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President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to impose tariffs on European steel and aluminum imports after failing to win concessions from the European Union, a move that could provoke retaliatory tariffs and inflame trans-Atlantic trade tensions.

The tariffs are likely to go into effect on the EU with an announcement by Friday’s deadline, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The administration’s plans could change if the two sides are able to reach a last-minute agreement, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Trump announced in March the United States would slap a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum, citing national security interests. But he granted an exemption to the EU and other U.S. allies; that reprieve expires Friday.

​Europe bracing

Europe has been bracing for the U.S. to place the restrictions even as top European officials have held last-ditch talks in Paris with American trade officials to try to avert the tariffs.

“Realistically, I do not think we can hope” to avoid either U.S. tariffs or quotas on steel and aluminum, said Cecilia Malmstrom, the European Union’s trade commissioner. Even if the U.S. were to agree to waive the tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, Malmstrom said, “I expect them nonetheless to want to impose some sort of cap on EU exports.”

European officials said they expected the U.S. to announce its final decision Thursday. The people familiar with the talks said Trump could make an announcement as early as Thursday.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross attended meetings at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris on Wednesday, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer joins discussions in Paris on Thursday.

The U.S. plan has raised the threat of retaliation from Europe and fears of a global trade war — a prospect that is weighing on investor confidence and could hinder the global economic upturn.

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If the U.S. moves forward with its tariffs, the EU has threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs on U.S. orange juice, peanut butter and other goods in return. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire pledged that the European response would be “united and firm.”

Limits on cars

Besides the U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs, the Trump administration is also investigating possible limits on foreign cars in the name of national security.

“Unilateral responses and threats over trade war will solve nothing of the serious imbalances in the world trade. Nothing,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in an impassioned speech at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.

In a clear reference to Trump, Macron added: “These solutions might bring symbolic satisfaction in the short term. … One can think about making voters happy by saying, ‘I have a victory, I’ll change the rules, you’ll see.’”

But Macron said those “who waged bilateral trade wars … saw an increase in prices and an increase in unemployment.”

Tariffs on steel imports to the U.S. can help local producers of the metal by making foreign products more expensive. But they can also increase costs more broadly for U.S. manufacturers who cannot source all their steel locally and need to import the raw material. That hurts the companies and can lead to more expensive consumer prices, economists say.

Ross criticized the EU for its tough negotiating position.

“There can be negotiations with or without tariffs in place. There are plenty of tariffs the EU has on us. It’s not that we can’t talk just because there’s tariffs,” he said. He noted that “China has not used that as an excuse not to negotiate.”

But German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier insisted the Europeans were being “constructive” and were ready to negotiate special trade arrangements, notably for liquefied natural gas and industrial goods, including cars.

WTO reforms

Macron also proposed to start negotiations between the U.S., the EU, China and Japan to reshape the World Trade Organization to better regulate trade. Discussions could then be expanded to include other countries to agree on changes by the end of the year.

Ross expressed concern that the Geneva-based World Trade Organization and other organizations are too rigid and slow to adapt to changes in global business.

“We would operate within (multilateral) frameworks if we were convinced that people would move quickly,” he said.

Ross and Lighthizer seemed like the odd men out at this week’s gathering at the OECD, an international economic agency that includes the U.S. as a prominent member.

The agency issued a report Wednesday saying “the threat of trade restrictions has begun to adversely affect confidence” and tariffs “would negatively influence investment and jobs.”
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Wednesday a U.S.-European Union trade deal could still be reached even if the United States imposes tariffs on EU steel and aluminum imports.

EU and U.S. officials are holding last-minute negotiations two days before U.S. President Donald Trump decides to apply tariffs on Europe.

The threat of tariffs has increased prospects of retaliation and a global trade war that could hinder the global economy.

“There can be negotiations with or without tariffs in place,” Ross said at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. “There are plenty of tariffs the EU has on us. It’s not that we can’t talk just because there’s tariffs.”

The Trump administration is also exploring possible limits on foreign auto imports, citing national security. 

The EU wants exemptions on steel and aluminum tariffs, which Trump hopes will benefit the U.S., or impose tariffs on U.S. peanut butter, orange juice and other products.

In a speech at the OECD, French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe should stand its ground in the face of unilateral actions and warned against trade wars.

“Unilateral responses and threats over trade wars will solve nothing of the serious imbalances in world trade. Nothing,” he proclaimed.

In an apparent reference to Trump’s proposed tariffs, Macron said, “These solutions might bring symbolic satisfaction in the short term. …. One can think about making voters happy by saying, ‘I have a victory. I’ll change the rules. You’ll see.’” 

Macron also called on the EU, the U.S., China and Japan to draft a World Trade Organization reform plan for the G-20 summit in Argentina later this year.

“The new rules must meet the current challenges of world trade: massive state subsidies creating distortions of global markets, intellectual property, social rights and climate protection,” he said. 

But Macron’s multilateral approach has produced limited results to date, as Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran nuclear deal, and is threatening to disrupt trade relations between China, the EU and other economic powers.

 
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Europe’s financial markets are in a swoon, Italy is in political turmoil, a fresh eurozone debt crisis is in the offing and the continent’s euroskeptic populists are predicting gleefully the fast-approaching demise of the European Union.

So, what’s new?

For the past few years, all of the above could have been written virtually any day of the week, much of it fueled by hyperbole. But the political drama unfolding in Italy is of a different order and shaping up to be a much greater existential threat to the European Union than Britain’s Brexit vote two years ago, analysts say.

That is unless Italy can gain firmer political ground, and quickly.

“Italy is, not for the first time, in political crisis,” said Nick Ottens, chief editor of the transatlantic opinion website Atlantic Sentinel. “But this time, what happens in Rome could have a big impact on financial markets, the euro, and the longer-term future of the European Union as a whole.”

Tuesday, the global financial markets saw massive sell-offs of European equities and bank stocks, and currency traders dumped the euro, sending it plummeting to its lowest level against the dollar in nearly a year. Bond markets also swooned as global investors headed for the safety of U.S. Treasury securities, reviving memories of the debt crisis that bankrupted Greece and threatened to fracture the eurozone.

The sell-off came as Italian politicians struggled to shape an orderly way toward fresh elections after Sergio Mattarella, Italy’s president, vetoed the selection of an anti-euro finance minister by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and anti-immigrant Lega. That collapsed the nascent coalition government and prompted the resignation of the prime minister nominee after just 90 hours — a stunning turnaround even by Italy’s chaotic political standards. 

Mattarella’s decision to turn to a former IMF economist, Carlo Cottarelli, to head a caretaker government remains beset by problems. The president’s plan appears to have involved delaying elections until next year.

But Cottarelli, a Europhile, isn’t expected to win a vote of confidence in the Italian parliament because of opposition from the two populist parties, who together command a parliamentary majority, forcing Mattarella to call a populist-demanded early election, possibly as soon as July.

‘On Verge of Panic’

The Italian political turmoil is sending shock waves across Europe amid alarm the country is on a political trajectory to exit the eurozone, despite polling data suggesting Italians would prefer to stick with the euro, although they remain resentful of Brussels and EU-dictated austerity policies.

“On Verge of Panic,” was how the normally sober Economist magazine headlined its coverage Wednesday of the political crisis in Rome and what it may entail for Europe.

Brinkmanship and miscalculation by both old guard politicians in Italy and upstart populists risks worsening the Italian domestic crisis and transforming it into a continent-shaking European one, analysts and investors warn.

On Tuesday, Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros said he feared the European Union could be heading toward another major financial crisis triggered by populist political parties intent on ripping the bloc apart. “The EU is in an existential crisis. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong,” he said in a speech in London.

Italy is the third-largest country in the eurozone, the fifth-largest in the European Union, and as one of its founding members, conflict with Brussels will test the bloc far more than Brexit.

‘Italian democracy’s darkest night’

EU officials fear the Italian populists will grab an even bigger share of the popular vote in rerun parliamentary elections and only four months after Italians voted in a bad-tempered national poll, marred by violence, that resulted in a hung parliament.

“The political risk is becoming very complex,” said Mauro Vittorangeli of Allianz Global. “The political situation is totally unpredictable,” he added.

Lega leader Matteo Salvini intends to frame his party’s election campaign as a referendum on Italy’s EU relationship, arguing the populists’ plan for a coalition government failed because of interference from the “powers-that-be, the markets, Berlin and Paris” who want Italy to be “a slave, scared and precarious.”

A poll released last week suggested 61 percent of Italians believe their voice isn’t being heard in Brussels. Pollsters put the Lega’s support at 22 percent, five points up from its vote share in March’s election.

Likewise, M5S leader Luigi Di Maio, whose party won 32 percent of the March vote, is also blaming entrenched elites, foreign and domestic, for crashing the proposed populist coalition government. He has called on party supporters to attend to protest Mattarella’s actions, which he says amount to “Italian democracy’s darkest night.”

