PARIS: Thousands of “yellow vest” protesters returned to the streets of France Saturday to protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s policies, clashing with police in several cities in a challenge to his bid to quell the movement.
Police fired tear gas and water cannon to push back protesters at Place de la Bastille in Paris, one of the regular protest areas, as some demonstrators threw stones from a building site.
The local prefecture reported 223 arrests in Paris, while the interior ministry estimated numbers for the 11th week of protests were at 69,000 across France, compared with 84,000 last Saturday.
The demonstrations erupted in mid-November over Macron’s economic reforms, but have since grown into a wider rallies calling for the resignation of the former investment banker who critics say is out of touch with the economic struggles of ordinary French people.
In Paris and other cities, the yellow vest movement had called for the protests to continue into the night.
But police quickly dispersed several hundred protesters in the capital’s symbolic Republique square, using stun grenades as well as tear gas and water cannon to clear the area, AFP journalists said.
Clashes erupted too in Nantes in western France and in the southern city of Montpellier, where a police officer was injured by “a pyrotechnic device,” said a statement from the local prefecture.
In Paris, the official count was 4,000 demonstrators against 7,000 the previous weekend.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner on Twitter criticized “rioters disguised as yellow vest protesters” after Saturday’s clashes.
The weekend’s protests against Macron’s tax and social policies came as divisions appeared among the yellow vests — named after the high-visibility vests they wear — as to where to take the movement.
In a new political development, a 31-year-old nurse named Ingrid Levavasseur said this week she would lead a yellow vest list of candidates for the European elections in May.
An initial survey in the wake of the announcement suggested they would garner a respectable 13 percent of the vote.
But not every protester appeared to welcome this development.
“There is a hard core that is ready to keep fighting,” said 42-year-old Gilbert Claro from the Paris suburbs. But the movement “is not meant to be political,” he added.
“We have to keep the pressure on in the streets,” to get their demands accepted, said Virginie, an activist in her 40s who said she had been involved in the protests from the beginning.
She and many other protesters want a citizen-sponsored referendum so ordinary people can have more of a say in government policy.
This idea has been consistently rejected by the government, although Macron made some concessions last December in a bid to end the protests.
Recent opinion polls suggest that he has regained some of the ground lost during the crisis, as he has presented his case in a series of town hall events around the country.
The “great national debate” he initiated in response to the protests has nevertheless been dismissed as a public relations operation by many yellow vest protesters.
The debate is a “masquerade,” said Mathieu Styrna, a 36-year-old carpenter from northern France in Paris for the protests. His impression, he said, was that the participants had been selected.
Outside Paris, several thousand protesters were marching in Bordeaux and Toulouse in the southwest — two of the cities where support for the movement has been consistently strong.
In Bordeaux, police broke up small groups of protesters tossing fireworks and bottles as night fell.
In the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, members of the CGT union joined the protests and about a thousand protesters turned out in the eastern city of Lyon.
For the first time on Saturday, riot police used controversial defense ball launchers (LBDs) that shoot 40-millimeter (1.6-inch) rubber and foam rounds were equipped with cameras.
A French court on Friday refused a bid brought by France’s League for Human Rights (LDH) and the CGT to ban the weapons, blamed for serious injuries suffered by some demonstrators.
The police authority in Paris announced the introduction of cameras in a move for greater transparency.
On Sunday, supporters of the government will stage their first “red scarf” protest to represent what they say is “the silent majority” defending “democracy and its institutions” and denouncing the violence of the yellow vests protests.
Two-thirds of people questioned in a IFOP-Journal du Dimanche survey published Sunday said they thought the demonstrations had not succeeded in changing how Macron was governing France.
‘Yellow vests’ back on France’s streets to challenge Macron
‘Yellow vests’ back on France’s streets to challenge Macron
- The demonstrations erupted in mid-November over Macron’s economic reforms, but have since grown into a wider rallies calling for the resignation of the president
- In Paris, the official count was 4,000 demonstrators against 7,000 the previous weekend
House Republicans launch investigation into federal funding for universities amid campus protests
- Nationwide, campus protesters have called for their institutions to cut financial ties to Israel
WASHINGTON: House Republicans on Tuesday announced an investigation into the federal funding for universities where students have protested the Israel-Hamas war, broadening a campaign that has placed heavy scrutiny on how presidents at the nation’s most prestigious colleges have dealt with reports of antisemitism on campus.
