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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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Trump swoops into Paris as Europe prepares for a more transactional relationship

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Trump swoops into Paris as Europe prepares for a more transactional relationship

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Donald Trump met Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris on Saturday for the first time since the US leader’s re-election, in a diplomatic coup for French President Emmanuel Macron.

The trip to France marks Trump’s return to the world stage for the reopening of Notre-Dame cathedral, as Europe braces for the incoming US administration to take a harder, more transactional approach to the transatlantic relationship.

The event, which has attracted some 50 world leaders, comes at a decisive moment for Europe as Trump warns of punitive tariffs and pushes to end the war between Ukraine and Russia quickly. 

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Macron sought to discuss pressing issues during the two-day event, meeting with Trump on Saturday afternoon at the Elysée palace before holding talks with Zelenskyy. The three leaders then held a meeting before the reopening service at the cathedral.

“United States, Ukraine, and France. Together on this historic day. Gathered for Notre-Dame. Let us continue our joint efforts for peace and security,” Macron wrote on X above a photo of the three leaders at the Elysée.

Zelenskyy said the trilateral meeting was “good and productive”.

“President Trump is, as always, resolute,” he wrote on X.

“We all want this war to end as soon as possible and in a just way. We spoke about our people, the situation on the ground, and a just peace,” he added.

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The Ukrainian leader was applauded by the crowds as he entered Notre-Dame on Saturday night.

With Ukraine heavily dependant on US weapons to fight Russia, Zelenskyy has been lobbying Trump not to abandon their cause or force them to accept unfavourable peace conditions. 

Facilitating the informal meeting is a diplomatic win for Macron, who has been on the retreat domestically since losing legislative elections over the summer and having his handpicked prime minister toppled this week.

“This will be a high-level diplomatic moment to establish connections and also for leaders to try to glean hints of what Trump will do when he takes office,” said Patrick Martin-Genier, an international relations professor at Sciences Po.

European leaders, many of whom feared the return of Trump, have now begun to court him.  

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“It seems like the world is going a little crazy right now and we will be talking about that,” Trump said ahead of his one-on-one with Macron. “We had a great relationship as everyone knows. We accomplished a lot.”

The reopening of Notre-Dame is a triumph for Macron, who championed the cause of repairing within five years the cathedral that was nearly destroyed in a fire in 2019. 

Macron hopes to draw on his experience as one of the few European leaders in office during the first Trump term to deal with the unpredictable president-elect.

During Trump’s first term, Macron used flattery and pomp to curry favour with the US president and invited him to the Bastille Day military parade, sparking a shortlived friendship that broke down over American tariffs on French goods such as cognac.

Trump’s entourage on Saturday included multi-billionaire Elon Musk, Steve Witkoff, a special envoy who recently held talks with Israel and Qatar over a ceasefire in Gaza, and Massad Boulos, an adviser responsible for maintaining the US and French brokered ceasefire in Lebanon. He is also the father in law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany.

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Trump last week named another family connection to serve as US ambassador to France: Charles Kushner, a real estate developer who is the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

About 3,000 visitors, including the Prince of Wales and the presidents of Germany and Italy, will be among the first to witness the new bright interiors that have erased any trace of the blaze.

The billionaire donors who contributed more than half of the €800mn restoration budget were also in attendance, such as Bernard Arnault, the head of luxury giant LVMH, and François-Henri Pinault, who runs Gucci-owner Kering.

The gothic masterpiece of Notre-Dame will officially be reopened as a place of worship when the Archbishop of Paris strikes its towering wooden doors and enters in a procession towards the altar.

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Dorothy's ruby slippers from Wizard of Oz movie to be auctioned off

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Dorothy's ruby slippers from Wizard of Oz movie to be auctioned off

A pair of ruby red slippers worn by actress Judy Garland in the classic movie The Wizard of Oz is set to be auctioned off Saturday.

The iconic sequinned pumps were once stolen from a Minnesota museum. But now they are expected to fetch as much as $3m (£2.35m) at auction, according to Heritage Auctions.

Online bidding started a month ago, and as of noon local time on Saturday, the highest bid was $1.55m.

Heritage Auctions has called these slippers the “Holy Grail of Hollywood memorabilia”.

Garland was only 16 when she played Dorothy in the classic 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz. Media outlet Variety ranked it second in its inaugural list of “100 Greatest Movies of All Time”.

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The film is a musical adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. While in the book, the magical slippers are silver, the producers for the film changed them to red to take advantage of the new Technicolor technology.

