342, operated by PSA, with service from Wichita, Kansas (ICT) to Washington Reagan National Airport (DCA) has been involved in an incident.”
American Airlines said it would provide more information as it became available to the company.
Over the last two years, a series of near-miss incidents have raised concerns about US aviation safety and the strain on understaffed air-traffic-control operations.
FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker stepped down on Jan. 20 and the Trump administration has not named a replacement — or even disclosed who is running the agency on an interim basis.
The last deadly major crash involving a commercial airliner in the US was in 2009, when 49 people aboard a Colgan Air flight crashed in New York state. One person also died on the ground.
Passenger jet with 64 aboard collides with Army helicopter while landing at Reagan Airport near DC
ARLINGTON: A jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided Wednesday with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation in the nearby Potomac River.
There was no immediate word on casualties or the cause of the collision, but all takeoffs and landings from the airport were halted as helicopters from law enforcement agencies across the region flew over the scene in search of survivors. Inflatable rescue boats were launched into the Potomac River from a point along the George Washington Parkway, just north of the airport, and first responders set up light towers from the shore to illuminate the area near the site of the collision.
President Donald Trump said he had been “fully briefed on this terrible accident" and, referring to the passengers, added, “May God Bless their souls.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said the midair crash occurred around 9 p.m. EST when a regional jet that had departed from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a military helicopter on a training flight while on approach to an airport runway. It occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over three miles south of the White House and the Capitol.
Investigators will try to piece together the aircrafts' final moments before their collision, including contact with air traffic controllers as well as a loss of altitude by the passenger jet.
American Airlines Flight 5342 was inbound to Reagan National at an altitude of about 400 feet and a speed of about 140 miles per hour when it suffered a rapid loss of altitude over the Potomac River, according to data from its radio transponder. The Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet, manufactured in 2004, can be configured to carry up to 70 passengers.
A few minutes before landing, air traffic controllers asked the arriving commercial jet if it could land on the shorter Runway 33 at Reagan National and the pilots said they were able. Controllers then cleared the plane to land on Runway 33. Flight tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.
Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.” Seconds after that, the two aircraft collided.
The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river.
Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Center showed two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to join in a fireball.
The collision occurred on a warm winter evening in Washington, with temperatures registering as high as 60 degrees Fahrenheit, following a stretch days earlier of intense cold and ice. On Wednesday, the Potomac River was 36 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The National Weather Service reported that wind gusts of up to 25 mph were possible in the area throughout the evening.
The U.S. Army described the helicopter as a UH-60 Blackhawk based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. A crew of three soldiers were onboard the helicopter, an Army official said. The helicopter was on a training flight.
The crash is serving as a major test for two of the Trump administration’s newest agency leaders. Pete Hegseth, sworn in days ago as defense secretary, posted on social media that his department was “actively monitoring” the situation that involved an Army helicopter. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, just sworn in earlier this week, said in a social media post that he was “at the FAA HQ and closely monitoring the situation.”
The airport was to remain closed until 5 a.m. Friday.
Located along the Potomac River, just southwest of the city. Reagan National is a popular choice because it’s much closer than the larger Dulles International Airport, which is deeper in Virginia.
Depending on the runway being used, flights into Reagan can offer passengers spectacular views of landmarks like the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall and the U.S. Capitol. It’s a postcard-worthy welcome for tourists visiting the city.
The incident recalled the crash of an Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac on January 13, 1982, that killed 78 people. That crash was attributed to bad weather.
The last fatal crash involving a U.S. commercial airline occured in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. Everyone aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane was killed, including 45 passengers, 2 pilots and 2 flight attendants. Another person on the ground also died, bringing the total death toll to 50. An investigation determined that the captain accidentally caused the plane to stall as it approached the airport in Buffalo.
Trump issues orders to promote school choice, end “anti-American” teaching
- Order prioritizes federal funding for school choice programs
- Second order aims to block federal funding related to “gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology” in schools
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed executive orders to promote parental choice in school selection and end federal funding for curricula that he called the “indoctrination” of students in “anti-American” ideologies on race and gender.
The two directives, which come a week after Trump was sworn into his second term of office, are in keeping with his campaign promise to remake the country’s education system in line with a rigorous conservative agenda that Democrats say could undermine public schools.
The first order directs the Department of Education to issue guidance on how states can use federal education funds to support “choice initiatives,” without providing further details.
