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SOUTH AFRICA GOVT: WELCOMES PROGRESS TOWARDS A GAZA PEACE AGREEMENT

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* Former Prime Minister Babis aims to return to power * Babis may need fringe allies to form majority * Babis opposes EU's climate, migration policies * Babis would scale back Czech support for Ukraine (Updates with polls closed) By Radovan Stoklasa and Jan Lopatka PRAGUE, Oct 4 (Reuters) – Czechs finished voting on Saturday in the final day of an election likely to return populist billionaire Andrej Babis to power on pledges to raise wages and lift growth, while reducing aid for Ukraine. Polls closed at 2 p.m. (1200 GMT), with results due within a few hours in the central European nation where Babis was expected to fall short of a majority in parliament and need to find partners among other parties to govern. A change from the current centre-right cabinet would boost Europe's populist, anti-immigration camp and could harden opposition to the European Union's climate goals. Czechs endured surges in inflation after the global pandemic and Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and have only slowly recovered from one of Europe's worst declines in real incomes. That, as well as several corruption scandals, damaged Prime Minister Petr Fiala's Spolu coalition and its liberal government allies, who focused on a gradual reduction of the budget deficit. Babis, whose ANO party held double-digit leads in most opinion polls, is an ally of Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament. Babis, who was previously prime minister from 2017-21, has taken an ambivalent line on aid to Ukraine – a departure from Fiala's government which has supported Kyiv throughout the war with Russia. Under Fiala, Prague set up the "Czech initiative" pulling together traders and defence officials to find millions of artillery rounds around the world for Ukraine with financing from Western countries. Babis, 71, has pledged to end the ammunition project, saying it is overpriced. ANO wants NATO and the EU to handle aid for Ukraine, and has abstained in some European Parliament votes supporting Kyiv and its bid for EU membership, which Babis publicly opposed in the past. BABIS NEEDS ALLIES Opinion polls pointed to Babis's ANO party winning more than 30% of the vote, about 10 points more than Fiala's coalition but still well short of a majority. Given its poor relations with Spolu and its allies, ANO may need support from anti-EU and anti-NATO fringe parties – the far-right SPD and the far-left Stacilo! – for its preferred one-party cabinet. Babis has rejected steps towards an exit from the EU or NATO, including calls for referendums, countering accusations by the current government that he would drag the country off its democratic pro-Western course. Prague resident Petr Jirabek, 53, who works in international trade and voted for Spolu, said the election was all about democracy. "There are a lot of extremist parties here that could come to power, which is pretty dangerous, so it’s really important to vote." ANO has promised faster growth, offering higher wages and pensions, and lower taxes and tax discounts for students and young families to draw supporters. Babis must overcome other hurdles to become prime minister, including conflict-of-interest laws as owner of a chemicals and food empire, as well as long-running fraud charges related to drawing an EU subsidy over 15 years ago. He denies wrongdoing. If some smaller parties fall below the 5% threshold to get into parliament, that could favour the government parties. (Reporting by Jan Lopatka, Radovan Stoklasa, Jason Hovet and Michael Kahn; editing by Mark Heinrich, Alexandra Hudson and Susan Fenton)

