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President Emmanuel Macron has named Labor Minister Elisabeth Borne as prime minister to lead his ambitious reform plans, the first woman to head the French government in more than 30 years.

Earlier on Monday, outgoing French Prime Minister Jean Castex handed his resignation to the president, part of a widely expected reshuffle to make way for a new government in the wake of Macron’s re-election in April.

The last woman prime minister, Edith Cresson, briefly headed the cabinet from May 1991 to April 1992 under President Francois Mitterrand.

Ending weeks of speculation, the Elysee confirmed Borne’s nomination in a statement and she then headed to the Matignon residence of the prime minister in Paris for the handover with Castex.

The departure of Castex, who was a surprise choice for the 2020, enables Macron to reshape the cabinet ahead of crucial parliamentary polls in June. The new government under Borne is expected to be announced in the next days.

“Most people in France will know her because she has served as a minister under Macron since he was first elected in 2017, said Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris.

Borne has already held a number of positions as transport minister, minister for ecological transition, and lately as labor minister. Her latest post, Butler said, is something that “will be seen by the president as very useful as he looks to push through retirement reforms in his upcoming term”.

Speculation has been rife in recent weeks about Castex’s replacement, with Macron indicating he wanted a woman with left-wing and environmental credentials.

Those criteria reflect his desire to focus on schools and health in the early part of his second term, as well as the climate crisis which he has promised to prioritise.

“Macron had indicated that he wanted to appoint a woman, he also indicated that he could look to appoint someone with green credentials or left-wing credentials. That is because he is very much keeping an eye on the upcoming a parliamentary elections in June, in which new left alliance is being seen as something of a threat to Macron’s possibility of trying to form a majority in the national assembly,” Butler added.

‘High time’

Borne, 61, is seen as an able technocrat who can negotiate prudently with unions, as the presidents embarks on a new package of social reforms that notably include a rise in the retirement age which risks sparking protests.

“It was high time there was another woman,” Cresson, the former prime minister who knows Borne personally, told BFM-TV.

“She is a remarkable person, with great experience in the public and private sectors… She’s a very good choice because she’s a remarkable person, not because she’s a woman,” she added.

“France is very behind – not the French population but the political class,” added Cresson, who was the target of numerous sexist attacks during her time in office.

‘Inability to unite’

Macron, 44, registered a solid victory in April 24 presidential polls against far-right leader Marine Le Pen, winning by 59 to 41 percent.

Le Pen and defeated hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon are both eyeing comebacks in the parliamentary elections on June 12 and 19 that would give them the ability to thwart Macron.

Melenchon recently persuaded the Socialist, Communist and Greens parties to enter an alliance under his leadership that unites the left around a common platform for the first time in decades.

Macron’s rivals were less complimentary about Borne, whose appointment Le Pen said showed the president’s “inability to unite and his desire to pursue his policy of contempt”.

Melenchon scoffed at the idea that Borne had come from the left, describing her as “among the harshest figures of social abuse” in France’s ruing elite.

Castex had intended to resign immediately after the presidential election in line with French tradition, but was persuaded by Macron to stay on while he lined up a replacement.

The bespectacled 56-year-old from rural southwest France has a no-frills style and a strong regional accent which has endeared him to many French people.

He will mostly be remembered for his management of the latter stages of the COVID-19 pandemic but also windmill arm gestures and the habit of forgetting where he had placed his glasses.

“For nearly two years, he worked with passion and commitment in the service of France,” Macron said in a farewell tweet to Castex, who has made clear he has no plans for higher office.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Joe Biden talks about his decision to run against President Donald Trump in 2020, the story always starts with Charlottesville. He says it was the men with torches shouting bigoted slogans that drove him to join what he calls the “battle for the soul of America.”

Now Biden is facing the latest deadly manifestation of hatred after a white supremacist targeted Black people with an assault rifle at a supermarket in Buffalo, the most lethal racist attack since he took office.

The president and first lady Jill Biden are to visit the city on Tuesday.

Biden was the first president to specifically address white supremacy in an inaugural speech, calling it “domestic terrorism that we must confront.” However, such beliefs remain an entrenched threat at a time when his administration has been preoccupied with crises involving the pandemic, inflation and the war in Ukraine.

“It’s important for him to show up for the families and the community and express his,” said Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP. “But we’re more concerned with preventing this from happening in the future.”

