PARIS: France’s long-standing debate over the Muslim headscarf has landed in a local political race, giving it a national message, with a decision by President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party to withdraw its backing for a candidate because she was pictured in a poster with her head covered.
“I’m frankly pained by the decision,” Mahfoud Benali, the lead candidate on the list for a district in the southern city of Montpellier, said Wednesday of the move by Macron’s party to refuse support for Sara Zemmahi, a quality engineer, from his list.
Zemmahi is shown in a campaign poster with a white headscarf before the June elections. She was on a work trip and not immediately available to comment, Benali said on a TV talk show on Channel 8.
While France bans Muslim headscarves in classrooms, they aren’t forbidden in the public space or on campaign posters.
However, Stanislas Guerini, head of Macron’s LREM party, told radio station RTL Tuesday that, nevertheless, the party wouldn’t back Zemmahi, one of four people in the poster.
“We consider that ostentatious religious signs don’t have their place on posters, whatever the religion,” Guerini said.
The poster for the June 20 and 27 local elections shows two men and two female candidates, including Zemmahi, under the sign “Different But United For You.” On the bottom, it notes the candidates stand for the “presidential majority.”
The decision, which drew criticism from some members of Macron’s own party, underscored the divisiveness of France’s long-standing debate on headscarves, and secularism, and how it may play out in politics before next year’s presidential vote. Macron is expected to try to renew his mandate, and, if so, could find himself in a repeat of the 2017 race, facing off against far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
It was a tweet of the poster by the No.2 official in Le Pen’s National Rally party, Jordan Bardella, that brought the issue into the public eye, along with his remark: “That’s the fight against separatism,” a reference to Macron’s priority effort to rid France of political Islam and extremists.
In a later tweet, Bardella said the Muslim headscarf is “contrary to all our values” and his National Rally party “will forbid it in public.” He was clearly making a reference to an eventual victory of Le Pen in next year’s presidential race.
Macron’s party pulls support from woman in Muslim headscarf
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Macron’s party pulls support from woman in Muslim headscarf
- Sara Zemmahi is shown in a campaign poster with a white headscarf before the June elections
- While France bans Muslim headscarves in classrooms, they aren’t forbidden in the public space or on campaign posters
Canada and China agree to ‘regularize communications’
“Mark Carney, spoke with the Premier of China, Li Qiang. The leaders exchanged views on bilateral relations, including the importance of engagement, and agreed to regularize channels of communication between Canada and China,” it said in a statement.
They also discussed trade and “committed their governments to working together to address the fentanyl crisis.”
Ties between Beijing and Ottawa have been tense in recent years following the arrest of a senior Chinese telecom executive on a US warrant in 2018.
Li told Carney that “in recent years, China-Canada relations have faced unnecessary disturbances and encountered serious difficulties,” Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
He added that China is “willing to work with Canada to jointly uphold multilateralism and free trade” in the face of growing unilateralism and protectionism, Xinhua reported, noting that the call came at Carney’s request.
Both countries have been targeted by US President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes and have condemned them.
UN rights chief demands US withdraw sanctions on ICC judges
- Volker Turk: ‘I call for the prompt reconsideration and withdrawal of these latest measures’
“I call for the prompt reconsideration and withdrawal of these latest measures,” Volker Turk said in a statement to media. “Attacks against judges for performance of their judicial functions, at national or international levels, run directly counter to respect for the rule of law and the equal protection of the law – values for which the US has long stood.”
Lufthansa to restart Tel Aviv flights on June 23
- Lufthansa suspended its flights to Israel’s main airport following a May 4 rocket attack launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and extended the suspension several times since
BERLIN: Germany’s Lufthansa airline group said Friday it would restart flights to and from Tel Aviv on June 23, having suspended them early last month amid the ongoing regional conflict.
The group said in a statement that the decision would affect Lufthansa, Austrian, SWISS, Brussels Airlines Eurowings, ITA and Lufthansa Cargo but that “for operational reasons,” the individual airlines would only resume services “gradually.”
“The decision is based on an extensive security analysis and in coordination with the relevant authorities,” it added.
