LONDON — Keir Starmer will be Britain’s next prime minister with his Labour Party set to win a massive majority in a parliamentary election, an exit poll on Thursday indicated, while Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are forecast to suffer historic losses.

The poll showed Labour would win 410 seats in the 650-seat parliament and a majority of 170, ending 14 years of Conservative-led government.

Sunak’s party was forecast to only take 131 seats, down from 346 when parliament was dissolved and the worst electoral performance in its history. Voters punished the party for a cost-of-living crisis and years of instability and in-fighting that have seen five prime ministers since 2016.

“Britain’s future was on the ballot at this election. And, if we are successful tonight, Labour will get to work immediately with our first steps for change,” Pat McFadden, Labour’s campaign coordinator said in statement.

The centrist Liberal Democrats were predicted to capture 61 seats while Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK was forecast to win 13.

While the forecast for Reform was far better than expected, the overall outcome suggests the disenchanted British public appears to have shifted support to the center-left, unlike in France where Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party made historic gains in an election last Sunday.

It was not just the Conservatives whose vote was predicted to have collapsed. The pro-independence Scottish National Party was forecast to win only 10 seats, its worst showing since 2010, after a period of turmoil which has seen two leaders quit in little over a year, a police investigation into the party’s finances and splits on a range of policies.

In the last six U.K. elections, only one exit poll has got the outcome wrong: In 2015 the poll predicted a hung parliament when in fact the Conservatives won a majority. Official results will follow over the next hours.

Sunak stunned Westminster and many in his own party by calling the election earlier than he needed to in May with the Conservatives trailing Labour by some 20 points in opinion polls.

He had hoped that the gap would narrow as had traditionally been the case in British elections, but the deficit has failed to budge in a fairly disastrous campaign.

It started badly with Sunak getting drenched as he stood in the rain outside Downing Street and announced the vote, before aides and Conservative candidates became caught up in a gambling scandal over suspicious bets placed on the date of the election.

Sunak’s early departure from D-Day commemorative events in France to do a TV interview angered veterans, and even those within his own party said it raised questions about his political acumen.

If the exit poll proves right, it represents an incredible turnaround for Starmer and Labour, which critics and supporters said was facing an existential crisis just three years ago when it lost a parliamentary seat on a 16% swing to the Conservatives, an almost unique win for a governing party.

But a series of scandals — most notably revelations of parties in Downing Street during COVID lockdowns — undermined then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and by November 2021 the Conservative poll lead, which had been higher than at any time during Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years in government, was gone.

Liz Truss’ disastrous six-week premiership, which followed Johnson being forced out at the end of 2022, cemented the decline, and Sunak was unable to make any dent in Labour’s now commanding poll lead

While polls have suggested that there is no great enthusiasm for Labour leader Starmer, his simple message that it was time for change appears to have resonated with voters.

However, the predicted Labour result would not quite match the record level achieved by the party under Tony Blair in 1997 when the party captured 418 seats with a majority of 179.
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NEW YORK — The parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue has signed a deal to buy upscale rival Neiman Marcus Group, which owns Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman stores, for $2.65 billion, with online behemoth Amazon holding a minority stake.

The new entity would be called Saks Global, which will comprise the Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks OFF 5TH brands, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, as well as the real estate assets of Neiman Marcus Group and HBC, a holding company that purchased Saks in 2013.

HBC has secured $1.15 billion in financing from investment funds and accounts managed by affiliates of Apollo, and a $2 billion fully committed revolving asset-based loan facility from Bank of America, which is the lead underwriter, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets and Wells Fargo.

The deal comes after months of rumors that the department store chains had been negotiating a deal. But the twist is Amazon’s minority stake, which adds “a bit of spice” to an otherwise anticipated pact, according to Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, a research firm.

The pact was announced Thursday after months of rumors that the department store chains had been negotiating a deal.

“For years, many in the industry have anticipated this transaction and the benefits it would drive for customers, partners and employees,” said Richard Baker, HBC executive chairman and CEO in a statement. “This is an exciting time in luxury retail, with technological advancements creating new opportunities to redefine the customer experience, and we look forward to unlocking significant value for our customers, brand partners and employees.”

Saks and Neiman Marcus have struggled as shoppers have been pulling back on buying high-end goods and shifting their spending toward experiences such as travel and upscale restaurants. The two iconic luxury purveyors have also faced stiffer competition from luxury brands, which are increasingly opening their own stores. The deal should help reduce operating costs and create more negotiating power with vendors.

Saks Fifth Avenue currently operates 39 stores in the United States, including its Manhattan flagship. In early 2021, Saks spun off its website into a separate company, with the hopes of expanding that business at a time when more people were shopping online.

Current Saks.com CEO Marc Metrick will become CEO of Saks Global, leading Saks Global’s retail and consumer businesses and driving the strategy to improve the luxury shopping experience.

Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy protection in May 2020 during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic but emerged in September of that year. Like many of its peers, the privately held department store chain was forced to temporarily close its stores for several months.

Meanwhile, other department stores are under pressure to keep increasing sales.

Lord & Taylor announced in late August 2020 it was closing all its stores after filing for bankruptcy earlier that month. It’s operating online. Macy’s announced in February of this year that it will close 150 unproductive namesake stores over the next three years, including 50 by year’s end.

Consumers have proven resilient and willing to shop even after a bout of inflation, although behaviors have shifted, with some Americans trading down to lower-priced goods.
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PARIS — Some 30,000 police will be deployed across France late Sunday following the high-stakes runoff of a parliamentary election to ensure there is no trouble, a minister said, as three candidates said they had been victims of attacks on the campaign trail.

Sunday’s second round will determine whether Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, or RN, secures a parliamentary majority for the first time and forms the next government in France, the euro zone’s second-largest economy.

The campaign has been marred by political tensions but also growing violence.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said he would be “very careful” about security on Sunday evening, when the election’s results will be announced.

Some 5,000 of the 30,000 police deployed that evening will be in Paris and its surroundings, and they will “ensure that the radical right and radical left do not take advantage of the situation to cause mayhem,” he told France 2 TV.

Darmanin said four people had been arrested over an attack that occurred on Wednesday evening on government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot and her team when they were out putting up campaign posters.

While Thevenot herself was not harmed, her deputy and a party activist were injured by an unidentified group of about 10 youths who were defacing campaign posters, Thevenot told Le Parisien newspaper.

An RN candidate in Savoie, Marie Dauchy, also said she had been attacked by a shopkeeper at a market on Wednesday.

Separately, the 77-year-old deputy mayor of a small town near Grenoble, in southeastern France, was punched in the face on Thursday morning when putting up a poster for Olivier Veran, a former spokesperson for President Emmanuel Macron.

Veran denounced a “completely unprecedented context of violence in this campaign.”

Meanwhile, a poll on Wednesday suggested efforts by mainstream parties to block the far right from reaching an absolute majority might work.

The Harris Interactive poll for Challenges magazine showed the anti-immigration RN and its allies would get 190 to 220 seats in the 577-strong assembly, while the center-right Republicans, or LR, would win 30 to 50 seats. This could rule out the possibility of a far-right minority government supported by part of the LR parliamentary group.

The poll was published after more than 200 candidates across the political spectrum withdrew their candidacies to clear the path for whoever was best placed to defeat the RN candidate in their district, in a process known as the “republican front.”

However, much uncertainty remains, including whether voters will go along with these efforts to block the RN.
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July 20 marks the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. An interactive exhibit at Manhattan’s Intrepid Museum reminds viewers of the enormity of that undertaking and what went into the first moon landing. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Vladimir Badikov.
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London — Britain voted Thursday in a general election widely expected to hand the opposition Labour party a landslide win and end nearly a decade-and-a-half of Conservative rule. 

The first national ballot since Boris Johnson won the Tories a decisive victory in 2019 follows Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s surprise call to hold it six months earlier than required. 

His gamble looks set to backfire spectacularly, with polls throughout the six-week campaign — and for the last two years — pointing to a heavy defeat for his right-wing party. 

That would almost certainly put Labour leader Keir Starmer, 61, in Downing Street, as leader of the largest party in parliament. 

Centre-left Labour is projected to win its first general election since 2005 by historic proportions, with a flurry of election-eve polls all forecasting its biggest-ever victory. 

But Starmer was taking nothing for granted as he urged voters not to stay at home. “Britain’s future is on the ballot,” he said. “But change will only happen if you vote for it.” 

Voting began at 7:00 am (0600 GMT) in more than 40,000 polling stations across the country, from church halls, community centers and schools to more unusual venues such as pubs and even a ship. 

Sunak was among the early birds, casting his ballot at his Richmond and Northallerton constituency in Yorkshire, northern England. Starmer voted around two hours later in his north London seat. 

“I just moved back from Australia and I’ve got the feeling that everything has turned wrong in this country and a lot of people are not satisfied,” said Ianthe Jacob, a 32-year-old writer, after voting in Hackney, east London. 

In Saint Albans, north of London, 22-year-old student Judith told AFP: “I don’t really trust any of them but will vote. A lot of my friends feel the same.” 

Voting closes at 10:00 pm (2100 GMT). Broadcasters then announce exit polls, which typically provide an accurate picture of how the main parties have performed. 

Results from the UK’s 650 constituencies trickle in overnight, with the winning party expected to hit 326 seats — the threshold for a parliamentary majority — as dawn breaks Friday.  

Polls suggest voters will punish the Tories after 14 years of often chaotic rule and could oust a string of government ministers. 
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OROVILLE, Calif. — Firefighters lined roads to keep flames from reaching homes as helicopters dropped water on a growing wildfire Wednesday in Northern California that has forced at least 26,000 people to evacuate, as the state sweltered under extreme heat.

The Thompson fire broke out before noon Tuesday about 110 kilometers north of Sacramento, near the city of Oroville in Butte County. It sent up a huge plume of smoke that could be seen from space as it grew to more than 14 square kilometers. There was no containment.

But Oroville Mayor David Pittman said by Wednesday afternoon there had been a “significant drop in the fire activity,” and he was hopeful that some residents could soon be allowed to return home. The fire’s progress was stopped along the southern edge and firefighters working in steep terrain were trying to build containment lines on the northern side.

“On that north side they have some real struggles in terms of the topography,” Pittman said.

More than a dozen other blazes, most of them small, were active in across the state, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. A new fire Wednesday afternoon prompted a small number of evacuations in heavily populated Simi Valley, about 65 kilometers northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

The state’s largest blaze, the Basin Fire, covered nearly 57 square kilometers of the Sierra National Forest in eastern Fresno County and was 26% contained.

In Oroville, a state of emergency was declared Tuesday night and evacuation centers were set up. The evacuation zone expanded Wednesday into foothills and rural areas beyond the city that’s home to about 20,000 people. With July Fourth in mind, authorities also warned that fireworks are banned in many places, including most of Butte County.

There was no immediate official report on property losses. An Associated Press photographer saw fire burn three adjacent suburban-style homes in Oroville.

The fire ignited sprigs of grass poking from the concrete edges of Lake Oroville as gusty winds whipped up American flags lining a bend of the state’s second largest reservoir and the nation’s tallest dam.

Residents stood on hillsides in the night, watching the orange glow, as aircraft made water drops to keep the fire from spreading. A crew of more than a dozen firefighters saved one home as goats and other farm animals ran to find safety.

The fire’s cause is being investigated. Red flag warnings for critical fire weather conditions, including gusty northerly winds and low humidity levels, were in effect when it erupted.

The warnings were expected to remain in effect until 8 p.m. Wednesday, said Garrett Sjolund, the Butte County unit chief for Cal Fire.

“The conditions out there that are in our county this summer are much different than we’ve experienced the last two summers,” Sjolund said in an online briefing. “The fuels are very dense, brush is dry. And as you can see, any wind will move a fire out very quickly.”

The conditions led Pacific Gas & Electric to implement targeted public safety power shutoffs in parts of some Northern California counties to prevent fires from being ignited by downed or damaged wires.

More high temperatures above 100 degrees (37.8 Celsius) were forecast Wednesday, the National Weather Service said. Hot conditions were expected to continue into next week.

Authorities warned of full legal consequences for any illegal use of fireworks during the Fourth of July holiday.

“Don’t be an idiot, cause a fire and create more problems for us,” said Butte County Sheriff Kory L. Honea. “No one in the community is going to want that. And we certainly don’t want this.”

The governor’s office announced late Tuesday that federal funding had been approved to help with firefighting efforts. Gov. Gavin Newsom this week activated the State Operations Center to coordinate California’s response, dispatch mutual aid and support communities as they respond to threats of wildfire and excessive heat.

