Pakistan human rights group have condemned violence and harassment against women from minority communities in the country despite amendments in its law,
Pakistan human rights group have condemned violence and harassment against women from minority communities in the country despite amendments in its law,
JUNE 20: He had called on voters to deliver a solid majority.
But his centrist coalition lost dozens of seats in an election that has left French politics fragmented.
The prime minister he had only recently appointed, Elisabeth Borne, said the situation was unprecedented.
A storm hit Paris as she returned to her Matignon residence from a long meeting at the presidential Élysée palace to say that modern France had never seen a National Assembly like this one.
"This situation represents a risk for our country, given the risks we're facing nationally and internationally," she said. "We will work as of tomorrow to build a working majority."
That seems a stretch when the two other biggest groups in the Assembly are not remotely interested in collaboration. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire was adamant that France was not ungovernable, but said it was going to require a lot of imagination.
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon was enjoying his success in bringing together mainstream parties from the left with Communists and Greens into an alliance called Nupes.
He told supporters that the presidential party had suffered a total rout and every possibility was now in their hands.
Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally party were also in jubilant mood after turning eight seats into 89. The people had spoken, she said: Emmanuel's Macron's adventure was over and he had been consigned to a minority government.
If the prime minister was looking to the right-wing Republicans to help build a working majority, their message was not immediately encouraging. Party chairman Christian Jacob said the result was a "stinging failure" for a president now paying for cynically weaponising France's extremes.
He's not Jupiter any more, said Dominique Rousseau, professor of constitutional law, referring to an earlier nickname ridiculing Mr Macron's supposed desire for power.
"For Mr Macron these five years will be all about negotiations and parliamentary compromise," he told AFP.
It was all so different in April, when he defeated Marine Le Pen convincingly and won a second term as president. He had more than 300 seats, but to maintain his outright majority he needed 289 - and fell well short with 245.
More than half of voters abstained, with a turnout of 46.23%.
Among the ministers to lose their seats was Health Minister Brigitte Bourguignon, who lost to her far-right opponent by just 56 votes. Green Transition Minister Amélie de Montchalin was also defeated, but another key figure, Europe Minister Clément Beaune, survived despite losing in the first round.
One of Mr Macron's closest allies, the president of the Assembly Richard Ferrand, conceded victory to his Nupes rival Mélanie Thomin. Another casualty came on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where a secretary of state, Justine Benin, lost her seat.In a rousing speech to his supporters, Mr Mélenchon said the result marked the moral failure of "Macronie", accusing the ruling party of enabling the far right by refusing to give clear guidance in seats where the left was running head to head with Marine Le Pen's party.
In a tacit admission that he was unlikely to achieve his ambition of prime minister, the far-left leader said he was now changing his role in battle: "My commitment is and will remain at the front of your ranks until my final breath if you want."
But as he was not running for a seat, he will not feature in the National Assembly.
Five years ago, Emmanuel Macron harnessed a wave of optimism, bringing in a fresh cohort of MPs from civil society. The new faces this time have emerged from Nupes and the National Rally.
Among the MPs elected for Nupes, which stands for New Ecological and Social Popular Union, is a hotel chambermaid who led her colleagues in a fight for better pay and conditions. Rachel Keke had vowed to dance in the Assembly if she succeeded in defeating a former sports minister.
Which reforms are at risk?
President Macron has promised to tackle the cost of living crisis, but his rivals have very different ideas on how to go about it. His big-ticket proposals were reforming benefits, cutting taxes and raising the retirement age gradually from 62 to 65.
His pension age reform will be particularly hard to get through, although he will attract support from the Republicans.
Then there are proposals to move towards carbon neutrality and full employment. And he recently offered a "new method" of governing with greater involvement from civil society, proposing a National Council for Refoundation made up of local people to make France more democratic.
The sexual and gender minority community has expressed their reservations over the discriminatory provisions in the proposed citizenship law that demands proof of gender transformation to obtain new citizenship certificate with the gender identity of their choice. The provision in the proposed citizenship amendment bill requires applicants to present medical evidence of sex reassignment surgery to obtain citizenship with a changed gender. The current provision of Citizenship Act allows individual to choose male, female or other as their sex on the citizenship certificate.
Sweden's first-ever female prime minister has resigned just hours after she was appointed, reported BBC.
Magdalena Andersson, was announced as the leader on Wednesday but resigned after her coalition partner quit the government and her budget failed to pass.
