Latest News Clips 2017.05.08

                    Bango’s Latest News Clips            2017.05.08

1.      It's Macron or Le Pen after first round of France's presidential election

Supporters chant ‘Macron President’ after self-styled liberal progressive outsider reaches 7 May runoff with 23.75% of votes, ahead of Le Pen on 21.53%

 The Guardian   April 23, 2017 

The independent centrist Emmanuel Macron has topped the first round of the French presidential election and will face the far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen in a standoff marked by anti-establishment anger that knocked France’s traditional political parties out of the race.

Macron topped Sunday’s first round with 23.75% of votes, slightly ahead of Le Pen with 21.53%, according to final results from the interior ministry. Macron, 39, a political novice, now becomes the favourite to be elected as France’s next president. He is the youngest ever French presidential hopeful and has never run for election before.

After the UK’s vote to leave the European Union and the US vote for the political novice Donald Trump as president, the French presidential race is the latest election to shake up establishment politics by kicking out the figures that stood for the status quo. 

The historic first-round result marked the rejection of the ruling political class – it was the first time since the postwar period that the traditional left and right ruling parties were both ejected from the race in the first round.

France’s two political outsiders – the progressive, pro-business and socially liberal Macron and the anti-immigration, anti-EU, far-right Le Pen – will now face off in a final round on 7 May that will redraw French politics and could define the future direction of Europe.

The Socialist prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve led appeals from across the political spectrum to support Macron in order to block Le Pen, who he said represented “regression and division” for France. The scandal-hit rightwing candidate François Fillon, who was knocked out of the race, said he would also vote for Macron because the Front National “has a history known for its violence and intolerance” and its economic and social programme would lead France to bankruptcy.

Macron, a former investment banker, who had been a chief adviser and then economy minister to the Socialist François Hollande, is not a member of any political party. He quit government last year and launched his own political movement, En Marche! (on the move), that was “neither left nor right”, promising to “revolutionise” what he called France’s vacuous and decaying political system.

Speaking in front of an ecstatic and raucous crowd in Paris, Macron said of his fledgling political movement: “In one year we have changed the face of French political life.” He said he represented “optimism and hope”. In a dig at Le Pen, he said he would be a president of “patriots” against the “nationalist threat”.

Le Pen’s place in the final round cements her party’s steady rise in French politics. The Front National has made steady gains in every election since she took over the leadership from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2011. Le Pen ran a hardline campaign against immigration and promised to crack down on what she called “Islamic fundamentalism”. While Macron’s supporters at rallies waved EU flags and he hailed the positive role of the 27-country bloc, Le Pen told supporters “the EU will die”. She wants to leave the euro, return to the franc, exit the Schengen agreement and close French borders.

The central message of Marine Le Pen’s campaign was the staple of the Front National party since it was co-founded by her father in 1972: keeping France for the French. Le Pen promised to give priority to French people over non-nationals in jobs, housing and welfare, and would hold a referendum to cement this policy into the constitution. She said she would demand extra tax from companies that employed any kind of foreign worker.

In the final days of the first round campaign, she returned firmly to the main concern of her electorate: immigration. She went further than she had done before by promising to immediately suspend all legal immigration in order to reassess what she called the “uncontrollable situation” of foreigners coming into France.

2.      House Passes Measure to Repeal and Replace the Affordable Care Act

The New York Times   THOMAS KAPLAN and ROBERT PEAR  MAY 4, 2017

 

The House on Thursday passed a new version of a health care bill to replace the Affordable Care Act after the first one failed to get enough Republican support in March. The bill still needs to pass the Senate before becoming law.

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday narrowly approved legislation to repeal and replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act, as Republicans recovered from their earlier failures and moved a step closer to delivering on their promise to reshape American health care without mandated insurance coverage.

The vote, 217 to 213, held on President Trump’s 105th day in office, is a significant step on what could be a long legislative road. Twenty Republicans bolted from their leadership to vote no. But the win keeps alive the party’s dream of unwinding President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

The House measure faces profound uncertainty in the Senate, where a handful of Republican senators immediately rejected it, signaling that they would start work on a new version of the bill virtually from scratch.