In Southern California, Joshua Tree National Park officials closed Covington Flats, an area with most of the park’s important Joshua tree populations, on Wednesday because of extreme fire risk after spring rains led to abundant grass that has now dried. A June 2023 fire burned 4.14 square kilometers of Joshua trees and desert tortoise habitat.
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HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM — Analysts cite an effort to strengthen Vietnam’s South China Sea territorial claims as a key reason Hanoi welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month, despite potential fallout from links to Moscow in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

They also say Russian investment in offshore oil and gas reserves off Vietnam’s coast in the South China shows Hanoi strengthening its territorial claims.

Vietnam and Russia signed 11 agreements during the visit. They included, according to the Kremlin, granting an investment license for a hydrocarbon block off Vietnam’s southeastern coast to Zarubezhneft, a state-owned Russian oil and gas firm with a history of joint ventures with Vietnam.

Ian Storey, senior fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS Yusof-Ishak Institute, told VOA that Vietnam wants to expand its oil and gas operations with Russia inside its exclusive economic zone for two reasons.

“First, the resources in the fields being worked by Vietsovpetro [a Russian-Vietnamese oil and gas joint venture] are running low and it’s time to start operations in new blocks,” Storey wrote over email on June 25, referring to an existing oil partnership.

“Second,” he wrote, “Vietnam wants to internationalize the energy projects in its EEZ because it adds legitimacy to its jurisdictional claims in the South China Sea.”

Storey added that although there have been reports of Hanoi making an arms purchase by using funds from the joint oil enterprise Rusvietpetro, it is unlikely that the leaders settled plans for a weapons sale during the visit.

“While there have been reports that Russia is considering providing loans to Vietnam to buy military hardware using the profits from their joint venture in Siberia, it is unclear whether the two sides have reached a final agreement,” Storey wrote. The New York Times reported on a leaked March 2023 document from Vietnam’s Finance Ministry that outlined plans for Hanoi to purchase Russian weapons using loans from Rusvietpetro.

“The absence of Russian Defence Minister [Andrei] Belousov from Putin’s entourage to Vietnam suggests they have not,” he wrote.

Protecting disputed waters

Although Vietnamese territory stretches 370 kilometers off its coast according to international law, China claims the vast majority of the South China Sea with its disputed so-called nine-dash line delineating its claims in the sea.

Ray Powell, director of the Sea Light Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University, wrote over WhatsApp on June 27 that the block licensed to Zarubezhneft “appears to be inside” the nine-dash line.

Nguyen The Phuong, a maritime security expert and Ph.D. candidate at the University of New South Wales Canberra, told VOA during a call on June 26 that the key takeaway from Putin’s visit is Hanoi’s intention to secure its territorial integrity.

“Vietnam wants Russia to have more presence in the South China Sea because, different from the United States or Western countries, the presence of Russia will not infuriate China,” Phuong said. “It could somehow prevent China from going overboard, from being overly aggressive.”

Alexander Vuving, professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, said it is important for Hanoi to maintain strong ties with Moscow after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The Ukraine war is pushing Russia closer to China, and that is the Vietnamese nightmare,” Vuving said during a Zoom call with VOA on June 27, noting that Moscow is Hanoi’s leading partner to counter Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.

“From Vietnam’s perspective, they need Russia,” he said.

Vietnam is attempting to diversify its military equipment away from Russia, which has been its primary supplier, and it is not clear whether the two sides agreed on an arms sale during this visit. Nevertheless, Russia remains Hanoi’s top option to update its aging military arsenal, Vuving said.

“[Vietnam] is still trying to buy arms from Russia for many reasons,” he said. “The price is not so high like some other alternative sources but there’s also the question of the issue of trust – Vietnam would trust Russia,” Vuving said.

That trust comes from a long history of support from the former Soviet Union and later Russia, Nguyen Hong Hai, senior lecturer at Hanoi’s Vinuniversity, told VOA. Along with military aid to support Vietnam’s fights for independence, the Soviet Union and Russia helped to bring the country out of poverty and most of Vietnam’s top leaders trained there, Hai said.

“For the generation who lived during that period of time, they still have very fond memories of the Soviet Union’s and Russian assistance to Vietnam,” Hai said June 25 by Zoom.

Some see dangers

Even with the historic connection, some point to the dangers of welcoming Putin after the invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s visits to China and North Korea.

“This trip was made right after Putin visited [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un. The two most brutal dictators in East Asia,” Tran Anh Quan, a Ho Chi Minh City-based social activist wrote to VOA in Vietnamese over Telegram.

