PARIS: The good news keeps coming for the French economy: data published Thursday showed unemployment at its lowest level since 2009 while the head of the IMF praised recent reforms by President Emmanuel Macron.
Long seen as the weakest of Europe’s major economies, French GDP is expanding at its highest rate in years, with optimism underpinned by the pro-business agenda being implemented by the government.
Statistics agency INSEE said Thursday that unemployment had fallen to 8.9 percent nation-wide in the final quarter of 2017, down 0.7 percentage points to its lowest level since 2009.
The uptick in the jobs market has led some companies to warn about skills shortages, a dramatic turnaround for an economy that has consistently lagged its better performing neighbors.
“We’ve had new job creation at a very high level in 2017 which was sufficient to reduce unemployment,” commented economist Bruno Ducoudre at the OFCE economic institute.
On a day of bumper announcements, online giant Amazon also said that it planned to create 2,000 new jobs in France in 2018, most of them in its warehouses.
Economists stress that the improving conditions are partly down to stronger growth across Europe generally, as well as reforms launched by previous president Francois Hollande.
But the head of the International Monetary Fund emphasised Thursday the role of recent policy changes under Macron.
“We need to recognize clearly the quality and the ambition of the reforms that have been started,” Christine Lagarde said on Thursday during a visit to the economy ministry in Paris.
Macron, a 40-year-old centrist elected in May, has promised a “transformation” of the economy and social system to make France an easier place to start companies and more attractive for investors.
His first annual budget cut taxes on companies and profits on financial investments, while his government is preparing a second wave of reforms focused on improving training for workers and the unemployed.
Economic growth is forecast to be around 2.0 percent in 2018, while expansion of 1.9 percent in 2017 was the highest level in six years, according to INSEE.
Tackling mass unemployment is Macron’s number one priority, with joblessness a scourge for high-poverty areas around major cities and felt particularly acutely by the under 25s.
Around 20 percent of young people are out of work, according to the INSEE figures, down from around 25 percent.
Macron has promised to bring the overall unemployment level down to 7.0 percent by the end of his term in 2022, but early complaints about skills shortages underline the scale of the task.
France has high levels of long-term unemployed workers who are unskilled, making them unattractive for companies looking to take on new staff.
A survey by INSEE in October found that half of companies in the construction sector were having difficulty finding skilled labor, while 38 percent of industrial groups faced the same problem.
“Everything is just starting for us,” Economy Minister Economy Minister Bruno commented as he played down the unemployment figures. “I think that for results, notably on the jobs front, we will need two years.”
Despite the improving economy, Macron’s approval ratings remain low and volatile, with a new survey out on Wednesday showing him down five points in February to 35 percent.
This makes him less popular than his predecessor Francois Hollande at the same point in his term in office, the polling group Ispos said.
Other surveys have shown that French people are worried about their own household budgets and are not convinced that Macron’s reforms will deliver improvements in their own lives.
The young president, a former investment banker, has been labelled the “president of the rich” by opponents to his pro-business agenda that has so far favored company owners.
“I’m not obsessed at this stage whether people have confidence in me or not for their purchasing power because if someone asks you a question about it, we’re all the same, we want more,” Macron told reporters on Tuesday.
He ruled out the “quick response” favored by French governments in the past which would see increased public spending or tax cuts financed by debt.
France met EU rules on its public finances for the first time in a decade last year by reporting a deficit under 3.0 percent of GDP, but the country’s public finance watchdog has urged the government to go further.
“We need to decrease our debt because it makes us vulnerable to an increase in interest rates,” Le Maire added on Thursday, saying that increased tax revenues generated by additional growth in 2018 would be used for this purpose.
Macron praised as French economy powers ahead
Macron praised as French economy powers ahead
Students erect pro-Palestinian camp at Ireland’s Trinity College
DUBLIN: Students at Trinity College Dublin protesting Israel’s war in Gaza have built an encampment that forced the university to restrict campus access on Saturday and close the Book of Kells exhibition, one of Ireland’s top tourist attractions.
The camp was set up late on Friday after Trinity College’s students’ union said it had been fined 214,000 euros ($230,000) by the university for financial losses incurred due to protests in recent months not exclusively regarding the war in Gaza.
Students’ union President Laszlo Molnarfia posted a photograph of benches piled up in front of the entrance to the building where the Book of Kells is housed on the X social media platform on Friday. The illuminated manuscript book was created by Celtic monks in about 800 A.D..
