US president-elect Joe Biden's approach to diplomacy is diametrically opposed to that of the outgoing Donald Trump, known as he was to levy undiplomatic salvos at foreign leaders via social media. But one shouldn't expect a wholesale revamp in substance when the veteran Democrat takes office in January. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look at Biden's foreign policy agenda.
Macron has never met Biden, who served as vice president under Barack Obama from 2008-2016 before Macron arrived at the Elysee in 2017.
In contrast to some other EU leaders, Macron sought from the outset to build a strong relationship with Trump, hosting him for a high profile visit to Paris in 2017 and then again for the 2019 G7 summit in Biarritz.
French geopolitics specialist François Heisbourg is senior advisor for Europe at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies and special advisor at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. He spoke with FRANCE 24 on Monday about what foreign counterparts can expect of the erratic outgoing commander-in-chief and of a successor very familiar to some.
In London and Paris, President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Boris Johnson attended Armistice Day ceremonies to mark 100 years since the memorial interment of two unknown warriors -- one from each country -- in honour of the fallen.
"November 11, 1918. At 11.00 am, throughout France, bells and bugles sounded the ceasefire. Millions of soldiers died for France. For our freedom. For our values. Let us never forget," Macron tweeted after a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe.
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It is also 100 years since the remains of two nameless soldiers -- one French and one British -- were taken from the Western Front to be honoured in memorial graves at the Arc de Triomphe and in London's Westminster Abbey.
Britain's Prince Charles laid a wreath at the abbey, while England rugby players training in London and soldiers deployed to a coronavirus rapid-testing facility in Liverpool took time out to observe two minutes' silence for the fallen war heroes.
Commemorations were also held in Kosovo, Belgrade, Edinburgh and Brussels.
As Europe paid its respects, a bomb struck a World War I commemoration attended by Western diplomats in the Saudi city of Jeddah, leaving at least two people wounded.
The attack came amid widespread Muslim anger at Macron's vow to tackle radical Islam in the aftermath of a string of terror attacks which have claimed 250 lives on French soil since 2015.
Last month, a Saudi citizen with a knife wounded a guard at the French consulate in Jeddah on the same day a knife-wielding man killed three people in a church in Nice in southern France.
- Pantheon honour -
Macron did not address the Paris memorial, which was sparsely attended and socially-distanced amid a second nationwide lockdown to curtail the coronavirus outbreak.
After laying a wreath, he greeted military officials one by one, thanking them for their service.
Later Wednesday, Macron was to preside over a ceremony to reinter the remains of World War I writer Maurice Genevoix at the Pantheon of national heroes in Paris.
Macron has championed the honour to encourage remembrance of the conflict.
Such a response should focus on "the development of common databases, the exchange of information or the strengthening of criminal policies," he said after hosting a video conference with fellow EU leaders.
The online summit came a week after a convicted Islamic State group supporter killed four people in a shooting rampage in the heart of Vienna, following hot on the heels of last month's attack on a church in the French city of Nice and the beheading of a teacher in a Paris suburb two weeks before that.
Macron called the summit after the Austrian attack to seek an EU-wide response to Islamist attacks.
It was attended by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, European Council chief Charles Michel and EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen.
French officials will later move the remains of wartime writer Maurice Genevoix into the country's Panthéon of national heroes, an honour championed by Macron to encourage remembrance of the conflict.
Genevoix wrote five memoirs of his time as a frontline soldier experiencing the horrors of trench warfare in the conflict, which he later collected into a single book "Ceux de 14" ("Men of 14").
The work is considered by many to be the single greatest literary work to have emerged in French from the 1914-18 war, with its raw insight into the experience of battle drawing comparisons with "Storm of Steel" by German writer Ernst Junger or the English poetry of Wilfred Owen.
Marking 102 years since the end of World War I, an installation by French composer Pascal Dusapin and German artist Anselm Kiefer, commissioned by the French presidency, will also be put in the Panthéon.
A host of other events are planned across France to mark Armistice Day.
Officials in the Limousin region will commemorate the deeds of a six-year-old boy who is hailed as the youngest French World War II hero for carrying messages under his shirt to leaders of the resistance against Nazi occupation.
The name of Marcel Pinte — known as Quinquin — will be inscribed on Wednesday into the war memorial in Aixe-sur-Vienne just west of the city of Limoges.