“If Putin can link up with Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and To Lam, it will form an alliance of tyrants of the world’s major dictatorial states,” Quan said, referring to former public security minister To Lam, who became president in May.

Quan said he has not seen much response from the Vietnamese public to Putin’s Hanoi visit.

He said many are afraid to speak out in the current political environment and the public is more focused on the case of Thich Minh Tue – a monk who is not part of a state-sanctioned Buddhist group and became famous for walking barefoot across the country before he was detained by police in early June.

“Vietnam is increasingly suppressing critical voices, so people dare to speak out less than before,” Quan said.

Zachary Abuza, Southeast Asia expert and professor at the National War College in Washington, also noted the negative image Putin’s visit casts, adding that Russia’s war on Ukraine highlights the degradation of international laws, crucial to Vietnam, given its territorial tensions with neighboring China.

“The optics of it are terrible,” he told VOA on June 17. “This is the leader who is trying to upend the international rules-based order and change borders through the use of force. … The legal rationale that Russia and Putin have come up with for the invasion of Ukraine is really dangerous for Vietnam.”

Still, Hai said that although Vietnam and Ukraine are two small nations neighboring larger powers, it is too simplistic to compare the relationships between Vietnam and China with Ukraine and Russia.

“[Vietnam] has coexisted with China for over 4,000 years and understands its neighbor well,” he said, while noting the countries continue to have territorial disputes and had a border war in 1979.

“Since normalizing relations in 1991, the two countries have managed their relationship effectively,’’ Hai said. ‘’Both nations aim to avoid conflict.”

Further, he added that Hanoi does not “take sides” with Russia, and when leaders express their debt to the Soviet Union, that includes its former republic, Ukraine.

“In the joint statement between Vietnam and Russia during the Putin visit … Vietnam was very careful to show it does not side with Russia,” Hai said.
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WASHINGTON — General Motors will pay nearly $146 million in penalties to the federal government because 5.9 million of its older vehicles do not comply with emissions and fuel economy standards.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a statement Wednesday that certain GM vehicles from the 2012 through 2018 model years did not comply with federal fuel economy requirements.

The penalty comes after the Environmental Protection Agency said its testing showed the GM pickups and SUVs emit more than 10% more carbon dioxide on average than GM’s initial compliance testing claimed.

The EPA says the vehicles will remain on the road and cannot be repaired. The GM vehicles on average consume at least 10% more fuel than the window sticker numbers say, but the company won’t be required to reduce the miles per gallon on the stickers, the EPA said.

“Our investigation has achieved accountability and upholds an important program that’s reducing air pollution and protecting communities across the country,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said.

GM said in a statement that it complied with all regulations regarding the pollution and mileage certification of its vehicles. The company said it is not admitting to any wrongdoing nor that it failed to comply with the Clean Air Act.

The problem stems from a change in testing procedures that the EPA put in place in 2016, GM spokesperson Bill Grotz said.

Owners don’t have to take any action because there is no defect in the vehicles, Grotz said.

“We believe this voluntary action is the best course of action to resolve the outstanding issues with the federal government,” he said.

The enforcement action involves about 4.6 million full-size pickups and SUVs and about 1.3 million midsize SUVs, the EPA said. The affected models include the Chevy Tahoe, Cadillac Escalade and Chevy Silverado. About 40 variations of GM vehicles are covered.

GM will be forced to give up credits used to ensure that manufacturers’ greenhouse gas emissions are below the fleet standard for emissions that applies for that model year, the EPA said. In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, GM said it expects the total cost to resolve the matter will be $490 million.

Because GM agreed to address the excess emissions, EPA said it was not necessary to make a formal determination regarding the reasons for the excess pollution.

But David Cooke, senior vehicles analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, questioned how GM could not know that pollution exceeded initial tests by more than 10% because the problem was so widespread on so many different vehicles.

“You don’t just make a more than 10% rounding error,” he said.

Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign for the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the violations by GM “show why automakers can’t be trusted to protect our air and health, and why we need strong pollution rules. Supreme Court, take notice!”

In similar pollution cases in the past, automakers have been fined under the Clean Air Act for such violations, and the Justice Department normally gets involved, Cooke said. Hyundai and Kia, for instance, faced Justice Department action in a similar case.

The Justice Department declined to comment, and GM said the settlement resolves all government claims.

Cooke said it’s possible that GM owners could sue the company because they are getting lower gas mileage than advertised.

In 2014, Hyundai and Kia entered into a settlement in which they had to pay a $100 million civil penalty to end a two-year investigation into overstated gas mileage on window stickers of 1.2 million vehicles.
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NATO will roll out “concrete ways” to accelerate Ukraine’s eventual membership in the Atlantic alliance during a summit next week in Washington. The summit will also address top security concerns amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and challenges in the Indo-Pacific region. VOA State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching has the story, narrated by Elizabeth Cherneff.
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paris — France on Wednesday expelled an Iranian suspected of influence peddling on behalf of Tehran and having links to the Revolutionary Guard’s ideological army, his lawyer and Iranian officials said.

The deportation of Bashir Biazar, reportedly a former senior figure in state television in Iran, frustrated Paris-based activists who last month filed a torture complaint against him.

Biazar had been held in administrative detention since the beginning of June and was subject to a deportation order from the French interior ministry.

Mohammad Mahdi Rahimi, the head of public relations for the office of the Iranian president, wrote on X that Biazar “has been released and is on his way back to his homeland.”

He said Biazar had been “illegally arrested and imprisoned in France a few weeks ago.”

But a representative of the French interior ministry, speaking at a hearing earlier Wednesday, said Biazar was an “agent of influence, an agitator who promotes the views of the Islamic Republic of Iran and, more worryingly, harasses opponents of the regime.”

The representative accused Biazar of filming journalists from Iranian opposition media in September in front of the Iranian consulate in Paris after an arson attack on the building.

French authorities also accused him of posting messages on social networks in connection with the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza in which he denounced “Zionist dogs.”

During the hearing, his lawyer Rachid Lemoudaa said that the expulsion order was based on assumptions and that his client’s comments fell within the scope of “freedom of expression.”

“I have never been made aware of any threat whatsoever” posed by Biazar, he added.

Biazar has been described by the London-based Iran International television channel as a former official for Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.

Iranian state media have described him as a “cultural figure.”

The case has emerged at a time of heightened tensions between Paris and Tehran, with three French citizens, described by France as “state hostages,” still imprisoned in Iran.

A fourth French detainee, Louis Arnaud, held in Iran since September 2022, was suddenly released last month.

Activist group Iran Justice and victims of human rights violations filed the torture complaint against Biazar last month in Paris.

It accuses Biazar of complicity in torture because of his past work with IRIB, describing him as a former director of production there.

The complaint referred to the regular broadcasts by Iranian state television of statements by, and even interviews with, Iranian or foreign prisoners, which activists regard as forced confessions.

“It is incomprehensible … that no legal proceedings have been initiated” against Biazar, Chirinne Ardakani, the Paris-based lawyer behind the complaint, told AFP.

She said there were “serious indications” implicating Biazar “in the production, recording and broadcasting of forced confessions obtained clearly under torture.”

“Nothing is clear in this case,” she added.

The French citizens still held in Iran are Cecile Kohler, a teacher, and her partner Jacques Paris, detained since May 2022, and another man identified only as Olivier.

Kohler appeared on Iranian television in October 2022 giving comments activists said amounted to a forced confession.

Amnesty International describes Kohler as “arbitrarily detained … amidst mounting evidence Iran’s authorities are holding her hostage to compel specific action[s] by French authorities.”
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Turkey’s bid to join the BRICS trading group is likely a topic discussed between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kazakhstan on Wednesday. As Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, the bid has Erdogan playing a delicate balancing act in his relations with both Washington and Moscow.
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Between the southernmost tip of the United States and Cuba lies a body of water called the Florida Straits. Coast Guard vehicles patrol these waters daily, looking for migrants illegally trying to enter the U.S. VOA earlier this year got an exclusive flight with the U.S. Coast Guard on patrol. VOA’s Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti takes us along on the ride. (Camera and produced by: Mary Cieslak)
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Paris — The far-right National Rally (RN) is the only party capable of winning an absolute majority in France’s legislative elections, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said Wednesday, urging voters to block their rise to power.  

Attal admitted four days ahead of the polls that many French voters would have to hold their nose and vote for parties that they do not support in order to take control of the government.   

The RN dominated the first round of polls, presenting the party of Marine Le Pen with the prospect of forming the government and her protege Jordan Bardella, 28, taking the post of premier in a tense “cohabitation” with President Emmanuel Macron.   

