Sweden won’t be in a vulnerable security situation even if Finland joins NATO first, the Finnish president said Sunday, as both Nordic membership candidates negotiate bilateral military pacts with the United States.
“It is possible that Finland joins NATO before Sweden,” Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said in interview published by the Swedish public broadcaster SVT on Sunday. “Should we have refused Turkey’s offer to ratify? That sounds a bit crazy. It would have been a terribly difficult situation if we had said ‘no’ to Ankara.”
Niinisto referred to his Friday visit to Ankara where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that his government would move forward with ratifying Finland’s NATO application, paving the way for the country to join the military bloc, but wouldn’t ratify Sweden’s bid before disputes between Ankara and Stockholm are solved.
Both Finland and Sweden applied to become NATO members 10 months ago in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abandoning decades of nonalignment.
NATO requires the unanimous approval of its 30 existing members to expand, and Turkey and Hungary are the only countries that haven’t yet ratified the Nordic duo’s bids.
Should Sweden’s NATO membership talks with Turkey drag on for a long time, many Swedish security policy experts agree it would put Stockholm in a vulnerable military position in the Baltic Sea region.
Niinisto said that Finland, Sweden and Denmark are currently in separate talks with the United States on security matters to reach a bilateral military pact similar to what Norway has concluded with Washington before.
“I think that is a big change, almost bigger than NATO membership,” Niinisto said of the ongoing talks with the U.S. when asked what happens to Sweden’s security if talks to join NATO drag on. “It means a lot if we (Nordic countries) all have a direct and a quite similar (military) agreement with the United States.”
Since announcing their intention to join NATO in May 2022, Finland and Sweden pledged to enter the Western military alliance jointly at the same time.
Niinisto told SVT that the Nordic neighbors were determined to enter NATO “hand in hand as long as it is in our hands, but the ratification of Finnish NATO membership is in the hands of Turkey and Hungary.”
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Джуканович упродовж минулих 30-ти років постійно обіймав посаду глави держави або голови уряду
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«Момент, після якого стає безсумнівним, що завершенням цієї агресії для Росії буде повний спектр її відповідальності»
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In its arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, the International Criminal Court accused the Russian president of the war crime of unlawful deportation of people, in particular children, and their unlawful transfer from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
The ICC issued a separate warrant on the same charge for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children’s rights.
Moscow dismissed Friday’s move, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling the allegations “outrageous.” Russia, which has denied targeting civilians since its invasion in February last year, has repeatedly denied its forces have committed atrocities, and has rejected past allegations of illegally moving Ukrainians.
Following are some key facts and figures provided by the Ukrainian authorities on the issue:
Daria Herasymchuk, adviser-commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation, described in an interview with Reuters on Friday five main ways she said Russia has used to illegally transfer Ukrainian children.
They include:
taking Ukrainian children away from care institutions in occupied areas;
separating children from parents at filtration checkpoints — the places where Ukrainian citizens from regions under Russian occupation are checked and processed before being allowed to enter Russia;
taking away parental rights through laws enforced on occupied territories;
taking children away in cases where they were staying with other adults after their parents were killed in the war
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said on March 17 the prosecutors were investigating cases of deportation of over 16,000 children from Russian-occupied areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions. “But the real figure can be much higher,” Kostin said on his Facebook page.
Ukraine has so far managed to return 308 children, officials said.
Iryna Vereshchuk, minister for reintegration of temporarily occupied territories, issued a public appeal on Saturday to Russian officials asking for lists of all Ukrainian orphans and all Ukrainian children whose parents were stripped of parental rights who are currently in occupied Ukrainian areas or were illegally transferred to Russia.
A report published in February by the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health as part of the Conflict Observatory said Russia has held at least 6,000 Ukrainian children — likely many more — in sites in Russian-held Crimea and Russia whose primary purpose appears to be political reeducation. The report said Yale University researchers had identified at least 43 camps and other facilities where Ukrainian children have been held that were part of a “large-scale systematic network” operated by Moscow.
