Good morning. We’re covering the collapse of the government in France. Also:
Plus, will A.I. make smartphones obsolete?
France in turmoilThe government of Prime Minister François Bayrou collapsed yesterday after just nine months. With four prime ministers in the past 20 months, the fall of French governments, once unusual, has become close to mundane. Bayrou lost a confidence vote that he had called in Parliament to confront France’s ballooning debt. The far right party led by Marine Le Pen and a group of left and far-left parties, holding a clear majority between them, rejected Bayrou’s ideas, including a freeze on welfare payments and getting rid of two national holidays. Le Pen suggested cutting spending on immigrants instead. What comes next? Macron issued a statement saying he would accept the resignation of Bayrou today and name a new prime minister “in the next few days.” Naming a new prime minister from Macron’s group of centrist allies, however, could lead to more political turmoil. Street protests against austerity and against Macron himself are scheduled for tomorrow. Takeaway: “There’s an adage that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,” Roger Cohen, our Paris bureau chief, said. “There’s no reason to think why another centrist prime minister would not be equally paralyzed.” Context: France has become nearly ungovernable because the old alternation between moderate left and right has been replaced by the growing dominance of political extremes. The country does not have a tradition of coalition building, as in Italy or Germany.
Protests engulfed NepalAt least 19 people were killed yesterday in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, during demonstrations against corruption and a government ban on social media platforms, officials said. The protests were met with a violent response from the security forces and spread beyond Kathmandu to become the most extensive in a single day in the country’s recent history. By early this morning, government officials seemed ready to relax the social media restrictions, though they had not yet addressed the concerns about corruption. The mostly young demonstrators, who have embraced the label of “Gen Z protest,” were enraged over a perceived lack of prosecutions in high-level corruption cases as well as over the ban on apps including Facebook and WhatsApp. Officials said the platforms had failed to comply with regulations, but protesters said the government was trying to curtail free speech. “To address the demands raised by Gen Z, a social media ban will be lifted,” Nepal’s minister for communication and information technology told The Times.
A shooting in JerusalemGunmen opened fire at a crowded bus stop in northern Jerusalem yesterday, killing at least six people in what the police described as a terrorist attack. The police added that a soldier and several civilians “engaged” the attackers and killed them at the scene. The Israeli authorities said that the two gunmen were from Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israeli forces were “encircling the villages the murderers came from.” Related: President Trump warned on social media that if Hamas did not agree to his cease-fire proposal, Israel would push on with its ground invasion in Gaza City. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents are now torn between fleeing to the overcrowded south or taking the risk of staying put. Interested in providing feedback on this newsletter? Take our short survey here.
Behind an inconspicuous wooden door in downtown Budapest sits one of Europe’s most important and largest Jewish libraries. But around 20,000 of its books have been missing since World War II. This week, a 16th-century Torah being sold online for $19,000 turned out to be stolen property from the library and was seized by the authorities in New York. Volume by volume, the library’s collection is resurfacing as pieces of stolen history find their way home. Lives lived: Rick Davies, the lead singer of the British rock band Supertramp, died at 81.
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Tech after smartphonesMany of the world’s biggest tech companies believe that the smartphone will one day be obsolete. Modern A.I. assistants could soon become the main way we interact with our personal computing devices — speaking with a digital helper bot may feel a lot easier than swiping on an app or typing on a keyboard. This week, as Apple prepares to announce a new iPhone, our tech colleagues Brian Chen and Tripp Mickle share what experts have told them about smart glasses, smartwatches, ambient computers and other ascendant tech.
Cook: Create shatteringly crispy skin on this chicken with lime butter. |
