France's lower house of parliament has voted to extend a state of emergency for three months, after the government said the extra powers are still needed to end the country's worst civil unrest in four decades.
The government also moved to deport 10 foreigners convicted during the 19 days of violence in troubled poor neighborhoods.
The National Assembly voted 346-148 on Tuesday for the extension, which would keep the measure in place through mid-February. The measure goes next to the Senate, where it was expected to be approved yesterday and go into effect at midnight on Monday.
The opposition Socialist Party argued against an extension, saying emergency measures were no longer needed because violence is abating.
But the extension passed with support from President Jacques Chirac's governing conservatives backed by centrist lawmakers.
The 12-day state of emergency was declared on Nov. 9.
The national police said yesterday morning that vandals torched 159 vehicles overnight up to 4am, down from 162 at the same time a night earlier. Forty-four people were arrested overnight.
National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said on Tuesday that the steadily declining numbers showed France was "getting back to normal" after nights of arson attacks, clashes with police and other unrest.
Late on Tuesday night, a suspected arson fire caused serious damage to a church in the southeastern town of Romans.
Officials said it wasn't immediately clear if the fire was linked to the unrest. Three mosques have been attacked with firebombs since Friday.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, arguing for the extension, said that because of the unrest, France faces one of its "sharpest and most complex urban crises."
Sarkozy, who many immigrants say has fanned the violence with combative talk, told the National Assembly that many people live with "fear in the belly" because of crime in tough areas.
"The state of emergency has been, is and will be applied with discretion," Sarkozy said. "The stakes are considerable. If republican order does not rule in these neighborhoods, gangs and extremists will."
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS