10/09/2025

WEDNESDAY | SEPT 10, 2025

/thesuntelegram FOLLOW / Malaysian Paper

ON TELEGRAM m RAM

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Macron scrambles to find new prime minister

Apologise for anti-Indian comments, Aussie lawmaker told SYDNEY: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said yesterday that a right-wing opposition lawmaker should apologise for comments suggesting an unsustainable number of Indians were migrating to the country. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a senator in the centre-right Liberal Party, made the comments about one of Australia’s largest minority groups following anti-immigrant protests that in part blamed Indians for cost-of-living pressures. Price used a radio interview last week to suggest that large numbers of Indians had been allowed to migrate to Australia to vote for Albanese’s centre-left Labor Party. “There is a concern with the Indian community ... and only because there’s been large numbers. And we can see that reflected in the way that the community votes for Labor at the same time,” Price said. Her comments have caused anger among the community, leading to calls for an apology, including from within her own party. “People in the Indian community are hurting,” Albanese said in an interview with state broadcast ABC yesterday. “The comments are not true that the senator made and, of course, she should apologise for the hurt that has been caused and her own colleagues are saying that.” Government statistics show 845,800 Indian born people were living in Australia in 2023, more than doubling over the previous decade. Hundreds of thousands more born in Australia claim some form of Indian ancestry. The New South Wales government yesterday held a meeting of community groups to discuss what it said was rising anti-Australian-Indian sentiment. “Today we stand together with the Australian-Indian community to say unambiguously that the sort of racist rhetoric and divisive false claims we have seen over the last couple of weeks have no place in our state or country,” NSW Premier Chris Minns said. India’s Foreign Ministry said last week it was engaging with Canberra over the rise in anti Indian sentiment. – Reuters

o 64% of French want president to resign: Survey

PARIS: French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou was set to submit his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron after parliament ousted the government, with the French leader rushing to find a successor and stave off a new political crisis. On Monday, Bayrou suffered a crushing loss in a confidence vote he had himself called, plunging France into fresh uncertainty and leaving Macron with the task of finding the seventh premier of his mandate. The French presidency said in a statement that Macron “took note” of the outcome and said he would name a new premier “in the next days”, ending any remaining speculation that the president could instead call snap elections. Macron was scheduled to meet Bayrou “to accept the resignation of his government”, it added. The formal submission of his resignation was expected in the middle of the day. The French president has in the past been notoriously slow in “casting” a new prime minister. But he is widely expected on this occasion not to procrastinate given the risk of financial and political stability. “Emmanuel Macron is now in the front line to find a solution to the political crisis,” said the Liberation daily. France’s borrowing costs, a measure of investor confidence in a country, on Tuesday surged slightly higher than those for Italy, long one of Europe’s debt laggards. Bayrou had blindsided even his allies by calling a confidence vote to end a lengthy standoff over his austerity budget, which foresaw almost €44 billion (RM217.7 billion) of cost savings to reduce France’s debt pile. In the vote in the National Assembly, 364 deputies voted that they had no confidence in the government while just 194 gave it their confidence. Bayrou was the sixth prime minister under Tom Phillips’ days as a fugitive came to a bloody end this week when he was killed in a shootout in the rolling hill country of the North Island’s Waikato region. His three children were safely recovered. Police detailed yesterday their time in the bush and how they were able to stay undetected for so long. “Phillips and his children have been very mobile and moved frequently,” New Zealand Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said. The family’s mobility made it a “challenge” for authorities to find them, he explained. Authorities also took great caution in dealing with Phillips because they knew he was armed and dangerous. “We have taken time over four years to consider how best to deal with the situation,” Chambers said. “We were confident that, irrespective of how hard we tried to bring it to a peaceful conclusion, that with a motivated person that was always going to be a challenge,” he said.

Bayrou, flanked by Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Minister Annie Genevard leaving the National Assembly yesterday. – AFPPIC

by a figure such as PS leader Olivier Faure could survive. According to a poll by Odoxa-Backbone for Le Figaro newspaper, 64% of the French want Macron to resign rather than name a new prime minister, a move he has ruled out. He is forbidden from standing for a third term in 2027. Alongside political upheaval, France is also facing social tensions. A left-wing collective named “Block Everything” is calling for a day of action today, and trade unions have urged workers to strike on Sept 18. – AFP

At Phillips’ bush camp hideout nestled in the scrub, the family had access to two red quad bikes, firearms and ammunition, police said. Strewn across the site was a fuel container, spare tyres and empty bottles, photos showed. But there were touches of small luxuries, including cans of soft drinks. Police also found firearms and ammunition at the site. The camp was just two kilometres from where Monday’s shooting took place, Chambers said, in “deep bush, not an easily found location for anybody”. Authorities have said they believed sympathetic locals were assisting Phillips, and they would investigate whether he had help getting hold of guns and a quad bike. “There is a lot of work to do to try and understand who, if anybody, was assisting Mr Phillips and we will deal with that should that be the case,” Chambers said. Phillips absconded with his three children in December 2021 after a row with his former partner and eluded capture for years despite several sightings. He was killed in a gunfight with police after shooting an officer in the head and shoulder with a high-powered rifle. – AFP Macron since his 2017 election, and the fifth since 2022. His predecessor Michel Barnier was brought down by a no-confidence vote in December and the crisis dates back to legislative elections last year that resulted in a hung parliament. Macron now faces one of the most critical domestic decisions of his presidency over who to appoint as premier. The Socialist Party (PS) has expressed readiness to lead a new government but it is far from clear whether such an administration led

NZ police detail fugitive’s life on the run WELLINGTON: A fugitive father killed in a shootout with New Zealand police after nearly four years on the run with his children maintained a bushland hideout stocked with firearms and ammunition.

A campsite where Phillips and his children were hiding in Waitomo. – NEW ZEALAND POLICE/AFPPIC