The statement added that Macron's policies were aimed at "fighting against radical Islamism, and to do so with the Muslims of France, who are an integral part of French society, history and the Republic."
"We will not give in, ever," Macron tweeted on Sunday. "We respect all differences in a spirit of peace. We do not accept hate speech and defend reasonable debate. We will always be on the side of human dignity and universal values."
Paty's death has sparked a security crackdown in France, where officials are targeting hate speech on social media and organizations and non-profits with possible links to Islamism.
The Mohammed caricatures that Paty used in his class originally appeared in Charlie Hebdo, and were cited as the motivation for a terror attack on the satirical magazine in 2015 that left 12 people dead. Macron fiercely defended the right to display such cartoons in France at the memorial event for Paty..
French Prime Minister Jean Castex has said his government would keep “fighting relentlessly” against “radical Islam” as he paid tribute to the three victims of a knife attack in the southern city of Nice last month.
“We know the enemy. Not only has it been identified, but it has a name, it is radical Islam, a political ideology that disfigures the Muslim religion,” Castex said in a speech during a ceremony for the victims on Saturday.
“(It is) an enemy that the government is fighting relentlessly by providing the necessary resources and mobilising all of its forces every day,” he added.
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Concerns over security and immigration have increased in France after the knife attack at a church in Nice on October 29 saw three people killed.
The man suspected of carrying out the Nice attack – still in a critical condition after being shot by police – was a 21-year-old Tunisian born who had arrived in Europe on September 20, landing in Lampedusa, the Italian island off Tunisia. He has been identified as Brahim Issaoui.
The attack came after the beheading of Samuel Paty, a school teacher in a Paris suburb who showed his pupils caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a discussion on free speech.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s subsequent defence of the right to draw the prophet drew the ire of Muslim communities across the world, with trade associations in several Muslim countries announcing a boycott of French products.
Joe Biden, the US president-elect, has cast himself as a moderate with the experience and empathy required to offset Donald Trump’s disruptive presidency. Having battled adversity throughout a career scarred by personal tragedy, he says he feels the pain of a nation unnerved by economic crisis, civil unrest and a deadly pandemic.
Slovak officials said the team included two Downing Street advisers and two people responsible for arranging the UK’s large-scale testing programme in Liverpool.
“They are interested in our lessons and in the details and results,” said Slovakia’s deputy defence minister, Marian Majer, who added that Slovakia has offered to send a planning team to London to help with UK preparations if required.
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A No 10 spokesperson declined to comment on the visit except to say that “we are constantly seeking to evolve our testing system in order to control the spread of the virus and bring the R rate down”.
Among 302 such adults, 16 (5.3%) had antibodies, likely generated during infections with “common cold” coronaviruses, that reacted to a specific region of the spike protein on the new virus called the S2 subunit. Among 48 children and adolescents, 21 (43.8%) had these antibodies. In test tube experiments, blood serum from both older and younger uninfected individuals with cross-reactive antibodies could neutralise the new coronavirus. That was not the case with serum from study participants who lacked these antibodies.
“Together, these findings may help explain higher Covid-19 susceptibility in older people and provide insight into whether pre-established immunity to seasonal coronaviruses offers protection against SARS-CoV-2,” the publishers of the journal said in a statement. The findings also suggest that targeting the S2 subunit on the coronavirus spike protein might be the basis for a drug or vaccine that works on multiple types of coronavirus.
The woman worked election day as an election judge supervisor at Memorial Hall in Blanchette Park in the St Louis suburb of St Charles. Officials don’t yet know if the virus was the cause of death. County officials didn’t release her name, citing privacy laws.
Lost confidence
Good evening from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.
Kamala Devi Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, is to become the highest-ranking woman in the 244-year existence of the United States. She's been welcomed by women, by black activists and by a chorus of liberal voices – but she comes to the job after having publicly savaged Joe Biden in the first Democrat TV debate, and with a confused reputation from her time as California attorney general.
Kamala Harris was among the gang of Democratic contenders who slugged it out in the first of the party's televised debates, back in June, 2019. In the course of that frequently stormy discussion, Harris accused Biden of having sided with racial segregationists in the 1970s by opposing legislation on "bussing", the controversial use of federal transport to bring black kids to white schools.
