The UK’s King Charles III starts a three-day state visit to France on Wednesday meant to highlight both nations’ friendship, after the trip was postponed in March amid widespread demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension changes.

Charles and Queen Camilla were greeted by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne at Paris-Orly airport, before heading to the city centre for a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in the presence of Macron and his wife, Brigitte.

Both nations’ hymns will be played during the ceremony before a review of French troops and a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to “mark the shared sacrifices of the past and an enduring legacy of cooperation”, according to Buckingham Palace.

The jet fighters of the Patrouille de France and Britain’s Red Arrows, the acrobatic teams of the countries’ air forces, will fly above the monument.

The presidential and royal couples will then head by car to the presidential palace, parading on the Champs-Élysées avenue.

Macron and Charles will hold a bilateral meeting expected to cover topics including Russia’s war in Ukraine and the migration issue as Italy’s southern island of Lampedusa was in recent days overwhelmed by people setting off from Tunisia.

The visit “symbolizes the relationship of friendship and trust” between them since they both ”have in the past worked closely together to protect biodiversity and combat global warming”, the French presidency stressed.

A state dinner on Wednesday in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles in the presence of more than 150 guests will be one of the highlights of the visit.

On Thursday, Charles will address French lawmakers at the Senate, providing a new venue for the king to show off his language skills after he wowed his audience by switching seamlessly between German and English during a speech to Germany’s parliament in March

He will later rejoin Macron in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral to see the ongoing renovation work aimed at reopening the monument by the end of next year.

Charles and Macron will also both attend a reception for British and French business leaders about financing climate-related and biodiversity projects.

The king will end his trip on Friday with a stop in Bordeaux, home to a large British community. He will meet emergency workers and communities affected by the 2022 wildfires in the area and visit the Forêt Experimentale, or experimental forest, a project designed to monitor the impact of climate on urban woodlands.

He will also tour a vineyard, which has pioneered a sustainable approach to wine making.

Source: FRANCE 24

Charles III finally makes it across the Channel from Britain to France this week, six months after rioting and strikes forced the last-minute postponement of his first state visit as king.

The 74-year-old British head of state’s rescheduled three-day trip to Paris and Bordeaux with his wife Queen Camilla, 76, starts on Wednesday, with the itinerary largely unchanged from March.

It includes set-piece ceremonial events with President Emmanuel Macron, whose unpopular pension reforms sparked the civil unrest earlier this year, as well as more informal meetings with the public.

The royal couple, Macron and his wife Brigitte will be officially welcomed at the Arc de Triomphe and lay wreaths of remembrance before a procession down the sweeping Champs-Elysees avenue.

The French leader and First Lady will host Charles and Camilla at a state banquet at Versailles, the palace west of Paris synonymous with French royalty — and the bloody republican revolution of 1789.

Source: France 24

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy will face a trial in 2025 on charges of corruption and receiving illegal funding from former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for his successful 2007 presidential campaign, according to France’s financial prosecutors.

An initial hearing is set for March 7, 2024, the prosecutor’s office said, with the trial itself scheduled to take place between Jan.6, 2025 and April 10, 2025.

The 68-year-old is also fighting various other charges, including “concealment of embezzlement of public funds, passive corruption, and illegal campaign financing, the prosecutor’s office said.

The investigation was sparked by revelations from the investigative website Mediapart which published a document purporting to show that Gaddafi agreed to give Sarkozy up to 50 million euros ($54 million at current rates).

Sarkozy could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted in the case, while he has repeatedly denied the accusations. “There’s not even the smallest inkling of proof,” he said in an interview in 2018.

In addition to Sarkozy, there are 12 others facing the trial among them heavyweights such as Sarkozy’s former right-hand man Claude Gueant, his then head of campaign financing Eric Woerth and former interior minister Brice Hortefeux.

Sarkozy has already been convicted twice for corruption and influence-peddling in separate cases involving attempts to influence a judge and campaign financing.

He lost an appeal in May against a 2021 conviction for corruption and influence peddling. His legal team promised to challenge that at France’s highest court.

Sarkozy championed a NATO-led military intervention in Libya, taking advantage of an uprising against Gaddafi in 2011, which plunged the African country into chaos and infighting continuing to this day.

Before Sarkozy, the only former French leader to be sentenced at trial was his predecessor Jacques Chirac, who received a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for corruption over a fake jobs scandal relating to his time as Paris mayor.

Source: Presstv

France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy has stirred outrage in Kyiv and Paris by suggesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be ended with new referendums in occupied territories.

