Page 8 - aruba-today-20170502

A8 WORLD NEWS
Tuesday 2 May 2017
French election rallies on May Day bring insults, unrest

ELAINE GANLEY rie Le Pen was trounced by
SYLVIE CORBET Jacques Chirac.
Associated Press Addressing thousands
PARIS (AP) — Far-right at a venue outside Paris,
leader Marine Le Pen and Marine Le Pen skewered
centrist Emmanuel Macron Macron, a former invest-
hunted working class votes ment banker, as a puppet
Monday, entering the final of financiers and Islamic
week of an increasingly fundamentalists, a lapdog
nasty campaign for presi- of Socialist President Fran-
dent. Thousands across cois Hollande and a mem-
France celebrated May ber of the “caviar left.”
Day by showing their top His pro-business policies,
concerns are jobs and the she warned, would leave
kind of country the next French workers hungry.
leader will give them. Cheers of “Marine Presi-
Amid the holiday march- dent!” and anti-immigrant
es, masked demonstrators chants rose to the rafters.
threw firebombs at police
in Paris before being dis- Whether she wanted it
persed by tear gas. Four or not, Le Pen got an en-
officers were injured, with dorsement from her father,
one seriously burned in the Jean-Marie Le Pen, who
face, Interior Minister Mat- French conservative candidate from the first-round election Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, left, and co-founded the National
french far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen sing the “Marseillaise”, the French national
thias Fekl said. anthem at the end of their meeting, Monday May 1, 2017, in Villepinte, outside Paris. With just six Front party she now leads.
While violence from fringe days until a French presidential vote that could define Europe’s future, far-right leader Marine Le The senior Le Pen has often
groups is a standard pres- Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron are holding high-stakes rallies Monday. been decried as a ractst;
ence in French demonstra- (AP Photo/Francois Mori) his daughter ejected him
tions, at least some of those from the party in 2015 as
who mixed in the union-or- both candidates. defense” read one sign. read another, a reference part of her bid to make the
ganized march came with “Not one or the other; in- “Macron equals Louis XVI, to Marine Le Pen’s father, National Front more politi-
an angry message against stead it’s the people’s self- Le Pen equals Le Pen,” Jean-Marie, the co-found- cally acceptable.
er of the anti-immigration “She is not Joan of Arc, but
National Front party known she accepts the same mis-
for his extremist views. sion ... France,” Jean-Marie
Sunday’s runoff election is Le Pen said at his tradition-
being watched closely by al May Day rally.
other European govern- He denounced the front-
ments and financial mar- running Macron as a
kets to see if the French
hand power to the populist “masked Socialist” backed
Le Pen. by the highly unpopular
Mainstream parties on the Hollande, who did not seek
left and right failed to form a second term. Macron
a bloc against her as they once served as Hollande’s
did in 2002 when Jean-Ma- economy minister.q

No injuries immediately reported as
high-speed train derails in Germany

BERLIN (AP) — A high- fast the train was going at
speed train derailed in the the time of the accident.
western German city of Police said the last three of
Dortmund on Monday eve- the train’s seven carriages
ning, but there were no in- had derailed for unknown
juries reported. reasons, and that all pas-
The national Bundespolizei sengers had been able to
posted a photo on Twitter then get off the train with-
showing a picture of the out needing help.
train partially off the tracks, The Bundespolizei said the
but with no cars turned train and tracks were “se-
over. riously damaged” and it
Rail operator Deutsche was unclear how long the
Bahn told the dpa news stretch of track where the
agency the incident had derailment happened
occurred at about 7 p.m. would be closed.
as the train was pulling into Police in Dortmund re-
the main Dortmund sta- ferred all comment to
tion, and that there were their officer on the scene,
no injuries. The train was on who could not immedi-
its way from Duesseldorf to ately be reached Monday
Berlin. It was not clear how evening.q