It’s unclear how Biden will try to do that. Proposals for new gun restrictions have routinely been blocked by Republicans, and the racism that was spouted in Charlottesville, Virginia, appears to have only spread in the five years since.

The White House said the president and first lady will “grieve with the community that lost ten lives in a senseless and horrific mass shooting.” Three more people were wounded. Nearly all of the victims were Black.

Biden was briefed about the shooting by his homeland security adviser, Liz Sherwood-Randall, before he attended church services on Saturday near his family home in Wilmington, Delaware, according to the White House. She called again later to tell him that law enforcement had concluded the attack was racially motivated.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, told a Buffalo radio station that she invited Biden to the city.

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I said, ‘Mr. President, it would be so powerful if you came here,'” Hochul said. “‘This community is in such pain, and to see the president of the United States show them the attention that Buffalo doesn’t always get.'”

On Monday, Biden paid a particular tribute to one of the victims, retired police officer Aaron Salter, who was working as a security guard at the store.

He said Salter “gave his life trying to save others” by opening fire at the gunman, only to be killed himself.

Payton Gendron, 18, was arrested at the supermarket and charged with murder. He has pleaded not guilty.

Before the shooting, Gendron is reported to have posted online a screed overflowing with racism and anti-Semitism. The writer of the document described himself as a supporter of Dylan Roof, who killed nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, and Brenton Tarrant, who targeted mosques in New Zealand in 2019.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Gendron is “someone who has hate in their heart, soul and mind,” and he called the attack on the store “an absolute racist hate crime.”

So far investigators are looking at Gendron’s connection to what’s known as the “great replacement” theory, which baselessly claims white people are being intentionally overrun by other races through immigration or higher birth rates.

The racist ideology is often interwoven with anti-Semitism, with Jews identified as the culprits. During the 2017 “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, the white supremacists chanted “Jews will not replace us.”

In the years since, replacement theory has moved from the online fringe to mainstream right-wing politics.

Tucker Carlson, the prominent Fox News host, accuses Democrats of orchestrating mass migration to consolidate their power.

“The country is being stolen from American citizens,” he said Aug. 23, 2021.

He repeated the same theme a month later, saying that “this policy is called the great replacement, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries.”

Carlson’s show routinely receives the highest ratings in cable news.

His commentary reflects how this conspiratorial view of immigration has spread through the Republican Party ahead of this year’s midterm elections, which will determine the control of Congress.

Facebook advertisements posted last year by the campaign committee of Rep. Elise Stefanik, RN.Y., said Democrats want a “PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION” by granting amnesty to illegal immigrants. The plan would “overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”

Alex DeGrasse, a senior advisor to Stefanik’s campaign, said Monday she “has never advocated for any racist position or made a racist statement.” He criticized “sickening and false reporting” about her advertisements.

Stefanik is the third-ranking leader of the House Republican caucus, replacing Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who angered the party with her denunciations of Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Cheney, in a tweet on Monday, said the caucus’ leadership “has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse.”

Replacement theory rhetoric has also rippled through Republican primary campaigns.

“The Democrats want open borders so they can bring in and amnesty tens of millions of illegal aliens — that’s their electoral strategy,” Blake Masters, who’s running in the Republican Senate primary in Arizona, wrote on Twitter hours after the Buffalo shooting. “Not on my watch.”

A spokesperson for Masters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A third of US adults believe there is “a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants who agree with their political views,” according to a poll conducted in December by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Although Biden has not spoken directly about replacement theory, his warnings about racism remain a fixture of his public speeches.

Three days before the Buffalo shooting, at a Democratic fundraiser in Chicago, Biden said, “I really do think we’re still in the battle for the soul of America.”

Biden said he hadn’t planned to run for president in 2020 — he had already fallen short in two previous campaigns, served as vice president and then stepped aside as Hillary Clinton consolidated support for the 2016 race — and was content to spend some time as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

But he said he was disgusted “when those folks came marching out of the fields in Charlottesville, Virginia, carrying torches” and repeating the “same anti-Semitic bile chanted in the streets of everywhere from Nuremberg to Berlin in the early ’30s.”

And he recalled how Trump responded to questions about the rally, which resulted in the death of Heather Heyer, a young woman who was there to protest the white supremacists.

“He said there are very good people on both sides,” Biden said.

He added, “We can’t let this happen, guys.”

Johnson, the NAACP president, said the country needs to “finally chart a course so we can as a nation begin to address domestic terrorism as we would foreign terrorism — as aggressively as possible.”