The group suspended its flights to Israel’s main airport following a May 4 rocket attack launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and extended the suspension several times since.
The missile landed near a car park at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport and injured six people, the first time a missile had penetrated the airport perimeter.
The Houthis have repeatedly launched missiles and drones at Israel since the war in Gaza began in October 2023 with Palestinian militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel.
The Iran-backed Houthis, who say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians, paused their attacks during a two-month Gaza ceasefire that ended in March, but began again after Israel resumed its military campaign in the territory.
The Israeli army has reported several such launches in recent days, with most of the projectiles being intercepted.
Japan allows longer nuclear plant lifespans
- The world’s fourth-largest economy is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 but remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels
- Many of the country’s nuclear reactors were taken offline after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown
TOKYO: A law allowing nuclear reactors to operate beyond 60 years took effect in Japan on Friday, as the government turns back to atomic energy 14 years after the Fukushima catastrophe.
The world’s fourth-largest economy is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 but remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels – partly because many nuclear reactors were taken offline after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown.
The government now plans to increase its reliance on nuclear power, in part to help meet growing energy demand from artificial intelligence and microchip factories.
The 60-year limit was brought in after the 2011 disaster, which was triggered by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan.
Under the amended law, nuclear plants’ operating period may be extended beyond 60 years – in a system similar to extra time in football games – to compensate for stoppages caused by “unforeseeable circumstances,” the government says.
This means, for example, that one reactor in central Japan’s Fukui region, suspended for 12 years after the Fukushima crisis, will now be able to operate up until 2047 – 72 years after its debut, the Asahi Shimbun daily reported.
But operators require approval from Japan’s nuclear safety watchdog for the exemption. The law also includes measures intended to strengthen safety checks at aging reactors.
The legal revision is also aimed at helping Japan better cope with power crunches, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked energy market turmoil.
Japan’s Strategic Energy Plan had previously vowed to “reduce reliance on nuclear power as much as possible.”
But this pledge was dropped from the latest version approved in February, which includes an intention to make renewables the country’s top power source by 2040.
Under the plan, nuclear power will account for around 20 percent of Japan’s energy supply by 2040 – up from 5.6 percent in 2022.
Also in February, Japan pledged to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent in the next decade from 2013 levels, a target decried by campaigners as far short of what was needed under the Paris Agreement to limit global warming.
Japan is the world’s fifth largest single-country emitter of carbon dioxide after China, the United States, India and Russia.
Three Serbs charged over paint attack on France Jewish sites
- France’s Holocaust memorial, three Paris synagogues and a restaurant were vandalized with paint in the night of Friday to Saturday
PARIS: A French judge has charged three Serbs with vandalizing Jewish sites with paint at the weekend “to serve the interests of a foreign power,” a judicial source said Friday.
A source close to the case said investigators suspect Russia is behind the attacks for which the men were charged on Thursday evening.
They had exchanged messages on Telegram with other individuals not yet apprehended, it added.
France’s Holocaust memorial, three Paris synagogues and a restaurant were vandalized with paint in the night of Friday to Saturday, in what the Israeli embassy denounced as a “coordinated anti-Semitic attack.”
The source following the case described the three suspects, two born in 1995 and one born in 2003, as having completed a task motivated by financial compensation, but without being aware of any geopolitical implications.
They were two brothers and a third person who had lived in France for several years, the source said.
They were arrested on Monday in southeast France as they tried to leave the country.
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said he was “deeply disgusted by these heinous acts targeting the Jewish community.”
Israeli’s President Isaac Herzog said Saturday he was “dismayed” by the Paris vandalism, noting that his great-grandfather had been a rabbi at one of the synagogues.
In the run-up to the Summer Olympics in Paris last year, several high-profile stunts intended to influence French public opinion led French officials to point the finger at Moscow.
They included red hands tagged on Paris’s main Holocaust memorial in May 2024.
In October 2023, soon after the Palestinian militant attack on Israel that sparked the latest Gaza war, stars of David were tagged on buildings in the Paris region, with two Moldovans suspected of working for the Russian FSB security service later arrested.
Russia has previously denied any involvement in any of the plots attributed to it by French officials.