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«Угода та її імплементація через додаток стануть невід’ємною частиною їхніх відповідних шляхів до Європейського Союзу»
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Раніше міністр юстиції Німеччини заявив, що німецькі правоохоронці матимуть заарештувати Путіна в разі його приїзду до країни
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«ПАР має дуже сильне бажанням, щоб (російсько-українську війну – ред.) було вирішено мирним шляхом переговорів»
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PARIS, March 19 (Reuters) – President Emanuel Macron faces a critical moment on Monday when the National Assembly is due to vote on no-confidence motions filed after his government bypassed parliament on Thursday to push through an unpopular rise in the state pension age.
The move, which followed weeks of protests against the pension overhaul, triggered three nights of unrest and demonstrations in Paris and throughout the country, reminiscent of the Yellow Vest protests that erupted in late 2018 over high fuel prices.
However, while Monday’s votes may put on display anger at Macron’s government, they are unlikely to bring it down.
Opposition lawmakers filed two motions of no-confidence in parliament on Friday.
Centrist group Liot proposed a multiparty no-confidence motion, which was co-signed by the far-left Nupes alliance. Hours later, France’s far-right National Rally party, which has 88 National Assembly members, also filed a no-confidence motion.
But even though Macron’s party lost its absolute majority in the lower house in elections last year, there was little chance the multi-party motion would go through — unless a surprise alliance of lawmakers from all sides is formed, from the far-left to the far-right.
The leaders of the conservative Les Republicains (LR) party have ruled out such an alliance. None of them had sponsored the first no-confidence motion filed on Friday.
But the party still faced some pressure.
In the southern city of Nice, the political office of Eric Ciotti, the Les Republicains leader, was ransacked overnight and tags were left threatening riots if the motion was not supported.
“They want through violence to put pressure on my vote on Monday. I will never yield to the new disciples of the Terror,” Ciotti wrote on Twitter.
Macron’s overhaul raises the pension age by two years to 64, which the government says is essential to ensure the system does not go bust.
“I think there will be no majority to bring down the government. But this will be a moment of truth,” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told Le Parisien newspaper, commenting on prospects for Monday’s votes.
“Is the pension reform worth bringing down the government and political disorder? The answer is clearly no. Everyone must take his responsibilities,” he added.
your ad hereThe white-colored humanoid “Garmi” does not look much different from a typical robot — it stands on a platform with wheels and is equipped with a black screen on which two blue circles acting as eyes are attached.
But retired German doctor Guenter Steinebach, 78, said: “For me, this robot is a dream.”
Not only is Garmi able to perform diagnostics on patients, it can also provide care and treatment for them. Or at least, that is the plan.
Garmi is a product of a new sector called geriatronics, a discipline that taps advanced technologies like robotics, IT and 3D technology for geriatrics, gerontology and nursing.
About a dozen scientists built Garmi with the help of medical practitioners like Steinebach at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence.
Part of the Technical University of Munich, the institute based its unit specializing in geriatronics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a ski resort that is home to one of the highest proportion of elderly people in Germany.
Europe’s most populous country is itself one of the world’s most rapidly ageing societies.
With the number of people needing care growing quickly and an estimated 670,000 carer posts to go unfilled in Germany by 2050, the researchers are racing to conceive robots that can take over some of the tasks carried out today by nurses, carers and doctors.
“We have ATMs where we can get cash today. We can imagine that one day, based on the same model, people can come to get their medical examination in a kind of technology hub,” said Abdeldjallil Naceri, 43, the lead scientist of the lab.
Doctors could then evaluate the results of the robot’s diagnostics from a distance, something that could be particularly valuable for people living in remote communities.
Alternatively the machine could offer a more personalized service at home or in a care home — by serving meals, opening a bottle of water, calling for help in case of a fall or organizing a video call with family and friends.
‘We must get there’
In the Garmisch laboratory, Steinebach sat down at a table equipped with three screens and a joystick as he got ready to test the robot’s progress.
At the other end of the room, a researcher designated as a test model took his spot in front of Garmi, which poses a stethoscope on his chest — an action directed by Steinebach from afar via the joystick.
Medical data immediately appear on the doctor’s screen.
“Imagine if I had had that in my old practice,” Steinebach said, while moving the joystick.
Besides the retired doctor, other medical practitioners also visit the lab regularly to offer their ideas and feedback on the robot.
