PARIS: French far-right leader Marine le Pen insisted Thursday her party can still win control of parliament despite the center and left scrambling to block her way and football hero Kilian Mbappe urging fans to outvote “those people.”
Three days before Sunday’s run-off in France’s most critical legislative elections in recent history, a poll projected Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) would fall short of an overall majority despite dominating the June 30 first round vote.
Tensions are growing as the clock ticks down to Sunday, with assaults reported on candidates and the outcome will determine if postwar France elects its first far-right government since World War II, or embarks on an era of potentially paralysing coalition politics.
France’s iconic football captain, striker Kylian Mbappe, addressed the race at a news conference in Hamburg ahead of the team’s Euro 2024 quarter-final against Portugal, warning: “We can’t leave our country in the hands of those people there.
“I think we all saw the results, it’s catastrophic,” he said of the RN’s first round victory. “We hope that that will change and that everyone will mobilize to vote, and to vote for the right side.”
Mbappe’s intervention will encourage both the centrist camp, led by President Emmanuel Macron, and the broad-left wing coalition who have between them withdrawn more than 200 candidates from the runoff on Sunday in a joint effort to ensure the far right is defeated.
“I think there is still the capacity to have an absolute majority, with the electorate turning out in a final effort to get what they want,” the RN’s three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen told BFM television.
“I say turn out to vote as it’s a really important moment to get a change in politics in all the areas that are making you suffer right now,” she said.
If the RN wins an absolute majority of 289 seats in the 577-member National Assembly, it would be able to form a government with Le Pen’s 28-year-old protege Jordan Bardella as prime minister.
But she acknowledged that Macron’s centrists and the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition had made her party’s task tougher with their “operation” to withdraw candidates to unite the anti-RN vote.
The move has sparked speculation that a right-center-left coalition could emerge after the election to prevent the RN from taking power.
Le Pen alleges that the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) could figure in such a coalition, an idea dismissed by Macron.
Le Pen, who is expected to make a fourth attempt to win the Elysee Palace in 2027, acknowledged that there had been problems with a handful of RN candidates, one of whom had to withdraw after a picture of her emerged wearing a Nazi-era Luftwaffe cap.
“There are statements that have been inadmissible and will involve sanctions and there are also statements that are just clumsy,” Le Pen said.
Four people, including three minors, were detained after government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot and her team were attacked while they were sticking up campaign posters in Meudon outside Paris, prosecutors said.
Thevenot, who is of Mauritian origin, was not harmed but a colleague and a supporter were wounded and taken to hospital after the attack by around 20 people.
“Violence and intimidation have no place in our society,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal wrote on X.
Of the 30,000 police to be deployed nationwide Sunday, 5,000 would be on duty in Paris so that the “far left and far right do not create disorder,” Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin said.
Macron’s decision to call snap elections three years ahead of schedule after his party’s drubbing in EU Parliament elections is seen as a huge gamble that could plunge France into chaos weeks before it hosts the Olympics and at a time when Paris is playing a key role in backing Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
A poll by Harris Interactive projected that the RN and its allies would win 190 to 220 seats in the National Assembly, the NFP 159 to 183 seats and Macron’s Ensemble (Together) alliance 110 to 135.
French far right says power within grasp as Mbappe warns of disaster
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French far right says power within grasp as Mbappe warns of disaster
- A poll projected Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) would fall short of an overall majority despite dominating the June 30 first round vote
- France’s iconic football captain, striker Kylian Mbappe, warned: “We can’t leave our country in the hands of those people there”
Bangladesh revamps worker training for Saudi 2034 FIFA World Cup projects
- Govt to prepare training centers with focus on Saudi market demands
- Reskilling, upskilling services to be provided to migrants already residing in the Kingdom
DHAKA: Bangladeshi authorities are revamping training for prospective migrant workers and will offer upskilling programs to those residing in Saudi Arabia to tap into the labor market ahead of the FIFA World Cup, which the Kingdom will host in 2034.
Last month, the football governing body confirmed that Saudi Arabia had won the bid to host the world’s largest sporting event.