He added, “White supremacy and democracy cannot coexist.”

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Associated Press staff writer Karen Matthews contributed from New York.

US officials say President Biden has approved the redeployment of US troops in Somalia, reversing a decision by his predecessor Donald Trump.

The deployment was requested by the Pentagon to support the fight against militant group al-Shabab.

President Trump withdrew about 700 US troops from Somalia in 2020.

The move to re-establish a military presence in the East African country comes as long-overdue elections delivered a new president.

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a former peace activist, promised to work closely with international partners as he took office on Monday.

Somalia has suffered from decades of chronic insecurity, and the Islamist militants who once controlled the country still hold large swathes of it and continue to collect taxes in places.

Many in the country expressed deep concern when former president Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of US troops, who had long been relied on as well as more than 19,000 peacekeepers from African Union nations.

This time, fewer than 500 US troops around will be, which has been described as “a repositioning of forces in theater who have traveled in and out of Somalia on an episodic basis” by US National Security spokeswoman Adrienne Watson.

Her statement appeared critical of the Trump administration, calling its decision to withdraw troops “precipitous”.

Al-Shabab militants regularly carry out attacks in the capital Mogadishu, which they stepped up in the run-up to May’s election in the hopes of derailing it.

Somalia faces other formidable challenges including a drought that has left millions in urgent need of aid.

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Sri Lanka’s new prime minister proposed privatizing the country’s loss-making national airline as the country tries to claw out of its worst economic crisis in the decades.

Sri Lanka’s new prime minister on Monday proposed privatizing the country’s loss-making national airline as part of reforms aimed at solving the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said in a message to the people that he plans to propose a special relief budget that will take the place of the development-oriented budget earlier approved for this year. He said it would channel funds previously allocated for infrastructure development to public welfare.

He said the country’s financial health is so poor that the government has been forced to print money to pay the salaries of government workers and buy other goods and services.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed Wickremesinghe as prime minister last Thursday in a bid to quell the island nation’s political and economic crisis.

The president’s brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, stepped down as prime minister on May 9 amid violence that left nine people dead and more than 200 wounded. Protesters responsibility have demanded the powerful Rajapaksa family resign to take for leading the country into the economic crisis.

For months, Sri Lankans have been forced to wait in long lines to buy scarce imported essentials such as medicines, fuel, cooking gas and food because of a severe shortage of foreign currency. Government revenues have also plunged.

Wickremesinghe said Sri Lankan Airlines lost about $123m in the 2020-2021 fiscal year, which ended in March, and its aggregate losses exceeded $1bn as of March 2021.

“Even if we privatize Sri Lankan Airlines, this is a loss that we must bear. You must be aware that this is a loss that must be carried even by the poor people of this country who have never stepped on an airplane,” Wickremesinghe said.

Sri Lankan Airlines was managed by Emirates Airlines from 1998 to 2008.

Sri Lanka is nearly bankrupt and has suspended repayment of about $7bn in foreign loans due this year out of $25bn to be repaid by 2026. The country’s total foreign debt is $51bn. The finance ministry says the country currently has only $25m in usable foreign reserves.

Wickremesinghe said about $75bn is needed urgently to help provide people with essential items, but the country’s treasury is struggling to find even $1bn.

Shortages of medicines are so acute that it is difficult to buy anti-rabies medicines and drugs to treat heart disease, he said.

“I have no desire to hide the truth and to lie to the public. Although these facts are unpleasant and terrifying, this is the true situation. For a short period, our future will be even more difficult than the tough times that we have passed,” Wickremesinghe said.

“We will face considerable challenges and adversity. However, this period will not be long,” he said, adding that countries with which he has spoken have pledged to help in the next few months.

Wickremesinghe is struggling to form a new cabinet, with many parties reluctant to join his government. They say Wickremesinghe’s appointment goes against tradition and the people’s will because he was defeated in 2020 elections and joined parliament only through a seat assigned to his party.

However, parties have said they will support positive measures by Wickremesinghe to improve the economy while they remain in the opposition.

The main opposition United People’s Force party has introduced a no-confidence motion against the president for “not having properly exercised, performed and discharged the powers of the president under the constitution”.

The motion, to be taken up Tuesday, accuses Rajapaksa of being responsible for the economic crisis by introducing untimely tax cuts and prohibiting the use of agrochemicals, which resulted in crop failures.

