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Thousands gathered at the Place de la Concorde to denounce the government’s use of a constitutional loophole to pass the pension reform, raising the retirement age without a vote in the National Assembly.

Marie Magnin/Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

What We’re Watching: France’s fiery response, Poland’s first big step, Israeli president’s “civil war” warning

Macron bypasses the legislature on pension reform

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday made the risky call to bypass the National Assembly, France’s powerful lower house, and push through a very unpopular pension reform scheme.

As expected, protesters responded with anger. More than 300 people were arrested overnight, and on Friday morning demonstrators halted production at a fuel refinery and briefly blocked traffic on a highway outside Paris.

(A brief recap on the proposal that’s sent France into a tailspin: Macron’s government wants to incrementally raise the national retirement age by two years to 64 by 2030. Starting from 2027, workers will need to have worked for 43 years, up from 41, to access a full pension.)

Why’s he doing this? Macron has long said that France's public spending, 14% of which goes toward its pension scheme – the highest of any OECD country after Greece and Italy – is crucial to addressing its growing debt-to-GDP ratio. But this approach is very unpopular in France, where retirement is sacred and government interference is abhorred.

Fearing he wouldn’t have the votes in the lower chamber, Macron triggered a constitutional loophole to get the bill through (it had already passed in the upper chamber). But by taking this route – which his political opponents say renders the bill illegitimate, though it is legal – Macron now opens himself up to serious political blowback.

On Friday, a group of opposition centrist lawmakers — backed by the far-left NUPES coalition — filed a no-confidence vote against the government, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen announced she'll table her own. But any vote would need to pass by an absolute majority to topple the government – meaning PM Élisabeth Borne and the cabinet, not the president. Still, that’s very unlikely to happen, analysts say.

But Macron, who cannot run again after 2027 due to term limits, is not out of the woods. Unions have vowed to make the government pay, and prolonged strikes are expected. Meanwhile, far-left and far-right factions say they’ll intensify efforts to topple the French government.

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Ari Winkleman

The Graphic Truth: How much it costs to supply Ukraine

As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, proponents of continued military aid to Kyiv say it’s a cut-rate investment for security while others wonder whether the cost is worth it. We look at how much the biggest suppliers spent on military aid to Ukraine as a percentage of their defense budgets last year.

A person wearing a protective suit sits in the Beijing Railway Station after China lifted its COVID-19 restrictions in Beijing, January 20, 2023.

REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Hard Numbers: China zeroes out zero, German tanks run low, Turkey jails a journalist, Greek train crash, police find ‘spiritual girlfriend’ in Peru

0 x 0: Remember China’s zero-Covid strategy? No you don’t, at least not if you’re the Chinese Communist Party, which is now aggressively zeroing out public mentions of the draconian lockdowns that kneecapped the country’s economy and provoked rare widespread protests against Xi Jinping. Here’s our own portrait of zero-Covid life from last spring.

62: Despite promising to give tanks to Kyiv, Germany and other NATO allies have struggled to rustle up enough of them — 62 to be precise — to fill two Ukrainian battalions worth. Part of the problem is that no one on the continent has planned for a major European land war in 30 years, so tanks, parts, and trainers are limited.

10: Turkey has sentenced a journalist to 10 months in prison for posting an unsubstantiated allegation that police officers and soldiers had sexually assaulted a young girl. This is the first jail term handed down under a new law meant to combat disinformation that critics fear will be used to stifle criticism of the government.

36: A train collision has killed at least 36 and injured dozens more near the city of Larissa in northern Greece. Railway employees reported that there were issues with electric coordination of traffic control, despite recent modernization of Greece’s railway system, which is operated by Italy’s state-owned railway company Ferrovie dello Stato Italiene.

1.5: The sentence you are about to read does not end the way you think it will: Police searching a delivery man who was acting drunk at a Peruvian archaeological site found in his backpack a 1.5-meter tall pre-hispanic mummy named “Juanita.” He said the mummy, which once belonged to his dad, lives with him as “a kind of spiritual girlfriend.” We love this LatAm remake of "Fin de Semana at Bernie’s.

NATO flag

Ari Winkleman

What We’re Watching: NATO members’ defense budgets, Social Security as a political weapon, China’s support for Sri Lanka

NATO chief wants more defense spending

As Russian aggression in Ukraine enters year two, NATO members need to boost their defense spending. That was the message from NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg Wednesday after a summit with member states’ defense ministers. Back in 2014, around the time of Russia’s invasion of Crimea, NATO states committed to raising their respective defense spending to 2% of gross domestic product. (NATO’s direct budget is separate from national defense budgets.) Still, while many have increased their spending on military equipment and training, most NATO states – including Germany, France, Italy, and Canada – still fall short of the 2% threshold. The US, for its part, leads the pack, spending 3.47% of GDP on defense. (You’ll likely remember that former President Donald Trump made a habit of slamming NATO members, particularly Germany, for not paying their fair share. As war ravages Europe again and tensions with China soar, Stoltenberg says that the 2% target, which expires next year, should be the floor – not the ceiling. Finland and Sweden, both vying to join the bloc, respectively spend 2% and 1.3% of GDP on defense.

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Swiss soldiers on a German-made Leopard 2 tank.

REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

How tanks for Ukraine might impact NATO — and Russia

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky finally got what he’s spent months asking for — at least some of it. The US and Germany have agreed to send state-of-the-art battle tanks to Kyiv, and Berlin has greenlit other NATO members to send German-made armor to Ukraine as well.

But this policy U-turn by the US and Germany — both of which have long been reluctant to send such heavy kit — raises two big questions about the near-term trajectory of the war.

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A US M1 Abrams tank fires a round during a live-fire exercise in Germany.

ABACA via Reuters Connect

Ukraine tanks up

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced on Wednesday that Germany will (finally!) send Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine.

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Police secures the area in Berlin after 25 suspected members and supporters of a far-right group were detained during raids across Germany.

REUTERS/Christian Mang

What We’re Watching: German coup plotters, Peru’s self-coup, Xi’s Saudi visit, TSMC’s big investment

A thwarted German Jan. 6?

Is there a single German word for "narrowly averted right-wing coup attempt"? We aren't sure, but on Wednesday German authorities arrested 25 people accused of belonging to a domestic terror organization with plans to overthrow the government and replace it with German nobility in a throwback to pre-Weimar times. Some 3,000 police conducted raids in several German states as well as in Austria and Italy, detaining people associated with the Reichsbürger, a right-wing German conspiracy group, the far-right Alternativ für Deutschland party, and at least one Russian citizen. You’ll likely remember that a member of the AfD – a euroskeptic party that has capitalized on anti-immigrant sentiment in recent years to grow its base – tweeted after the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol that "Trump is fighting the same political fight — you have to call it a culture war." Harboring beliefs that Germany is being run by a “deep state'' (sound familiar?), the group reportedly planned to launch an armed attack on the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament. This is just the most recent reflection of a far-right extremist problem in Deutschland. Last year, the German government placed the AfD under surveillance for its far-right extremist affiliations, and early this year the government found that more than 300 employees in Germany's security apparatus harbored far-right views.

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Why No One Approved of Olaf Scholz’ Trip to China | GZERO World

Why no one approved of Olaf Scholz’s trip to China

Why did German leader Olaf Scholz decide to make a solo trip to Beijing earlier this month? It's a question that many Germans, even within his own administration, are asking. GZERO's Alex Kliment takes a closer look.

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