French President Emmanuel Macron has faced jeers from locals on the cyclone-battered French overseas territory of Mayotte, telling them they should be “happy to be in France, because if it wasn’t France you’d be 10,000 times even more in the s***.”

Macron has come under fire for his handling of Cyclone Chido, which ripped across Mayotte last weekend inflicting destruction that has been likened to an atomic bomb, and his comments only risk exacerbating anger from locals who are without water or electricity.

Opposition politicians say France has neglected the archipelago and has failed to anticipate how to fortify the islands in anticipation for natural disasters linked to climate change, such as Chido – a category 4 storm that flattened neighborhoods, knocked out electrical grids, crushed hospitals and schools and damaged the airport’s control tower.

The cyclone tore through the southwestern Indian Ocean last weekend, impacting northern Madagascar before rapidly intensifying and slamming Mayotte with winds above 220 kilometers per hour (136 miles per hour), according to France’s weather service. It was the strongest storm to hit the islands in more than 90 years, Meteo-France said.

Macron began the conversation on Thursday by expressing that he had come to Mayotte to listen and engage in dialogue with residents, who he acknowledged had lived through “something horrible.” But as the crowd began to scoff, he changed his tone.

Macron has been met with anger by many of the residents he visited during his two-day trip to Mayotte. Many say they feel there is a lack of support from Paris following the disaster.

“The water isn’t there, no services are there. After six days, is that normal?” one man angrily asked him on Thursday.

Another woman, clearly distressed, told Macron that the archipelago “needs him.”

“Everything is demolished. We need you – there is nothing in Mayotte. We have young children, we are without water, without electricity,” she said.

Meanwhile, right-wing politicians, including acting Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau of the conservative Les Republicains party, have pointed the finger at illegal immigration, which they say has impoverished Mayotte and left it with vast shanty towns vulnerable to extreme weather, Reuters reported.

The worst damage was to those informal settlements and shacks.

These neighborhoods are home to many of the roughly 100,000 undocumented migrants who live in Mayotte, according to France’s interior ministry.

Located about 5,000 miles from Paris, Mayotte is the poorest place in the European Union and has struggled with unemployment, violence and a deepening migration crisis.

Around 77% of Mayotte’s population live below the national poverty line, making it the poorest department in France. The poverty rate in Mayotte is five times higher than that of mainland France, according to government figures.

In recent decades, tens of thousands of people from neighboring Comoros and Madagascar have come to Mayotte seeking better economic conditions and access to the French welfare system.

Authorities in Mayotte are continuing their relief operations, with many of the supplies arriving via an air bridge from France’s other Indian Ocean territory, Reunion Island.

In addition to the 31 confirmed deaths, the local prefecture said Wednesday it had recorded 1,373 people with light injuries, with a complete list of deaths and injuries expected to take time. It is feared the death toll could still rise significantly, but authorities have said that they are currently focused on bringing survivors to safety.

Macron said the government would send additional support to Mayotte soon and that France will observe a day of national mourning on Monday.

At least one person has died after a car plowed into a crowd at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, police have said, according to local public broadcaster MDR.

Several people have also been injured, MDR reported, citing police.

In the video, dozens of people are crowded at the market stalls when the vehicle plows directly into them. Some people can be seen running away from the car in panic, others dive into the stalls.

Bodies and debris are scattered across the narrow lane as the car turns out of the plaza.

Extensive police measures are currently in place at the scene, Magdeburg police said in a post on X.

MDR reported that the Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, is on his way to Magdeburg, which is west of Berlin.

Magdeburg is the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt and has a population of about 240,000.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini was found not guilty in a criminal kidnapping case dating back to August 2019, when he barred a migrant vessel from docking in the country, leaving it stranded offshore.

The ruling judge said Friday that “the facts do not exist.”

The case dates back to when Salvini was interior minister in 2019. He had prohibited the Spanish-flagged Open Arms NGO rescue boat from docking in Sicily with 147 asylum seekers, leaving migrants at sea under stifling hot conditions for 19 days before a Sicilian court intervened and ruled they could be brought to shore.

Children and vulnerable people onboard were air-lifted to safety throughout the ordeal.

At the time, Salvini cited national security concerns, amid government efforts to crack down on irregular immigration by sea into Italy.

The case drew international attention after American actor Richard Gere, who was vacationing in Italy at the time, took food and water out to the stranded migrant vessel. Gere was also named as a witness, but did not testify in person or writing after objections from Salvini’s defense, led by Giulia Bongiorno, who is also a member of Salvini’s Lega party.

On Thursday, Elon Musk posted on X that it was “crazy” that Salvini was being tried for “defending Italy.”

Salvini responded: “Thank you for your solidarity, @elonmusk. Defending Italy’s borders was my duty, and I am proud of what I accomplished. Whether I am convicted or acquitted, our fight for FREEDOM and SECURITY in Italy and Europe will continue.” Musk responded: “You did the right thing.”

Before nearly eight hours of deliberation, prosecutor Marzia Sabella told the court that Salvini had exceeded his powers as interior minister. “There were no national security reasons preventing disembarkation,” she told the panel of judges.

