AFP

Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas said on Tuesday a deal had been struck for US businessman John Textor to complete a takeover of the seven-time French champions.

Eagle Football Holdings, a sports investment vehicle controlled by Crystal Palace shareholder Textor, is set to acquire a majority stake in the Ligue 1 club.

“We agreed, we shook hands overnight via video and at 3 a.m. Monday everything was signed,” said Aulas, adding that the board of directors had approved the deal.

The agreement will see Textor buy out minority shareholders Pathe and IDG Capital — who hold 19.36 percent and 19.85 percent stakes respectively — and a gradual sale of Holnest, the family holding company of Aulas, which holds 27.72 percent of the capital.

Aulas said he would continue as club president for “at least three years”.

“John wanted me to stay… it wasn’t an obligation but a wish of the fans” and of all those involved in the club, he said.

“OL… has stretched its wings beyond the borders, it has got a brand known everywhere, it is the 20th club in the world, so why would I show up and want to change any of that,” Textor told reporters.

“I believe in dreaming with your eyes wide open. Jean-Michel and I really want championship titles and winning Europe.”

Textor also owns Brazilian top-flight club Botafogo and Belgian second-division side RWD Molenbeek.

Lyon missed out on European competition for the second time in three seasons after finishing the 2021-22 campaign in eighth place under Peter Bosz.

The American economy remains strong, a White House economist asserted Tuesday, while acknowledging President Joe Biden’s team is concerned about a possible recession.

With inflation soaring at the fastest pace in more than four decades, sending prices for gas and housing rocketing, Americans are feeling the pain and the Federal Reserve is cranking up interest rates to try to cool the economy, fueling fears of a sharp downturn.

Despite a contraction in the first three months of the year, core parts of the world’s largest economy remain in good shape, including the labor market and consumer spending, Cecelia Rouse, head of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers said on CNBC.

“When we look at recession (risks) … that’s obviously a concern, but the bones of our economy are solid,” she said, noting that the United States is better positioned to face the challenges than most other nations.

On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also tried to quell recession fears, saying a downturn is not “inevitable” even while the economy will slow as it “transitions to stable growth.”

Rouse said Biden is focused on the inflation challenge, which is related to the Covid-19 pandemic: “It’s not easy to turn back on a global economy.”

Global supply chain snarls have been a key factor in fueling the prices increases, and pandemic lockdowns in China are adding to the ongoing uncertainty.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a “game changer,” she said.

“We all hope the Fed can get inflation under control without ceding too much on maximum employment,” Rouse said “We all hope for the longed-for soft landing.”

The Fed last week implemented the third interest rate hike this year, the biggest in nearly 30 years, and promised more big increases in coming months.

– ‘Relatively healthy’ –

Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin said there is a risk of recession, but agreed there are many signs the economy remains strong.

“Data on today’s economy still looks relatively healthy. Tomorrow is of course unclear,” Barkin said Tuesday in a speech prepared for delivery to an event in Richmond.

However, he acknowledged that with the Fed raising interest rates and an uncertain outlook for the global supply chain, fears of a coming downturn are not surprising.

But “not all recessions are equal,” he said, and “it’s worth remembering that most other recessions aren’t that long or that deep.”

Getting the economy back to normal in the wake of the supply disruptions “doesn’t have to require a calamitous decline in activity.”

Barkin echoed comments from Fed chief Jerome Powell that the central bank has the tools and will do whatever it takes to bring down inflation, but he cautioned that “we may or may not get help from global events and supply chains. There is of course recession risk.”

Earlier Tuesday, during a discussion with the National Association for Business Economics, Barkin said it was not yet clear how fast and how far the central bank will have to move.

“You want to get back to where you want to go as fast as you can without breaking anything,” he said.

Police used tear gas Tuesday to disperse hundreds of Ecuadorans protesting in the capital Quito on the ninth day of Indigenous-led fuel price protests that the military described as a “grave threat.”

Some 500 protesters among thousands who arrived in the capital from around the country in recent days blockaded a key road with burning tree branches.

Dispersed with tear gas, they quickly regrouped to march with watery eyes on the CCE culture center — traditionally used by Indigenous people to launch protests but requisitioned by police on Sunday to use as a base. 

“The objective of today is to retake the Casa de la Cultura,” protester Wilson Mazabanda told AFP before police used mace for a second time to break up the group.

