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French parliament votes to oust Michel Barnier’s government

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French parliament votes to oust Michel Barnier’s government

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The French parliament on Wednesday voted to oust Prime Minister Michel Barnier over his proposed deficit-cutting budget, plunging the country into deeper political turmoil.

A motion of no confidence was approved by 331 votes in the 577 member national assembly, as Marine Le Pen’s far-right party teamed up with a leftist bloc to bring down Barnier’s minority government.

Barnier’s administration has collapsed without adopting his contentious 2025 budget that included €60bn in tax increases and spending cuts to reduce France’s deficit, which will reach 6 per cent of GDP this year.

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President Emmanuel Macron will now have to select another prime minister, a task made difficult by a raucous parliament divided into three blocs, none of which is close to having a governing majority.

Barnier’s three-month term as prime minister was the shortest of any premier since France’s Fifth Republic was founded in 1958. It is only the second time a government has been voted down since then. 

The political tumult gripping France comes just weeks after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition collapsed, leaving the EU’s two most powerful states in limbo.

Barnier defended his record as prime minister during a national assembly debate before the confidence vote, telling lawmakers: “I have been and am proud to act to build rather than to destroy.”

He said it was “not for pleasure” that he had presented a difficult budget. France’s fiscal “reality will not disappear by the enchantment of a motion of censure”, he added.

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Macron will have to contend with an emboldened Le Pen and her Rassemblement National party, which was decisive in removing Barnier after spurning his last-ditch attempts at a compromise on his budget.

Le Pen said her decision to censure Barnier was prompted by the “necessity to put an end to the chaos, to spare the French people from a dangerous, unfair and punitive budget”.

Macron “is largely responsible for the current situation”, Le Pen told TF1 television shortly after the vote.

When the president appoints a new prime minister, that person would work on a new budget which Rassemblement National “will construct with other forces in the national assembly”, she added.

Mathilde Panot, a leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, slammed Barnier for seeking deals with the Rassemblement National to try to stay in power.

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“Barnier tried to escape censure by choosing dishonour, he has gotten dishonour and censure,” she said.

Marie Lebec, a lawmaker from Macron’s centrist alliance and former minister, said her fellow parliamentarians should put aside party squabbling to find a way forward.

The political crisis risks further spooking financial markets. Barnier had previously warned of a financial and economic “storm” should his government fall without adopting the 2025 budget, saying borrowing costs were on track to exceed €60bn next year, more than the French defence budget.

French borrowing costs on its 10-year sovereign bond hit a 12-year high against Germany’s last week, as investors fretted about the likely failure of Barnier’s government.

After the confidence vote on Wednesday, the euro was flat against the dollar at $1.052, reflecting how the result was widely expected.

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Barnier may stay on as a caretaker premier for a short time, but it will fall to his successor to craft another 2025 budget, ahead of a year-end deadline.

In the meantime, Macron and parliament have several options to pass emergency measures that would avoid a government shutdown and keep public services funded temporarily.

But unlike previously when he procrastinated on picking premiers, Macron aimed to move quickly this time, said a person familiar with his thinking, and he has drawn up a list of potential candidates to succeed Barnier.

The Elysée said Macron would address the nation on Thursday evening in a televised speech.

Barnier was appointed by Macron in September after the president’s centrist alliance lost snap parliamentary elections, which increased the ranks of the far right and leftist parties.

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His departure is a sign of how gridlocked French institutions have become since the elections.

“It feels like a series of impasses in a parliament where no one has a workable majority,” said Bruno Cautrès, political scientist at Sciences Po. “There is a risk that a new government would fall quickly, just as Barnier has done.”

Additional reporting by Ian Smith in London

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Romania scraps presidential election after alleged Russian meddling

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Romania scraps presidential election after alleged Russian meddling

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Romania’s constitutional court has cancelled a presidential election scheduled for Sunday after allegations that Russia used TikTok to promote the leading candidate.

The decision to scrap Sunday’s run-off and annul the first-round victory of Călin Georgescu, who has praised Vladimir Putin, came after Romanian authorities published documents this week that indicated Moscow had sought to undermine the vote.

But the move was criticised by some politicians and analysts as anti-democratic. Opinion polls had given the far-right Georgescu a comfortable lead over Elena Lasconi, the second-placed liberal presidential candidate, ahead of the now cancelled vote.

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“The electoral process for the election of the president of Romania will be repeated in its entirety,” the court said on Friday.

The date of the new vote will be set by Romania’s government, but only after a new coalition is formed following parliamentary elections last Sunday.

Costin Ciobanu, an analyst at Aarhus University in Denmark, said the annulment “deepens uncertainty and polarisation within Romanian society, raising serious concerns about the strength of Romania’s institutions and democracy”.

Thousands have taken to the streets of Bucharest and other cities to protest against Georgescu in recent days, while a few hundred have held demonstrations backing him.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis sought in a televised address on Friday evening to reassure investors and western allies, promising to stay in office until a successor is sworn in. “Romania is a stable and secure country,” he said.

