By Dominique Vidalon

PARIS (Reuters) -President Emanuel Macron faces a critical moment on Monday when the French National Assembly is due to vote on no-confidence motions filed after his government bypassed parliament on Thursday to push through an unpopular rise in the state pension age.

The move, which followed weeks of protests against the pension overhaul, triggered three nights of unrest and demonstrations in Paris and throughout the country, with hundreds of people arrested, reminiscent of the Yellow Vest protests that erupted in late 2018 over high fuel prices.

In a sign that Macron was holding firm, his office on Sunday evening said the president had called the heads of the Senate upper house and of the National Assembly to say he wanted the pension reform to go to “the end of its democratic process”.

Macron also told them the government was mobilised to “protect” members of parliament who are facing pressure ahead of the vote.

However, while Monday’s votes may put on display the level of anger at Macron’s government, they are unlikely to bring it down.

Opposition lawmakers filed two motions of no-confidence in parliament on Friday.

Centrist group Liot proposed a multiparty no-confidence motion, which was co-signed by the far-left Nupes alliance. Hours later, France’s far-right National Rally party, which has 88 National Assembly members, also filed a no-confidence motion.

But even though Macron’s party lost its absolute majority in the lower house after elections last year, there was little chance the multi-party motion would go through – unless a surprise alliance of lawmakers from all sides is formed from the far-left to the far-right.

The leaders of the conservative Les Republicains (LR) party have ruled out such an alliance. None of them had sponsored the first no-confidence motion filed on Friday.

But the party still faced some pressure.

In the southern city of Nice, the political office of Eric Ciotti, leader of Les Republicains, was ransacked overnight and tags were left threatening riots if the motion was not supported.

“They want through violence to put pressure on my vote on Monday. I will never yield to the new disciples of the Terror,” Ciotti wrote on Twitter.

BROAD ALLIANCE

Macron’s overhaul raises the pension age by two years to 64, which the government says is essential to ensure the system does not go bust.

Even if the government survives Monday’s no confidence vote, a broad alliance of France’s main unions has said it would continue to mobilise to try to force a U-turn on the changes. A day of nationwide industrial action is scheduled for Thursday.

Laurent Berger, leader of the moderate CFDT labour union, told French daily Liberation that the pension reform was “not a failure, it is a shipwreck” for the government.

Philippe Martinez, leader of the hard-left CGT labour union, said on BFM television that he condemned violence but it was Macron’s “responsibility if the level of anger is so high”.

Macron’s approval ratings have fallen four points in the past month to 28%, according to an IFOP-Journal du Dimanche poll, their lowest level since the Yellow Vest crisis.

Strikes at the country’s refineries persisted over the weekend, raising concerns of potential fuel shortages.

Less than 4% of French petrol stations were however experiencing supply disruptions, Rene-Jean Souquet-Grumey, an official for the Mobilians petrol stations federation, told Franceinfo radio on Sunday.

Rolling strikes continued on the railways, while rubbish has piled up on the streets of Paris after refuse workers joined the action.

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told Le Parisien newspaper, commenting on prospects for Monday’s votes: “I think there will be no majority to bring down the government. But this will be a moment of truth”.

“Is the pension reform worth bringing down the government and (creating) political disorder? The answer is clearly no. Everyone must take his responsibilities,” he added.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, Gilles Guillaume, Michel RoseEditing by Frances Kerry, David Holmes and Diane Craft)

ALMATY (Reuters) -Kazakhstan voted in a snap parliamentary election on Sunday widely expected to cement President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s grip on power and complete a reshuffle of the ruling elite that began after he fully assumed leadership last year.

Exits polls showed the ruling Amanat party winning 53-54% of the vote, enough to retain a comfortable majority. Voter turnout stood at 54.2%, the Central Election Commission said.

A stronger mandate will help Tokayev navigate through regional turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent damage to trade, investment and supply chains throughout the former Soviet Union.

Although he formally became president in 2019, Tokayev, 69, had remained in the shadow of his predecessor and former patron Nursultan Nazarbayev until January 2022, when the two fell out amid an attempted coup and violent unrest.

Tokayev sidelined Nazarbayev, after suppressing political unrest in the oil-rich Central Asian country, and had a number of his associates removed from senior positions in the public sector, some of whom later faced corruption charges.