“The Ukrainians… will want to reconquer what has been unjustly taken from them. But if they can’t manage it completely, the choice will be between a frozen conflict… or taking the high road out with referendums strictly overseen by the international community,” Sarkozy told conservative newspaper Le Figaro on Wednesday.

Speaking particularly about the Crimean peninsula, which Russia claimed to have annexed in 2014, the former French leader said that “any return to the way things were before is an illusion”.

“An incontestable referendum… will be needed to solidify the current state of affairs,” he added.

The ex-president insisted that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was “not irrational” and could be reached with the right kind of diplomacy from Europe, harking back to Moscow’s 2008 invasion of Georgia when Sarkozy said he “convinced (Putin) to withdraw his tanks”.

“Russia is Europe’s neighbour and will remain so,” he said. “Diplomacy, discussion and talks remain the only way to find an acceptable solution. Nothing is possible without compromise.”

Sarkozy added that Ukraine should remain “neutral” and had no place in the EU or NATO.

The remarks drew an immediate response from Kyiv, with Mykhailo Podolyak — a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky — saying they were based on “criminal logic”.

“You cannot trade other people’s territories because you are afraid of someone or because you are friends with criminals,” Podolyak added.

While in office, Sarkozy had “deliberately participated in a criminal conspiracy for Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territories,” he charged.

The ex-president — who has spent much of his time since leaving office battling a slew of legal cases — was also attacked at home in France.

Sarkozy “should be considered a Russian influencer,” said Julien Bayou, a senior Green Party MP, telling broadcaster LCI the interview was “lunatic” and “shocking”.

Bayou recalled an ongoing investigation into Sarkozy’s lucrative ties to a Russian insurance company on suspicion of influence peddling and concealing crimes.

Sarkozy’s former intelligence advisor Jerome Poirot told LCI that the ex-president’s words were “shameful”.

“He has no perspective on what’s happened or on what he did” during his 2007-2012 term, Poirot said, recalling that Sarkozy was one of the key voices against Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO in 2008 — which did not prevent Russia’s later invasions of both countries.

“What were President Sarkozy’s red lines? What was his vision for France’s security? Just giving in to whatever Vladimir Putin wanted?” he asked.

Source: AFP

Congo Republic President Denis Sassou Nguesso called on Friday for an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, saying a peace plan put forward by African leaders deserved attention.

Nguesso spoke at a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said the peace proposal would be discussed later in the day.

Source: France 24

Pope Francis said on Friday there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine as his peace envoy wrapped up three days of talks in Moscow.

“The tragic reality of this war that seems to have no end demands of everyone a common creative effort to imagine and forge paths of peace,” the pope told a religious delegation from the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The Vatican said in a subsequent statement that the pope’s envoy, Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, had finished his consultations in Moscow, where he had met one of President Vladimir Putin’s advisers, Yuri Ushakov, and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill.

“(The visit was) aimed at identifying humanitarian initiatives, which could open roads to peace,” the statement said. It added that further steps would be taken, but gave no details.

Source: France 24

France braced for more angry protests Wednesday after the killing of a teenager by police during a traffic stop that President Emmanuel Macron called “unforgivable”.

The government said it would deploy 2,000 riot police to deal with any unrest, a day after a 17-year-old was shot in the chest by a police officer who then appeared to lie about the circumstances of the killing.

The shooting had already sparked unrest in several Paris suburbs overnight.

Celebrities and politicians expressed outrage and grief at the death of the teenager, with Macron calling it “inexplicable” and “unforgivable”.

The teenager, named only as Nael M., was pulled over by two policemen on Tuesday for breaking traffic rules, prosecutors said.

Police initially reported that one officer shot at the teenager because he was driving his car at him, but this version of events was contradicted by a video circulating on social media and authenticated by AFP.

The footage shows the two policemen actually standing by the side of the stationary car, with one pointing a weapon at the driver. A voice is heard saying “You are going to get a bullet in the head.”

The police officer then appears to fire point blank as the car abruptly drives off.

The car moved a few dozen metres before crashing. The driver died shortly after.

His death sparked immediate protests in Nanterre, a western Paris suburb.

Bins were set alight and a fire broke out at a music school, while police tried to disperse the protesters with tear gas.

Protests then broke out in some neighbouring suburbs.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Wednesday that 31 people had been arrested overnight, 24 police slightly injured and around 40 cars torched.

Darmanin added that 2,000 police would be deployed to deal with any further violence later Wednesday.