Instead, parliament voted for a budget drawn-up by the opposition which includes the anti-immigrant far-right.
"I have told the speaker that I wish to resign," Ms Andersson told reporters.
Her coalition partner, the Greens Party said it could not accept a budget "drafted for the first time with the far-right".
Ms Andersson said that she hoped to try to become prime minister again as a single party government leader.
"There is a constitutional practice that a coalition government should resign when one party quits," the Social Democrat said on Wednesday. "I don't want to lead a government whose legitimacy will be questioned.
The speaker of parliament said he would contact party leaders on the next move.
Ms Andersson was elected as prime minister earlier on Wednesday because under Swedish law, she only needed a majority of MPs not to vote against her.
A hundred years after Swedish women were given the vote, the 54-year-old Social Democrat leader was given a standing ovation by sections of the parliament, or Riksdag.
Her election at the head of a minority government followed an 11th-hour deal with the opposition Left party, in exchange for higher pensions for many Swedes. She also secured the support of coalition partner the Greens.
Of the 349 members of the Riksdag, 174 voted against her. But on top of the 117 MPs who backed Ms Andersson, a further 57 abstained, giving her victory by a single vote.
A former junior swimming champion from the university city of Uppsala, she began her political career in 1996 as political adviser to then-Prime Minister Goran Persson. She has spent the past seven years as finance minister.
Before MPs backed Magdalena Andersson, Sweden was the only Nordic state never to have a woman as PM.
LONDON, May 5: Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy industrialized nations gathered Tuesday in London for their first face-to-face meeting in more than two years, with the issue of whether to challenge or coax a surging China high on the agenda.
Host nation Britain is keen to show that the rich countries' club still has clout in a fast-changing world, and has warned that the increasingly aggressive stances of Russia, China and Iran pose a challenge to democratic societies and the international rule of law.
U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the meeting “demonstrates diplomacy is back.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken underscored the United States' re-embrace of its international allies since President Joe Biden replaced his “America-first” predecessor, Donald Trump.
Blinken said engaging with China “from a position of strength ... means actually working with allies and partners, not disparaging them.”
“It means leaning in and engaging in the vast array of multilateral and international organizations because that’s where so many of the rules are made. That’s where the norms are shaped," he said. “And if we’re not leaning in, we know that Beijing is likely to be trying to do so in our place.”
At the two-day meeting, top diplomats from the U.K., the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan also were to discuss the military coup in Myanmar, the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the Tigray crisis in Ethiopia and the precarious situation in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops and their NATO allies are winding down a two-decade deployment.
The U.K. Foreign Office said the group would also discuss “Russia’s ongoing malign activity,” including Moscow's earlier troop buildup on the border with Ukraine and the imprisonment of opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
While the G-7 members likely can agree in broad terms to condemn Navalny's imprisonment or Beijing's repression of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, there are differences over how to relate to countries such as China and Russia that will have to be smoothed out in any final communique on Wednesday.
Asked what message the group would send to authoritarian regimes, Raab said the G-7 believed “in keeping trade open. We believe in standing up for open societies, for human rights and democracy. We believe in safeguarding and promoting public good.”
The G-7 ministers will also try to agree on a way to make coronavirus vaccines available around the globe in the long term. But for now, wealthy countries are reluctant to give up precious stocks until they have inoculated their own people.
The ministers wore face masks and greeted one another with arm and elbow bumps as they arrived at Lancaster House, a grand former stately home in central London. Plastic screens between participants and on-site coronavirus tests were among measures intended to make the venue COVID-secure.
The British government, which holds the G-7 presidency this year, invited the foreign ministers of Australia, India, South Korea and South Africa to join parts of the meeting, including Tuesday evening's formal dinner. The guest list was intended to underline the G-7’s support for democracies, as well as the U.K. government’s attempts to build stronger ties with Asia in the wake of the country’s departure from the European Union.
Britain's Conservative-led government hopes the resumption of in-person G-7 meetings — after more than a year of disruption by the coronavirus pandemic — will give the group a jolt of energy and bolster attempts to forge a post-Brexit “Global Britain” role for the U.K.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to host the other G-7 leaders at a summit in Cornwall, England, in June.
Opposition politicians and international aid organizations say the goal of Britain playing a bigger role in world affairs is undermined by the government's decision to slash its foreign aid budget from 0.7% of gross domestic product to 0.5% because of the economic hit from the pandemic.
Raab said the aid cuts were a “difficult decision” but insisted Britain would become “an even greater force for good in the world.”