But over 200 candidates from the left and the center this week dropped out of three-way races in the second round of the contest, sacrificing their hopes to prevent the RN winning the seat.   

“There is one bloc that is able to have an absolute majority (in the National Assembly) and it’s the extreme right,” Attal told France Inter radio.   

“On Sunday evening, what’s at stake in the second round is to do everything so that the extreme right does not have an absolute majority,” he added.   

“It is not nice for some French to have to block… by using a vote that they did not want to,” he said.  

“I say it’s our responsibility to do this,” he added.    

An absolute majority of 289 seats is needed in the 577 seat National Assembly for a party to form a government on its own. But Le Pen has said that the RN will try if it gets any more than 270 seats by winning over other deputies.   

“At the end of this second round, either power will be in the hands of a far-right government, or power will be in parliament. I am fighting for this second scenario,” said Attal.   

One option that is the subject of increasing media attention is the possibility that rather than a far-right government France could be ruled by a broad coalition of pro-Macron centrists, the traditional right, Socialists and Greens.   

But Attal was non-committal: “I did not speak about a coalition. I do not want to impose on the French a coalition that they did not choose.”   

Former prime minister Edouard Philippe, still an influential voice in the pro-Macron camp, told TF1 TV in his constituency on Sunday he would be voting for a Communist candidate to stop the far right.   

He said that after the election he would support a new parliamentary majority that could span “conservative right to the social democrats” but not include the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI). 
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Arles, France — One of the world’s most renowned photo festivals, in the French town of Arles, returned this week with a timely ode to diversity at a moment when France is turning towards the far right.

The Rencontres festival, which runs until Sept. 29, is spread across 27 venues in the ancient cobbled streets of this former Roman town in Provence and has been running since 1970.

This year’s theme is “Beneath the Surface,” seeking to delve into diversity without the usual caricatures around minorities.

The star exhibition is a world-first retrospective for U.S. portrait artist Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015), who worked for magazines like Life and Rolling Stone.

One of her celebrated images features an Icelandic child resting on the neck of a horse that focuses attention away from the boy’s disability.

Mark “devoted a lot of time and attention to her protagonists, in a few cases returning to photograph them again and again over the course of many years, forging close relationships with many,” said co-curator Sophia Greiff.

An example is Tiny, whom Mark followed from her years on the street falling into drug use, to tender moments with her children.

“What I’m trying to do is make photographs that are universally understood… that cross cultural lines,” Mark once said.

Elsewhere at the festival, Spanish photographer Cristina de Middel presents documentary and dreamlike work about migrants traveling from Mexico to the U.S.

She ignores the usual tropes around migration, presenting the crossing as a heroic epic of courageous men and women heading towards a new life.

By mixing documentary images with staged and poetic photos, “it gives each person back their personality and restores a level of humanity in their representation,” said festival director Christoph Wiesner.

He said the message was particularly vital given the rise of the far right in France, which is currently leading in legislative elections.

“Just because the situation is complex, we cannot just give up,” said Wiesner, highlighting the festival’s regular work on issues around feminism and anti-racism, including presentations in local schools. 

Other exhibitions this year include “I’m So Happy You’re Here,” featuring the work of 20 Japanese female photographers.

Another invites visitors into the “baroque of everyday life” in the Indian state of Punjab with shots of bizarre roof sculptures that locals have brought back after working abroad, including footballs, tanks, planes and lions.

French artist Sophie Calle presents her images alongside responses from blind people about their understanding of visual beauty.

“Green is beautiful, because every time I like something I’m told it’s green,” reads one caption alongside a shot of vivid grass.
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NEW YORK — In the winter of 1789, around the time George Washington was elected the country’s first president, a Boston-based printer quietly launched another American institution.

William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy, published anonymously by Isaiah Thomas & Company, is widely cited as something momentous: the first American novel.

Around 100 pages long, Brown’s narrative tells of two young New Englanders whose love affair abruptly and tragically ends when they learn a shocking secret that makes their relationship unbearable. The dedication page, addressed to the “Young Ladies of United Columbia” (the United States), promised an exposé of “the Fatal consequences of Seduction” and a prescription for the “Economy of Human Life.”

Outside of Boston society, though, few would have known or cared whether The Power of Sympathy marked any kind of literary milestone.