One thing that may hurt the populists and reduce their electoral support, argues economist Alberto Mingardi of the Istituto Bruno Leoni research group, is if voters start fearing “an impending financial disaster.” Or if Italians decide the populists are more to blame for the crisis than Italy’s president.
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UNICEF is warning that hundreds of thousands of severely malnourished children in Mali are at risk of dying, as the security situation in the country worsens.

The United Nations reports that attacks by extremists and criminals in northern and central Mali are rising at an alarming rate, with many civilians being deliberately targeted.

UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac says more than a million children are going hungry because of severe food shortages.

“More than 850,000 children under the age of 5 are at risk of global acute malnutrition this year, including 274,000 children facing severe malnutrition and at imminent risk of death,” he said. “This represents a 34 percent increase and is largely due to the worsening food security situation in parts of the country.”

The U.N. reports 20 percent of the country is suffering from food insecurity and 1.2 million people lack water, sanitation and basic hygiene.

UNICEF says severe acute malnutrition rates are highest in the conflict affected areas in the north, exceeding the emergency level of 15 percent in Timbuktu. It cites Mali as one of the countries with the highest newborn and maternal mortality rates in the world.

Boulierac also says newborn deaths are rising because of malnutrition and lack of basic health services.

Northern Mail has been in turmoil since 2012, when Islamist militant groups temporarily seized control of the region.

​On a visit to Mali’s capital Bamako on Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres paid homage to the U.N. peacekeepers who have been killed while serving what is considered the world body’s most dangerous peacekeeping mission.Twenty-one peacekeepers were killed in attacks by extremists last year.

While in Mali, Guterres appealed for funds to support the G5 Sahel force, which is composed of troops from Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.The force was created to contain the West African jihadists active in Mali and nearby countries.

UNICEF calls the crisis in Mali one of the most forgotten in the world. It notes nearly 80 percent of the agency’s $37 million humanitarian appeal for this year remains unfunded.
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Italy may hold repeat elections as early as July after the man asked to be prime minister failed to secure support from major political parties for even a stop-gap government, sources said on Tuesday, as markets tumbled on the growing political turmoil.

Italy has searched for a new government since inconclusive elections in March, with the president finally designating former International Monetary Fund official Carlo Cottarelli as interim prime minister until a new vote is held between September and early 2019.

But sources close to some of Italy’s main parties said there was now a chance that President Sergio Mattarella could dissolve parliament in the coming days and send Italians back to the polls as early as July 29.

That prospect emerged immediately after Cottarelli met the president on Tuesday afternoon and left without making any statement. Cottarelli had been expected to announce his stopgap government’s cabinet after those talks.

A source close to the president said Cottarelli had made no mention in the meeting of an intention to give up his mandate and that he was simply finalizing his cabinet lineup.

Major parties, though, sensed Cottarelli’s mission was all but dead and called for parliament to be dissolved immediately.

“It would be best to go to elections as quickly as possible, as early as July,” said Andrea Marcucci, senate leader for the centre-left Democratic Party.

Italy suffered its biggest market selloff in years amid investor fears the election would deliver an even stronger mandate for anti-establishment, eurosceptic politicians, casting doubt on Italy’s future in the euro zone.

Market rout

Yields on Italy’s two-year bonds, the most sensitive to political upsets, suffered their biggest one-day jump since 1992.

The euro also hit multi-month lows, as credit rating agency Moody’s signalled a possible downgrade for Italy if the next government failed to address its debt burden.

Central bank Governor Ignazio Visco said Italy “must never forget that we are only ever a few short steps away from the very serious risk of losing the irreplaceable asset of trust,” but there were “no justifications” for the market turmoil.

Saxo Bank currency strategist John Hardy said European Central Bank President Mario Draghi might soon be required to intervene to calm markets, as he did during the euro zone debt crisis in 2012 when he promised to do “whatever it takes.”

Euro zone money markets had been betting on the ECB raising interest rates from ultra-low levels mid-next year. But with economic growth slowing and worries about Italy, they are now pricing in just a 30 percent chance of a modest 10 basis point rise in June 2019.

‘Respect the voters’

President Mattarella had looked to Cottarelli as prime minister to calm political and market turmoil, which Italy’s two anti-establishment parties blame on the president himself after he vetoed their choice for economy minister in their would-be coalition government.