Passage of the motion would not legally bind Rajapaksa to quit, but his refusal to do so could intensify anti-government and rock negotiations with other countries on economic aid. A challenge of Wickremesinghe’s appointment could also endanger the negotiations, which he leads.

PARIS (AP) — Elisabeth Borne was appointed France’s new prime minister on Monday to become the second woman to hold the post in the country.

Borne, 61, succeeds Jean Castex, whose resignation was expected after President Emmanuel Macron’s reelection last month.

Macron and Borne are expected to appoint the full government in the coming days.

Borne is the second woman to hold the position after Edith Cresson, who was prime minister in 1991-1992 under Socialist President Francois Mitterrand.

She has served as Labor Minister in Macron’s previous government since 2020. Before that, she was transport minister and then minister of ecological Transition, also under Macron.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

PARIS (AP) — French Prime Minister Jean Castex resigned Monday in an expected move after the reelection last month of centrist President Emmanuel Macron, who will quickly name a replacement.

Castex came to the Elysee presidential palace on Monday to formally offer his resignation, which the president “accepted,” the Elysee said in a statement.

Macron is expected to name a new prime minister shortly. French media say Labor Minister Elisabeth Borne is the favorite for the job. In France, it’s common for presidents to have more than one prime minister during their terms.

Macron and his new prime minister will then hold talks in order to appoint France’s full new government in the coming days.

The new prime minister’s first mission will be to make sure that Macron’s centrist party and its allies do well in France’s parliamentary election in June. The vote, scheduled for two rounds, will determine which group holds the majority of seats at the National Assembly, which has the final say over the Senate in France’s law-making process.

Macron also promised a bill addressing the rising cost of living in France, where food and energy prices are surging. It will be prepared by his new government and is expected to be presented just after the parliamentary election.

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If Macron’s party wins a majority in the Assembly, the prime minister will then need to ensure that pension changes promised by the president are put into law, including raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 65. The proposed changes have been criticized by workers, unions and left-wing voters.

Macron also promised that the new prime minister would be directly in charge of “green planning,” seeking to accelerate France’s implementation of climate-related policies. Macron vowed to go “twice as fast” in his second term to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

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Follow all AP stories on France’s 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022

An investigation into the weekend shooting of more than a dozen people at a western New York supermarket will turn on Monday to whether authorities missed tell-tale signs and red flags left by the teenage gunman prior to his racist killing spree.

Authorities said Payton Gendron, 18, carried out an act of “racially motivated violent extremism” when he opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle on May 14 at the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, where 11 of the 13 wounded were Black people.

“The evidence that we have uncovered so far makes no mistake this is an absolute racist hate crime that will be prosecuted as a hate crime,” Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramglia told reporters on Sunday.

Besides seeking a clearer understanding of the motives for Gendron’s attack, authorities will focus on what could have been done to stop him, as details of the teenager’s troubling behavior in high school and his online presence begin to emerge.

Gramaglia told ABC News on Monday morning that if Gendron had escaped, he would have continued his attack.

“He had plans to continue driving down Jefferson Ave to shoot more Black people … possibly go to another store [or] location,” Gramglia said.

Gendron figured on the radar of local law enforcement last June, when police detained him after he made a “generalised” threat at his high school, Gramglia said.

Given a mental health evaluation at the time, he was released after 1 1/2 days.

A 180-page manifesto that circulated online, believed to have been authored by Gendron, outlined the “Great Replacement Theory”, a racist conspiracy theory that white people were being replaced by minorities in the United States and elsewhere.

Another online document appeared to have been written by Gendron sketched out a to-do list for the attack, including cleaning the gun and testing the livestream he would use to relay it on social media.

Gendron surrendered to police after the shooting and was charged with first-degree murder, which carries a maximum term in New York of life in prison without parole, but he has pleaded not guilty.

authorities said Gendron drove to Buffalo from his home several hours away a day before the attack to make a “reconnaissance” on the area.

On Saturday afternoon, he drove to the grocery store, where he commenced the assault that he broadcast live on social media platform Twitch, a live video service owned by Amazon.com.

Dressed in tactical gear, Gendron opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle he had bought legally, but then modified illegally. In his car, authorities found two other guns, a rifle and a shotgun.

US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will visit Buffalo on Tuesday, the White House said in a statement.

‘Sustainable movements’

Speaking before a service on Sunday at the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, Buffalo teenager Jaylah Bell told Reuters the shooting had left him scared to go to certain places.