“The Book of Kells is now closed indefinitely,” he said in the post.
Trinity College said it had restricted access to the campus to students, staff and residents to ensure safety and that the Book of Kells exhibition would be closed on Saturday.
Similar to the student occupations sweeping US campuses, protesters at Trinity College are demanding that Ireland’s oldest university cut ties with Israeli universities and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Protests at universities elsewhere have included Australia and Canada.
In a statement last week, the head of the university, Linda Doyle, said Trinity College’s was reviewing its investments in a portfolio of companies and that decisions on whether to work with Israeli institutions rested with individual academics.
More than
34,600 Palestinians
have been killed in Israel’s seven-month-old assault on the Gaza Strip, say health officials in the Hamas-ruled enclave. The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Ireland has long been a champion of Palestinian rights, and the government has pledged to formally recognize Palestine as a state soon.
($1 = 0.9295 euros)
India opposition social media chief arrested over doctored video
- Congress party’s Arun Reddy was detained in connection with the edited footage, showing Interior minister Amit Shah
- Shah is often referred to as the second-most powerful man in India after Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi
NEW DELHI: Indian police said Saturday they had arrested the social media chief of the country’s main opposition party over accusations he doctored a widely shared video during an ongoing national election.
The Congress party’s Arun Reddy was detained late Friday in connection with the edited footage, which falsely shows India’s powerful interior minister Amit Shah vowing in a campaign speech to end affirmative action policies for millions of poor and low-caste Indians.
Shah is often referred to as the second-most powerful man in India after Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the pair have been close political allies for decades.
Reddy “was arrested yesterday on investigation about... a doctored video of the home minister,” deputy commissioner of Delhi police Hemant Tiwari told AFP.
“We produced him in the court and he is in police custody.”
Congress spokesperson Shama Mohamed confirmed Reddy’s arrest to AFP but denied he was responsible for creating or publishing the clip.
“He is not involved in any doctored video. We are supporting him,” she said.
Authorities seized Reddy’s electronic devices for forensic verification, the Indian Express newspaper reported Saturday, quoting an unnamed police officer who accused Reddy of having “cropped and edited” the video.
Shah has been campaigning on behalf of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is widely expected to win a third term when India’s six-week election concludes next month.
Analysts have long expected Modi to triumph against a fractious alliance of Congress and more than two dozen parties that have yet to name a candidate for prime minister.
His prospects have been further bolstered by several criminal investigations into his opponents and a tax investigation this year that froze Congress’s bank accounts.
Opposition figures and human rights organizations have accused Modi’s government of orchestrating the probes to weaken rivals.
Modi’s government remains widely popular a decade after coming to power, in large part due to its positioning of the nation’s majority Hindu faith at the center of its politics despite India’s officially secular constitution.
That in turn has left India’s 220 million-strong Muslim community feeling threatened by the rise of Hindu nationalist fervor.
Since voting began last month, both Modi and Shah have stepped up campaign rhetoric on India’s principal religious divide in an effort to rally voters.
In the original campaign speech at the center of the police investigation against Reddy, Shah vows to end affirmative action measures for Muslims established in the southern state of Telangana.
Modi last month used a campaign rally to refer to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children,” prompting condemnation and an official complaint to election authorities by Congress.
But the prime minister has not been sanctioned for his remarks despite election rules prohibiting campaigning on “communal feelings” such as religion, prompting frustration from the opposition camp.
“Where is the election commission when the Prime Minister is spewing hate every day?” Shama said.
India’s foreign minister rejects Biden’s ‘xenophobia’ comment
NEW DELHI: Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar rejected US President Joe Biden’s comment that “xenophobia” was hobbling the South Asian nation’s economic growth, The Economic Times reported on Saturday.
Jaishankar said at a round table hosted by the newspaper on Friday that India’s economy “is not faltering” and that it has historically been a society that is very open.
“That’s why we have the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), which is to open up doors for people who are in trouble ... I think we should be open to people who have the need to come to India, who have a claim to come to India,” Jaishankar said, referring to a recent law that allows immigrants who have fled persecution from neighboring countries to become citizens.
Earlier this week, Biden had said “xenophobia” in China, Japan and India was holding back growth in the respective economies as he argued migration has been good for the US economy.