 Mattarella blocked Paolo Savona as unsuitable on the grounds he had argued Italy should be prepared to quit the euro.

The 5-Star Movement and the far-right League, the biggest winners from the March election, declined to nominate an alternative candidate and abandoned plans to form a government, switching back into election mode, with 5-Star Movement calling for Mattarella to be impeached.

Other euro zone countries are concerned about the currency bloc’s third-largest economy. French President Emmanuel Macron defended what he called Mattarella’s courage and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke of the need to obey rules governing the euro.

But top EU officials were quick to play down a comment from Germany’s European commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, who said he hoped the market turmoil would be “a signal (to Italians) not to hand governing responsibilities to the populists.”

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker released a statement saying: “Italy’s fate does not lie in the hands of the financial markets,” and Donald Tusk, the chairman of EU leaders’ summits, called on EU institutions to “respect the voters … We are there to serve them, not to lecture them.”

Even if Cottarelli were able to form an interim government acceptable to the splintered Italian parliament, investors believe he would fail to pass the 2019 budget, triggering a snap election in the autumn.

The election campaign is likely to centre on Italy’s relationship with the European Union and in particular the budget restraints imposed on members of the euro zone.

A poll by SWG showed support for the League had jumped to 27.5 percent, up about 10 points from the March 4 elections.

With support for 5-Star falling about three points to 29.5 percent, the two combined would have a majority in parliament if they decided to join forces again.
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A Canadian accused of helping Russian intelligence agents break into email accounts as part of a massive 2014 data breach at Yahoo was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison and ordered to pay a $250,000 fine.

Karim Baratov, who pleaded guilty in November 2017 in San Francisco, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Baratov, a Canadian citizen born in Kazakhstan, was arrested in Canada in March 2017 at the request of U.S. prosecutors. He later waived his right to fight a request for his extradition to the United States.

Lawyers for Baratov in a court filing had urged a sentence of 45 months in prison, while prosecutors had sought 94 months.

“This case is about a young man, younger than most of the defendants in hacking cases throughout this country, who hacked emails, one at a time, for $100 a hack,” the defense lawyers wrote in a May 19 court filing.

Verizon Communications Inc., the largest U.S. wireless operator, acquired most of Yahoo’s assets in June 2017.

The U.S. Justice Department announced charges in March 2017 against Baratov and three others, including two officers in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), for their roles in the 2014 hacking of 500 million Yahoo accounts. Baratov is the only one of the four who has been arrested. Yahoo in 2016 said cyberthieves might have stolen names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords.

Gmail targets

When FSB officers learned that a target had a non-Yahoo webmail account, including through information obtained from the Yahoo hack, they worked with Baratov, who was paid to break into at least 80 email accounts, prosecutors said, including numerous Alphabet Inc. Gmail accounts.

Federal prosecutors said in a court filing “the targeted victims were of interest to Russian intelligence” and included “prominent leaders in the commercial industries and senior government officials (and their counselors) of Russia and countries bordering Russia.”

Prosecutors said FSB officers Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin directed and paid hackers to obtain information and used Alexsey Belan, who is among the FBI’s most-wanted cybercriminals, to breach Yahoo.
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A British-based maritime services company has agreed to pay $20 million to resolve allegations it overbilled the U.S. Navy for goods and services provided to American warships at ports around the world, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.

Privately held Inchcape Shipping Services Holdings Ltd and some of its subsidiaries provided U.S. Navy ships with waste removal, telephone access, ship-to-shore transportation, local security and other services at ports in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, the Justice Department said in a statement.

A lawsuit charged that between 2005 and 2014 Inchcape knowingly submitted invoices to the Navy overstating the goods and services actually provided, the Justice Department said in announcing the settlement.

“We trust contractors supporting our warfighters to act with the utmost integrity and expect them to comply with their obligations to bill the government as called for by their contracts,” the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie Liu, said in the statement.

Inchcape did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its previous chief executive resigned in 2015, and it has since hired new management not implicated in the overbilling, according to attorneys involved in the case.

The lawsuit was brought under whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act by three former senior employees of Inchcape, said Janet Goldstein, one of their attorneys. The former Inchcape employees included a retired Navy Reserve intelligence officer and a former FBI special agent.

The lawsuit said the whistleblowers resigned from Inchcape after discovering the alleged overbilling and bringing it to the attention of the company’s chief executive, only to be rebuffed in their effort to stop the practice. They contacted the FBI in 2009 and worked to provide evidence of the fraud, their attorneys said.