While Tokayev has reshuffled the government, the lower house of parliament – elected when Nazarbayev still had sweeping powers and led the ruling Nur Otan party – was not due for election until 2026, and the president called a snap vote.

RULING PARTY

Unlike Nazarbayev, Tokayev has chosen not to lead the ruling party, rebranded Amanat, but it is certain to form the core of his support base in the legislature. Five other parties set to win seats also support Tokayev.

However, for the first time in almost two decades, several opposition figures were running as independents, a move which may allow some government critics to win a limited number of seats.

Still, in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s biggest city which usually shows most support for the opposition, voting appeared slow on Sunday amid a heavy police presence on the streets.

“We keep complaining that nothing changes in our country and we ourselves take no part in our country’s political life,” said Yevgeniya, a 36-year-old marketing executive who declined to give her last name or say for whom she voted. “Going out and voting is the least we can do to bring about change.”

Tokayev, who cast his ballot in Astana early in the morning without talking to the press, has said the vote would allow him to start implementing his plan to reform the country and ensure a fairer distribution of its oil wealth.

The completion of political transition is also likely to strengthen Tokayev’s hand in foreign policy. Despite receiving Moscow’s backing during the 2022 unrest, he has refused to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or recognise its annexation of some Ukrainian territories.

Astana is trying to maintain good relationships with both Moscow, its neighbour and major trading partner, and the West, which seeks to isolate Russia.

(Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov and Mariya Gordeyeva; Additional reporting by Tamara Vaal in Astana; Editing by William Mallard and David Holmes)

(Reuters) -Advisors to the World Health Organization have urged China to release all information related to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic after new findings were briefly shared on an international database used to track pathogens.

New sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as additional genomic data based on samples taken from a live animal market in Wuhan, China in 2020 were briefly uploaded to the open access GISAID database by Chinese scientists earlier this year, allowing them to be viewed by researchers in other countries, according to a Saturday statement from the WHO’s Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO).

The sequences suggested that raccoon dogs were present in the market and may have also been infected by the coronavirus, providing a new clue in the chain of transmission that eventually reached humans, according to the WHO.

    Access to the information was subsequently restricted “apparently to allow further data updates” by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the statement added.

    WHO officials discussed the matter with Chinese colleagues, who explained that the new data were intended to be used to update a preprint study from 2022. China’s CDC plans to re-submit the paper to the scientific journal Nature for publication, according to the statement.

    WHO officials say such information, while not conclusive, represents a new lead into the investigation of COVID’s origins and should have been shared immediately.

   “These data do not provide a definitive answer to the question of how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important in moving us closer to that answer,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday. “These data could have – and should have – been shared three years ago.”

“We continue to call on China to be transparent in sharing data, and to conduct the necessary investigations and share the results,” he said. 

    SAGO was tasked by the WHO to continue to investigate the origins of the pandemic that has killed nearly 7 million people worldwide.

The Chinese CDC did not immediately respond to the WHO’s latest statement.

‘TOO EARLY’ FOR CONCLUSION

When asked by Reuters why the sequences were not uploaded before, George Gao, professor at the Institute of Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and former head of the Chinese CDC, said the data uploaded were “nothing new.”

He added that GISAID, the Munich-based pathogen database, took down the sequences, not the Chinese scientists, and that he was in contact with WHO.

It’s “too early for any conclusion,” he added in an emailed statement. “All this must be left for scientists to work on, NOT for journalists or public. We are eager to know the answer.”

A spokesperson for GISAID said it does not take down data. They said the sequences had been “recalled” and “are currently being updated with newer and additional data as part of a manuscript currently under review”.

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was shut down by Chinese authorities after the novel coronavirus emerged in the city in late 2019. The market has since been a focus of study of whether the virus had infected several other species before jumping to humans.

The WHO and other scientists have also said they cannot rule out the possibility that the virus emerged from a high-security laboratory in Wuhan that studies dangerous pathogens. China denies any such link.

    The 2022 preprint paper said that a small portion of 923 samples collected from the stalls and sewage systems in and around the market tested positive for the virus; no virus was detected in 457 animal samples tested. The paper said initially that raccoon dogs were not among the animals tested.

The new analysis suggests “that raccoon dog and other animals may have been present before the market was cleaned as part of the public health intervention,” the SAGO statement said.

(Reporting by Sneha Bhowmik in Bengaluru and Jennifer Rigby in London; Writing by Michele Gershberg; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Aurora Ellis)