“It’s like a three-year-old child. We have to teach it everything,” Naceri said.
It’s anyone’s guess when Garmi might be ready on a commercial scale.
But Naceri is convinced that “we must get there, the statistics are clear that it is urgent.”
“From 2030, we must be able to integrate this kind of technology in our society.”
Question of trust
And if it is indeed deployed one day, residents of the Sankt Vinzenz retirement home in Garmisch, a partner of the project, will likely see Garmi whizzing down the corridors.
Just thinking about it made Mrs Rohrer, a 74-year-old resident at the home, smile.
“There are things that a robot can do, for example, serve a drink or bring meals,” she said as Eva Pioskowik, the director of the home, did her nails.
Pioskowik, who battles with staffing shortages on a daily basis, said she did not expect the robot to take the place of health workers.
“But it could allow our staff to spend a bit more time with the residents,” she said.
For Naceri’s team, one of the major challenges is not technological, medical or financial.
Rather, it remains to be seen if most patients will accept the robot.
“They need to trust the robot,” he said. “They need to be able to use it like we use a smartphone today.”
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Це перші національні вибори в країні після незначної поразки партії президента Міло Джукановича від здебільшого просербської коаліції у 2020 році
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За повідомленням російських медіа, він прилетів туди вертольотом і об’їхав місто за кермом машини
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol, according to a report Sunday from the Russian state news agency Tass.
Putin traveled to Crimea on Saturday on the ninth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has demanded Russia’s withdrawal from Crimea and all areas it has occupied since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which entered its second year in February.
Saturday’s trip also came the day after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest, charging him with being personally responsible for the abduction of children from Ukraine in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian leader visited an art center and a children’s center in Crimea.
Meanwhile, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Sunday in its daily intelligence update on Russia’s invasion that the “quiet declaration of an alternative capital” for the Zaporizhzhia Oblast “is likely tacit acknowledgement within the Russian system that its forces are highly unlikely to seize previously planned major objectives in the near future.”
Russian officials published a decree on March 3 declaring Melitopol as the Zaporizhzhia oblast capital. It was designed as a temporary measure, the ministry said, until the city of Zaporizhzhia is controlled by Russia.
However, Russia has never occupied the city of Zaporizhzhia, which is about 35 kilometers from the current front line.
Putin claimed in September to have annexed four oblasts, including Zaporizhzhia, as part of the Russian Federation.
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Brazilian federal agents aboard three helicopters descended on an illegal mining site on Tuesday in the Amazon rainforest. They were met with gunfire, and the shooters escaped, leaving behind an increasingly familiar find for authorities: Starlink internet units.
Starlink, a division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has almost 4,000 low-orbit satellites across the skies, connecting people in remote corners of the Amazon and providing a crucial advantage to Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. The lightweight, high-speed internet system has also proved a new and valuable tool for Brazil’s illegal miners, with reliable service for coordinating logistics, receiving advance warning of law enforcement raids and making payments without flying back to the city.
Agents from the Brazilian environment agency’s special inspection group and the federal highway police rapid response group on Tuesday found one Starlink terminal up and running next to a pit, an officer who participated in the raid told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity over concerns for his personal safety.
They also seized mercury, gold and ammunition, and destroyed fuel and other equipment used by miners in an area known as Ouro Mil, controlled by Brazil´s most feared criminal organization, known as the First Command of the Capital, according to federal investigations.
Since taking office this year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has sought to crack down on environmental violations, particularly illegal mining in Yanomami land, Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory. In recent years, an estimated 20,000 prospectors contaminated vital waterways with mercury used to separate gold. They have disrupted traditional Indigenous life, brought disease and caused widespread famine.
The environment agency, known as Ibama, has seized seven Starlink terminals in Yanomami land over the past five weeks, the agency’s press office said.
Illegal miners have long used satellite internet to communicate and coordinate, but until now that entailed sending a technician, usually by plane, to install a heavy, fixed antenna that cannot be carried off when mining sites move or are raided. And the connection was slow and unstable, especially on rainy days.
Starlink – which first became available in Brazil last year and has spread rapidly – solved those problems. Installation is do-it-yourself, the equipment works even on the move, speed is as fast as in Brazil´s large cities and it works during storms.