Under provisions of the False Claims Act that allow private citizens to share in funds recovered, the three whistleblowers will receive about $4.4 million, the Justice Department said.

The Navy suspended Inchcape from contracting with the U.S. government in 2013. The action affected contracts worth $243 million, a Navy official said at the time.

The action against Inchcape coincided with a Navy scandal over its dealings with another maritime services firm — Glenn Defense Marine Asia, run by Leonard Glenn Francis, a Malaysian businessman who pleaded guilty in 2015 to bribery and defrauding the Navy.

More than 30 other people have been convicted or are facing charges in that case. Six admirals have been disciplined or admonished by the Navy.
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The doctors who treated a Russian former spy and his daughter after they were poisoned with a nerve agent in Britain say they don’t know what the pair’s long term health outlook is — and initially feared the incident could have been much worse.

Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s military intelligence who betrayed dozens of agents to Britain, and daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench in the southern English city of Salisbury on March 4.

Staff at Salisbury hospital, where they were treated, told the BBC that some started to wonder whether they too would fall victim to the nerve agent.

Prognosis uncertain

Asked about the long term impact of the poisoning on the Skripals health, the hospital’s medical director, Christine Blanshard, said the prognosis was uncertain.

“The honest answer is we don’t know,” she said, according to extracts of an interview released by the BBC’s Newsnight program.

Britain has said that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals, and western governments, including the United States, have expelled more than 100 Russian diplomats. Russia has denied any involvement in the poisoning and retaliated in kind.

Yulia Skripal spoke to Reuters last week, saying her recovery had been “slow and extremely painful” and that she was lucky to have survived.

Hospital staff too said that they expected the Skripals would die as a result of the poisoning.

“All the evidence was there that they would not survive,” said Stephen Jukes, an intensive care consultant who treated the Skripals a week after they arrived at the hospital.

He added that the medical team initially suspected the Skripals were suffering an opioid overdose before the diagnosis quickly changed.

Police officer admitted with symptoms

The cathedral city of Salisbury was transformed by the incident, with major shopping areas cordoned off while decontamination of locations the Skripals visited took place.

A policeman was admitted to hospital with symptoms after attending to the Skripals, and hospital staff feared that the incident might have been far more serious than first thought.

“When the (policeman) was admitted with symptoms — there was a real concern as to how big could this get,” Lorna Wilkinson, director of nursing at the hospital, said, adding she feared it could have “become all-consuming and involve many casualties. “We really didn’t know at that point.”
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Talks to settle the long-running dispute between Greece and Macedonia over the name Macedonia are in their final stage, the two foreign ministers said Monday.

Greece’s Nikos Kotzias and Nikola Dimitrov of Macedonia both say their prime ministers will take over the talks after several legal and technical issues are worked out.

Dimitrov told reporters in Brussels Monday there could be a final agreement before an EU summit at the end of June.

Macedonia is the name of a former Yugoslav republic and a historic ancient area of northern Greece. 

Both countries have been feuding over the use of the name since the country Macedonia gained independence in 1991.

Many Greeks say allowing the neighboring country to use the name insults Greek history and implies a claim on Greek territory.

Some Macedonians say changing their country’s name or even modifying it in a deal with Greece would be like committing treason.

Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev has proposed changing his country’s name to “New Macedonia” or possibly “Upper Macedonia” in exchange for Greece dropping its blocking of Macedonian membership in NATO.
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The World Trade Organization is being slowly strangled to death, a retiring trade judge whose replacement has been blocked by the United States said in his farewell speech, delivering a thinly-veiled rebuke to the Donald Trump administration.

Ricardo Ramirez-Hernandez served two terms as a judge on the WTO’s Appellate Body, which acts as the final court for trade disputes between countries. Since his departure last year, the United States has been blocking the process to replace him and other judges, throwing the WTO into crisis.

“This institution does not deserve to die through asphyxiation,” Ramirez-Hernandez said. “You have an obligation to decide whether you want to kill it or keep it alive.”

In a speech introducing Ramirez-Hernandez, WTO Deputy Director-General Karl Brauner said there was “no movement in sight” to unblocking appointments.

“This is frightening,” he said, adding that it was an illusion to believe the WTO could manage without its appeals judges. It remained to be seen if the WTO was an achievement of civilization or only a temporary experiment, he added.

Founded in 1995

The Geneva-based World Trade Organization, founded in 1995, is the final arbiter for trade disputes between its 164 member economies and the main global forum for discussing trade.