‘Revolt for my son’

Government spokesman Olivier Veran told reporters that Macron had expressed “emotion” at the shooting during Wednesday’s weekly cabinet meeting, and called for “calm” on behalf of the government.

Source: AFP

World leaders will gather in Paris this week with ambitions to reimagine global financing for a new era shaped by climate change, as a cascade of crises swamps debt-burdened countries.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact is aimed at building a “new consensus” to meet the interlinked global targets of tackling poverty, curbing planet-heating emissions and protecting nature.

Ideas on the table range from taxation on shipping, fossil fuels or financial transactions, to innovations in lending and a structural rethink of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

France says the two-day summit, which begins on Thursday and will bring together some 50 heads of state and government, was more of a platform for ideas sharing ahead of a cluster of major economic and climate meetings in the coming months.

In particular, the French Presidency said on Friday it wanted to give “political impetus” to the idea of an international tax on carbon emissions from shipping, with hopes of a breakthrough at a meeting of the International Maritime Organization later in June.

With trust in short supply over broken climate financing promises from richer countries, developing nations are looking for tangible progress.

The V20 group of countries on the climate frontlines, which now includes 58 member nations, has said restructuring the global financial system to align with climate targets must be completed by 2030.

“It’s great we are talking about the international financial architecture, but we have to see timelines and we have not seen those timelines,” Sarah Jane Ahmed, V20 global lead and finance adviser, told AFP.

“If we’re starting to do this stuff in the 2030s, it’s going to be so much more expensive and the trade-offs are going to be far steeper.”

Leaders arriving in Paris to champion that message include Kenyan President William Ruto and Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo, as well as Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who has become a powerful advocate for reform and will speak at the summit opening on Thursday.

Other attendees include Chinese Premier Li Qiang, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen.

Ajay Banga is also expected in Paris, in his first international meeting since taking the helm of the World Bank, promising to embrace change.

With fewer leaders from wealthier countries attending, Friederike Roder of Global Citizen said the conference could fall short of hopes for a show of unity. 

“We need everyone coming together,” she told AFP, stressing that major economies are needed to agree reforms.

‘Failed’

Economies have been battered by successive shocks in recent years, including Covid-19, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, spiking inflation and the increasingly expensive impacts of weather disasters intensified by global warming.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres has said the pandemic and its aftermath amounted to a “stress test” for a financial system that was set up nearly eight decades ago.

“It largely failed,” he said earlier this month, adding that 52 developing countries are in, or near, debt distress.

The World Bank plans to increase its lending capacity by $50 billion over 10 years.

Last week it also called for drastic reform to rechannel trillions of dollars in harmful and unnecessary subsidies for fossil fuels, agriculture and fishing into action on climate and nature.

Currently the world is far off track in its aims to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, risking enormous costs for nature, human societies and the global economy.

Last year, a UN experts committee said developing countries other than China will need to spend more than $2 trillion a year by 2030 on development and to respond to the climate and biodiversity crises.

Ambition ‘gap’

Roder said one key signal from the Paris summit would be for richer nations to show they can fulfil existing promises, like the still-unmet pledge of $100 billion annually by 2020 to help developing nations cut emissions and boost climate resilience.

Increasing the money available — potentially using hundreds of billions of the IMF’s liquidity-boosting “special drawing rights” — is among the calls from emerging economies, as well as a new lending strategy.

One idea championed by Barbados is a disaster clause so loan repayments can be paused for two years in the wake of a climate disaster or pandemic.

Another key point of debate is the scale of existing debts.

That will also focus attention on China, which has become a significant lender to African countries, but has been reluctant to participate in the common framework for debt restructuring.

The Paris summit can bring a lot of issues “out of their niche”, said Louis-Nicolas Jandeaux of Oxfam, noting, however, “a gap between the initial stated ambition of the summit and the reality”.

Source: AFP

Silvio Berlusconi was honored Wednesday with a state funeral in Milan’s Duomo cathedral and a day of national mourning, as his legacy — positive or negative — was being hotly debated among Italians.

Tens of thousands of people outside the Duomo and within erupted in applause as a sign of respect as Berlusconi’s flower-draped casket was hoisted out of the hearse and into the cathedral. His children and companion teared up as the casket was placed in front of the altar.

Most Italians identify Berlusconi, a media mogul, soccer entrepreneur and three-time former premier, as the most influential figure in Italy over recent decades. But they remain sharply divided on whether his influence was for the better or worse, extending to whether the three-time former premier merits all the fuss and ceremony.

