World

Paris commuters were bracing for bedlam Thursday as metro workers called a major one-day pay strike, the latest industrial action across France seeking relief from inflation.

The walkout comes amid wider European protests over the soaring cost of living, after transport workers in Belgium and Greece also refused to work on Wednesday, and with Underground employees in the British capital also set to strike on Thursday.

The French capital’s public transport operator RATP said nearly every line would be shut down or operating with only limited rush-hour service, and urged people to work from home or postpone trips if possible.

Only lines 1 and 14, which are fully automated with no drivers, will operate normally but risk being jam-packed.

The two main suburban rail lines called RER A and B, which connect central Paris with Disneyland Paris and the Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports, will also see severe disruptions, the operator warned.

Frequency of bus services will be cut by a third, while tram operations are expected to be nearly normal.

Unions have staged strikes across several sectors in recent weeks seeking pay hikes or increased hiring as spiralling energy costs feed into widespread inflation.

Union leaders are also hoping to step up pressure on President Emmanuel Macron as he prepares to revive a controversial pensions overhaul that would push back the official retirement age from 62 to 64 or 65.

But the Paris transport strike did not spill over into other sectors, with only the hard-line CGT union calling for general work stoppages that could match turnout of October 18, when authorities say 107,000 demonstrators turned out nationwide.

National high-speed train services will run normally, rail operator SNCF said, and only light disruptions are expected on regional lines.

Unions representing the RATP’s nearly 70,000 employees say they are feeling the pinch of soaring prices, but are also overstretched because of insufficient hiring, resulting in increased sick leave.

That has led to increased service delays or lower frequency on busy metro lines in recent months, causing headaches for the system’s roughly 12 million daily users.

The government is set to appoint former prime minister Jean Castex as RATP chief, with parliamentary panels giving their green light after questioning him this week.

“The most urgent issue… is the continuity and quality of service,” Castex told lawmakers. “The heart of our job is to meet the expectations of our users.”

Paintings and sculptures from the collection of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen were auctioned off for a historic $1 billion Wednesday, Christie’s auction house said, with records set for works by Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat and Klimt.

At the end of the night Wednesday, five paintings entered the exclusive club of works of art sold for more than $100 million at auction, the New York auction house said.

The most expensive piece of art of the evening, Georges Seurat’s 1888 work “Les Poseuses, Ensemble (small version)”, a renowned work of pointillism, fetched $149.24 million, including fees, Christie’s said.

The auction house had announced that all the proceeds would be donated to charity.

While only 60 of 150 lots were sold on Wednesday, with the rest to be auctioned off Thursday, the value of the collection has already surpassed the previous record for the Macklowe collection, named after a wealthy New York couple, which fetched $922 million at competitor Sotheby’s earlier this spring.

The two-day sale in New York came as experts say the super wealthy are viewing art as a safe investment this year amid a tumultuous global economy and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Allen made his fortune with the establishment of the PC operating system with his better-known Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 1975.

He amassed a huge art collection which he used to lend to museums before his death in 2018 at the age of 65.

Allen left Microsoft in 1983, due to health problems and a deteriorating relationship with Gates, who remained in charge of the company until 2000.

Despite their strained friendship, Allen signed Gates’s “Giving Pledge” campaign and all proceeds from the auction are to be donated to charitable causes.

At auction Wednesday, French painter Paul Cezanne’s “La Montagne Sainte-Victoire” fetched $137.8 million, almost double the artist’s auction record.

A work by Vincent Van Gogh, “Orchard with Cypresses,” broke the Dutch artist’s previous record, bringing in $117.2 million.

A painting from Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian period, “Maternity II,” brought $105.7 million.

Austrian painter Gustav Klimt’s “Birch Forest” brought in $104.6 million.

Another 95 works from Allen’s collection go on sale Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the G20 leaders’ summit on the Indonesian resort island of Bali next week, Moscow’s embassy in Indonesia told AFP on Thursday.

“I can confirm that (foreign minister) Sergei Lavrov will lead the Russian delegation to the G20. President Putin’s program is still being worked out, he could participate virtually,” said Yulia Tomskaya, the embassy’s chief of protocol.

US President Joe Biden, who has called Putin a “war criminal” and who will be attending the summit, previously said he had no intention of meeting Putin in Bali if he went.

The decision, which follows months of speculation, comes as Moscow is suffering losses in its Ukraine campaign and as the Kremlin tries to shield itself from Western condemnation at the November 15-16 summit.

Another source with knowledge of Russia’s planning for the Bali event confirmed that Putin would be replaced by Lavrov. The person said it was unclear if the Russian leader would attend virtually.