Several House committees will be tasked with a wide probe that ultimately threatens to withhold federal research grants and other government support to the universities, placing another pressure point on campus administrators who are struggling to manage pro-Palestinian encampments, allegations of discrimination against Jewish students and questions of how they are integrating free speech and campus safety.
The House investigation follows several recent high-profile hearings that precipitated the resignations of presidents at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. And House Republicans promised more scrutiny, saying they were calling on the administrators of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to testify next month.
“We will not allow antisemitism to thrive on campus, and we will hold these universities accountable for their failure to protect Jewish students on campus,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson at a news conference.
Nationwide, campus protesters have called for their institutions to cut financial ties to Israel and decried how thousands of civilians in Gaza have been killed by Israel following the deadly attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Some organizers have called for Hamas to violently seize Israeli territory and derided Zionism. Jewish students, meanwhile, have reported being targeted and say campus administrators have not done enough to protect them.
After Johnson visited Columbia last week with several other top House Republicans, he said “the anti-Jewish hatred was appalling.”
Republicans are also turning to the issue at a time when election season is fully underway and leadership needs a cause that unites them and divides Democrats. The House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has fallen flat and the Republican conference is smarting after a series of important bills left GOP lawmakers deeply divided. Democrats have feuded internally at times over the Israel-Hamas war and how campus administrators have handled the protests.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a floor speech Tuesday that it was “unacceptable when Jewish students are targeted for being Jewish, when protests exhibit verbal abuse, systemic intimidation, or glorification of the murderous and hateful Hamas or the violence of October 7th.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar, the No. 3 House Democrat, at a news conference Tuesday said that it was important for colleges “to ensure that everybody has an ability to protest and to make their voice heard but they have a responsibility to honor the safety of individuals.”
“For many of Jewish descent, they do not feel safe, and that is a real issue,” he said, but added that he wanted to allow university administrators to act before Congress stepped in.
But the Republican speaker promised to use “all the tools available” to push the universities. Johnson was joined by chairs for six committees with jurisdiction over a wide range of government programs, including National Science Foundation grants, health research grants, visas for international students and the tax code for nonprofit universities.
Without Democratic support in the divided Congress, it is not clear what legislative punishments House Republicans could actually implement. Any bills from the House would be unlikely to advance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
But so far, the House hearings with university presidents have produced viral moments and given Republicans high-profile opportunities to denounce campuses as hotbeds of antisemitism. In December, the presidents of Ivy League universities struggled to answer pointed questions about whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate each university’s code of conduct.
Rep. Elize Stefanik, the New York Republican who posed the question in the December hearing, said it became the highest-viewed congressional hearing in history. She also cast the campaign against antisemitism as part of a broader conservative push against what they say is overt liberal bias at elite American universities.
“Enough is enough,” she said. “It is time to restore law and order, academic integrity and moral decency to America’s higher education institutions.”
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is also requesting that the administrators of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan appear at a hearing on May 23 that focuses on how they handled the recent protests.
“As Republican leaders, we have a clear message for mealy-mouthed, spineless leaders: Congress will not tolerate your dereliction of duty to your Jewish students,” said the committee chair, North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx.
At a hearing of the committee earlier this month, Columbia University’s president took a firm stance against antisemitism. But at the same time, a protest was underway on Columbia’s campus that would soon set off others like it nationwide. The university began suspending students this week in an attempt to clear the protest encampment on campus.
The university is also facing federal legal complaints. A class-action lawsuit on behalf of Jewish students alleges Columbia breached its contract by failing to maintain a safe learning environment.
Meanwhile, a legal group representing pro-Palestinian students is urging the US Department of Education’s civil rights office to investigate whether Columbia’s treatment of the protesting students violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called on university administrators to “take charge.”
“On campus, protect Jewish community members. Clear the encampments. Let students go to class and take their exams. And allow graduations to proceed,” he said.
US newspapers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training
- The newspaper cases are among several potential landmark lawsuits brought by copyright owners against tech companies over the data used to train their generative AI systems
WASHINGTON: A group of newspapers, including the New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune, sued Microsoft and OpenAI in New York federal court on Tuesday, accusing them of misusing reporters' work to train their generative artificial-intelligence systems.