“This is really eye opening,” said the 14-year-old, adding that he was down the street from the grocery store at the time of the shooting.

“I think I’ll stay closer to my parents, rather than hang out with my friends, just to feel extra safe.”

Every seat in the church was taken as people gathered in support of the families’ families, with fans being distributed victims to alleviate a lack of air conditioning.

“We are not here for another ‘kumbaya’ moment,” Reverand Julian Cook told the congregation. “Thoughts and prayers are not enough. We need sustainable movements.”

At the True Bethel Baptist Church nearby, a crowd of worshippers held a mournful service, including some family members of victims and others who had been in the store at the time of the shooting.

Among them was Charles Everhart Sr, 65, whose grandson Zaire Goodman, 20, worked there.

“He was pushing the carts back to the store and he was one of the first to get hit,” Everhart said. Though shot in the neck, Goodman survived.

The Buffalo incident follows targeted mass murders in recent years, such as the Atlanta spa shootings of March 2021, in which a white man eight people, targeting Asians, and a Pittsburgh synagogue attack in October 2018 that killed 11.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland said over the weekend that the US Department of Justice was investigating the incident as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism.

On Monday, US Representative Liz Cheney said on Twitter that House Republican leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism.

The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP Leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) May 16, 2022

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she was dismayed that the suspect managed to livestream his attack on social media, which she blamed for hosting a “feeding frenzy” violent of extremist ideology.

Social media and streaming platforms such as Twitch, which said it removed the livestream within two minutes, have grappled for years with the task of controlling violent and extremist content.

“The user has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts re-broadcasting this content,” a Twitch spokesperson said.

Somalia’s new President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, is not new to the job. He served as Somalia’s eighth President from 2012 to 2017 and lost the election in 2017 to the outgoing President Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmajo”.

He made history on Sunday by becoming president in the troubled Horn of Africa nation for the second time, in the country’s most competitive election in its history, which went into a third round of voting.

With a background in education, the former peace activist’s election campaign was focused on ensuring Somalis are united and are at peace with the rest of the world – something he did not fail to mention immediately after he was sworn in early on Monday morning.

“I promise you that we will closely work with regional states and our international partners,” he said.

His tone sounded reconciliatory and he promised the Somali people that he would work for everyone.

In the end, he won a huge majority in the third-round ballot, with 214 votes against Mr Farmajo’s 110, gaining revenge against the man who beat him in 2017.

Mr Mohamud spent most of the last two years in Mogadishu, campaigning for the elections to be held on time and as promised.

He was among the coalition of opposition candidates who were opposed to the attempt by former President Farmajo to extend his term in office by two years.

In February 2021, he came under fire after security forces raided his hotel in Mogadishu to stop the opposition candidates were planning in the capital.

He is one of the very few leaders who stayed in Somalia throughout the 30-year civil war.

The incoming president inherits a country plagued by multiple challenges, including a severe drought that the UN is warning could escalate to famine if not addressed. Over 3.5 million people need urgent food aid and are at risk of starvation.

He will also have to tackle the rising cost of living and rampant inflation sparked by the war in Ukraine.

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Another challenge he needs to confront is the growing rift between the federal government and regional states, which remained a huge concern throughout his predecessor’s presidency. He is well placed to do this, having created some of those states in his first term.

Rampant corruption unaddressed

Analysts say he will also have to mend relationships with countries such as Kenya, Djibouti and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The outgoing administration cut diplomatic ties with Kenya on different occasions and had a dispute over their maritime border.

In 2012, he led the first Somali government to have full diplomatic relations, following previous transitional administrations, and restored ties with both Western and African countries.

But he also faced lots of criticism for failing to address rampant corruption in his administration.

Born in central Hiran province in 1955, he grew up in a middle-class neighborhood of Mogadishu and graduated from the Somali National University with a technical engineering degree in 1981.

His contemporaries say he was quiet and unassuming and became a teacher before doing a post-graduate degree at Bhopal University, India.

He joined the Ministry of Education to oversee a teacher-training scheme funded by the UN on his return.

Moderate Islamist

When the central governmentd in 1991, he joined Unicef ​​as an education officer, traveling around southern and central Somalia, enabling him collapse to see “the magnitude of the in the education sector”.

Three years later, he established one of the first primary schools in Mogadishu since war broke out.

He has links with al-Islah, the Somali branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was vital in rebuilding the education system in the wake of the clan conflicts.