Biden, when he was a Delaware Senator in 1975, did indeed describe bussing as "asinine". In the 2019 debate, Harris told the man who will become her boss next January that he had been wrong to oppose the system that gave her the start of an education that had made her career possible. "I was the girl on the bus," she said. Biden ran out of time before he could answer.
Worldwide, there have been 1,235,148 Covid-19-related deaths. The United States is the hardest hit country with 234,944 fatalities, followed by Brazil with 161,736, India 124,985, Mexico 93,772 and the UK 48,120.
The US has also recorded more than 120,000 new daily infections - breaking a record set the day before.
Europe’s number of coronavirus-linked deaths has surged past 300,000 and its number of infections surpassed 12 million, according to an AFP tally from official sources.
The region’s 300,688 recorded deaths is second only to the 408,841 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The New York Times described Harris's assault on Biden as "perhaps the toughest attack he faced throughout the primary campaign".
That was then. Harris dropped out of contention before the first of the party's selection votes, running out of money.
When Joe Biden secured the Democrat nomination, he took the woman who had savaged him as his running-mate, and Kamala Harris was rocketing towards the glass ceiling with a clenched fist.
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A long career of being first
Harris was born 56 years ago in Oakland, California, across the Bay from San Francisco.
In an interview last year with The New Yorker magazine, she summed up her career quite simply: “Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of colour. First woman. First woman of colour. Every time.”
She has been, successively, San Francisco district attorney in 2003, attorney general of California in 2010, senator in 2016, vice-president-elect in 2020, seconding the oldest man ever elected to the White House.
She has played several crucial roles in the Biden campaign, becoming a forceful voice for racial justice, meeting black activists nationwide and showing up at Black Lives Matter protests. She also clearly helped to boost voter participation by black women in places like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.
A mixed political legacy
As a senator, Harris supported Medicare-for-all and other health care reform plans. She introduced bills aimed at reducing racial disparities in health care, the economy and the criminal justice system.
Critics have wondered why she did so little to change the criminal justice system when she was working inside it in California.
Her efforts to end school absenteeism in San Francisco have been criticised as punitive of poor households, with parents being sent to jail because their kids were needed at home to mind sick siblings. As a prosecutor, Harris is alleged to have asked for bail amounts five times higher than the national average. She is accused of having ignored the Black Lives Matter movements until it became politically useful.
“We will not give up cartoons,” President Emmanuel Macron earlier told a solemn ceremony at the Sorbonne university in Paris attended by Paty’s family, who was targeted for having shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed in a civics class discussion on free speech early this month.
The president gave France’s highest civilian award, the Legion of Honour, to Paty and said he had been slain by “cowards” for representing the secular, democratic values of the French Republic.
“He was killed because Islamists want our future,” Macron said. “They will never have it.”
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A family history of feminism
president on Friday declared a state of health emergency that will come into force next week to allow the government to impose further coronavirus restrictions.
In a televised appearance, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said he had just signed a decree “relating to a second state of emergency” since the start of the pandemic that will last at least two weeks.
It will be “very limited and largely preventative” but “paves the way for new measures such as restricting traffic to certain times and certain days, in highest risk municipalities,” he said.
The government will hold an extraordinary cabinet meeting on Saturday to decide what type of measures to introduce.
These could include a nighttime curfew similar to what has been implemented in other European nations, or taking people’s temperature at some locations.
During the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, Portuguese authorities decreed a six-week state of emergency.
Some 7.1 million people are currently living under new restrictions and have been asked to stay home and work remotely as far as possible.
But unlike the first spring lockdown, schools remain open, along with shops and restaurants, though they have to close earlier.
Since the start of the pandemic, Portugal has reported close to 167,000 cases and more than 2,700 deaths.
Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, the Brahman daughter of a diplomat from Chennai, India, graduated from the University of Delhi at age 19, avoided an arranged marriage, and went to the University of California at Berkeley to study nutrition and endocrinology.
Trump’s campaign said it would file a lawsuit to stop Michigan from officially certifying Biden as the winner there until the state could verify that votes were cast lawfully, the latest in a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states to try to back up Trump’s unsupported claims of widespread fraud.
Legal experts have said Trump’s litigation has little chance of changing the outcome, and state officials have said there were no significant irregularities in the Nov. 3 election.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters faced a possible setback in Pennsylvania. A witness who had raised accusations of ballot tampering recanted his allegations, according to Democrats in Congress who were briefed on the investigation.