Its appellate body normally has seven members, but because of the Trump administration’s veto on new hires, only four of the posts are now filled. One judge is due for reappointment in September and two are due to leave next year.

Three judges are needed to hear any case, which means the court will cease to function altogether next year unless Trump lifts his refusal to fill vacancies.

‘Unfair’ treatment

Trump and his trade advisers take a tough and unorthodox line on what they see as “unfair” treatment by the trade body.

Ramirez-Hernandez did not point fingers directly at any particular country for the crisis, saying all WTO members were responsible for dealing with problems.

“It seems to me that the crisis we now face could have been avoided if it had been addressed face-on, as it began to escalate,” he said.
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A real-life Spiderman spring into action in Paris and saved a young boy dangling from a fourth floor balcony.

Mamoudou Gassama, a 22-year-old migrant from Mali, said he saw that the child was in danger in the neighborhood where he went Saturday to watch a soccer (football) match on a restaurant television.   

He told CNN,  “I like children.  I would have hated to see him getting hurt in front of me. I ran and I looked for solutions to save him and thank God I scaled the front of the building to the balcony.”

Video footage of the rescue shows Gassama, using just his bare hands, climbing from balcony to balcony. A man on the fourth floor was leaning across another balcony and was struggling to hold on to the child.

Gassama reached the fourth floor balcony and rescued the boy with one hand.

By the time firefighters arrived on the scene, the four-year-old was safe.

“Luckily, there was someone who was physically fit and who had the courage to go and get the child,” a fire service spokesman told AFP,  the French news agency.

Gassama is being widely hailed as a hero.  French President Emmanuel Macron thanked the young migrant personally Monday at the Elysee Palace where Gassama told the president that “God helped me” with the rescue.  He said,”The more I climbed, the more I had the courage to climb up higher.”  

President Macron announced Gassama will be become a naturalized French citizen and offered a job with the fire department.

Paris Mayor Anne HiIdalgo said on Twitter she had phoned Gassama to thank him for his courageous act.

“He explained to me that he arrived from Mali a few months ago with the dream of making a  life for himself here.  I replied that his heroic act is an example for all citizens and that the City of Paris will obviously be keen to support him in his efforts to settle in France,” she posted on Twitter.

According to AFP, the child’s parents were not home at the time of the incident. The mother was out of town and the child’s father is scheduled to appear in court Monday after being held for questioning about why he had left his child unattended. 
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Supporters of the nationalist Alternative for Germany party marched through central Berlin to protest against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government Sunday, and were kept away from a raft of counter-demonstrations by a heavy police presence.

Police said over 5,000 people turned out for the demonstration organized by the anti-migration Alternative for Germany, known by its German acronym AfD. A variety of counter-protests against the far right attracted well over 25,000 people in total, they said. 

The AfD event opened with German flags, placards such as “No Islam in Germany” and chants of “Merkel must go” outside Berlin’s central train station. The party’s supporters then marched to the landmark Brandenburg Gate. Opponents chanted “Nazis out” from the other side of the monument.

Some of the counter-protesters took to rafts on the Spree river, within sight of the train station. Groups organizing protests against AfD included artists and a coalition of Berlin music clubs hoping to “blow away” the party with loud techno beats.

About 2,000 police officers were in place to prevent trouble, including reinforcements from other parts of Germany. The march concluded without significant trouble.

AfD won 12.6 percent of the vote to enter Germany’s national parliament last year on anti-migrant and anti-establishment sentiment. It is now the largest of four opposition parties after the country’s two biggest parties finally agreed to continue a centrist “grand coalition” under Merkel earlier this year. 

Its march Sunday, an unusual move for a German political party, was headlined “Germany’s Future.” An AfD regional leader, Andreas Kalbitz, proclaimed that “this is a signal” and argued that it shows “AfD is the center of society.”

In parliament, AfD’s novice lawmakers have sometimes struggled to grasp basic procedures and stood out with blunt attacks on minorities, particularly Muslims, who made up the majority of the more than 1 million asylum-seekers to enter Germany in 2015 and 2016. Recent polls have put the party’s support around the same level as in last year’s election.

Prominent AfD lawmaker Beatrix von Storch told Sunday’s demonstrators that “the vital question for us is: freedom or Islamization?”

Among the protesters was Silke Langmacker, an accountant, who carried a sign reading “Taxpayers First.”

“We are here to stop the uncontrolled influx into the German welfare system,” she said. “The refugees must return to Syria and rebuild their country there.” 
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