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9/4: CBS News 24/7 Episode 2
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French Prime Minister Michel Barnier resigning after parliament’s no-confidence vote
Paris — French Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Thursday was meeting Emmanuel Macron to submit his resignation after losing a vote of no confidence in parliament, with the president urgently seeking ways to halt growing political and financial chaos. Poised to be contemporary France’s shortest-serving premier, Barnier arrived at the Elysee Palace just after 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. Eastern) for the resignation formality, with the outgoing premier and government constitutionally obliged to step down after the defeat in parliament.
A majority of lawmakers supported the no-confidence vote Wednesday that was proposed by the hard-left and backed by the far-right, headed by Marine Le Pen.
Barnier’s record-quick ejection comes after snap parliamentary elections this summer that resulted in a hung parliament, with no political force able to form an overall majority and the far-right holding the key to the government’s survival.
The trigger for Barnier’s ouster was his 2025 budget plan including austerity measures that were unacceptable to a majority in parliament, but that he argued were necessary to stabilize France’s finances. On Monday he had forced through a social security financing bill without a vote.
The successful no-confidence motion cancelled the government’s entire financing plan, leading to an automatic renewal of the current budget into next year, unless any new government can somehow rush through approval of a new budget by Christmas — an unlikely scenario.
“France probably won’t have a 2025 budget,” said ING Economics in a note, predicting that the country “is entering a new era of political instability.”
Moody’s, a ratings agency, warned that Barnier’s fall “deepens the country’s political stalemate” and “reduces the probability of a consolidation of public finances.”
The Paris stock exchange fell at the opening on Thursday before recovering to show small gains, while the yields on French government bonds were again under upward pressure in debt markets.
Macron now has the unenviable task of picking a viable successor. The president was to address the nation Thursday evening, his office said. Macron has more than two years of his presidential term left, but some opponents are calling on him to resign, too.
National Assembly Speaker Yael Braun-Pivet on Thursday urged Macron to waste no time in choosing a new premier, saying France could not be allowed to “drift” for any length of time.
There was no indication early Thursday of how quickly Macron would appoint Barnier’s successor, nor what their political leanings might be.
Loyalist Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu and Macron’s centrist ally Francois Bayrou have been touted as possible contenders, as has former Socialist premier and interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
With the support of the far-right, a majority of 331 MPs in the 577-member chamber voted to oust the government on Wednesday night. It was the first successful no-confidence vote since a defeat for Georges Pompidou’s government in 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president.
Macron flew back into Paris just ahead of the vote after wrapping up a three-day state visit to Saudi Arabia, an apparent world away from the domestic crisis.
“We are now calling on Macron to go,” Mathilde Panot, head of the parliamentary faction of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, told reporters. She urged “early presidential elections” to solve the deepening political crisis.
But taking care not to crow over the government’s fall, Le Pen said in a television interview that her party — once a new premier is appointed — “would let them work” and help create a “budget that is acceptable for everyone.”
Laurent Wauquiez, the head of right-wing deputies in parliament, said the far-right and hard-left bore the responsibility for a no-confidence vote.
Barnier is the fifth prime minister to serve under Macron since he came to power in 2017, with every premier serving a successively shorter period.
Given the composition of the National Assembly, there is no guarantee that Barnier’s successor will last any longer.
Strike calls across transport, education and other public sector services were kept in place Thursday despite the disappearance of the austerity budget that has prompted so much anger.
The plunge into more uncertainty comes ahead of the reopening of the Notre-Dame cathedral on Saturday after a 2019 fire, a major international event hosted by Macron.
Guests include Donald Trump, who will make it his first foreign trip since being re-elected to serve as the U.S. president for a second term.
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Philippines police say Elliot Eastman, American YouTuber shot during kidnapping, likely died of gunshot wounds
Manila, Philippines — Philippine police officials said Thursday they were checking reports that a kidnapped American died after being shot twice while resisting his Oct. 17 abduction by gunmen in the country’s south. Elliot Eastman, 26, from Vermont, was shot twice with an M16 rifle while trying to fight off his four kidnappers, who posed as police officers, in the coastal town of Sibuco in Zamboanga del Norte province, police said.
The kidnappers dragged him to a motorboat and sped off, according to earlier police reports.
A massive search for Eastman and his abductors led to the arrest of a number of suspects, but he has not been found. Three suspects were killed in a gunbattle with police in the south last month.
Regional police spokesperson Lt. Col. Ramoncelio Sawan said investigators received information from a relative of one of the suspects that Eastman died due to gunshot wounds in the thigh and abdomen while being taken away by his abductors. The kidnappers decided to throw his body into the sea after he died, the relative said.
The information about Eastman’s death was later corroborated by a key suspect in the kidnapping who was arrested recently, and his sworn statement has been submitted to government prosecutors, Sawan said. Criminal complaints of kidnapping have been filed against several suspects, he said.
“We are constrained to believe that he has died. All of the information that we have points to that,” Sawan said. But he added that without the victim’s body, “we’re still leaving a little bit of hope that it may not be the case” and police would continue their investigation.
Philippine police have informed Eastman’s Filipino wife and the U.S. Embassy in Manila about his reported death, Sawan said.
The embassy said it’s aware of the police report and is coordinating with Philippine authorities, but did not comment further due to privacy considerations.
Eastman traveled out of the Philippines and returned to Sibuco to attend his wife’s graduation when he was kidnapped. He had been posting YouTube and Facebook videos of his life in Sibuco, a poor, remote coastal town, where the suspects spotted him, police said earlier.
They said the suspects appeared to be common criminals who did not belong to any Muslim rebel groups which have been accused of ransom kidnappings in the past.
Security problems have long hounded the southern Philippines, the homeland of a Muslim minority in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
The southern third of the Philippines has bountiful resources but has long been hamstrung by poverty, insurgencies and outlaws.
On his YouTube page, Eastman said he came to the Philippines and met “the love of my life deep in the mountains” of Zamboanga del Norte, which he said he would be exploring to offer followers a glimpse of “day to day life as the first and only foreigner” to take up permanent residence in the remote region.
A 2014 peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest of several Muslim separatist groups, has considerably eased widespread fighting in the south. Relentless military offensives have weakened smaller armed groups such as the Abu Sayyaf, reducing kidnappings, bombings and other violence.
The Abu Sayyaf has targeted Americans and other Western tourists and missionaries, most of whom were freed after ransoms were paid. A few were killed, including American Guillermo Sobero, who was beheaded on the southern island of Basilan, and a U.S. missionary, Martin Burnham, who was killed while Philippine army forces were trying to rescue him and his wife, Gracia Burnham, in 2002 in a rainforest near Sibuco.
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