Category Archives: Emmanuel Macron

Protests grow across Muslim world against French president Emmanuel Macron – video report

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Demonstrations are growing across the Muslim world against the French president Emmanuel Macron and his perceived attacks on Islam and the prophet Muhammad.

In Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, about 40,000 people were involved in a demonstration organised by the country’s largest Islamist party, while protests took place in Pakistan, Palestine, Iran and Afghanistan.

French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished cartoons of Muhammad in September, before the trial of 14 people accused of involvement in a terrorist attack against the publication’s offices in 2015 for publishing the same caricatures.

Macron has defended the publication, pledged to fight ‘Islamist separatists’ and said his country ‘would not give up cartoons’

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France expected to impose four-week national lockdown

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Emmanuel Macron reportedly planning move after record number of new Covid cases

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is expected to impose a new four-week national lockdown to halt the spread of Covid-19, according to French media.

The announcement would follow record numbers of new cases in France that have put pressure on hospitals, and a startling rise in coronavirus deaths.

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Anger towards Emmanuel Macron grows in Muslim world

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Protests take place in several countries against French president in aftermath of crackdown

On the front page of a hardline Iranian newspaper, he was the “Demon of Paris”. In the streets of Dhaka he was decried as a leader who “worships Satan”. Outside Baghdad’s French embassy, a likeness of Emmanuel Macron was burned along with France’s flag.

Rage is growing across the Muslim world at the French president and his perceived attacks on Islam and the prophet Muhammad, leading to calls for boycotts of the French products and security warnings for France’s citizens in majority-Muslim states.

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Muslim backlash against Macron gathers pace after police raids

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Iran calls Paris’s response to teacher’s killing ‘unwise’ amid protests across Muslim world

The backlash against Emmanuel Macron following his insistence that publication of caricatures of the prophet Muhammad is fundamental to freedom of speech has spread, with angry international protests, cyber-attacks against French websites and warnings that the president’s response is “unwise”.

Muslims in France – and elsewhere – are also furious at what they claim is a heavy-handed government clampdown on their communities in the wake of the killing 11 days ago of the high school teacher Samuel Paty.

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Macron’s clash with Islam sends jolt through France’s long debate about secularism

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President has become a hate figure in Islamic world over response to death of Samuel Paty

On 6 October, when Samuel Paty, a popular history and geography teacher at a school in a quiet Paris suburb, presented a copy of the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that provoked the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine five years ago, he self-evidently had no idea of the tragic consequence for his own life, French society or France’s relations with the Islamic world. What was intended as a classroom exploration of the freedom of thought has turned into a mini-clash of civilisations.

Ten days later, Paty was killed, allegedly by a Russian-born teenager of Chechen heritage, sending an electric shock into France’s long debate about secularism, or laïcité. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, responded by saying France would not “renounce the caricatures”.

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Turkey’s Erdoğan questions Macron’s mental state – video

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Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested Emmanuel Macron, his French counterpart needed mental health treatment, the latest sign of a growing backlash in the Islamic world sparked by Macron’s claim that Islam is in crisis.

Ankara has been particularly incensed by a campaign championed by Macron to protect France’s secular values against radical Islam, a debate given fresh impetus by the murder of a teacher who showed his class a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad

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France recalls ambassador to Turkey after Erdoğan questions Macron’s mental state

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Macron’s office says ‘rudeness is not a method’ after Turkish president calls for counterpart to have ‘mental checks’

France said it would recall its envoy to Turkey for consultations following “unacceptable” comments by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, that suggested his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, needed a mental health check-up.

In the highly unusual move, a French presidential official said the French ambassador to Turkey was being recalled from Ankara for consultations and would meet Macron to discuss the situation after Erdoğan’s outburst.

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EU seeks Amazon protections pledge from Bolsonaro in push to ratify trade deal

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Brazilian president’s stance on deforestation remains stumbling block for South America agreement

Brussels is in talks with Brazil’s far-right nationalist president, Jair Bolsonaro, over commitments on the future of the Amazon as it seeks to persuade Emmanuel Macron and other EU leaders and parliaments to ratify the trade deal the bloc has negotiated with South America.

The ratification of the draft trade agreement between the EU and the “Mercosur” or Southern Common Market free-trade zone – which spans Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina – has been in doubt almost since it was announced last June.

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Brexit negotiations expected to resume despite UK’s tough rhetoric

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Michael Gove confirms British government’s door to re-engagement with Brussels is ‘ajar’

Brussels expects the Brexit negotiations to resume within days, as Michael Gove confirmed that despite Downing Street’s tough rhetoric the door remained “ajar” on re-engagement.

The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, will hold a video conference call with his British counterpart, David Frost, on Monday afternoon to discuss the structure of future talks.

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Beheading of French teacher an attack on ‘the republic and its values’, says Macron – video

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The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said France’s battle against Islamist terrorism is 'existential' after the killing of Samuel Paty, a teacher who reportedly showed his class a caricature of the prophet Muhammad.

Macron, who visited the site of the killing near a school in a Paris suburb, said the 47-year-old victim had been 'assassinated' and that his killer sought to 'attack the republic and its values'. French police shot a man dead after the attack and officials swiftly announced the killing was being investigated by an anti-terrorism prosecutor.

