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EMMANUEL MACRON

Macron quips about cuddly ‘wedding’ pics with Lula

French President Emmanuel Macron has joined social media users in their jokes that likened his cosy pictures with Brazilian President Lula to those from a wedding album.

Published: 29 March 2024 08:44 CET
Macron quips about cuddly 'wedding' pics with Lula
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva and French President Emmanuel Macron pose during the French president's visit to Brazil. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP

Images of the pair smiling and warmly embracing during Macron’s three-day visit to Brazil circulated online this week alongside light-hearted captions and montages suggesting a loving relationship between the leaders.

“Some have compared the pictures of my visit to Brazil to those of a wedding,” Macron wrote Thursday on X.

“I tell them it was one. France loves Brazil and Brazil loves France,” he said.

Macron retweeted a picture of himself and Lula smiling during the visit, overlaid on the background of a poster for the romantic 2016 film La La Land.

Lula responded to Macron’s tweet, which was also shared in Portuguese, with emojis of the Brazil and France flags alongside two small love hearts.

One picture shared on social media this week showed the leaders raising their arms underneath a large tree in the Brazilian jungle was edited to show them holding red balloons in the shape of a heart.

“They are going to marry in the Amazon and have their honeymoon in Paris,” joked one user on X, while others said pictures from the trip could make up a wedding album.

Macron’s trip to Brazil saw the two leaders announce a billion-dollar green investment plan for the Amazon.

Lula hailed the relationship between the two countries as one that created “a bridge between the global South and the developed world.”

Macron’s warm relations with Lula mark a departure from the frosty ties between the French leader and Brazil’s former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, who led the country from 2019 to 2022.

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POLITICS

French territory New Caledonia counts the cost of overnight riots

People in New Caledonia's main city Noumea assessed the damage on Tuesday after a night of rioting in the French Pacific territory that saw vehicles and shops torched, and shots fired at security forces.

Published: 14 May 2024 08:08 CEST
French territory New Caledonia counts the cost of overnight riots

Riots erupted on Monday over a constitutional reform that is being debated in the national assembly in Paris, and which aims to expand the electorate in the territory’s provincial elections.

Groups of demonstrators took over several roundabouts and confronted police, who responded with non-lethal rounds, while the territory’s high commissioner said shots had been fired at security forces during the riots.

On Tuesday, the streets of Noumea bore the scars of clashes between the police and rioters with traffic blocked by burnt-out cars and smoking piles of tyres.

“The police station nearby was on fire and a car was too, in front of my house, there was non-stop shouting and explosions, I felt like I was in a war,” said Sylvie, whose family has lived in New Caledonia for several generations.

“We are alone. Who is going to protect us?” she told AFP, asking to be identified only by her first name.

A total of 36 people were arrested and 30 police officers injured, according to authorities, who also announced a night-time curfew on Tuesday and a ban on public gatherings.

No deaths have been reported.

“I can’t talk,” said Joelle Vincent, who owns a supermarket business. “I am disappointed and disgusted.”

The fire brigade recorded nearly 1,500 calls and counted around 200 fires in the overnight unrest.

At least two car dealerships and a bottling factory in the capital Noumea were set on fire in arson attacks, an AFP journalist saw.

‘Side by side’

While the situation appeared more calm in parts of Noumea on Tuesday, there were still clashes in the suburbs, where a supermarket was looted after being rammed during the night.

Many other businesses also bore the marks of attempted break-ins and few shops were open. Long queues were forming in front of the few that are still open.

Hundreds of cars were set on fire, as were more than 30 businesses, shops and factories, according to a group of employers’ representatives.

The group issued an appeal for calm and said nearly 1,000 jobs on the island had been put at risk by the unrest.

The island’s public transport network has also been cut off, with the territory’s flag carrier Aircalin announcing that it was cancelling all its flights for Tuesday.

“I feel sad,” Jean-Franck Jallet, who owns a butcher shop that firefighters managed to rescue from the flames. “I thought it was possible for us (islanders) to live side by side, but it hasn’t worked. There are too many lies.”

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