Moscow’s top diplomat walked out of a July G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali after officials roundly condemned Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Host Indonesia pursues a neutral foreign policy and has rebuffed Western calls to disinvite Russia from the summit. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to attend the summit virtually.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said Putin would be invited to the summit despite the invasion, prompting a flurry of Western criticism. In August, he said Putin had accepted that invitation.

Zelensky had threatened to boycott the summit if Putin attended. Ukraine is not a member of the G20 bloc.

– Battlefield losses –

While US President Joe Biden has shunned contact with his Russian counterpart, France has warned against worsening Putin’s isolation on the world stage.

French President Emmanuel Macron has spoken to Putin in recent months and succeeded in gaining permission for a mission by the UN nuclear watchdog to travel to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

Russia refers to its invasion as a special military operation to “de-Nazify” Ukraine and blames subsequent Western sanctions for global economic turmoil caused by the conflict after it sparked food and energy crises.

The Bali meeting comes as Russia is suffering battlefield setbacks in the face of a Ukrainian counter-offensive.

Russia on Wednesday ordered its troops to withdraw from the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine. It was the only regional capital controlled by Moscow’s forces since the offensive began on February 24.

Chinese dissident Bao Tong, a top Communist Party official imprisoned in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests who became a vocal critic of Beijing, has died at 90 years old, his son said on Twitter.

Bao had spent much of the past three decades under home surveillance or in prison following the Chinese military’s violent crackdown on the student movement, which called for democratic reforms and an end to corruption. 

“My late father… died peacefully at 07:08 on the 9th of November 2022,” his son Bao Pu wrote Wednesday night on Twitter.

A former member of the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful Central Committee, Bao Tong served as political secretary to reformist premier — and subsequent party general secretary — Zhao Ziyang.

Zhao, once a rising star within the party leadership, clashed with hardline colleagues over his sympathy for the student movement, eventually leading to his dismissal and house arrest.

Bao Tong, like Zhao a supporter of economic and political reforms, was also detained over his support for the movement, serving seven years in prison before being released and placed under house arrest.

But his detention did not prevent his becoming a vehement critic of the Chinese government in articles he penned and comments to foreign press. He also notably fought for the official rehabilitation of Zhao Ziyang until his death in 2005.

Convinced that China has taken the wrong path after the events of Tiananmen, he signed the “Charter 08” manifesto, a widely circulated online petition that called for political reform.

The manifesto, signed by more than 10,000 people, called for the protection of basic human rights and the reform of China’s one-party system.

Bao later became an outspoken critic of Chinese President Xi Jinping — the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong — speaking out against his drive against corruption, which critics have said was used to quash his opponents.

“Our system is run on corruption,” Bao said in 2013. “If I beat 10 tigers, 100 more will come out. If I hit 100 flies, 1,000 come out.

“Why do they want political power? They want it in order to be corrupt.”

Facebook owner Meta will lay off more than 11,000 of its staff in “the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” boss Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday.

He said the cuts represented 13 percent of the social media titan’s workforce and would affect its research lab focusing on the metaverse as well as its apps, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The tech industry is in a serious slump and several major firms have announced mass layoffs — Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk fired half its staff last week.

“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg said in a note to staff.

“I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

Ad-supported platforms such as Facebook and Google are suffering with advertisers looking to cut costs as they struggle with inflation and rising interest rates.

Zuckerberg told his 87,000-strong staff he had expected the boost in e-commerce and online activity during the Covid pandemic to continue, but added: “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

The measures were also a message to Wall Street, where the company’s poor performance has sent the Meta share price plummeting by 70 percent since the start of the year.

The move on Wednesday was welcomed by investors with Meta shares showing major gains for the day of nearly six percent just ahead of the closing bell in New York.

The downturn has affected companies across the sector, with Apple and Amazon also recently announcing results that disappointed investors.

But Meta also faces some unique problems of its own.

The California-based company is being squeezed by Zuckerberg’s decision to devote billions of dollars to developing the metaverse, an immersive version of the web accessed via virtual reality headsets.

Zuckerberg renamed the company Meta a year ago to reflect the commitment to the project, but the division working on metaverse technology has since made losses of more than $3.5 billion.

Facebook is also struggling to fend off Chinese-owned TikTok, the now dominant social media for younger users to the detriment of Meta’s Instagram.

– ‘Last resort’ –

Mike Proulx, a research director at Forrester, said “Meta is amidst an identity crises” and that severe cost-cutting was “inevitable.”

“The company has one foot in a risky long-term metaverse bet and another foot failing to compete with TikTok,” he added.