Starlink has long viewed the Amazon as an opportunity. That was underscored by Musk’s visit to Brazil last May, when he met with then-President Jair Bolsonaro.
“Super excited to be in Brazil for launch of Starlink for 19,000 unconnected schools in rural areas & environmental monitoring of Amazon,” Musk tweeted at the time.
That project with the government hasn’t advanced, however. SpaceX and the communications ministry haven’t signed any contract, and only three terminals were installed in Amazon schools for a 12-month trial period, the ministry’s press office said in an emailed response to questions.
Nevertheless, Starlink has taken off in the region and begun ushering in change.
In Atalaia do Norte, on the western reaches of the Brazilian Amazon near the borders with Peru and Colombia, Rubeney de Castro Alves installed Starlink at his hotel in December. Now, he can make bank transfers and conduct video calls. He even started bingeing Netflix.
“There are so many new things to watch that I’m not even sleeping,” Alves said, chuckling.
His son once flew all the way to Manaus, the state capital 1,140 kilometers (708 miles) away, just to negotiate with a group of tourists via conference call. Today, internet at his 11-room hotel in Atalaia do Norte is more reliable than in Manaus, and he bought a second terminal for his tour boat to enable communications on its 10-day voyages, Alves said.
With high demand for internet, dozens of the riverside town’s 21,000 residents flock to Alves’ hotel each day. Its balcony is a meeting point for teenagers who spend hours playing online games on their phones.
“It made a revolution in our city,” Alves said.
A world away, in Ukraine, Starlink has yielded advantages on the battlefield in its war with Russia.
Ukraine has received some 24,000 Starlink terminals that allow continued internet in the most vulnerable regions of the southeast even amid ongoing Russian shelling. In large Ukrainian cities, authorities have set up “points of resilience” that offer free internet along with hot beverages.
The benefits of connectivity were immediately apparent to bad actors in the Amazon, Hugo Loss, operations coordinator for Brazil´s environment agency, told the AP in a phone interview.
“This technology is extremely fast and really improves the ability to manage an illegal mine,” Loss said. “You can manage hundreds of mining sites without ever setting foot in one.”
Another official with the environment agency told AP it is just beginning to expel miners from the Yanomami territory and the spread of Starlink has complicated that mission. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about personal safety.
An unauthorized reseller of Starlink in Boa Vista, the gateway for travel into Yanomami territory, has been marketing the units in a WhatsApp group for illegal miners and promising same-day delivery. Her price for a terminal is $1,600— six times what Alves pays for service at his little hotel in Atalaia do Norte. Others are selling the Starlink terminals on Facebook groups for illegal miners, like one called “Fanatics for Prospecting.”
As lawbreakers have gained access to superior internet service, authorities have started using Starlink themselves. Federal agents installed a terminal at a new checkpoint on the Uraricoera River – an important corridor for miners entering Yanomami territory. The official who informed the AP about the Tuesday raid used Starlink to send photos and even heavy video files of their operation.
Brazil’s environment agency told the AP via email that it, along with other federal bodies, is studying how to block Starlink’s signal in illegal mining areas, calling it crucial to stopping the activity.
The AP emailed James Gleeson, SpaceX’s Communications Director, questions about Starlink’s presence in Brazil and its use by illegal miners in remote areas, but received no response.
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The Vatican Museums officially reopened its African and American ethnographic collections Thursday by showcasing intricately restored Rwandan raffia screens that were sent by Catholic missionaries to the Vatican for a 1925 exhibit.
The display at the Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum featured a scientific presentation of the restoration process as well as the research that preceded it, with consultations with Rwanda’s own ethnographic museum, a UCLA graduate student and Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa. It came as ethnographic museums in Europe and North America are grappling with demands from Indigenous groups and former colonies to return artifacts dating from colonial times.
The Rev. Nicola Mappelli, curator of the Anima Mundi museum, declined to comment on calls for restitution of the Vatican’s own ethnographic holdings, saying these were questions for the museum leadership. Speaking to The Associated Press during a visit to the new exhibit, he noted that the Vatican last year returned three mummies to Peru and a human head to Ecuador in 2017.
