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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 says he will not remove Jay Powell from Fed before term ends

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Trump says he will not remove Jay Powell from Fed before term ends

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Donald Trump said he would not seek to remove Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell before his term expires in May 2026, but promised to push ahead with sweeping tariffs, mass deportations and tax cuts in his first days in the White House.

In an interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press, Trump spoke about his priorities for the world’s largest economy when his second administration begins in January, including curtailing aid to Ukraine and reducing bloat across the government.

When asked if he had plans to replace Powell, who was tapped by Trump in 2017 and later renominated by President Joe Biden for a second term as head of the US central bank, the president-elect said he did not.

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“I think if I told him to, he would. But if I asked him to, he probably wouldn’t,” Trump added.

Since winning the US presidential election last month, concern has grown across Wall Street and Washington that Trump would threaten the independence of the Fed, which is seen as crucial to the stability both of the global economy and financial markets.

On the campaign trail, Trump seemed to suggest that he would continue the attacks of his first term, in which he called Powell an “enemy” for resisting his calls for lower interest rates.

Trump has questioned whether he should have a more direct say in monetary policy decisions. Scott Bessent, his pick for Treasury secretary, has also floated the idea of announcing an heir apparent who would act as a “shadow” Fed chair, undermining the institution’s communications by issuing contradictory guidance on the policy outlook.

Just after the election, Powell was adamant that he would not step down early from his post even if the president-elect asked him to. He also told reporters that there were no legal grounds for him to be removed early.

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Last week, he added that he was “not concerned” about the Fed’s independence during a second Trump administration, saying it was protected by “the law of the land”.

Economists are bracing for tension however, given their expectation that Trump’s plans to enact tariffs on trading partners, deport immigrants in large numbers and boost growth via lower taxes and regulations will stoke price pressures, thereby limiting how much the Fed will be able to lower interest rates overall.

The Fed has already cut its benchmark policy rate twice since September and is poised to do so again later this month, but officials have begun to hint that the pace will slow in 2025.

Trump conceded that he “can’t guarantee anything” in terms of higher costs for Americans if his tariff proposals are enacted, although he denied that they would weaken the economy. He also again touted such levies as a negotiating tool, saying he had “stopped wars with tariffs”.

The president-elect said he also had “no choice” but to deport all illegal immigrants in the US. But he said he would work with Democrats on a plan for undocumented people who entered the country as children. He also vowed to end birthright citizenship via executive action.

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On his efforts to reduce government spending, Trump said his administration would raise ages for entitlement programmes like Social Security or Medicare. “People are going to get what they’re getting,” he said.

Those plans would probably be accompanied by a pullback in the US’s involvement oversees, including in its provision of aid to Ukraine as well as its involvement in Nato, the president-elect said.

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Cancer interrupted their school lives, but also set them on a mission

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Cancer interrupted their school lives, but also set them on a mission

At age 8 in 2009, EJ Beck hugs her favorite book, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s These Happy Golden Years. At 10, center, she is pictured in the hospital where she was treated for thyroid cancer. For Beck and her family, the Happy Golden Years image became emblematic of her life, before. At right, EJ Beck today is a 23-year-old medical student.

Beck family; José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR


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Beck family; José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR

EJ Beck was a bookish, wispy 10-year-old when a doctor found the thyroid cancer on her tiny neck that upended her life. Treatment for that cancer took Beck’s joyful school routine and replaced it with a complicated surgery, followed by a harrowing radiation treatment that made her so sick and radioactive, it required her to remain in a sealed chamber without human contact for many days.

Beck, along with her parents, had decided not to tell friends, her teachers or even her two younger sisters about her illness, hoping that might help her slip back into normal life, eventually. But in the short term, it intensified her isolation in the hospital, where she passed her solitary confinement rereading the Harry Potter series and drawing on a picture of Spiderman posted to the window.

“I was so, so jealous because Spiderman could just leave the hospital, and I couldn’t,” Beck recalls. “Spiderman got to take radiation, and he got cool powers; I got sick and sad and lonely and tired.”

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Today, Beck is a 23-year-old medical student, and among a growing population of 18 million people who are surviving cancer for much longer, thanks to myriad recent advances like AI-powered tumor detection and new immunotherapies that chemically target cancers. Survival rates for pediatric cancer, in particular, are considered a crowning medical achievement: Those rates increased from 58% in the mid-1970s to 85% today.