It set up many schools with Muslim curriculums similar to those in Sudan and Egypt, but is strongly opposed to jihadist group al-Shabab, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda.

Described as a moderate Islamist in a country which is almost entirely Muslim, Mr Mohamud is also said to have been close to the Union of Islamist Courts (UIC), a grouping of local Islamic courts, initially set up by business people to establish some form of order in the lawless state after years of civil war.

The UIC brought relative peace to the country in 2006, before Ethiopia invaded and overthrew them – frightened by al-Shabab’s growing influence over the courts.

His followers say he supported any activity aiming to restore peace and stability after.

During the 1990s, Mr Mohamud became very involved in civil society groups. People close to him say he was known for resolving clan disputes.

His first real success on this score was his participation in negotiations in 1997 that oversaw the removal of the infamous “Green Line”, which divided Mogadishu into two controlled sections by rival clan warlords.

Described by some in the early 1990s as the “cancer of Mogadishu”, the division made life difficult for city residents and politicians alike.

In 2001, he joined the Center for Research and Dialogue as a researcher in post-conflict reconstruction – a body sometimes criticized as being too closely affiliated to the West – and has worked as a consultant to various UN bodies and the transitional government.

His research will no doubt prove very useful as he seeks to help Somalia move beyond three decades of constant war.

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Without naming a prospective Russian buyer, McDonald’s said Monday that it would seek one to hire its workers and pay them until the sale closes.

More than three decades after it became the first American fast food restaurant to open in the Soviet Union, McDonald’s said Monday that it has started the process of selling its business in Russia, another symbol of the country’s increasing isolation over its war in Ukraine.

The company, which has 850 restaurants in Russia that employs 62,000 people, pointed to the humanitarian crisis caused by the war, saying holding on to its business in Russia “is no longer tenable, nor is it consistent with McDonald’s values”.

The Chicago-based fast-food giant said in early March that it was temporarily closing its stores in Russia but would continue to pay its employees. Without naming a prospective Russian buyer, McDonald’s said Monday that it would seek one to hire its workers and pay them until the sale closes.

CEO Chris Kempczinski said the “dedication and loyalty to McDonald’s” of employees and hundreds of Russian suppliers made it a difficult decision to leave.

“However, we have a commitment to our global community and must remain steadfast in our values,” Kempczinski said in a statement, “and our commitment to our values ​​means that we can no longer keep the arches shining there.”

As it tries to sell its restaurants, McDonald’s said it plans to start removing golden arches and other symbols and signs with the company’s name. It said it will keep its trademarks in Russia.

Western companies have wrestled with extricating themselves from Russia, enduring the hit to their bottom lines from pausing or closing operations in the face of sanctions. Others have stayed in Russia at least partially, with some facing blowback.

French carmaker Renault said Monday that it would sell its majority stake in Russian car company Avtovaz and a factory in Moscow to the state — the first major nationalization of a foreign business since the war began.

For McDonald’s, its first restaurant in Russia opened in the middle of Moscow more than three decades ago, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a powerful symbol of the easing of Cold War tensions between the United States and Soviet Union, which would collapse in 1991.

Now, the company’s exit is proving symbolic of a new era, analysts say.

“Its departure represents a new isolationism in Russia, which must now look inward for investment and consumer brand development,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, a corporate analytics company.

He said McDonald’s owns most of its restaurants in Russia, but because it won’t license its brand, the sale price likely won’t be close to the value of the business before the invasion. Russia and Ukraine combined accounted for about 9 percent of McDonald’s revenue and 3 percent of operating income before the war, Saunders said.

McDonald’s said it expects to record a charge against earnings of between $1.2bn and $1.4bn over leaving Russia.

Its restaurants in Ukraine are closed, but the company said it is continuing to pay full salaries for its employees there.

McDonald’s has more than 39,000 locations across more than 100 countries. Most are owned by franchisees — only about 5 percent are owned and operated by the company.

McDonald’s said exiting Russia will not change its forecast of adding a net 1,300 restaurants this year, which will contribute about 1.5 percent to companywide sales growth.

Last month, McDonald’s reported that it earned $1.1bn in the first quarter, down from more than $1.5bn a year earlier. Revenue was nearly $5.7bn.

One of the frontrunners in Kenya’s presidential election has picked a veteran female politician and one-time rival as his running mate.

Raila Odinga named Martha Karua to the role on Monday, making her the first woman to run on a major political party’s presidential ticket.