“If you picked 10 random citizens, I doubt it would have mattered to any of them,” says David Lawrimore, an associate professor of English at the University of Idaho who has written often about early U.S. literature. “Most people weren’t thinking about the first American novel.”

What the first American novel was like

Subtitled The Triumph of Nature. Founded in Truth, Brown’s book is in many ways characteristic of the era, whether its epistolary format, its Anglicized prose, its unidentified author, or its pious message. But The Power of Sympathy also includes themes that reflected the aspirations and anxieties of a young country and still resonate now.

Dana McClain, an assistant professor of English at Holy Family University, notes that Brown was an outspoken Federalist, believing in a strong national government, and shared his contemporaries’ preoccupation with forging how a stable republican citizenry. The letters in The Power of Sympathy include reflections on class, temperament and the differences between North and South, notably the “aristocratic temper” of Southern slaveholders that endangered “domestic quietude,” as if anticipating the next century’s Civil War.

Like many other early American writers, fiction and nonfiction, Brown tied the behavior of women to the fate of the larger society. The novel’s correspondents fret about the destabilizing “power of pleasure” and how female envy “inundates the land with a flood of scandal.” Virtue is likened to a “mighty river” that “fertilizes the country through which it passes and increases in magnitude and force until it empty itself into the ocean.”

Brown also examines at length the ways novels might be a path to corruption or a vehicle to uplift, mirroring current debates over the banning and restrictions of books in schools and libraries.

“Most of the novels with which our female libraries are overrun are built upon on a foundation not always placed on strict morality, and in the pursuit of of objects not always probable or praiseworthy,” one of Brown’s characters warns. “Novels, not regulated on the chaste principles of true friendship, rational love, and connubial duty, appear to me totally unfit to form the minds of women, of friends, or of wives.”

Brown was likely more interested in shaping minds than in literary glory.

“The Great American Novel” is a favorite catchphrase but wasn’t coined until the 1860s. During Brown’s lifetime, novels were a relatively crude art form and were valued mostly for satire, light entertainment or moral instruction. Few writers identified themselves as “novelists”: Brown was known as a poet, and essayist and the composer of an opera.

Even he recognized the book’s lower stature, writing in the novel’s preface: “This species of writing hath not been received with universal approbation.”

How it became considered the first

The Power of Sympathy was commonly cited as the first American novel in the 1800s, but few bothered debating it until the 20th century. Scholars then agreed that honors should belong to the first written and published in the United States by an author born and still residing in the country.

Those guidelines disqualified such earlier works as Charlotte Ramsay Lennox’s The Life of Harriot Stuart and Thomas Atwood Digges’ Adventures of Alonso.

Another contender was Father Bombo’s Pilgrimage to Mecca, a prose adventure by college students Hugh Henry Brackenridge and Philip Freneau, both of whom went on to prominent public careers. Written around 1770, the manuscript was later believed lost and wasn’t published in full until 1975.

Brown’s novel was unexamined for so long that only in the late 19th century did the public even discover he had written it. Many had credited the Boston poet Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, whose family had endured a scandal similar to the one in The Power of Sympathy.

In 1894-95, editor Arthur W. Brayley of the Bostonian serialized the novel in his magazine, identifying Morton as the author. But after being contacted by Brown’s niece, Rebecca Vollentine Thompson, Brayley published a lengthy correction, titled “The Real Author of the Power of Sympathy.”

Thompson herself added a preface to a 1900 reissue, noting that Brown was close to Morton’s family and alleging that the publication had been “suppressed” because Brown had bared an “unfortunate scandal.”

A clockmaker’s son, Brown was a Boston native, likely born in 1765. He was well-read, connected, culturally conservative and politically minded; one of his first published writings was an unflattering poem about Daniel Shays, the namesake for the 1786-87 rebellion of impoverished Revolutionary War veterans in Massachusetts. Brown is also the author of several posthumous releases, including the play The Treason of Arnold and the novel Ira and Isabella.

His unofficial standing as “America’s First Novelist” did not lead to broader fame. The novel, currently in print through a 1996 edition from Penguin Classics, remains more of interest to specialists and antiquarians than to general readers.

Brown was not yet 30 when he died in North Carolina, in 1793, from what is believed to be malaria. He apparently never married or had children. No memorials or other historical sites are dedicated to him. No literary societies have been formed in his name.

His burial site is unknown.
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