Zuckerberg has hinted several times this year that belt-tightening measures were just around the corner and said in his letter on Wednesday that staff layoffs were a “last resort.”

Meta would also keep a hiring freeze going into next year, he said, and other spending cuts were envisaged.

“Fundamentally, we’re making all these changes for two reasons: our revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the beginning of this year, and we want to make sure we’re operating efficiently,” Zuckerberg wrote.

In the US, terminated Meta employees will receive four months severance pay and two additional weeks of pay for each year of service. 

Last month, Meta announced profits of $4.4 billion in the third quarter, a 52 percent decrease year-on-year.

The slump in profits comes despite its platforms dominating the world in terms of users — Facebook alone claims to have around two billion people who log on daily.

Cities in western Iran went on strike Wednesday in solidarity with mourners marking 40 days since security forces killed dozens in a crackdown on protests in the country’s strife-torn southeast, rights groups said.

Security forces opened fire on protests that erupted on September 30 after weekly prayers in Zahedan, capital of the restive province of Sistan-Baluchistan on Iran’s border with Pakistan.

It came two weeks after demonstrations broke out across Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, following her arrest in Tehran for allegedly flouting the country’s strict hijab dress rules for women.

The crackdown on nationwide protests since her death has killed at least 304 people, including 41 children and 24 women, says the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR).

Activists were seen distributing fliers calling for protests in all cities Wednesday for the 40-day mourning ceremony of Zahedan’s “Bloody Friday”, in a video shared by the 1500tasvir social media channel.

One of Iran’s most prominent actors, Taraneh Alidoosti, also posted a photo of herself on Instagram without a headscarf and holding a slogan that has become the rallying cry of the protests: “Woman. Life. Freedom”.

Widespread strikes were held “in solidarity” with Zahedan in the Kurdish cities of Baneh, Bukan, Kermanshah, Marivan, Sanandaj and Amini’s hometown of Saqez, in the country’s west, said the Norway-based Hengaw rights group.

– ‘Angry and frustrated’ –

The trigger for the violence that IHR said left at least 92 dead in Zahedan on September 30 was the alleged rape in custody of a 15-year-old girl by a police commander in the province’s port city of Chabahar.

But analysts say the Baluchi were inspired by the protests that flared over Amini’s death, which were initially driven by women’s rights but expanded over time to include other grievances.

“The 2022 protests are a convergence of angry and frustrated Iranians with the same goal, overthrowing the Islamic republic and a theocratic regime,” said Saeid Golkar, from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Poverty-stricken Sistan-Baluchistan province is a flashpoint for clashes with drug smuggling gangs, as well as rebels from the Baluchi minority and Sunni extremist groups.

Activists have long complained the region has been the victim of discrimination by Iran’s Shiite clerical leadership, with disproportionate numbers of Baluchi killed in clashes every year and also hanged in executions.

Protests over Amini’s death have shown no signs of abating despite the brutal crackdown and a campaign of mass arrests.

Young women have led the way, removing and burning their head coverings, chanting anti-regime slogans and confronting security forces on the street.

On Wednesday, reformist parties called for “courageous and innovative changes” including a referendum in a bid to end the crisis, according to a statement from the Iranian Reform Front, founded last year by officials close to former president Mohammad Khatami.

But Henry Rome, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute, suggested the “call will almost certainly wither”.

“The regime is unable to coalesce around even modest reforms to defuse the protests; in a moment of turbulence, there’s little prospect it would go so far as to put itself on the ballot,” he said.

– ‘Systematically silencing women’ –

Iran has struggled to suppress the demonstrations, which have evolved into its biggest challenge since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Security forces have fired directly on protesters using live ammunition, bird shot, tear gas and even paintballs.

Iran has sought to portray the protest movement as a plot hatched by its arch-enemies in the West, with Britain, Canada, the European Union and the United States imposing sanctions over rights violations.

The EU will seek to adopt further restrictions next week, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Wednesday.

“We won’t let up,” Baerbock said. “We stand with the men and women of Iran, not only today, but as long as it is necessary.”

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was accused this week of issuing death threats against two journalists working for the London-based Persian-language Iran International television channel.

The Saudi-linked channel’s owner, Volant Media, said London police had warned them of “credible threats to their lives”.

In response, Iran’s Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib warned Britain it would “pay” for what it labelled actions to destabilise the Islamic republic.

Khatib also accused Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia of financing media outlets behind the wave of unrest, state news agency IRNA reported Wednesday.

An unprecedented number of female journalists have been detained, which Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said “symbolically reveals the Iranian regime’s intention to systematically silence women’s voices”.