With the bid proposing to hold games across 15 stadiums in five cities, many new migrant workers will be involved in building new sports and transport networks, as well as hotel infrastructure.
In Bangladesh, which has a major expat community in Saudi Arabia, the trend is viewed as an “opportunity” for the country’s migrant workers, according to A.Z.M. Nurul Huq, joint secretary at the employment wing of the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment.
“It’s a huge task, and a lot of construction works will take place targeting this World Cup event. Here lies the opportunity for us as our migrants have been working with much goodwill in many sectors of the Kingdom for many years,” Huq told Arab News.
“Saudi Arabia has to build over a dozen new stadiums, renovate existing ones and develop numerous new accommodation facilities, along with necessary infrastructure and connectivity.”
Some 3 million Bangladeshi nationals live and work in Saudi Arabia. They are the largest expat group in the Kingdom and also the biggest Bangladeshi community outside Bangladesh.
Many are employed in the construction sector as masons, electricians, pipe fitters, plumbers and electricians.
“Bangladeshi migrants can be more actively employed in the construction work for the FIFA World Cup,” Huq said.
“Works are underway for providing reskilling and upskilling services to migrants who are already in the Kingdom. In this way, our workers will be able to secure their jobs and earn more.”
For the past few years, as Saudi Arabia is prioritizing efforts to improve the professional competence of employees under its Vision 2030 program, the expatriates’ ministry has been collaborating with the Kingdom’s skills verification authority, Takamol.
The agency, which manages migrant skill certification based on the needs of Saudi employers, provides Bangladesh’s 113 technical training centers with a list of the Kingdom’s latest workforce requirements.
“Our centers tailor their programs to equip workers with the necessary skills. Upon completing the training, the prospective migrants receive certification through Takamol, which is recognized by Saudi authorities,” said Shah Zulfiquer Haider, deputy secretary at the ministry’s training wing.
As demand is set to increase in line with 2034 World Cup projects, more Bangladeshi training centers will focus on the Saudi market in particular.
“We are planning to strengthen our collaboration with Takamol,” Haider said. “Currently, a dozen technical training centers are preparing skilled workers to meet Saudi Arabia’s demands. We will soon increase the number of training centers, which will produce more skilled migrants tailored to the needs of the Saudi labor market.”
Malaysia doubles patrols to find Myanmar migrant boats after nearly 200 detained
- Malaysia doubles patrols to find Myanmar migrant boats after nearly 200 detained
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s coast guard said on Friday it was doubling patrols in its waters to locate boats carrying undocumented Myanmar migrants, after almost 200 were detained on an island in the northwestern Malaysian state of Kedah.
The coast guard said police had detained 196 undocumented Myanmar migrants in the early hours of Friday after their boat came ashore on a beach on the resort island of Langkawi.
“Based on information the coast guard received, there are two more boats carrying undocumented Myanmar migrants at sea but their exact location is still unknown,” the coast guard said in a statement.
Malaysian coast guard director-general Mohd Rosli Abdullah said authorities were patrolling the northern waters off Langkawi and border areas, and had arranged for air surveillance to be conducted to locate the boats.
The coast guard is also in contact with Thai authorities to identify the movement of the boats carrying the migrants, Mohd Rosli said.
Earlier on Friday, local English daily The Star reported about 200 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar had come ashore on Langkawi. The Rohingya are a mainly Muslim minority in majority Buddhist Myanmar.
The coast guard did not specify in its statement whether the migrants were Rohingya.
Around one million Rohingya have fled, mostly to neighboring Bangladesh, to escape a Myanmar military offensive launched in August 2017, a campaign that UN investigators have described as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.
Mynamar’s military rulers deny the allegations.
Malaysia, which does not recognize refugee status, has long been a favored destination for ethnic Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar or the refugee camps in Bangladesh.
But in recent years, Malaysia has turned away boats carrying Rohingya refugees and rounded up thousands in crowded detention centers as part of a crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Between 2010 and 2024, Malaysian authorities detained 2,089 undocumented Myanmar migrants attempting to enter the country by sea, the coast guard said.