Salvini spoke with reporters outside the courthouse in Palermo before the final hearing. “I am absolutely proud of what I did. I kept the promises I made, I fought mass immigration and, whatever the sentence, for me today is a good day because I am proud to have defended my country,” he said, adding, “I would do everything I did again.”

The verdict comes as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government fights to send migrants to Albania to be processed, a scheme which has been blocked by the judiciary. The legality of the Albanian Centers, which cost Italian taxpayers millions of euros, is now to be considered by the European Court of Justice.

United States President-elect Donald Trump is staying true to his self-given moniker of “tariff man.” This time, he’s taking aim at some of the world’s fastest-growing major economies in the weeks before his inauguration.

Earlier this month, he singled out the BRICS nations, threatening them with 100% tariffs if they form a new currency or replace the US dollar with a different tender altogether.

India, a founding BRICS member, is powerful and central to the intergovernmental organization, that also features China and Russia among others. Like other countries, India has been targeted by Trump, who called New Delhi a “very big abuser” of the bilateral trading relationship during a campaign event in September.

Even during his first administration, Trump applied tariffs on steel and aluminum that set off a cascade of retaliatory moves. He eventually also stripped the country of preferential trade status, removing a designation that exempted billions of dollars’s worth of the country’s products from US tariffs and igniting anger among Indian officials.

But despite all that, the president-elect enjoys a warm personal relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The two men praised each other enthusiastically four years ago, when the president visited Modi’s home state of Gujarat. Observers say that rapport is likely to serve India well during Trump’s second term.

New Delhi is an outlier within the group and that could put it in an advantageous position, particularly given its heft, to quash any talk of de-dollarization, he said.

The idea, a long-held ambition for some members, could in theory see the group move away from using the greenback and seek to build either a new currency or transition to another tender altogether. Using other currencies could allow member countries to reduce their dependence on the US dollar.

“Having Trump breathing down BRICS’ neck saying, ‘don’t go down that road,’ gives India more space to maneuver,” Pant added.

It allows India to say the group should tread carefully to avoid provoking a very reactive United States, Pant said.

India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said this month that India had no interest in weakening the US dollar.

‘Quite positive’

There is still considersable pro-Washington sentiment in the Indian capital. China, and the belief that the US is on a collision course with the Asian superpower, is driving the relationship between Washington and India, according to some observers.

“His first term was quite positive, and the relationship that he ended up having with Modi also worked well for India, and therefore there is a sense that the second term might not be as disruptive,” Pant said.

Modi and Trump burnished their personal ties during Trump’s first term. Modi was feted at a rally in Texas in September 2019 titled “Howdy Modi.” The favor was returned for President Trump in February 2020 when 125,000 people turned out for the “Namaste Trump” rally in Ahmedabad.

Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center’s South Asian Institute in Annapolis, Maryland also believes that an incoming Trump administration may afford India some rapprochement compared with the Biden years, particularly over issues like Ukraine and human rights.

“The world views of Trump and Modi are much closer, they converge a lot more than the world views of Biden/Obama and Modi,” he said.

On Ukraine, he added, neither Trump nor Modi has criticized President Vladimir Putin for the invasion in 2022 and both have recently called for peace. Trump has said he would end the war in 24 hours, and Modi offered his help to broker peace when he visited Moscow in July.

Transactional ways

Yet that is not likely to totally absolve India from the occasional turbulence associated with a Trump administration.

A universal tariff of 10% threated by Trump would impact India, Kugelman said, in part because India enjoys a trade surplus with the US.

Trade between the two sides has heavily favored New Delhi, according to United States data. Over the past two years, the US has imported about twice as much as it has exported.

India is becoming an increasingly important manufacturing hub for companies such as Apple, especially as it seeks to build its supply chains outside China.

In the first 10 months of this year, the US has imported $73 billion from India, compared with the $35 billion it has exported to the country.

Kugelman and Pant agree that the trade imbalance would create headaches for New Delhi, but not ones that are insurmountable. Instead, it might make discussions about deals or policy more transactional.

“This is just how Trump rolls, so even strategic partners like New Delhi will have to adjust to that,” said Kugelman.

Trump is “a deal maker,” said Pant. “It’s always about give and take. So, the long-term approach to policy making has to give way to more ad hoc approaches … what’s the deal you can cut now, rather than looking five years down the line.”

Pant points to a 2018 waiver given to New Delhi by Washington over the Chabahar Port in Iran. The exemption was needed following the reimposition of sanctions on Iran. The restrictions forced all US companies, foreign firms and countries from doing business with Iran.

New Delhi had signed a 10-year, $500 billion agreement with Tehran to run and operate the port, which India sees as a vital trade route to Central Asia and Afghanistan bypassing its archrival Pakistan.

The waiver formed part of Donald Trump’s then South Asia policy. In a 2017 speech, he called on India to assist the US with more economic help to Afghanistan. He used highly beneficial trade between the two as a bargaining chip.

“If you are able to put your interests transparently, and if you’re able to do business with him, then you may not be as worse off,” Pant added.

India has demonstrated it is able to walk the fine line between staying on the good side of Trump while also pursuing its own interests. Time will tell if that can be replicated, but the view from New Delhi appears to be optimistic.