But in order to get on with life after treatment, Beck also had to overcome many of the less-discussed aftereffects of cancer – notably the missed schooling and loss of identity and peer support that came with it, not to mention various other cognitive and physical impacts of treatment that deeply shape survivorship. Patients often feel forgotten when treatment ends, but research shows the knock-on effects, from mental health to financial challenges, can persist decades into recovery.

Out of step with peers

Today Beck is cancer-free, but says she still feels she lives in its shadow – quite literally, in the sense that her apartment is within earshot of the sirens near the New York City hospital complex where she received treatment as a child.

Also, the experience forged her into who she is, she says, and left her feeling scholastically, socially, and emotionally out of step with peers. “It takes a really long time to feel like you’re falling into sync with everybody else,” Beck says. Even if you would make it on to college with everyone else, you kind of feel like you’re marching to a slightly different beat and you’re trying really hard to keep up.”

A close up of EJ Beck's hands with red fingernail polish holding a gold, sparkly ribbon is on the left. A portrait of her as an adult is on the right. She has long, brown hair and is wearing a blazer.

For many years, EJ Beck’s mother silently carried a golden ribbon that she received from the hospital to advocate for pediatric cancer awareness. “She passed the ribbon on to me,” says Beck, who has that ribbon hanging above her desk at home.

José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR

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José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR

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When a child is diagnosed and undergoing treatment, doctors and parents tend to pour their energies – understandably – into managing the medical demands of pediatric cancer. But Julia Gomez, an education coordinator at NYU Langone Health, says for kids, the absence of the normalcy of school usually hits harder. “It’s quite devastating, to the whole child,” she says. “School is their whole world.”

With the increase in the population of survivors, there’s growing recognition that cancer care must also include planning for various aspects of life after treatment. And Gomez says more cancer centers, especially at research hospitals, are hiring education coordinators like her, who can help patients and their families stay connected to school during treatment and transition them back into their lives afterward.

Consistent support

Gomez works with some patients for up to five years, helping them and their families navigate the dizzying number of school or state bureaucracies to ensure students receive home tutoring or additional accommodations, for example. She matches them with tutors in the hospital or at home, and keeps teachers at school updated with treatment plans – tasks parents are often too overwhelmed to manage.

“I can offer myself to take on the whole academic-education-school piece,” she says.

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Patient advocates argue specialized wraparound care like education coordinators should be an essential part of all pediatric and young adult cancer treatment plans. But they realistically are only accessible to a privileged minority of patients who live near the research hospitals or cancer centers that offer them.

Aside from those outside services, family engagement and support can have huge bearing on how children fare through treatment and survivorship, says Dr. Saro Armenian, director of the Childhood, Adolescent and Young Adult Survivorship Program at City of Hope Children’s Cancer Center in Los Angeles.

The more consistent, positive support a child feels from the adults and schools around them, the better they will maintain their self-worth through the grueling times, Armenian says. “The social network plays a huge role, especially as a child, when you really don’t have a guidepost for how you should behave and act in that situation.”

But even when children can remain in class or reintegrate back into school, they often feel marked by disease.

EJ Beck, for example, typically only missed morning classes through most of her treatments, but her highly restrictive, iodine-free diet meant she couldn’t eat school lunch, making her a conspicuous target for classmates. “I had this girl — I’ll never forget it,” Beck recalls, “she’d come up to me and say, ‘You’re really bullying everyone else because you’re so skinny and you’re dieting, so you’re saying that the rest of us are fat.’”

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Beck swallowed her explanation to keep her cancer secret: “Once people know, they never look at you the same way.”

Still, she felt lucky, because she didn’t lose her hair — that telltale, dreaded side effect — which meant keeping cancer secret was an option for her. “I had the privilege of somebody who…cancer was never going to be as visible on me as it is on the majority of cancer patients.”

An abrupt departure from normalcy

Brendan Harley’s exit from school was far more dramatic and noticeable. On the evening of May 5, 1995 – the night before his SAT exams – Harley landed in the hospital with acute leukemia at age 17.