Berlusconi died at the age of 86 on Monday in a Milan hospital where he was being treated for chronic leukemia. His family held a private wake Tuesday at one of Berlusconi’s villas near Milan, the city where he made his billions as the head of a media empire before entering politics in 1994.

Political opponents are questioning not only the decisions of Premier Giorgia Meloni’s government to hold a state funeral — an honor that can be afforded all former premiers — but to also declare a national day of mourning, which is more rarely invoked. In the case of the latter, flags are flown at half-staff and all political events not involving charity are put on hold, but it is otherwise business as usual.

“Berlusconi split Italy, he insulted adversaries for 30 years, he criminalized the magistrates and he didn’t recognize laws. What are we talking about?” journalist Marco Travaglio, a long-time Berlusconi critic and co-founder of the il Fatto Quotidiano daily, told private La7 TV on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, thousands of Italians filled the piazza outside Milan’s Duomo to follow the funeral on two giant video screens while carabinieri in full ceremonial regalia awaited the arrival of the hearse bearing Berlusconi’s casket outside. Family members, political allies and opponents meanwhile were gathering inside.

Hungarian President Viktor Orban and Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, were among the highest-ranking foreign dignitaries attending.

Meloni, who got her first government experience as a minister in a Berlusconi coalition, also will attend, along with League leader Matteo Salvini, whose party has long been allied with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. Opposition politicians also are expected in a show of respect for a political figure with whom many had sparred.

Barbara Cacellari, a Forza Italia councilwoman and one-time candidate for the European Parliament, said protests over how to officially mark Berlusconi’s death showed a lack of respect.

“The person must be respected per se. He is a person who represents the history of this country,” she said outside the cathedral, adding: “No one is without stains, I think.”

Berlusconi is widely recognized as a precursor to the type of populist politics that later would bring Donald Trump to power in the United States, both using their high profile as businessmen to springboard into the political arena, upending politics as usual along the way.

Supporters of Berlusconi’s legacy cite his success in unifying the Italian center-right after the collapse of the post-war political landscape with the 1990s “Clean Hands” corruption scandal. They also see his years as leader as periods of stabilization, after years of quickly rotating governments, while admiring his bold rule-breaking and irreverence, perhaps especially in the face of other global leaders.

“He did many big and small things, while suffering a mediatic and judicial aggression that only Craxi before him had endured,’’ Stefania Craxi, a senator in Berlusconi’s party and the daughter of late Italian leader Bettino Craxi told private TV La7 on Tuesday. Her father died in exile in Tunisia in 2000 after being convicted in absentia for involvement in illegal party financing.

Berlusconi’s detractors’ list of political damage is long, including conflicts of interest relating to his media empire, dozens of trials mostly for business dealings, revelations of sex-fueled bunga-bunga parties at his villa near Milan and questionable associations, including his enduring friendship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

“He is not a leader who helped us grow,’’ said Beppe Severgnini, a long-time foreign correspondent and writer for Corriere della Sera. “He tapped all of our weaknesses: moral, fiscal, sexual, everything.”

Source: AP

At least 59 migrants drowned early on Wednesday and more were feared missing when their boat capsized and sank off Greece, the country’s coast guard said.

By midday, 104 were rescued, but it remained unclear how many were on board when the vessel went under, authorities said.

The shipwreck was the deadliest off Greece this year.

The coast guard said the boat, which was en route to Italy, was spotted in international waters late on Tuesday by an aircraft belonging to EU border agency Frontex and two nearby vessels, around 50 miles (80 km) southwest of the town of Pylos in southern Greece.

Death tolls has now raised to 59, and is expected to continue to increase throughout the day.

The survivors of the shipwreck, around 100 people, have arrived in Kalamata, they had been picked up by a Cayman Islands registered yacht named Mayan Queen IV.

It said those on board had refused assistance offered by Greek authorities late on Tuesday. A few hours later the boat capsized and sank, triggering a search and rescue operation.

State broadcaster ERT said it had sailed from the Libyan town of Tobruk, which lies south of the Greek island of Crete, with most on board being young men in their 20s. Their nationalities, as well as where the boat had sailed from, were not immediately confirmed by Greek authorities.

Survivors were taken to the town of Kalamata, the authorities said.

Greece is one of the main routes into the European Union for refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Most cross to Greek islands from nearby Turkey, but a growing number of boats also undertake a longer, and more dangerous journey from Turkey to Italy via Greece.

About 72,000 refugees and migrants have arrived so far this years in Europe’s frontline countries Italy, Spain, Greece, Malta and Cyprus, according to United Nations data, with the majority landing in Italy.

Source: Reuters