Direct mayoral elections in Paris, Lyon, Marseille get green light from France's top court
Until now, voters in Paris, Lyon, and Marseille chose their arrondissement (district) councilors, with the top-ranking councilors then forming a municipal council that selects the mayor. This meant that the mayor was elected through an indirect form of universal suffrage. But under a new law introduced by Paris MP Sylvain Maillard of the centrist Renaissance party, starting in March 2026, residents of these cities will vote twice on the same day. One vote will directly elect the mayor, who will be at the top of a list of municipal councilors. The other vote will elect arrondissement councilors. In Lyon, voters will also cast a third ballot to choose councilors for the métropole (Greater Lyon Area).
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Euronews
14 hours ago
- Euronews
Ukraine and Europe present counter to Russian ceasefire proposal
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LeMonde
a day ago
- LeMonde
Trump demands $1 billion from UCLA over last year's pro-Palestinian protests
President Donald Trump demanded a massive $1 billion fine from the prestigious University of California system on Friday, August 8, as the administration pushed its claims of antisemitism in UCLA's response to 2024 student protests related to Gaza. The figure, which is five times the sum Columbia University agreed to pay to settle similar federal accusations of antisemitism, would "completely devastate" the UC public university system, a senior official said. President James Milliken, who oversees the 10 campuses that make up the University of California system, including Los Angeles-based UCLA, said managers had received the $1 billion demand on Friday and were reviewing it. "As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country's greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians," he said. "Americans across this great nation rely on the vital work of UCLA and the UC system for technologies and medical therapies that save lives, grow the US economy, and protect our national security." Media reports suggest the government wants the money in installments and is demanding the university also pay $172 million to a claims fund to compensate Jewish students and others affected by alleged discrimination. The UC system, with schools that are consistently ranked the best public universities in the United States, is already grappling with the Trump administration's more-than half-billion-dollar freeze on medical and science grants at UCLA alone. The move appears to follow a similar playbook the White House used to extract concessions from Columbia University, and is trying to use to get Harvard University to bend. 'Order must prevail' Columbia's agreement includes a pledge to obey rules barring it from considering race in admissions or hiring, among other concessions. Partner service Learn French with Gymglish Thanks to a daily lesson, an original story and a personalized correction, in 15 minutes per day. Try for free Pro-Palestinian protests rocked dozens of US campuses in 2024, with police crackdowns and mob violence erupting over student encampments, from Columbia to UCLA, with then-president Joe Biden saying "order must prevail." Universities have been in Trump's sights since he returned to the White House. His Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement views academia as elite, overly liberal and hostile to the kind of ethno-nationalism popular among Trump supporters. The $1 billion demand of UCLA came the day after California Governor Gavin Newsom, who frequently spars with Trump, said the UC should not give in to the president's demands. "There's right and wrong, and we'll do the right thing," said Newsom, who sits on the UC board. "This is about our competitiveness. It's about the fate and future of this country. It's about our sovereignty. It's about so much more than the temperament of an aggrieved individual who happens to currently be president of the United States," he told reporters, continuing: "I'll do everything in my power to encourage them to do the right thing and not to become another law firm that bends on their knees, another company that sells their soul or another institution that takes a shortcut and takes the easy wrong versus the hard right."
France 24
a day ago
- France 24
French police open investigation after Israeli rabbi threatens Macron
The Paris prosecutor's office on Friday said it had opened an investigation following threatening remarks directed at French President Emmanuel Macron by an Israeli rabbi in an online video. Rabbi David Daniel Cohen's remarks against the French president were apparently motivated by the decision to formally recognise a Palestinian state. The rabbi "made several abhorrent threats, notably against the President of the Republic," Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau wrote on X, denouncing the "totally unacceptable remarks". Retailleau said he had contacted the French government's online Pharos platform monitoring dangerous and criminal online content and "also reported these remarks to the justice system under Article 40 of the criminal procedure code". In the YouTube video, the rabbi stated: "This French president, he needs to know – he better prepare his coffin. God will show him what it means to want to be so brazen and to want to make statements against God." By recognising a Palestinian state, which the French government has now slated for September, Cohen says Macron is expressing his "profound anti-Semitism" and "declaring war on God". Strongly condemning "the abhorrent and intolerable remarks by Daniel David Cohen", France 's Chief Rabbi Haïm Korsia clarified on X that Cohen "has never held any rabbinical position in France, was not trained by nor graduated from France's rabbinical school".
