Author: Olivier Depaul

The ranks of marchers were thinner during a new wave of strikes and protests in France Thursday against an unpopular pension reform, but unions put the accent on a planned March 7 general strike which they hope will bring the country to its knees. The fifth round of nationwide protests that began last month came a day before the deadline for lawmakers in the lower house of parliament to wrap up what has been one of the most rancorous debates in recent years. It concerns the flagship policy of President Emmanuel Macron’s second term, which would raise the minimum retirement…

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Saturday that the European Union is partly to blame for prolonging Russia’s war in Ukraine, doubling down on his government’s insistence that supporting Kyiv was a mistaken strategy for Europe. Speaking at an annual state of the nation address in Budapest, Orban said the EU had fanned the flames of the war by sanctioning Russia and supplying Ukraine with money and weapons, rather than seeking to negotiate a peace with Moscow. “When Russia launched its attack, the West didn’t isolate the conflict but elevated it to a pan-European level,” Orban said.…

Adds detail and background PARIS, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Recent strikes in protest at plans to raise the French retirement age are unlikely to hurt the country’s economy, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told Bloomberg TV on Friday. “I don’t think the strikes will have a really important economic impact on the French economy,” said Le Maire at the World Economic Forum in Davos, adding that the French economy was “doing well”. More than a million people marched through French cities on Thursday to denounce President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the retirement age, with a wave of nationwide strikes…

There’s little chance of students in Adèle Guilloteau’s Grade 1 French immersion class at Willingdon Elementary addressing her in English. Even if they tried, the teacher doesn’t understand much of her anglophone pupils’ mother tongue anyway. Guilloteau is one of three new instructors from France recently hired by the English Montreal School Board amid a teacher shortage in Quebec that has also prompted French service centres to recruit abroad. But the language barrier may be a blessing in disguise for her young English-speaking students. “In two months, I already see progress. Certain students didn’t speak French at all when I…

Boxing could be dropped from the 2024 Paris Olympics due to governance issues within the sport. The IOC said in a statement Thursday, first reported by the Washington Post, that recent International Boxing Association (IBA) decisions could lead to “the cancellation of boxing” for the 2024 Paris Games. Some of the already reported governance issues led to the IOC stripping IBA — then known as AIBA — of its Olympic recognition in 2019. AIBA had suspended all 36 referees and judges used at the 2016 Rio Olympics pending an investigation into a possible judging scandal, one that found that some medal bouts were fixed…