In the film, as in the book, a pivotal moment occurs when Dorothy must click her heels three times as she repeats “There’s no place like home” in order to leave the magical land of Oz and return to Kansas and her Auntie Em.

While several pairs of shoes were worn by Garland during filming, only four are known to have survived.

One of the pairs is on exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. But this pair up for auction has its own unique history.

Collector Michael Shaw had loaned the slippers out to the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, when they were stolen in 2005.

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Professional thief Terry Jon Martin used a hammer to smash the glass case and snatch the slippers, believing that their insured value of $1m must be because they were covered in actual gemstones.

But when he took them to a “fence” – and intermediary who sells stolen goods to discreet buyers – he discovered they were just glass.

So he gave the shoes to someone else. It wasn’t until 2018 that the FBI recovered the shoes in a sting operation. What happened to them in those 13 years is still not known.

In 2023, Martin – who was in his 70s and used a wheelchair – pleaded guilty to stealing them, and was sentenced to time served.

“There’s some closure, and we do know definitely that Terry Jon Martin did break into our museum, but I’d like to know what happened to them after he let them go,” John Kelsch, curator of the Judy Garland Museum, told CBS News Minnesota in 2023. “Just to do it because he thought they were real rubies and to turn them over to a jewelry fence. I mean, the value is not rubies. The value is an American treasure, a national treasure. To steal them without knowing that seems ludicrous.”

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Syrian rebels close in on Homs in latest blow to Assad

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Syrian rebels close in on Homs in latest blow to Assad

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Syrian rebels say they are closing in on the strategic city of Homs as they push ahead with a lightning advance southwards towards President Bashar al-Assad’s remaining strongholds.

“Our forces have liberated the last village on the outskirts of Homs city and are now at its walls,” the rebels said late on Friday evening via their Telegram channel.

Homs is the largest city still controlled by Assad’s regime on the highway that leads south to the capital Damascus. The rebels, led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have already captured Aleppo, Syria’s second city, and Hama, since launching their offensive 11 days ago.

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The assault poses the most serious threat to Assad’s rule in a decade, reigniting a 13-year civil war that had been largely frozen since 2020.

State media said that joint Syrian and Russian forces had shelled rebel forces in Homs’s northern suburbs.

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Although much of the rebels’ advance has been met with little resistance by forces loyal to Assad, there are signs that the fighting may be more intense around Homs.

If the government were to lose Homs, analysts said, it would cut off Damascus from Assad’s other big support base in the coastal Latakia and Tartus governorates. Assad comes from the minority Alawite sect, whose population is concentrated on the coast.

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The area is also crucial to Russia, which intervened in Syria’s war in 2015 to support Assad, giving Moscow access to the Mediterranean.  

HTS, which is supported by Turkish-backed factions, has taken advantage of Assad’s supporters Iran, Iranian-backed Lebanese movement Hizbollah and Russia being weakened and distracted by other conflicts. 

Russian jets have responded to the rebels’ advance with air strikes but in a sign of the crisis’ severity, Moscow warned its citizens on Friday to flee Syria. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Iranian military commanders were being evacuated. 

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told the state news agency IRNA that its embassy in Damascus had not been evacuated. “The embassy of the Islamic republic of Iran continues its activities as usual,” he said.

Homs is close to the Syrian-Lebanese border, where Hizbollah has a large presence. Iran and Hizbollah’s support of Assad a decade ago helped shore up the dictator’s rule, but a year of war with Israel has left it weakened.

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Local media reported roads were jammed with people fleeing the offensive, and HTS issued a statement addressed to the Lebanese asking them not to get drawn into the conflict.

Only one border crossing remained open between Lebanon and Syria, on the Beirut-Damascus road, after Lebanese security forces on Friday closed other entry points, citing “repeated Israeli attacks targeting land border crossings”.

The Israeli military has repeatedly targeted the crossings, and said it had struck sites close to the border on Thursday night, as it aims to cut off Hizbollah’s resupply routes from Syria.  

In Deraa, the birthplace of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Reuters reported that the rebels had reached an agreement with regime forces to withdraw. HTS said Deraa had been “liberated from the grip of the criminal regime and its militias”.

Several towns near the Jordanian border have also been claimed by opposition factions, with minimal fighting. 

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State media downplayed the rapid realignment of the south, saying the army was repositioning and establishing a “security cordon” after “terrorist elements attacked the army’s scattered checkpoints with the aim of distracting our armed forces”.

But Assad has also lost ground in eastern Syria, where US-backed Kurdish fighters have taken control of Deir Ezzor city, the capital of the oil-rich province. The area was where jihadist militants Isis had been at their most expansive in Syria.

Additional reporting from Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran

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