Briefly

FRANCE

Macron names Barnier as new prime minister

French President Emmanuel Macron nominated Michel Barnier as France's new prime minister on Thursday. Barnier, 73 years old, served as the European Union chief Brexit negotiator. On July 16, Macron accepted Prime Minister Gabriel Attal's resignation but asked him to stay as the head of a caretaker government until the establishment of a new cabinet. There is no guarantee Barnier's government will be able to convince parliament to adopt reforms or keep him in power for long. But at least the far-right National Rally, the biggest single party in parliament after the early July election, signaled earlier on Thursday it would not immediately reject Barnier if he met certain conditions.

UNITED KINGDOM

2017 blaze probe blames govt, firms

A public inquiry into the devastating 2017 London Grenfell Tower blaze that killed 72 people blamed the disaster on failings by the government, construction industry and, most of all, the firms involved in fitting the exterior with flammable cladding. The fire ripped through the 23-story social housing block in one of London's richest areas in the early hours of June 14, 2017. It was Britain's deadliest blaze in a residential building since World War II. In its long-awaited final report, the inquiry laid most responsibility for the disaster on the companies involved in the maintenance and refit of the apartment tower, as well as companies that it said had dishonestly marketed combustible cladding materials as safe.

RUSSIA

US sanctions on RT employees slammed

Russia said on Thursday that new US sanctions on its state-funded media RT were part of an "information campaign" ahead of presidential elections, saying it was working on a response. The US on Wednesday indicted two RT employees and slapped its top editors with sanctions, accusing them of trying to influence the election. The 10 individuals and two entities included RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan. "It is an obvious operation, an information campaign … that was long prepared and that is needed ahead of the last stage of the electoral cycle," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

Agencies via Xinhua