The eight newspapers, owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital's MediaNews Group, said in the lawsuit that the companies unlawfully copied millions of their articles to train AI products, including Microsoft's Copilot and OpenAI's ChatGPT.
The complaint follows similar ongoing lawsuits against Microsoft and OpenAI, which has received billions in financial backing from Microsoft, brought by the New York Times and news outlets The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet.
An OpenAI spokesperson said on Tuesday that the company takes "great care in our products and design process to support news organizations." A spokesperson for Microsoft declined to comment on the complaint.
The newspaper cases are among several potential landmark lawsuits brought by copyright owners against tech companies over the data used to train their generative AI systems.
A lawyer for the MediaNews publications, Steven Lieberman, told Reuters that OpenAI owed its runaway success to the works of others. The defendants know they have to pay for computers, chips, and employee salaries, but "think somehow they can get away with taking content" without permission or payment, he said.
The lawsuit said Microsoft and OpenAI's systems reproduce the newspapers' copyrighted content "verbatim" when prompted. It said ChatGPT also "hallucinates" articles attributed to the newspapers that harm their reputations, including a fake Denver Post article touting smoking as an asthma cure and a bogus Chicago Tribune recommendation for an infant lounger that was recalled after being linked to child deaths.
The plaintiffs also include the Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, San Jose Mercury News, Orange County Register and Twin Cities Pioneer Press. They asked the court for unspecified monetary damages and an order blocking any further infringement.
UN Human Rights Chief troubled by ‘heavy-handed’ action against protesters at US colleges
- Volker Turk says ‘freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental to society, particularly when there is sharp disagreement on major issues’
- Protests have taken place on campuses in several states as students demand colleges withdraw investments from businesses involved in Israel’s assault on Gaza
NEW YORK CITY: The UN’s high commissioner for human rights on Tuesday said he is troubled by “a series of heavy-handed steps” taken by education authorities and law enforcement officials to break up protests at college campuses in the US.
Volker Turk said: “freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental to society, particularly when there is sharp disagreement on major issues, as there are in relation to the conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have spread across college campuses in Texas, New York, Atlanta, Utah, Virginia, New Jersey, California and other parts of the US as students protest against the death toll during the war in Gaza, call for a ceasefire and demand authorities at their colleges withdraw investments from businesses involved in Israel’s military assault on Gaza.
Though largely peaceful, at some locations the protests have been dispersed or dismantled by security forces. Hundreds of students and teachers have been arrested, some of whom face charges or academic sanctions.
Turk expressed concern that some of the responses by law enforcement authorities at several colleges might have been disproportionate, and called for such actions to be scrutinized to ensure they do not exceed what is necessary “to protect the rights and freedoms of others.”
He added that all such actions must be guided by human rights law, while “allowing vibrant debate and protecting safe spaces for all.”
He reiterated that antisemitic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian activities and speech are “totally unacceptable, deeply disturbing (and) reprehensible.” However, the conduct of protesters must be assessed and addressed individually rather than through “sweeping measures that impute to all members of a protest the unacceptable viewpoints of a few,” Turk added.
“Incitement to violence or hatred on grounds of identity or viewpoints, whether real or assumed, must be strongly repudiated. We have already seen such dangerous rhetoric can quickly lead to real violence.”
Poland says it is probing alleged links between Orlen unit’s ex-CEO and ‘terrorist organizations’
- Polish website Onet had reported on Monday that the former CEO of Orlen Trading Switzerland was suspected by Orlen’s internal security unit of having had contacts with Hezbollah
- The ex-CEO denied in an interview with Polish private radio RMF on Tuesday that he had any connections with Hezbollah
WARSAW: Poland has launched an investigation into multi-million-dollar cash losses by Polish refiner Orlen’s Swiss unit and allegations that its former CEO had ties to “terrorist organizations,” Warsaw chief prosecutor Malgorzata Adamajtys said on Tuesday.
Polish website Onet had reported on Monday that the former CEO of Orlen Trading Switzerland, referred to only as Samer A. due to local privacy laws, was suspected by Orlen’s internal security unit of having had contacts with Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.