Earlier Tuesday, Defense Minister Luis Lara said Ecuador’s democracy “faces a grave threat from… people who are preventing the free movement of the majority of Ecuadorans” with widespread road blockades.

Flanked by the heads of the army, navy and air force, Lara warned that the armed forces “will not allow attempts to break the constitutional order or any action against democracy and the laws of the republic.”

Called by the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), demonstrations since June 13 have seen roads barricaded nationwide at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy.

Dozens of people have been injured. 

– ‘Tired of this government’ –

Conaie — credited with helping topple three presidents between 1997 and 2005 — called the demonstrations as Ecuadorans increasingly struggle to make ends meet.

Indigenous people comprise more than a million of Ecuador’s 17.7 million inhabitants and wield much political clout, but are disproportionately affected by rising inflation, unemployment and poverty exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Conaie has vowed to maintain the protests until its demands are met.

Thousands of fresh protesters entered Quito from the south and north on Monday, after often long journeys on foot and on the backs of trucks.

They took to the streets afresh on Tuesday, burning tires and tree branches, some wielding sticks, fireworks and makeshift shields made of road signs or garbage can lids.

“We are already tired of this government,” said protester Mazabanda, a university student, of ex-banker President Guillermo Lasso’s one-year-old term.

– State of emergency –

Fuel prices have risen sharply since 2020, almost doubling for diesel from $1 to $1.90 per gallon and rising from $1.75 to $2.55 for gasoline.

Conaie is demanding a price cut to $1.50 a gallon for diesel and $2.10 for gasoline.

It also wants jobs, food price controls and a commitment to renegotiating the personal bank loans of about four million families.

The movement has since been joined by students, workers and other Ecuadorans feeling the economic pinch.

Police said on Monday that 63 armed forces personnel have been wounded in clashes and 21 others briefly held hostage since the protests began, while human rights observers reported 79 arrests and 55 civilians wounded.

Lasso on Monday extended a state of emergency to cover six of the country’s 24 provinces, with a night-time curfew in the capital Quito, as he sought to curtail the countrywide show of anger.

The state of emergency empowers Lasso to mobilize the armed forces to maintain order, suspend civil rights and declare curfews.

Conaie has vowed to maintain its blockade until the government meets its demands.

– ‘They seek chaos’ –

The president said in a video on Twitter Monday that the protesters “do not want peace” and have rejected government calls for dialogue.

“They seek chaos. They want to eject the president,” he charged.

Ecuador was losing about $50 million a day as a result of the protests, official figures show, without counting oil production — the country’s main export product.

State-owned Petroecuador has reported almost 64,300 barrels in lost production because of more than 230 wells shuttered by demonstrations in the Amazon.

Ecuador’s parliament voted 81 to 56 late Monday in favor of a resolution urging the government to conduct a “serious, clear and honest” dialogue with protesters.

It also proposed the convening of a “round table” of talks including the United Nations, Red Cross, universities and the powerful Catholic Church to find a solution to the stalemate.

In 2019, Conaie-led protests left 11 people dead and more than 1,000 injured but forced then-president Lenin Moreno to abandon plans to eliminate fuel subsidies.

The United States on Tuesday promised enforcement as a landmark ban took effect on most imports from Xinjiang, the Chinese region where rights groups say the Uyghur people are being forced into slave labor.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which will be felt especially in the textile industry, took effect six months after it was signed into law by President Joe Biden following bipartisan support in Congress.

“We are rallying our allies and partners to make global supply chains free from the use of forced labor,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

The US Customs and Border Protection service, which will enforce the new law, issued guidance that said it would presume products from Xinjiang involve forced labor and are therefore banned unless businesses can document otherwise.

The act “requires that importers demonstrate due diligence, effective supply chain tracing and supply chain management measures to ensure that they do not import any goods made, in whole or in part, by forced labor,” its advisory said.

It said it would look at the complete supply chain and not exempt goods shipped from other parts of China or third countries.

An estimated 20 percent of garments imported into the United States each year include some cotton from Xinjiang, according to labor rights groups.

The vast western region is also a major center of tomatoes canned for export.

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican hawk who teamed up with liberal Democrats to push for the legislation, called the act “the most significant change in America’s relationship with China since 2001.”

“No longer will we look at images of bareheaded prisoners in shackles and blindfolds, lined up like animals for slaughter, and shrug,” he wrote in an opinion piece for Real Clear Politics.

– ‘Undermines free market principles’ –

China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, helping usher in soaring growth as it became the manufacturing hub for the world.