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No 10 startled by EU insistence that UK accept Brexit trade terms

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Bloc’s stance apparently taken as challenge to Boris Johnson’s threat to walk out on talks

Downing Street reacted in dismay as Emmanuel Macron led EU leaders in warning Boris Johnson that he must swallow the bloc’s conditions, in what appeared to be taken as a direct challenge to the British prime minister’s threat to walk out on the talks.

At a summit in Brussels, the EU proposed a further “two to three weeks” of negotiations but Europe’s heads of state and government offered Johnson little succour, demanding that he alone needed to “make the necessary moves to make an agreement possible”.

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France: Macron announces 9pm curfew for Paris and eight other cities – video

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France will impose a nightly curfew on almost one-third of the country's 67 million people to tackle a resurgence in coronavirus cases, but a new national lockdown is not envisaged, Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday. The French president announced the curfew, which will take effect from Saturday and run each night from 9pm to 6am the following morning, shortly after the government declared a new public health state of emergency.

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Johnson and Macron hold talks on coronavirus and Brexit

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UK and French leaders spoke as British and EU negotiating teams engage in eleventh-hour trade deal meetings

Boris Johnson has held Brexit telephone talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as the clock ticks down to the deadline for a deal.

The two leaders spoke on Saturday with seemingly just days remaining for an agreement on a future trade deal to be reached, after UK and EU negotiating teams met on Friday for what sources said was a positive meeting.

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Macron outlines new law to prevent Islamic ‘separatism’ in France

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Local officials will get extra powers to fight radicalism and social problems will be tackled

Emmanuel Macron has announced a law against religious “separatism” aimed at freeing Islam in France from “foreign influences”.

In a long-awaited declaration, the French president outlined new measures to “defend the republic and its values and ensure it respects its promises of equality and emancipation”.

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France divided over calls for Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine to be reburied in Panthéon

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Petition says the poets, who were lovers as young men, were ‘the French Oscar Wildes’ and deserve to rest in the mausoleum

France’s cultural elite are split over whether the remains of two of the country’s greatest poets, Arthur Rimbaud and his lover Paul Verlaine, should be dug up and re-interred in the Panthéon in Paris.

The secular mausoleum is home to French greats including Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile Zola, Alexandre Dumas and Marie Curie. Now a petition signed by more than 5,000 people, including culture minister Roselyne Bachelot and a host of her predecessors, is calling on president Emmanuel Macron to allow Rimbaud and Verlaine to join them.

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Belarus accuses western nations of sowing ‘chaos and anarchy’

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Country’s foreign minister attacks western ‘interference’, as Emmanuel Macron says president Lukashenko must go

Belarus’s foreign minister, Vladimir Makei, has accused western countries of attempting to sow “chaos and anarchy” in the former Soviet republic, which has been rocked by street protests since a contested election last month that was claimed by President Alexander Lukashenko.

“We are seeing attempts to destabilise the situation in the country,” Makei told the UN general assembly in a video statement on Saturday. “Interference in our internal affairs, sanctions and other restrictions on Belarus will have the opposite effect, and are harmful for absolutely everyone.”

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Lebanon’s leader Mustapha Adib steps down as hopes for reform collapse

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The acting prime minister failed to form a government from among the feuding political blocs that have led the country to ruin

Lebanon’s prime minister designate, Mustapha Adib, has stood down after failing to form a government in a month of negotiations, in a further blow to a country reeling under the weight of multiple crises.

The talks were brought down by the issue of who would nominate key cabinet ministers, particularly the finance minister. The government is made up of feuding political blocs, and the powerful Shia groups Hezbollah and Amal insisted on controlling the finance ministry, despite demands for a technocratic government that could

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Covid-19: Marseille and Bordeaux announce new restrictions

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New measures to limit public gatherings come as number of cases surges

Authorities in Bordeaux and Marseille have announced strict new measures to limit public gatherings in an effort to rein in a rapid surge in Covid-19 cases that risks overwhelming the two French cities’ hospitals.

“The virus has accelerated despite the obligation to wear a mask introduced earlier this summer,” Christophe Mirmand, the government’s top official in greater Marseille area, said on Monday. “We need to take action to ensure health services can cope.”

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Erdoğan warns Macron: ‘Don’t mess with Turkey’

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Turkish leader hits back after criticism from French president over warship deployment

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Saturday warned his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, “not to mess” with Turkey, as tensions between the Nato allies escalated.

“Don’t mess with the Turkish people. Don’t mess with Turkey,” Erdoğan said during a televised speech in Istanbul on the 40th anniversary of the 1980 military coup.

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Macron visits Lebanese singer in bid to change political soundtrack

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French leader meets Fairouz, 85, amid frustration with ruling class unwilling to change

The French president had tried it all before: rebuking his counterpart, cajoling ministers, withholding aid and imploring the Lebanese ruling class to change its ways in order to save the country.

This time Emmanuel Macron arrived in Beirut with a different approach – a visit to one of the country’s most unifying figures. His first port of call was to the home of the illustrious singer, Fairouz, whose songs of loss and lament have been a soundtrack to Lebanese life for more than 50 years.

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