“She was one of the very few women of colour in science,” Harris told The New Yorker about her mother. “When I decided to run, she said, ‘Honey, you watch out for what’s going to happen, because there are still certain myths about what women can do and cannot do, in spite of the fact of what women actually do in life.’
"And she said, ‘Two of those myths are that women can do certain things but not necessarily be in charge of your security or your money.’ In spite of the fact that, who is the lioness protecting those cubs at all costs? Who is it who is invariably sitting at that kitchen table in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to get those bills paid?”
A huge weight of hope
Kamala Harris has already left a few myths in smithereens. She knows she carries a huge weight of hope for a better, more united, less racist America. But she won't be alone.
“She brought the names of black women in history to the stage when she accepted her nomination,” says Glynda Carr, co-founder of the advocacy group Higher Heights, which recruits and supports black women in politics.
“Maya Angelou used to say, ‘I come as one, but stand as 10,000’. That is what Kamala Harris is going to do when she steps into the Oval Office with Joe Biden.”
Donald Trump may not have conceded defeat yet, but messages of congratulations and warm wishes were on Saturday pouring in for President-Elect Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.
French President Emmanuel Macron was among the first to react to the pair's historic election victory.
"We have a lot to do to overcome today's challenges. Let's work together!," Macron tweeted after major US media networks announced the Democrats had won Pennsylvania and therefore the White House.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, meanwhile, congratulated Biden on his "election to the presidency" and on Harris for her "historic achievement".
"The US is our most important ally and I look forward to working closely together on our shared priorities, from climate change to trade and security," Johnson tweeted.
As she congratulated Biden, Germany's Angela Merkel said that trans-Atlantic ties were "irreplaceable".
And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement: "I look forward to working with President-Elect Biden, Vice President-Elect Harris, their administration, and the United States Congress as we tackle the world's greatest challenges together."
Trudeau has had a frequently stormy relationship with Trump, who once tweeted the Canadian leader was "very dishonest and weak" during a dispute on US tariffs.
Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump to claim the White House
Michael D. Higgins, the president of Ireland also tweeted a statement congratulating the new president and vice president, saying: "On behalf of the people of Ireland, I wish President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris every success in the years ahead."
A former vice-president under Barack Obama, Biden is the first candidate to notch more than 70 million votes nationwide in a presidential contest, ultimately securing a clear path to victory after days of nail-biting suspense.
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An affable figure with several decades of Washington experience, Biden has vowed to restore dignity to the presidential office after four uniquely turbulent years under President Donald Trump, a former real-estate tycoon and reality-TV host.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden has defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States, according to the Associated Press and other US media projections. Follow the reactions to his win on our live blog below.
France, Portugal, Russia, Italy, and Sweden were among the countries to register record daily totals of new Covid-19 infections on Friday. It comes as Europe continues to experience a second wave of the pandemic, and as many countries opt for new national lockdowns.
Russia recorded nearly 10,000 coronavirus-linked deaths in September. Data from the state statistics service, Rosstat, shows that 9,798 deaths in the country were linked to suspected or confirmed cases of the virus in September, while deaths from all causes were up 23% from the same month last year.
Aspirin is to to be evaluated as a possible treatment for Covid-19 in one of the UK’s biggest trials. Patients infected by the novel coronavirus are at a higher risk of blood clots because of hyper-reactive platelets, the cell fragments that help stop bleeding. Aspirin is an antiplatelet agent and can reduce the risk of clots, the Recovery trial’s website said.
The World Health Organisation is looking into biosecurity in countries that have mink farms after Denmark ordered a nationwide cull of the animals. Maria van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19, said the transmission of the virus between animals and humans was “a concern”.
Since June, Denmark has recorded more than 200 cases of mink-related Covid. The State Serum Institute, which deals with infectious diseases, has found 214 people infected with mink-related versions of coronavirus since June. It is one strain of the mutated coronavirus which has prompted Denmark to cull its entire herd of mink. That strain has, however, been found in only 12 people and on five mink farms so far.
Jérôme Fourquet is a political analyst and a director of the IFOP polling agency. He believes that this attack was different, both in targeting a teacher and in its brutality, and that there has been a "shift in gear" within government.