The museum director, Barbara Jatta, didn’t refer to the issue in her remarks at the opening, emphasizing, however, what she said was the Anima Mundi’s commitment to transparency and “dialogue with different cultures.”
She said the unveiling of the Rwandan panels was a moment to celebrate the reopening of the African and American section of the museum as well as the 50th anniversary of the transfer of the entire collection into the Vatican Museums itself.
The issue of the Vatican’s ethnographic collection came into the spotlight last year, when Indigenous groups from Canada came to the Vatican to receive an apology from Pope Francis for Canada’s church-run residential school system.
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has said the policy of forcibly removing Indigenous children from their families in a bid to assimilate them into Christian Canadian society amounted to “cultural genocide.” The First Nations, Metis and Inuit delegations visited the Anima Mundi and were shown several Indigenous items in the collection, and representatives later said they wanted them back or, at the very least, to have access to them so Indigenous researchers could study them.
The Vatican has long insisted that the basis of its ethnographic collection stemmed from “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, who in 1925 staged a huge exhibit in the Vatican gardens to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized. Catholic missionaries around the globe sent him artifacts, but some researchers today question whether Indigenous peoples were able to consent to such “gifts” given the power dynamics of the time.
The informational labels on the new exhibits emphasize the Vatican’s view. The Canada label, for example, reads: “There is a long tradition of gifts sent by the Indigenous peoples of Canada to the popes,” noting that a headdress in the exhibit was given to Francis during his 2022 trip to Canada by Chief Wilton Littlechild.
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Three senior U.S. security officials held a video call with a group of their Ukrainian counterparts to discuss military aid to Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff said Saturday.
“We discussed the further provision of necessary assistance to our country, in particular vehicles, weapons and ammunition,” Andriy Yermak wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Yermak said he, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, top general Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, and several other senior commanders and officials had attended the meeting Friday.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, top military commander Mark Milley, and the White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan represented the other side.
“The Ukrainian officials provided an update on battlefield conditions and expressed appreciation for the continued provision of U.S. security assistance,” according to a White House statement released Friday.
Yermak did not give details of specific requests to the U.S. side.
The meeting took place as Kyiv seeks to gather sufficient supplies of arms from its Western backers, of which the U.S. has been the most significant, to mount a counter-offensive and try to take back territory captured by Moscow last year.
Yermak added that Zelenskyy had joined the meeting at the end to give his views on the liberation of Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia since its invasion nearly 13 months ago.
“We briefed our allies in detail about the current situation at the front, combat operations in the most difficult areas, as well as the urgent needs of the Ukrainian army,” Yermak said.
Ukrainian forces continued Friday to withstand Russian assaults on the ruined city of Bakhmut, the focal point for eight months of Russian attempts to advance through the industrial Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine bordering Russia.
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Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu visited Cairo on Saturday to push to restore full diplomatic relations between the two countries despite Ankara’s ongoing support for the Muslim Brotherhood group.
During a joint news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Cavusoglu said that Turkey was “using its influence to extend a Black Sea grain deal permitting the export of grain from Ukraine” in its role as mediator between Moscow and Kyiv.
The fact that Shoukry and Cavusoglu held a joint news conference indicates a sea change between the two countries after almost 10 years of mutual recriminations and frazzled relations that followed the ouster from power of the Muslim Brotherhood and former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.
Both diplomats hinted that full diplomatic relations will be restored soon amid a general thaw of hostilities throughout the Middle East following the recent agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to resume diplomatic ties severed in 2016.
One of the key points Cavusoglu stressed to journalists in Cairo was the dangerous ramifications of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the need to avoid a more serious — potentially nuclear — conflict. He said that Ankara has pushed to gain Russia’s agreement on renewing a Black Sea grain deal that allows Ukraine to export grain to various Middle Eastern and Third World countries, including Egypt.
Cavusoglu said that while Ankara is hosting talks over the situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, it also is making an effort with Russia to permit the extension of the grain sale agreement.
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations has said that Moscow agreed to extending the agreement for two months, rather than the 120 days that was requested.