US policymakers across party lines have gradually come to reject their bet that trade integration would moderate Beijing, which the Biden administration has identified as the top global competitor of the United States.

China again voiced anger over the trade ban and said it went against global efforts to decrease inflation and stabilize supply chains. 

“The act is solid evidence of the US’s arbitrariness in undermining international economic and trade rules,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

“The US move is against the trend of the times and bound to fail.”

But Omer Kanat, executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, called the law a “huge win” for the movement and said it would push other governments to take similar action.

Rights groups, citing witness accounts, say that well more than one million Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim Turkic-speaking people have been locked up in re-education camps in a bid to integrate them forcibly into China’s Han majority.

Beijing denies the charges and says it is providing vocational training to reduce the allure of Islamist extremism following violence.

Europe’s low-cost airlines face a summer of discontent as staff in Spain and France announced new strikes over labour conditions on Tuesday.

Trade unions representing Ryanair cabin crew in Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain have called for strikes this coming weekend, while easyJet’s operations in Spain face a nine-day strike next month.

Damien Mourgues, a representative of the SNPNC trade union at Ryanair in France, said the airline did not respect rest-time laws. The union was also calling for a raise for cabin crew, still paid at the minimum wage.

Cabin crew will walk out on Saturday and Sunday.

Strike action on the weekend of June 12-13 already prompted the cancellation of about 40 Ryanair flights in France — about a quarter of the total.

Ryanair’s low-cost rival easyJet also faces nine days of strikes through July at the Barcelona, Malaga and Palma de Mallorca airports.

The union said Tuesday that Spanish easyJet cabin crew, with a base pay of 950 euros per month, have the lowest wages of the airline’s European bases.

An easyJet spokeswoman said: “should the industrial action go ahead we would expect some disruption to our flying programme” and “we would like to reassure customers that we will do everything possible to minimise any disruption.”

– Aviation sector ‘chaos’ –

The strikes come as air travel has rebounded since Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted.

But many airlines, which laid off staff during the pandemic, are having trouble rehiring enough workers, forcing them to cancel flights. That includes easyJet, which has been particularly hard hit by employee shortages.

On Monday, the European Transport Workers’ Federation called “on passengers not to blame the workers for the disasters in the airports, the cancelled flights, the long queues and longer time for check-ins, and lost luggage or delays caused by decades of corporate greed and a removal of decent jobs in the sector”.

The Federation said it expected “the chaos the aviation sector is currently facing will only grow over the summer as workers are pushed to the brink”.

In Spain, trade unions have urged Ryanair cabin crews to strike from June 24 to July 2 to secure their “fundamental labour rights” and “decent work conditions for all staff”.

Ryanair staff in Portugal plan to go on strike from Friday to Sunday to protest work conditions, as do employees in Belgium.

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has been dismissive of the strikes.

“We operate two and half thousand flights every day,” he said earlier this month in Belgium.

“Most of those flights will continue to operate even if there is a strike in Spain by some Mickey Mouse union or if the Belgian cabin crew unions want to go on strike over here,” told journalists.

– Airport staff discontent –

But Ryanair pilots in Belgium decided over the weekend to join cabin crew in a strike from Friday.

Meanwhile, staff at Brussels Airlines, a Lufthansa unit, have called a three-day strike from Thursday.

In Italy, a 24-hour strike is set to hit Ryanair operations on Saturday with pilots and cabin crew calling for the airline to respect the minimum wages set for the sector under a national agreement.  

Ryanair continued to dismiss the strike threat, saying they were being called by minority unions. 

“We do not expect widespread disruption this summer,” an airline spokeswoman told AFP, adding it had collective workplace agreements in place covering 90 percent of its European staff and was in talks to improve labour conditions.

“These minority union strikes are not supported by our crews,” said the spokeswoman.

Airports have also been plagued by staff shortages, which have caused long lines at check-in counters and security checks, provoking the ire of travellers.

On Monday, a strike by security agents caused the cancellation of all departures from Brussels’ Zaventem airport.

Cleaning staff at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport temporarily stopped working on Monday after missing out on a bonus.

And at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, one of Europe’s largest, staff are set to strike from July 1.

Meanwhile, London moved Tuesday to halt a spate of cancellations at its airports by relaxing the requirement that airlines use their landing and takeoff slots or risk losing them.

The move will enable “airlines to plan ahead and deliver a realistic summer schedule that minimises disruption at the airports”, said the government.