Samer A., the ex-CEO of Orlen’s Swiss subsidiary OTS, denied in an interview with Polish private radio RMF on Tuesday that he had any connections with Hezbollah.
“I have been to Poland many times, I am a Polish citizen, I have a Polish passport. I am treated by the current authorities as a second-class citizen,” he said, adding that though he was currently abroad, he was not hiding from Polish law enforcement.
Asked at a press conference for details of the investigation, chief prosecutor Adamajtys said: “We are looking into all information, some of which is known to prosecutors from the press, radio and television, including on connections with terrorist organizations.”
Western countries including the US designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The European Union classifies Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist group, but not its political wing.
Adamajtys said OTS was established as a business despite a warning by Orlen’s internal security unit not to do so. It operated, according to Adamajtys, without proper supervision, documentation and verification of contractors. She said this showed that Samer A. should not have been appointed as CEO.
“A person who makes advance payments without completion of the first tranches of certain deliveries is not a good CEO and should not be the CEO of this or any other company,” she said.
Reuters sought to contact Samer A. for comment on Adamajtys’ remarks about OTS operations, but he could not be reached. In his conversation with RMF, he denied that there had been any warning from Orlen’s internal security unit.
OTS LOSSES
Orlen has said OTS was behind the loss of around $400 million linked to contracts to buy Venezuelan oil and oil products.
OTS has said it tried to benefit from a temporary window in US sanctions against Venezuela and paid cash advances to intermediaries it never worked with before. The contracts were canceled, it said, as a closure of the window was nearing, and tankers weren’t loading.
Orlen has said it is currently auditing OTS operations.
Adamajtys said Orlen also faced questions over the alleged manipulation of fuel prices to artificially low levels ahead of last year’s national election and a sale of some assets that investigators suspect were below market level.
In February, Orlen rejected an allegation of below-market asset sales from the state audit office, saying it gained as much as 9 billion zloty ($2.2 billion) in one corporate merger. The company also denied lowering fuel prices artificially.
Samer A. has been charged in a separate probe with VAT fraud between 2008-2013, a regional prosecutor in Bydgoszcz said on Monday. He was detained by police and questioned by a prosecutor in February, and released on bail, the prosecutor added.
Opposition critics said that under the previous, nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government, which lost power in that vote, Orlen had helped financed the party’s policy agenda, including taking control of some media outlets.
On Monday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he had called the country’s chief prosecutor and secret services coordinator to discuss potential links between the former CEO of Orlen, Daniel Obajtek, and Hezbollah.
Obajtek, a close associate of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, responded on social media platform X that Tusk was “looking for scandals where there are none.”
Polish media have reported that PiS might put up Obajtek as a candidate in June’s European Parliament election.
Forest fires raze parts of India amid heat, dry weather
- As of 2021, 54.4 percent of forests in India experienced occasional fires, most of them due to man-made factors
- These fires have picked up again this year, with 653 incidents in Uttarakhand alone, government data shows
NEW DELHI: Frequent fires are razing forests in India’s Uttarakhand state in the north and Odisha in the east amid high temperatures and long dry spells, and the blazes have been worsened by people burning the forest to collect a flower used to brew alcohol.
Data from the state-run Forest Survey of India shows that as of 2021, 54.4 percent of forests in India experienced occasional fires, most of them due to man-made factors.
“Agriculture stubble burning, misconceptions and burning of shrubs to shoo away wildlife are major reasons behind the forest fires,” Swapnil Aniruddh, a forest official in Uttarakhand, told Reuters.
After a brief respite during the previous season from November to April, forest fires have picked up again this year, with 653 incidents in Uttarakhand alone, government data shows.
Odisha’s fires have been exacerbated by people setting parts of the forest ablaze to collect Mahua flowers, which are highly sought after as they are used to brew a popular liquor.
During the current season, 10,163 fire points in Uttarakhand have been detected using the government’s imaging radiometer.
Overall, loss of significant forest cover is a big worry for India as it tries to dramatically reduce its climate-changing emissions.
Among the organizations helping to curb the fires is the Indian Air Force, which has used the aerial firefighting ‘Bambi Bucket’ technique of collecting water from a nearby lake to spray over the region.
The situation may get worse, with India’s weather department predicting more heat-wave days than normal between April and June this year, along with a longer dry spell for Uttarakhand.