"We are no longer dealing with organised jihadist networks," he said, "but a terrorist who came from our own country, an isolated individual who was radicalised.
"The government believes the response cannot only be about law enforcement. They also need to manage social networks and associations, because this tragic case shed light on a whole network which spreads hate speeches within the population. The system needs changing."
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He said an IFOP survey two years ago suggested that a third of teachers had "self-censored" to avoid conflicts over secularism. He believes the government is right to challenge what he says are ideological threats to the Republic's laws, alongside security threats.
But Laurent Mucchielli, a sociologist at France's National Centre for Scientific Research, says that President Macron and his government have "overreacted" for political reasons; specifically, the presidential election in 2022.
In Kuwait, a non-governmental chain of hypermarkets said that over 50 of its outlets planned to boycott French products. A boycott campaign is also underway in Jordan, where some grocery shops hung signs declaring that they were not selling French goods.
A range of stores in Qatar are doing the same, including supermarket chain Al Meera, which has more than 50 branches in the Arab country. Qatar University also said that it was postponing its French Cultural Week indefinitely.
On Tuesday Saudi Arabia condemned the publication of "offensive" cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed but stopped short of calling for action against France. Riyadh also condemned terrorist acts, in a reference to Paty's death.
Paty's murder has reignited tensions surrounding secularism, Islamism and Islamophobia in France, but public anger in Islamic countries over the Macron's handling of the attack threatens to make it a diplomatic and economic issue too.
Amid the backlash, the French embassy in Ankara advised French citizens in Turkey on Monday to exercise caution and avoid public gatherings.
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In Kuwait, a non-governmental chain of hypermarkets said that over 50 of its outlets planned to boycott French products. A boycott campaign is also underway in Jordan, where some grocery shops hung signs declaring that they were not selling French goods.
A range of stores in Qatar are doing the same, including supermarket chain Al Meera, which has more than 50 branches in the Arab country. Qatar University also said that it was postponing its French Cultural Week indefinitely.
On Tuesday Saudi Arabia condemned the publication of "offensive" cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed but stopped short of calling for action against France. Riyadh also condemned terrorist acts, in a reference to Paty's death.
Paty's murder has reignited tensions surrounding secularism, Islamism and Islamophobia in France, but public anger in Islamic countries over the Macron's handling of the attack threatens to make it a diplomatic and economic issue too.
Amid the backlash, the French embassy in Ankara advised French citizens in Turkey on Monday to exercise caution and avoid public gatherings.
Paty's death has sparked a security crackdown in France, where officials are targeting hate speech on social media and organizations and non-profits with possible links to Islamism.
The Mohammed caricatures that Paty used in his class originally appeared in Charlie Hebdo, and were cited as the motivation for a terror attack on the satirical magazine in 2015 that left 12 people dead. Macron fiercely defended the right to display such cartoons in France at the memorial event for Paty.
France will keep "loving debates, reasonable arguments, we will love science and its controversies," the French leader said. "We will not give up caricatures, drawings, even if others are retreating."
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His father Eugène was himself a prominent commander, known as Athos, leading a strong local resistance movement around Limoges that would have 1,200 fighters by the end of the war.
According to family member Alexandre Bremaud, 28 — who has fought for recognition of Marcel — the father Eugène was able through his office work to invent false identities and even have access to official papers.
He formed his first resistance unit in 1941 at the village of Gaubertie where he rented a small farm and then made formal contacts with the wider resistance movement in France.
America has not grown in strength over the last 10 years, relative to a rising China. The US policy of strategic prudence in the Mediterranean will continue, meaning: The Americans are not going to do it for us. If you look towards Eastern Europe [in the last decade], the Ukrainian account was handled essentially by the Europeans, with the Americans in the background. The key players [in 2014] were German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French president François Hollande, not Barack Obama. There is little reason to expect that to change.
The former US vice president brings a wealth of foreign policy experience, expertise and, not insignificantly, genuine interest in global affairs to the White House. The Democrat served as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, readily making trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to gather the facts on the ground, prior to spending eight years as President Barack Obama's right-hand man from 2009 to early 2017.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday reflected fondly on her regular meetings with VP Biden under Obama. "He knows Germany and Europe well. I remember good encounters and conversations with him," Merkel said as she underlined Biden's "decades of experience in foreign policy" and "very warmly" congratulated him on his election win.
