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Hospitalised French far-right veteran Le Pen doing well: daughter

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the veteran leader of the far right in France, is "doing well" in hospital following a mild heart attack, his daughter Marine Le Pen said Sunday.

Hospitalised French far-right veteran Le Pen doing well: daughter
Photo: Thomas COEX/AFP

“He is doing well and I thank all those who have enquired after his health,” said Le Pen, who lost out to Emmanuel Macron in the past two French presidential elections.

“I have yet to see him and will do so shortly (but) he is doing well and that is the main thing,” she said.

She added that her father, hospitalised Saturday, would require some check-ups, being just a few months’ shy of his 95th birthday.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who ran for president five times, sent shock waves through France in 2002 when he beat out the Socialist prime minister to make it to the run-off vote against president Jacques Chirac.

He was hospitalised near Paris on Saturday after suffering heart trouble, the Le Point news magazine said in a report confirmed later by Le Pen’s longtime advisor Lorrain de Saint Affrique.

He has suffered several episodes of ill health in recent years, most recently in February last year, when he was hospitalised after suffering a “minor” stroke.

The former paratrooper was the co-founder of the National Front — later renamed the National Rally by his daughter Marine — and spent decades slamming immigration.

While his political fortunes fluctuated sharply over more than half a century — his unabashed racism leading to him being dubbed the “Devil of the Republic” — he once boasted that the rise of the far right around Europe showed his ideas had gone mainstream.

His daughter later tried to clean up the image of the party and kicked him out in 2015 over remarks he made that the Holocaust was merely a “detail” of history.

The party has since made significant inroads in both European and French politics.

Marine Le Pen obtained a far-right record 23.15 percent of the vote in 2022 presidential elections, as the party won 89 seats in parliament, becoming the country’s main opposition party.

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POLITICS

New Caledonia airport to reopen Monday, curfew reduced: authorities

New Caledonia's main international airport will reopen from Monday after being shut last month during a spate of deadly unrest, the high commission in the French Pacific territory said, adding a curfew would also be reduced.

New Caledonia airport to reopen Monday, curfew reduced: authorities

The commission said Sunday that it had “decided to reopen the airport during the day” and to “push back to 8:00 pm (from 6:00 pm) the start of the curfew as of Monday”.

The measures had been introduced after violence broke out on May 13 over a controversial voting reform that would have allowed long-term residents to participate in local polls.

The archipelago’s Indigenous Kanaks feared the move would dilute their vote, putting hopes for eventually winning independence definitively out of reach.

READ ALSO: Explained: What’s behind the violence on French island of New Caledonia?

Barricades, skirmishes with the police and looting left nine dead and hundreds injured, and inflicted hundreds of millions of euros in damage.

The full resumption of flights at Tontouta airport was made possible by the reopening of an expressway linking it to the capital Noumea that had been blocked by demonstrators, the commission said.

Previously the airport was only handling a small number of flights with special exemptions.

Meanwhile, the curfew, which runs until 6:00 am, was reduced “in light of the improvement in the situation and in order to facilitate the gradual return to normal life”, the commission added.

French President Emmanuel Macron had announced on Wednesday that the voting reform that touched off the unrest would be “suspended” in light of snap parliamentary polls.

Instead he aimed to “give full voice to local dialogue and the restoration of order”, he told reporters.

Although approved by both France’s National Assembly and Senate, the reform had been waiting on a constitutional congress of both houses to become part of the basic law.

Caledonian pro-independence movements had already considered reform dead given Macron’s call for snap elections.

“This should be a time for rebuilding peace and social ties,” the Kanak Liberation Party (Palika) said Wednesday before the announcement.

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