Dense smog shrouds Indian capital, threatening to disrupt flights
- Delhi ranked third among the world’s most polluted capitals in Friday’s live rankings by Swiss group IQAir
- On social media, India’s largest airline IndiGo and low-cost carrier Spicejet caution against weather delays
NEW DELHI: Thick smog engulfed the Indian capital on Friday, prompting warnings of possible flight disruptions from airport and airline officials, as worsening air quality cut visibility to zero in some areas.
Delhi, which has been battling smog and poor air quality since the beginning of winter, ranked third among the world’s most polluted capitals in Friday’s live rankings by Swiss group IQAir.
No diversion or cancelation has been reported yet, an airport spokesperson said, although authorities warned in a post on X that aircraft lacking equipment to enable landings in low visibility could face difficulties.
On social media, India’s largest airline IndiGo and low-cost carrier Spicejet also cautioned against weather delays.
Delays averaged eight minutes for 20 flights by 10:14 a.m., aviation website FlightRadar24 said.
Some train services in the capital were also delayed, media said.
New Delhi’s air quality was rated “very poor” on Friday, with an index score of 351, the country’s top pollution control body said, well beyond the levels from zero to 50 that it considers “good.”
Biden awards the 2nd highest civilian award to leaders of the Jan. 6 committee and 18 others
- Cheney, a Republican former Wyoming congresswoman, and Rep. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee that investigated the Trump-inspired insurrection
- Biden last year honored people who were involved in defending the Capitol from a mob of angry Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, or who helped safeguard the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden on Thursday awarded the second highest civilian medal to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, leaders of the congressional investigation into the Capitol riot who Donald Trump has said should be jailed for their roles in the inquiry.
Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people in a ceremony in the East Room, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers, and two of the president’s longtime friends, former Sens. Ted Kaufman, D-Delaware, and Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut.
“Together, you embody the central truth: We’re a great nation because we’re a good people,” he said. “Our democracy begins and ends with the duties of citizenship. That’s our work for the ages and it’s what all of you embody.”
Biden last year honored people who were involved in defending the Capitol from a mob of angry Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, or who helped safeguard the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried and failed to overturn the results.
Cheney, a Republican former Wyoming congresswoman, and Rep. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee that investigated the insurrection. The committee’s final report asserted that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the election he lost to Biden and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. Thompson wrote that Trump “lit that fire.”
The audience erupted in loud cheers and stood when Cheney took the stage. Biden clasped her hand and gave her the medal. The announcer said she was being given it “for putting the American people over party.”
Cheney, who lost her seat in the GOP primary in August 2022, later said she would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race and campaigned with the Democratic nominee, raising Trump’s ire. Biden has been considering whether to offer preemptive pardons to Cheney and others Trump has targeted.
Thompson, who also received a standing ovation, was recognized “for his lifelong dedication to safeguarding our Constitution.”
Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office Jan. 20, still refuses to back away from his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has said he would pardon the rioters once he is back in the White House.
During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the president-elect said that “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” claiming without evidence they “deleted and destroyed” testimony they collected.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he said.
Cheney and Thompson were “an embarrassment to this country” for their conduct on the committee, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung asserted.
Biden also awarded the medal to attorney Mary Bonauto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader of the marriage equality movement.
Other honorees included Frank Butler, who set new standards for using tourniquets on war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women’s rights protests in the 1970s and fought for equal pay.
He bestowed the honor to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
Other former lawmakers honored included former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who championed gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot to death.
After he presented the awards, he went back to the lectern to ask lawmakers in the room to stand, as well as John Kerry, a former US senator and Biden’s first climate envoy.
“Let’s remember, our work continues,” he said to the room after he thanked the families in attendance for the support they gave to the nominees. “We’ve got a lot more work to do to keep this going.”
Biden honored four people posthumously: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young“; civil rights advocate and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was held with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the detention.