Egyptian political sociologist Said Sadek told VOA there is a move afoot in the Middle East to ease tensions that have been brewing between regional states — such as Egypt and Turkey — and that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is especially eager to demonstrate his ability to bridge the gap between hostile states, both regionally and internationally.
“Turkey wants to say that ‘I am an important card in regional and international political affairs, and I play a very important strategic role in mediating between the East and the West. Despite the fact that I’m a member of NATO, I can also speak to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin when many Western leaders cannot today speak directly to Putin.’”
Paul Sullivan, a Washington-based Middle East analyst on the Atlantic Council, told VOA that an extension of the Black Sea grain agreement is a major relief for Egypt, because “the Russian war on Ukraine has caused great shocks to food, energy and other markets.”
“Egypt’s runaway inflation can be traced back to the war, [creating] a huge burden for Egyptians,” he said. “Even the mothers and dads in neighborhoods in the countryside [understand] how the war has made their lives more difficult.”
Egypt buys much of its grain and sunflower oil from Ukraine and is the world’s largest wheat importer, ahead of even China.
“Keeping the Black Sea deal going,” he argued, “is important for the health and well-being of all Egyptians … [who] have had enough shocks lately [and] need a break from food prices and food insecurity.”
Egyptian Member of Parliament Mustafa Bakri told Saudi-owned al Arabiya TV that restoring normal relations with Turkey is important for several strategic reasons, including “using Turkey’s good relations with Ethiopia to ease tensions over the Renaissance Dam,” which has caused consternation in Egypt because of its potential to disrupt the flow of water on the Nile.
Latent tensions between Cairo and Ankara over who controls parts of Libya and undersea natural gas resources in the eastern Mediterranean also have made relations between the two countries acrimonious, and improved relations between the two countries could avoid potential conflict in those areas, as well.
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Під час перемовин політики обговорили нові рішення для того, щоб Україна була здатною «проводити активні дії та захищатися від російського терору, відновлювати реальну безпеку», наголосив президент
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За словами Дженніфер Скарборо, співробітники імміграційної служби вирішили, що страх перед призовом до армії не відповідає критеріям визначення «достовірного страху»
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A spattering of protests were planned in France over the weekend against President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial pension reform, as garbage continued to reek in the streets of Paris and beyond amid a strike by refuse collectors.
An eerie calm, returned to Paris Saturday after two nights of thousands-strong protests across the French capital, with one flash point at the elegant Place de la Concorde where angry protesters tossed an effigy of Macron into a bonfire to cheers from the crowd. Police dispersed people with tear gas and water cannons and there were hundreds of arrests.
Protesters are trying to pressure lawmakers to bring down Macron’s government and doom an unpopular retirement age increase he’s trying to impose without a vote in the National Assembly.
Further protests were planned Saturday in Paris as well as in the cities of Marseille and Nantes, but they were expected to be smaller than in previous days.
In Paris’ 12th district Saturday, trash piled up meters away from a bakery, wafting fumes encouraged by the mild weather and sunshine. Some Parisian residents buying their weekend baguette blamed Macron’s administration.
“The government should change its position and listen to the people because what is happening is extremely serious. And we are seeing a radicalization,” said Isabelle Vergriette, 64, a psychologist. “The government is largely responsible for this.”
The district’s mayor, Emmanuelle Pierre-Marie, was out and about from the crack of dawn voicing concern in her neighborhood about the consequences of the refuse pile-up, which has become a visual and olfactory symbol of the anti-pension action.
“Food waste is our priority because it is what brings pests to the surface,” said Pierre-Marie. “We are extremely sensitive to the situation. As soon as we have a dumpster truck available, we give priority to the places most concerned, like food markets.”
Strikes in numerous sectors, from transport to energy, are planned for Monday. The Civil Aviation authority asked that 30% of flights be canceled at Orly, Paris’ second airport, and 20% in Marseille.
Laurent Berger, head of the moderate CFDT union, said the retirement reform “must be withdrawn.”
“We condemn violence. … But look at the anger. It’s very strong, even among our ranks,” he said on RMC radio.
On Friday, one day after Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne invoked a special constitutional power to skirt a vote in the chaotic lower chamber, lawmakers on the right and left filed no-confidence motions to be voted on Monday.
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