“It is the policy of my Administration to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children,” the president said in the order. “Too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.”
His second directive aims to stop schools from using federal funds for curriculum, teacher certification and other purposes related to “gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology.”
“In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight,” it reads.
Trump and his allies throughout the campaign have accused public schools of teaching white children to be ashamed of themselves and their ancestors due to the country’s history of slavery and discrimination against people of color.
The second order, without evidence, claims that teachers have been “demanding acquiescence” to concepts of “white privilege” or “unconscious bias” and thereby promoting racism and undermining national unity.
The executive order will have a “chilling effect” on subjects related to race and ethnicity in schools, said Basil Smikle Jr., a political strategist.
“I would imagine that it would restrict the kind of reading materials that are even available to students outside of the classroom,” he said.
Although that order does not invoke the term “critical race theory” by name, it employs the language often used by CRT opponents to criticize teaching about institutional racism.
A once-obscure academic concept, the theory has become a fixture in the fierce US debate over how to teach children about the country’s history and structural racism. An academic framework most often taught in law schools but not in primary and secondary schools, it rests on the premise that racial bias — intentional or not — is baked into US laws and institutions.
Conservatives have invoked the term to denounce curricula they consider too liberal or excessively focused on America’s history of racial discrimination. Supporters say understanding institutional racism is necessary to address inequality.
Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, said the order came as no surprise.
“As a candidate, he said there was radical indoctrination of students,” she said. “He’s making sure to frighten students and educators across the country so they can’t teach the real history of the United States.”
It was not clear how the order issued on Wednesday would affect how the history of race relations is taught in American schools. During his inaugural address last week, Trump criticized education that “teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country.”
SCHOOL CHOICE
The first order also directs the US Department of Education to prioritize federal funding for school choice programs, a longstanding goal for conservatives who say public schools are failing to meet academic standards while pushing liberal ideas.
Many Democrats and teachers’ unions, on the other hand, say school choice undermines the public system that educates 50 million US children.
Federal test scores released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress on Wednesday underscored the challenge faced by educators in the wake of widespread learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The scores showed that one-third of eighth graders tested below NAEP’s “basic” reading level, the most in the test’s three-decade history, while some 40 percent of fourth-graders also fell below that basic threshold.
That executive order also directs US states on how they could use block grants to support alternatives to public education, such as private and religious schools.
US education is primarily funded via states and local taxes, with federal sources accounting for about 14 percent of the funding of public K-12 schools, according to Census data.
Trump’s order could affect some $30 billion to $40 billion in federal grants, estimated Frederick Hess, an education expert at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
“This stuff is directionally significant,” said Hess, adding that Trump’s directive represented “the most emphatic support for school choice we’ve ever seen at the federal level.”
The first order also calls for allowing military families to use Pentagon funds to send their children to the school of their choosing. It also mandates that Native American families with students in the Bureau of Indian Education be allowed to use federal funds in selecting their schools.
A number of Republican-leaning states have in recent years adopted universal or near-universal school choice policies, paving the way for vouchers or other methods that allocate taxpayer funds for homeschooling or private tuition.
Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, said that Trump’s executive order is aimed at sending “an aggressive statement about his position on vouchers” even if his power to reallocate funds is limited.
Cowen said the bigger potential financial impact on education lies with a bill reintroduced in Congress this week that would create a federal school voucher program with an estimated $10 billion in annual tax credits.
Rohingya refugees stranded on boat off Indonesia
- Authorities block migrants from disembarking at tourist beach ‘in case they escape’
JAKARTA: At least 75 Rohingya refugees including four children were stranded aboard a migrant boat off the coast of western Indonesia on Wednesday after authorities blocked them from landing at a tourist beach.
Security officers prevented the Rohingya from disembarking at Leuge beach in Aceh province and ordered them to stay aboard the boat. Police were deployed to monitor the beach, while local residents took photos of the boat and provided the refugees with food.
“For now, they are not allowed to disembark, considering today is a public holiday. Many tourist activities are taking place ... there are concerns that they might blend in with the crowd and escape,” local official Rizalihadi said.
“The temporary policy is for them to remain on the boat while waiting for representatives from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration to arrive.”
The Muslim minority Rohingya are persecuted in Myanmar, and thousands risk their lives each year on long and dangerous sea journeys to Malaysia or Indonesia.