“One of the reasons why our economy’s growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants,” Biden said at a fundraising event for his 2024 re-election campaign and marking the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast last month that growth in Asia’s three largest economies would slow in 2024 from the previous year.
The IMF also forecast that the US economy would grow 2.7 percent, slightly brisker than its 2.5 percent rate last year. Many economists attribute the upbeat forecasts partly to migrants expanding the country’s labor force.
Canada arrests three Indians over killing of Sikh activist
- The murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar plunged Canada, India into a serious diplomatic crisis last fall
- Nijjar, who immigrated to Canada in 1997, advocated for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan
VANCOUVER: Canadian police on Friday arrested three men over the killing last year in Vancouver of a Sikh separatist, whose death has been linked to the Indian government.
The murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar plunged Canada and India into a serious diplomatic crisis last fall after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested Indian government involvement in the homicide.
India dismissed the allegations as “absurd” and responded furiously, briefly curbing visas for Canadians and forcing Ottawa to withdraw diplomats.
Three Indian nationals, two aged 22 and one aged 28, were arrested Friday and charged with first degree murder and conspiracy charges. They are accused of being the shooter, driver and lookout on the day Nijjar was killed.
They were arrested by police in Edmonton, in the neighboring province of Alberta, where they reside, and are being held pending further proceedings.
All had been in Canada for between three and five years, police said at a news conference.
“This investigation does not end here. We are aware that others may have played a role in this homicide,” said Mandeep Mooker of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s homicide investigations team.
Nijjar — who immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen in 2015 — advocated for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan, carved out of India.
He was wanted by Indian authorities for alleged terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder.
On June 18, 2023, he was shot dead by masked assailants in the parking lot of the Sikh temple he led in suburban Vancouver.
Trudeau announced several months later that Canada had “credible allegations” linking Indian intelligence to the killing and expelled an Indian official, spurring the diplomatic tit-for-tat with New Delhi.
Mooker said Canadian police are still investigating the ties of the suspects, “if any, to the Indian government.”
“It is a bit of a sigh of relief that the investigation is moving forward,” Moninder Singh, a close friend of Nijjar, told AFP.
“It is ultimately India who is responsible and hiring individuals to assassinate Sikh leaders in foreign countries,” said Singh, spokesperson for the British Columbia Council of Gurdwaras.
In November, the US Justice Department charged an Indian citizen living in the Czech Republic with allegedly plotting a similar assassination attempt on American soil.
Prosecutors said in unsealed court documents that an Indian government official was also involved in the planning.
The shock allegations came after US President Joe Biden hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a rare state visit, as Washington seeks closer ties with India against China’s growing influence.
US intelligence agencies have assessed that the plot on American soil was approved by India’s top spy official at the time, Samant Goel, The Washington Post reported this week.
Canada is home to some 770,000 Sikhs, who make up about two percent of the country’s population, with a vocal minority calling for an independent state of Khalistan.
Philippine bishops instruct flock to pray for rain, heat relief
- Rising temperatures have forced the government to shut down tens of thousands of schools over the past week
- Increased demand has also stressed the country’s already strained power supply
MANILA: Catholic bishops in the Philippines are pitching in to seek divine relief from the extreme heatwave scorching the country, instructing their flock to recite special prayers for rain and lower temperatures.
Rising temperatures have forced the government to shut down tens of thousands of schools over the past week, while increased demand has stressed the country’s already strained power supply.
A widespread El Nino drought that began early this year is compounding the problem, ruining 5.9 billion pesos ($103 million) worth of farm produce so far according to the Department of Agriculture.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines issued an “Oratio Imperata,” instructing parishes in the mainly Catholic nation to recite a prayer for deliverance from calamities during masses, according to the text seen by AFP on Saturday.
“We humbly ask you to grant us relief from the extreme heat that besets your people at this time, disrupting their activities and threatening their lives and livelihood,” the prayer read.
“Send us rain to replenish our depleting water sources, to irrigate our fields, to stave off water and power shortages and to provide water for our daily needs.”
A record-high 38.8 degrees Celsius (101.8 degrees Fahrenheit) was recorded in the capital Manila on April 27, forcing the closure of more than 47,000 schools for two days.
Nearly 8,000 schools remained shuttered as of Friday, the education department said, while the highest temperature in the country was recorded at 38.2C on the island of Mindoro south of the capital.