“To the extent that the House solves problems, we might borrow ideas,” said Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate health committee. “We can go to conference with the House, or they can pass our bill.”

Even before the vote, some Republican senators had expressed deep reservations about one of the most important provisions of the House bill, which would roll back the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

But a softening of the House bill, which could help it get through the Senate, would present new problems. For any repeal measure to become law, the House and the Senate would have to agree on the language, a formidable challenge.

Just before the House vote, the Senate gave final approval on Thursday to a $1.1 trillion spending bill that will finance the government through September, and unlike the health care legislation, the spending bill had broad bipartisan support.

After weeks of negotiations and false starts, Mr. Trump and House Republicans were not about to dwell on the tough road ahead. Passage of the health care bill completed a remarkable act of political resuscitation, six weeks after House leaders failed to muster the votes to pass an earlier version of the measure, a blow to Mr. Trump and Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin.

“Yes, premiums will be coming down; yes, deductibles will be coming down, but very importantly, it’s a great plan,” Mr. Trump boasted on Thursday at the kind of White House Rose Garden victory ceremony typically reserved for legislation that is being signed into law, not for a controversial bill that passed just one chamber.

“We want to brag about the plan,” Mr. Trump said, after asking those assembled how he was doing in his debut as a politician. “Hey, I’m president!”

Mr. Trump quickly turned his attention to pressuring the Senate to act, calling the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, to talk about the way forward for the health plan.

3.      China's first big passenger plane takes off for maiden flight

BBC         5 May 2017

China's first large domestically made passenger aircraft has completed its maiden flight, mounting a major challenge to Boeing and Airbus.

After about 90 minutes in the air the plane landed safely back at Pudong airport in Shanghai.

The plane is a key symbol of Beijing's soaring ambitions to enter the global aviation market.

Made by state-owned firm Comac, it has been in planning since 2008 but the flight was repeatedly pushed back.

For Friday's maiden flight, the plane carried only its skeleton crew of five pilots and engineers and took off in front of a crowd of thousands of dignitaries, aviation workers and enthusiasts.

Ahead of the flight, state television said the plane would fly at an altitude of only 3,000m (9,800 feet), some 7,000m lower than a regular trip, and reach a speed of around 300km/h (186mph).

The C919 is designed to be a direct competitor to Boeing's 737 and the Airbus A320.

In an interview carried out in March but released on Chinese television shortly before the launch, test pilot Cai Jun said he had full confidence in the plane.

"A pilot knows clearly the condition of a plane. He knows very well whether it will work. So I'm not afraid at all, but focusing more on whether the plane is in its best shape now," he said.

He also described halting an earlier taxiing test in late 2016 because of a problem with the brakes.

"It's just like driving a car. I put the brakes on, and the plane started to shake," he said.

He said he had had to argue with the plane's engineers help refine the design.

"For the designers, the plane is their baby, which they believe is perfect. But our task is to tell them that their baby is not perfect, it has strengths and weaknesses, and they have to make improvements," the pilot said.

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China's new pride of the skies

• The C919 is a single-aisle twin-engine plane with a capacity to seat up to 168 passengers.
• It will have a range of between 4,075 and 5,555km (2,532 - 3,452 miles).
• According to Chinese media, it will cost around $50m, less than half of a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320.

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The plane still relies on a wide array of imported technology though, it is for instance powered by engines from French-US supplier CFM International.

Orders have already been placed for more than 500 of the planes, with commitments from 23 customers, say officials, mainly Chinese airlines. The main customer is China Eastern Airlines.

Europe's aviation safety regulator has started the certification process for the C919 - a crucial step for the aircraft to be successful on the international market.

China has had ambitions to build its own civil aircraft industry since the 1970s, when leader Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, personally backed a project.

But the Y-10, built in the late 1970s, was impractical due to its heavy weight and only three of the aircraft were ever made.

It's estimated that the global aviation market will be worth $2tn (£1.55tn) over the next 20 years.