Brendan Harley home from the hospital in September 1995 after receiving a bone marrow transplant to treat his leukemia. “I was effectively living in a bubble at home,” Harley says.

Brendan Harley home from the hospital in September 1995 after receiving a bone marrow transplant to treat his leukemia. “I was effectively living in a bubble at home,” Harley says.

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“I had to call my date for the junior prom, which was the next weekend, and say, ‘Sorry, I’m not going to be there’ – and I was then gone,” he says. He remained in the hospital, in treatment, or in isolation and away from school and friends, for a full year. Notably, this was in an era before cell phones and social media existed, so Harley’s isolation felt complete.

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“I was effectively living in a bubble at home,” Harley says. His middle brother helped ferry homework to and from school. “I’d have a tutor that showed up once a week and we would set masks and gloves on different sides of the room and talk.”

It helped Harley to keep pinning his thoughts to discrete school assignments and other tasks he could control. Bald and tired, Harley studied frantically from his hospital bed, clinging to schoolwork as a handhold on life.

Often, things didn’t go to plan, as was the case with his chemistry finals: “I got out and went right to take my exams in June and I couldn’t remember any of the things I was studying because of all the chemotherapy.”

Brendan Harley at 17 is shown in a hospital gown and mask holding onto an IV pole in the hallway of a hospital. A smiling nurse in scrubs is hugging him. At right is a professional headshot of Harley as a healthy adult.

On May 5, 1995, at age 17, Brendan Harley was diagnosed with leukemia. The following day, he started chemotherapy treatments and spent a month on the oncology floor recovering at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Now, as a biochemical engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he’s developing better tumor models that improve targeted treatments

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But, says Harley, returning home after feeling so vulnerable made him more determined to live, fully. Driving home from the hospital with the trees having reached full bloom in his absence, he appreciated the vibrancy of color with fresh eyes – and saw his own life in the same light. “It was like I saw it for the first time; I’ve made it back,” he says. “To this day, I can’t forget.”

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Vocations forged by experience

Three decades later, Harley’s cancer-free and a father of two. He now fights cancer on a different front. As a biochemical engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he’s developing better tumor models that help improve targeted treatments to both kill cancer and improve the quality of life afterward. Harley says the cause of his own leukemia may be the earlier radiation and chemotherapy treatments he received at age 1, when he was diagnosed with a neuroblastoma. “How can I make it so that the next generation goes through something different?” he says of his career in cancer research.

Personalizing treatments can help avoid some of the harsher alternatives. “This idea of taking cells from a patient and turning them into a cure…that’s something that is incredibly motivating,” he says.

Meanwhile, EJ Beck is on her own revenge tour against cancer. This fall, she started medical school at NYU Langone, the very hospital where she’d received treatment as a 10 year old. Walking through the same doors as a physician in training felt like the bookend that made her whole life story make sense. “I almost feel like I can see the younger version of myself standing next to me in such a different place in her life,” Beck says.

EJ Beck is shown in her white medical coat. She has a bright smile on her face.

EJ Beck is now pursuing a medical degree at the same hospital complex where she received treatment as a child. “Sometimes it feels as though I’ve lived lifetimes since then, and it hurts to think about,” she says “But mostly they just make me feel immense gratitude for where I am now – I’m incredibly blessed.”

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What cancer stole from her childhood, she’s now reclaiming. “It was extremely identity-forming to me. It helped me understand people’s pain more and gave me a mission that I’ve carried with me in life to become a physician who gives back to a field that’s given me so much.”

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Original photography by José A. Alvarado Jr. Visuals design and editing by Katie Hayes Luke.
Audio and digital story edited by Diane Webber.

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Syrian rebels seize Damascus and topple Assad dynasty

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Syrian rebels seize Damascus and topple Assad dynasty

Syrian rebels seized Damascus on Sunday as President Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed in the face of the insurgents’ stunning offensive across the country.

The rebels said in a statement that “the city of Damascus is free from the tyrant Bashar al-Assad” and that “Assad has fled” after various factions encircled the capital from the north and the south.

The whereabouts of Assad were unclear, with reports that he had fled, as the rebel onslaught brought an ignominious end to a family dynasty that has ruled Syria for more than 50 years.