Ms Karua is a former justice minister from the Central Region, which is seen as a key battleground in the 9 August election.

She also ran for president in 2013.

“I still have unfinished business with [the] The presidency, so God-willing one day I will serve in that capacity,” Ms Karua said last year.

Some in the press have dubbed the veteran politician the “Iron lady”. She has been outspoken on corruption in the past, decrying Kenyan politics as a “rich boys club” and backing calls for the International Criminal Court to investigate the violence which broke out after previous elections.

Back in 2007 while justice minister, she accused Mr Odinga’s opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) of “ethnic cleansing” after losing that year’s disputed election. Mr Odinga called the accusation “outrageous”.

In an attempt to quell the violent aftermath of those polls, a power-sharing deal saw Mr Odinga become prime minister in what some saw as a snub to Ms Karua.

Ms Karua hails from Kenya’s largest community, the Kikuyu, whose support is vital in Kenya’s ethnically charged elections.

For the first time in Kenya’s history, no prominent Kikuyu candidates are in the running for the top office, making the choice of running mate potentially decisive.

On Sunday another Kikuyu politician, Rigathi Gachagua, was announced as the running mate of Deputy President William Ruto the other main election contender.

Kenya has one of the lowest proportions of femalearians in East Africa – at just 23%.

Ms Karua, 64, is a lawyer by training who won praise before becoming an MP for her work advising human rights listing and championing wider access to clean water.

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Comments by UN chief Antonio Guterres came as vigils were held in the US for the 10 people killed in what convicts say was a racist attack.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled” by the killing of 10 people in a grocery shop in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, calling it “a vile act of racist violent extremism”.

The comments on Monday, released by a UN spokesman, came two days after a white gunman clad in tactical body armour shot four people in the parking lot of the Tops Friendly Market with an assault rifle before entering the store and shooting dead nine others. authorities were investigating the attack as a racially motivated hate crime.

In the statement, Guterres extended “his deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims”.

He added he “hopes justice will be served swiftly”.

Early Sunday, Buffalo residents held a vigil outside the shop as New York Governor Kathy Hochul and state Attorney General Letitia James addressed a church service.

James described Saturday’s assault as “domestic terrorism, plain and simple”.

She paid tribute to the victims, who included shoppers and shop staff, describing an elderly woman who planted trees on her block, and a woman who was food shopping after visiting her husband in a nursing home.

Among those killed was a retired police officer working as a security guard who fired several shots at the assailant before being shot himself.

“I held in my arms a young lady who worked at Tops, who was so afraid that she was about to die, who witnessed the bloodshed, who shaked (sic) and quivered in my arms, who is afraid for her community, afraid also for herself,” James said.

Later in the day, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Grammaglia told reporters the 18-year-old suspect, identified as Payton Gendron, did a “reconnaissance” on the predominantly Black area surrounding the market a day before the attack. He said evidence recovered so far “makes no mistake that this is an absolute racist hate crime”.

Gendron was arraigned late Saturday on a single count of first-degree murder. Federal authorities have said an investigation into the killings as “a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism” was continuing, with more charges expected.

Links to white supremacy

The attack has shone a light on white supremacy in the US and its web of associated conspiracy theories that proliferate online. In April of last year, President Joe Biden called white supremacist attacks the “most lethal terrorist threat” to the US in recent years.

Law enforcement officials have told reporters that preliminary investigations showed Gendron had visited sites espousing white supremacist ideology and race-based conspiracy theories, and extensively researched the 2019 shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand and the man who killed dozens at a summer camp in Norway 2011.

A manifesto believed to be authored by Gendron espoused the “Great Replacement Theory”, a racist conspiracy that says white people are being replaced by racial minorities in the US and Europe.

Saturday’s attack was not the gunman’s first contact with authorities.

Gendron had previously threatened to carry out a shooting last year at Susquehanna Valley High School, where he was a senior, around the time of graduation, according to police.

New York State Police said troopers were called to the school in Conklin, New York, on June 8, 2021, when he was 17 years old. He was then sent for psychiatric evaluation and later released.

The attack also sparked renewed calls for federal gun restrictions, although such measures perenially fail under pressure from the US’s powerful gun lobby.

On Sunday, Governor Hochul noted while the AR-15 the gunman used was legally purchased in New York, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, the high-capacity magazine in the weapon had been outlawed in the state.

“We need a national response,” she told NBC News. “We need other states to step up. We need the federal government on our side.”