The Presidential Citizens Medal was created by President Richard Nixon in 1969 and is the country’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It recognizes people who “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”
Investigators seek clues to New Orleans attacker’s path to radicalization
- Jabbar’s profile atypical for Daesh recruits, says former FBI agent
- Jabbar is a former US veteran who worked for a major corporation
- Daesh uses online platforms for recruitment, experts say
WASHINGTON: As investigators learn more about the man who pledged allegiance to the Daesh group, or ISIS, and killed 14 people with a truck on New Year’s Day in New Orleans, a key question remains: How did a veteran and one-time employee of a major corporation become radicalized?
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia said on Thursday that videos made by Shamsud-Din Jabbar just before the attack showed the 42-year-old Texas native supported Daesh, claimed to have joined the militant group before last summer and believed in a “war between the believers and nonbelievers.”
While the FBI was looking into his “path to radicalization,” evidence collected since the attack showed that Jabbar was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” said Raia.
Jabbar, who authorities said acted alone, was killed in a shootout with police.
His half-brother, Abdur Jabbar, said in an interview that Jabbar, who had worked for audit firm Deloitte, abandoned Islam in his 20s or 30s, but had recently renewed his faith.
Abdur Jabbar told Reuters in Beaumont, Texas, where Jabbar was born and raised, that he had no idea when his half-brother became radicalized.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who investigated terrorism cases and is on an advisory council to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, said Jabbar did not fit the typical profile of those radicalized by Daesh.
Jabbar served for 10 years in the US Army and was in his 40s, Soufan noted, explaining that people who fall prey to Daesh recruitment are typically much younger.
“This is a guy who … went from being a patriot to being an Daesh terrorist,” said Soufan.
Attackers responsible for a range of deadly strikes have claimed a link to Daesh and other jihadist groups.
They included the lone survivor of the Islamist squad that killed 130 people across Paris in 2015, the man who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida in 2016, and the man who drove a truck into a crowded bike path in 2017 in New York City, killing eight people.
Some attacks, like those in 2015 in Paris, were carried out by trained Daesh operatives. But investigators found no evidence of a direct role for the terrorist group in others.
Online recruitment
It is still unclear what contact Jabbar might have had with overseas extremist groups.
US officials and other experts say Daesh conducts most of its recruiting in online chatrooms and over encrypted communications apps since losing the “caliphate” it overran in 2014 in Iraq and Syria to a US-led military coalition. Even as the coalition continues hitting the group’s remaining holdouts, Daesh has stepped up operations in Syria while its Afghanistan- and Africa-based affiliates have kept recruiting, expanding their networks and inspiring attacks.
US officials say Daesh has used the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Israel’s war in Gaza to boost its recruitment.
Nate Snyder, a former US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) counterterrorism official, said both international and US-based extremist groups follow a similar playbook to draw in new recruits.
The groups use social media to push their message and then move discussions to encrypted app such as Telegram, which could evolve into one-on-one conversations, Snyder said.
“Then people feel like they’re part of a community,” said Snyder, who left DHS in December and joined the race to chair the Democratic National Committee.
Recruits could either receive direct orders or self-radicalize to take action, Snyder said.
Individuals susceptible to recruitment “might have lost their jobs, might have had a mental health crisis, might have just concluded that however hard they’ve tried, they never belong,” said Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British diplomat who led a UN team that monitors Daesh and Al-Qaeda.
The main appeal of Daesh is its determination to establish a Sunni Muslim “caliphate” ruled by Islamic law, unlike the Taliban, which “has sold out to Afghan nationalism,” or Al-Qaeda, members of which have cooperated with Iran’s Shiite Muslim-run government, he said.
“People that are carrying out those attacks may never in their lives have actually met somebody who is a member of Daesh,” said Fitton-Brown, a senior adviser to the Counter-Extremism Project, a policy and research organization. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t carry out an Daesh-inspired attack.” Crashing cars into crowds or staging stabbing rampages “are unsophisticated, very low-budget attacks (that) are almost impossible to defend against,” he continued. “If you are determined enough to kill unsuspecting public, you are going to be able to do it.”