Videos sent to the Financial Times by a Damascus resident purportedly showed people inside the presidential palace, rummaging through rooms and smashing pictures of the Assad family.

A man dressed in civilian clothing appeared on Syrian state TV on Sunday morning, declaring that the rebels had “liberated” Damascus, and released detainees from “regime prisons”. He called on fighters to “protect the properties of the free Syrian state”.

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The speaker was flanked by eight other men, also in civilian clothes. Several of the men had their arms around each others’ shoulders.

Residents of Damascus said there was celebratory shooting in the air, with clouds of smoke hanging across the capital.

“I can’t believe it. Everyone is in the street, everyone is shouting,” said Abdallah, a Damascus resident. “It’s something historical. No one has suffered as much as the Syrian people.”

He added that rebel militants were posted outside banks and other public institutions to guard them.

While the downfall of the Assad regime sparked celebrations across Syria, it will also usher in a period of huge uncertainty for a nation shattered and fragmented after 13 years of civil war, and for the wider region. The country shares borders with Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Rebel groups have clashed with each other in the past.  

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The rebel offensive has been led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist movement that was confined to Syria’s north-west province of Idlib before beginning its offensive 12 days ago. The group, which was once an affiliate of al-Qaeda, rocked the country by seizing Aleppo, Syria’s second city, within 48 hours and then marching southwards towards the capital.

It has been working with Turkish-backed rebels who operate under the umbrella of the Syrian National Army, but Syria is home to myriad factions and the degree of co-ordination between them all is unclear.

As rebels entered the palace, Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said he was ready to work with any leadership chosen by the people and called for unity, saying “Syria is for all Syrians”. “We are ready to co-operate and all the properties of the people and the institutions of the Syrian state must be preserved,” he said. “They belong to all Syrians.”

Jalali said he last had contact with Assad on Saturday evening and has no idea where he is. Soon after he spoke, video emerged of armed rebels leading Jalali from his office to a car.

There was no official statement by the Syrian presidency, the military or state media about Assad or the situation in the country. Al-Ekhbaria, one state-run TV channel, had been broadcasting pre-recorded footage of Syrian architecture set to light guitar music.

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Assad, a London-trained eye doctor, has ruled Syria since 2000, when he succeeded his late father Hafez al-Assad. The civil war broke out in 2011 after his forces brutally sought to put down a popular uprising. 

He managed to cling to power with the backing of Iran, Iranian-backed militants and Russia, which provided vital air power. His regime had regained control over most of the country in recent years.

But he presided over a hollowed-out, bankrupt state and even many among his own Alawite community appeared to have given up on the regime after years of conflict and economic hardship.

When HTS mounted its offensive on November 27, regime forces seemed to melt away, while Russia, Iran and Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant movement, were all weakened and distracted by their own conflicts.

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Rebel fighters cheer from the back of a pick-up truck in Damascus © AFP via Getty Images

Rebels said they had gained full control of the strategic city of Homs, the last major city on the highway south to Damascus, in the early hours of Sunday.

Southern rebels, separate from HTS, took over Deraa, the birthplace of the Syrian uprising in 2011, as well as the cities of Suwaida and Quneitra, over the weekend, encircling Damascus from the south.

The rebel success is a humiliating blow to Iran, which reportedly pulled people out of Syria, and to Russia. Moscow gained access to air and naval bases on the Mediterranean after intervening in the war in 2015.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had said on Saturday that Moscow would stand by its ally and was “trying to do everything not to allow terrorists to prevail, even if they say they are no longer terrorists”.

Meanwhile, Tehran’s support for Assad had given it a “land bridge” across Iraq to Syria and Lebanon, home to its most important proxy, Hizbollah.

HTS is designated a terrorist organisation by the US, the UN, Turkey and other powers, while Jolani, its leader, has a $10mn US bounty on his head.

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In recent years, Jolani has sought to rebrand the group as a more moderate Islamist movement, building up an autocratic, centralised movement with a tight grip on Idlib, which is home to 3-4mn people.

The rebels said they had freed prisoners from the notorious Sednaya prison, which had become a symbol of the Assad regime’s brutal repression of its political opponents. 

On Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has long backed some Syrian opposition forces, hailed “a new diplomatic and political reality in Syria”.

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