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Friday’s ruling is the first time a western court has intervened to overturn an election because of an alleged Russian attempt to sway the result. But it comes after a series of bids by Moscow to influence votes in countries well beyond its traditional sphere of influence.

Maia Sandu, president of neighbouring Moldova, narrowly secured re-election last month after what the country’s officials said was an attempt at vote-buying by Moscow-aligned politicians.

The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has also warned that Russia may try to interfere in his country’s parliamentary election next year.

Georgescu’s rise in recent weeks has stunned Romania and its western allies.

His first-round victory came even though he had no party behind him and claimed to have spent “zero” on his campaign, which was run mainly on social media.

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The Romanian National Security Council declassified several documents on Wednesday that alleged that Russia attempted to promote Georgescu on social media platforms and hack into the country’s electoral infrastructure.

The documents also noted that the far-right candidate, who was polling in single digits before last month’s vote, “benefited from preferential treatment” on TikTok because the Chinese social media platform did not label his videos as political ads. Over 100 paid influencers with more than 8mn followers had promoted Georgescu’s videos, according to the documents.

TikTok said earlier this week that it had taken down a “cluster” of pro-Georgescu accounts.

Romanian authorities have asked the European Commission to open a probe into TikTok, which could result in fines. The company, which is owned by ByteDance, has denied the accusations and said it acted in compliance with Romanian and EU law.

The court’s decision to annul the vote comes despite it validating a recount on Monday that confirmed Georgescu’s first-round victory, in which he won 23 per cent of the vote.

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Friday’s ruling was welcomed as “the only correct decision” by Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who had led polls before the first round. “The Romanian vote was blatantly undermined following the Russian intervention,” he said.

But Lasconi, who had been expecting to face Georgescu in the run-off that had been scheduled for Sunday, labelled the court’s decision as “illegal, immoral”, adding that the ruling “crushes the essence of democracy — the vote”.

She vowed to stand again and win the presidency.

In a video statement on Friday, Georgescu said: “The Romanian state took democracy and trampled on it.” He said the court’s decision was “more than a legal controversy. It is, practically, a coup d’état.”

He pledged to fight on and said that his only “pact” was with the Romanian people and god.

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Prosecutors have started multiple probes following the evidence presented by the intelligence services.

The US state department also warned this week about “foreign actors seeking to shift Romania’s foreign policy away from its western alliances”, which it said would have “serious negative impacts on US security co-operation”.

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A body has been found in the search for a woman missing near a Pennsylvania sinkhole

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A body has been found in the search for a woman missing near a Pennsylvania sinkhole

Rescue workers search on Thursday for Elizabeth Pollard, who is believed to have disappeared in a sinkhole while looking for her cat, in Marguerite, Pa.

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A Pennsylvania coroner’s office said Friday that investigators believe they have located the body of a woman who was last seen four days earlier near a sinkhole above a shuttered coal mine.

Sean Hribal, a deputy coroner in Westmoreland County, said searchers believe they have found the remains of 64-year-old Elizabeth Pollard.

A coroner was dispatched by law enforcement shortly after 11 a.m. to Unity Township, where crews have been excavating the abandoned coal mine in an effort to locate Pollard.

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State police Trooper Steve Limani told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that there was massive relief among the search team that Pollard had been found.

“We were running out of options, time and resources,” Limani told the paper. “I was getting worried we weren’t gonna find her.”

Axel Hayes, Pollard’s son, said in a brief phone interview Friday that he had not heard from authorities and planned to call his father, Kenny Pollard, to let him know.

Kenny Pollard, 75, holds a photo in his home from a vacation that he and his wife, Elizabeth, took to Clearwater Beach, Fla., approximately 10 years ago.

Kenny Pollard, 75, holds a photo in his home from a vacation that he and his wife, Elizabeth, took to Clearwater Beach, Fla., approximately 10 years ago.

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Elizabeth Pollard was last seen searching for her cat Pepper on Monday evening near a restaurant a half-mile from her home. Pollard’s family reported her missing around 1 a.m. Tuesday as the temperature in the area dropped below freezing.

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The search her focused on a sinkhole with a manhole-sized surface gap that may have only recently opened up in the village of Marguerite, above where coal was mined until about 70 years ago.

Police said they found Pollard’s car parked about 20 feet from the sinkhole. Pollard’s 5-year-old granddaughter was found safe inside the car.

Hunters and restaurant workers who were in the area in the hours before Pollard’s disappearance told police they hadn’t noticed the sinkhole.

The effort to find Pollard included lowering a pole camera with a sensitive listening device into the hole, although it detected nothing. Crews removed a massive amount of soil and rock to try to reach the area where they believed she fell into the chasm about 30 feet deep.

Pollard grew up in Jeanette, about 12 miles from Unity Township, where she lived for much of her adult life. She previously worked at Walmart and was married for more than 40 years.

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Video: How Navy Pilots are Harmed by Their Own Planes

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Video: How Navy Pilots are Harmed by Their Own Planes

For decades, the Navy has stated that brain injuries have mostly occurred during accidents or leisure activities. But now, a confidential new program is studying whether intense fighter jet operations can cause brain injuries as devastating as those from repeated blast exposure.

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