Macron escapes cherry tomato fate as unions prep for May Day marches

Image of the week: Five more years

It wasn't all smiles and smartphones for Emmanuel Macron as he greeted residents at the Saint-Christophe market square in Cergy, a suburb of Paris, three days after he became the first French president to win a second term in 20 years. On his first walkabout since securing victory, someone in the up-close-and-personal crowd threw cherry tomatoes in his direction, hitting a passerby rather than Macron himself, with security personnel erecting an umbrella to protect him from further attack before whisking him away.

Macron, who struck a sombre tone after defeating far right candidate Marine Le Pen on Sunday, is promising that the next five years will bring a complete renewal for France. Unions dismayed by his record on economic inequality, meanwhile, are expected to use the traditional May Day demonstrations to remind Macron that his re-election shouldn't be seen as an endorsement of his policies to date.

In numbers: Boeing woes

7%

Decline in Boeing’s share price in the hours after it posted a quarterly loss, racked up new accounting charges and said it was pausing production of its new 777X aircraft, set to become the world’s largest twin-engine passenger jet when deliveries start in 2025.

The long economic tail of Covid-19

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Growth slows and prices rise as stagflation stalks euro zone

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Two local authorities did not build any social homes last year, expert says

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John FitzGerald: Pandemic savings have not yet hit house prices

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$45 billion

The US aerospace company’s net debt has risen to a new peak of this much (€42.8 billion) in what one analyst deemed “another dreadful set of results”.

141

Boeing aircraft orders now in accounting limbo as a result of war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. The company, which is still recovering from the 737 Max crisis that caused two fatal crashes, has booked pre-tax charges of $212 million due to the invasion.

Getting to know: Chris Licht

Chris Licht didn't kill CNN Plus, but it did fall to him to read its obituary to staff. The backstory is that CNN's former parent company WarnerMedia thought it would be a great idea to sell CNN as a standalone streaming service – hence CNN's disappearance from some pay-TV platforms. Alas, CNN Plus never made it as far as Ireland, and only existed for a month in the US. Shortly after launch, the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery was completed, forming Warner Bros Discovery, and the new leadership was unimpressed.

Incoming CNN boss Licht, until recently the executive producer of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, was charged with delivering the news that many of the $100 million service's employees would be losing their jobs as CNN goes back to being bundled in with sport, entertainment and lifestyle content. He has also announced his intention, on Twitter, to imminently quit Twitter. But then haven't we all?

The list: Elon Musk’s quotes

Twitter botherer Elon Musk loves to come out with a song lyric or literary line when he feels like being cryptic. So who has the world's richest man been quoting?

1. Elvis Presley: "Love me tender," Musk tweeted back on April 16th. This, according to CNBC, suggested he was "either listening to Elvis or considering a potential tender offer to Twitter shareholders". Why not both?

2. Robert Frost: "And be my love in the rain," Musk declared on Monday, quoting from the Frost poem A Line-storm Song for no obvious reason whatsoever ahead of the Twitter board's acceptance of his buyout offer.

3. Eminem: It’s not just on Twitter. During his unsuccessful battle to get rid of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirement that his tweets be legally pre-approved, Musk’s lawyers quoted Eminem’s 2002 song Without Me, which goes “the FCC won’t let me be or let me be me, so let me see / they tried to shut me down”, only with SEC in place of FCC.

4. Will Durant: “We are choked with news and starved of history,” Musk tweeted last November, citing the US philosopher and historian.

5. Monty Python: In February, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire tweeted “always look on the bright side of life” with some helpful musical notation emojis. This immediately racked up 250,000 Twitter likes and more than 30,000 retweets.