• French PM comfortably survives both no-confidence votes.
• Lecornu offer to suspend pension reform wins him vital support.
• Socialists help Lecornu survive but now want other concessions. 

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu survived two no-confidence votes in parliament on Thursday, winning crucial backing from the Socialist Party thanks to his pledge to suspend President Emmanuel Macron’s contested pension reform.

The two motions presented by the hard-left France Unbowed and the far-right National Rally (RN) secured just 271 and 144 votes respectively — well short of the 289 votes needed to bring down Lecornu’s days-old government.

Lecornu’s offer to mothball the pension reform until after the 2027 presidential election helped sway the Socialists, giving the government a lifeline in the deeply fragmented National Assembly.

Despite the reprieve, the motions underscored the fragility of Macron’s administration midway through his final term.

“A majority cobbled together through horse-trading managed today to save their positions, at the expense of the national interest,” RN party president Jordan Bardella wrote on X.

The French bond market remained steady after the back-to-back votes, with the government victory widely expected by investors.

Lecornu faces arduous budget negotiations 

By putting the pension reform on the chopping block, Lecornu threatens to kill off one of Macron’s main economic legacies at a time when France’s public finances are in a perilous state, leaving the president with little in the way of domestic achievements after eight years in office.

There are 265 lawmakers in parliament from parties that said they would vote to topple Lecornu, and only a handful of rebels from other groups joined their cause.

If Lecornu had lost either vote, he and his ministers would have had to immediately resign, and Macron would have come under huge pressure to call a snap parliamentary election, plunging France deeper into crisis.

But despite the outcome of Thursday’s votes, Lecornu still faces weeks of arduous negotiations in parliament over passing a slimmed-down 2026 budget during which he could be toppled at any point.

“The French need to know that we are doing all this work… to give them a budget, because it is fundamental for the future of our country,” said Yael Braun-Pivet, the president of the National Assembly and an ally of Macron.

“I am pleased to see that today there is a majority in the National Assembly that is operating in this spirit: work, the search for compromise, the best possible effort,” she added.

After winning the pension concession, the Socialists on Wednesday set their sights on including a tax on billionaires in the 2026 budget, underlining just how weak Lecornu’s hand is in the negotiations.

Political Kryptonite

France is in the midst of its worst political crisis in decades as a succession of minority governments seek to push deficit-reducing budgets through a truculent legislature split into three distinct ideological blocs.

Reforming France’s generous pension system has been political kryptonite ever since Socialist President Francois Mitterrand cut the retirement age to 60 from 65 in 1982.

In France, the average effective retirement age is just 60.7, compared to the OECD average of 64.4.

Macron’s reform raised the statutory retirement age by two years to 64 by 2030. Although that only brings French policy into line with other European Union member states, it chips away at a cherished social benefit beloved by the left.

• Modi assured India will stop buying Russian oil: Trump.
• Russia remains India’s top source of oil imports.
• India says its main goal is to protect consumers.
  

Some Indian refiners are preparing to cut Russian oil imports, with expectations of a gradual reduction, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, with the US pressuring New Delhi to stop buying Russian crude to help end the war in Ukraine.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured that India will stop buying oil from Russia, India’s top source of imported oil.

India said on Thursday the country’s two main goals were to ensure stable energy prices and secure supply.

“It has been our consistent priority to safeguard the interests of the Indian consumer in a volatile energy scenario. Our import policies are guided entirely by this objective,” the foreign ministry statement said in a statement.

The statement did not refer to Trump’s comment about India’s purchases of Russian oil.

Trade-off against steep tariffs

Indian officials are in Washington for trade talks, with the the US having doubled tariffs on Indian goods to pressure New Delhi to reduce Russian oil imports. US negotiators have said curbing those purchases would be crucial to reducing India’s tariff rate and sealing a trade deal.

India and China are the two top buyers of Russian seaborne crude exports, taking advantage of the discounted prices Russia has been forced to accept after European buyers shunned purchases and the US and the European Union imposed sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“So I was not happy that India was buying oil, and he (Modi) assured me today that they will not be buying oil from Russia,” Trump told reporters during a White House event on Wednesday.

India’s foreign ministry said it was discussing deeper energy co-operation with the United States.

“The current Administration has shown interest in deepening energy cooperation with India. Discussions are ongoing,” foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in the statement.

Indian refiners said they have not been formally told by the government about stopping Russian oil purchases, sources said. They declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak to media.

The sources said it would be difficult to immediately stop buying Russian oil as a sudden switch to buying other crudes would drive up global oil prices and threaten to stoke inflation.

In April to September, the first six months of this fiscal year, India imported 1.75 million barrels per day of Russian crude, with its share declining to about 36% of India’s total oil imports from 40% in the same period a year earlier, government data showed.

India’s US crude imports rose 6.8% on year to about 213,000 bpd, making up 4.3% of imports.

The share of Middle Eastern oil in the six months to September 2025 rose to 45% from 42%, the data showed.

• We demand the highest punishment for her: chief prosecutor.
• Up to 1,400 people killed in clashes in July and August 2024.
• Hasina faces trial in absentia alongside two ex-senior officials.
  

Bangladeshi prosecution lawyers demanded on Thursday that fugitive ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina receive the death penalty in her trial for crimes against humanity.

Hasina has defied court orders to return from India, where she fled last year, to face charges of ordering a deadly crackdown in a failed attempt to crush a student-led uprising.

Up to 1,400 people were killed in the clashes between July and August 2024, according to the United Nations.

“We demand the highest punishment for her,” chief prosecutor Tajul Islam told reporters outside court.

“For a single murder, one death penalty is the rule. For 1,400 murders, she should be sentenced 1,400 times — but since that is not humanly possible, we demand at least one.”

The prosecution alleges that Hasina, 78, was “the nucleus around whom all the crimes committed during the July-August uprising revolved”.

She is being tried in absentia alongside two former senior officials.

Her ex-interior minister, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, is also a fugitive, while former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun is in custody and has pleaded guilty.

The prosecution said on Thursday that Kamal should also face the death penalty.

The trial, which opened on June 1, has heard months of testimony alleging Hasina’s role in ordering or failing to prevent mass killings.

“Her goal was to cling to power permanently — for herself and her family,” Islam said.

“She has turned into a hardened criminal, and shows no remorse for the brutality she has committed.”

‘Use lethal weapons’

Prosecutors have filed five charges, including failure to prevent murder, which amount to crimes against humanity under Bangladeshi law.

Hasina’s now-banned Awami League says that she “categorically” denies the charges.

Hasina has a state-appointed lawyer but refuses to recognise the court’s authority.

The trial is in its final stages, with the interim government aiming to steer the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million towards elections in February.

Witnesses have included a man whose face was ripped apart by gunshot during the culmination of the protests.

The prosecution also played audio tapes — matched by police with verified recordings of Hasina — that suggested she directly ordered security forces to “use lethal weapons” against protesters and that “wherever they find (them), they will shoot”.

Hasina, already convicted in July for contempt of court and sentenced in absentia to six months in prison, also faces ongoing corruption cases.

Relatives including her daughter Saima Wazed, who has served as a senior UN official, and her niece Tulip Siddiq, a British lawmaker, also face corruption charges, which they deny.

The daughter of a revolutionary who led Bangladesh to independence in 1971, Hasina presided over breakneck economic growth.

Critics accused her government of unjustly jailing her chief rival, passing draconian anti-press freedom laws, and perpetrating a litany of rights abuses including the murder of opposition activists.