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Oct 4 (OPTA) – Summaries for the J-League on Saturday (start times are JST) Shimizu S-Pulse (1) 1 Scorers: T. Takahashi 34 Yellow card: Hasukawa 60 Subs used: Matsuzaki 67 (Kozuka), Uno 67 (Yumiba), Kitagawa 73 (Takahashi), Takagi 84 (Yoshida), Yajima 84 (Inui) Tokyo (0) 1 Scorers: K. Sato 76 Subs used: Tawaratsumida 61 (Marcos Guilherme), Nozawa 61 (Endo), Yamashita 87 (Sato), Oka 87 (Morishige) Attendance: 17099 Referee: Jumpei Iida ……………………………………………………….. Nagoya Grampus (2) 2 Scorers: Y. Nogami 37, Y. Kimura 45 Subs used: Tokumoto 54 (Nakayama), Nagai 79 (Nogami), Yamagishi 79 (Kimura), Kato 91 (Morishima), Kikuchi 91 (Mateus) Cerezo Osaka (0) 1 Scorers: Vitor Bueno 85 Subs used: Nakajima 46 (Shibayama), Sakata 46 (Thiago Andrade), Takahashi 68 (Ohata), Shindo 68 (Hatanaka), Vitor Bueno 76 (Kagawa) Attendance: 33496 Referee: Hayato Shimizu ……………………………………………………….. Albirex Niigata (0) 1 Scorers: E. Shirai 67 Yellow card: Hayakawa 47, Hashimoto 93 Subs used: Boudah 60 (Ono), Hashimoto 61 (Horigome), Ohara 74 (Shimamura), Taniguchi 84 (Okumura), Geria 84 (Hayakawa), Uemura 97 (Arai) Fagiano Okayama (1) 1 Scorers: K. Ichimi 24 Yellow card: Miyamoto 83 Subs used: Lucão 56 (Kimura), Matsumoto 75 (Motoyama), Suzuki 75 (Tagami), Iwabuchi 75 (Ichimi), Takeuchi 88 (Miyamoto), Fujii 92 (Esaka) Attendance: 19567 Referee: Koki Nagamine ……………………………………………………….. Sanfrecce Hiroshima (0) 2 Scorers: Kim Ju-Sung 88, T. Arslan 90+5pen Yellow card: Kim Ju-Sung 89, Arslan 95, 66 Subs used: Germain 9 (Kinoshita), Arai 61 (Nakano), Suga 62 (Higashi), Arslan 62 (Shiotani), Kato 76 (Nakajima) Machida Zelvia (0) 1 Scorers: Y. Soma 50 Yellow card: Nishimura 29 Subs used: Na Sang-Ho 65 (Nishimura), Duke 65 (Fujio), Sento 81 (Soma), Hayashi 81 (Masuyama), Kuwayama 89 (Shimoda) Referee: Hiroki Kasahara ……………………………………………………….. Avispa Fukuoka (0) 1 Scorers: M. Yuzawa 51 Subs used: Konno 76 (Nago), Iwasaki 76 (Sato), Oda 99 (Hashimoto) Yokohama (0) 0 Yellow card: João Paulo 60 Subs used: Sakuragawa 62 (Lukian), Kubota 62 (Adaílton), Shimbo 75 (Ito), Ito 81 (João Paulo), Endo 81 (Yamane) Attendance: 9076 Referee: Yuzo Sutani ……………………………………………………….. Urawa Reds (0) 1 Scorers: I. Kiese Thelin 47 Yellow card: Yasui 20 Subs used: Shibato 65 (Yasui), Sekine 77 (Gustafson), Komori 77 (Kiese Thelin), Matsuo 77 (Kaneko), Hayakawa 91 (Matheus Sávio) Vissel Kobe (0) 0 Missed penalty: T. Miyashiro 41 Subs used: Ide 46 (Osako), Komatsu 66 (Erik), Yuruki 66 (Miyashiro), Iino 74 (Kuwasaki), Jean Patrick 90 (Nagato) Attendance: 38062 Referee: Akihiko Ikeuchi ……………………………………………………….. Kashiwa Reysol (1) 1 Scorers: Y. Koizumi 41 Yellow card: Nakama 48 Subs used: Toshima 74 (Nakama), Harakawa 77 (Nakagawa), Yamanouchi 86 (Diego), Hosoya 87 (Kakita), Mitsumaru 87 (Koyamatsu) Yokohama F. Marinos (0) 0 Subs used: Miyaichi 64 (Yuri Araújo), Amano 64 (Croux), Inoue 64 (Uenaka), Deng 64 (Tsunoda), Watanabe 87 (Kida) Referee: Koji Takasaki ……………………………………………………….. Kyoto Sanga in play Kawasaki Frontale ……………………………………………………….. Sunday, October 5 fixtures (JST/GMT) Kashima Antlers v Gamba Osaka (0600)

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* French prime minister plans tax targeting high earners * Measures include minimum tax on high earners * He wants Socialist opposition to back 2026 state budget PARIS, Oct 4 (Reuters) – French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu plans a tax targeting individuals with annual incomes of over 250,000 euros to try to win the Socialist opposition's backing for his government's 2026 state budget, financial daily Les Echos said on Saturday. Les Echos reported that Lecornu plans two measures, each targeting taxpayers declaring more than 250,000 euros ($300,000) in income – or 500,000 euros for a couple – to raise an additional 3 billion euros in fiscal revenue next year. A first measure would be to renew a one-off tax introduced by predecessor Francois Bayrou last year, the CDHR (differential contribution on high incomes) "minimum tax" which aims to ensure that all high-earning tax households concerned pay at least 20% of their income in taxes. The minority government also wants to crack down on the super-wealthy's use of holding companies as a piggy bank, it said, as part of a drive against tax optimisation led by the outgoing budget minister, Amelie de Montchalin. Les Echos said the finance ministry had identified some 30,000 financial structures that would fall within the scope of the measure, notably for cashing in dividends but never re-distributing them, so that dividend tax can be avoided. The holding company measure is expected to yield just over 1 billion euros for 2026, the paper said, adding that – along with other measures – the total expected additional contribution from the wealthiest individuals would be between 4 billion and 4.5 billion euros. The finance ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Lecornu last month became President Emmanuel Macron's fifth prime minister in two years after parliament ousted Bayrou over his plans for a 44-billion-euro budget squeeze next year. Without giving much detail, Lecornu on Friday outlined a wealth tax among proposals aimed at winning leftist support for the 2026 budget, which the Socialists called "insufficient" without closing the door on further talks. With parliament divided into three blocs, none of which has a majority, Lecornu relies on rival parties to pass legislation – and for his own survival as prime minister. The Socialists want a 2% wealth tax on France's 0.01% in the 2026 budget as the price for their support, making Lecornu's political survival contingent on a measure that has strong public support but alienates conservatives. ($1 = 0.8517 euros) (Reporting by Geert De Clercq, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

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(Adds ministry declining to comment in paragraph 4, extra context in paragraph 3) BERLIN, Oct 4 (Reuters) – Germany's economy ministry revised its growth forecast for this year up to 0.2% from an earlier forecast of zero, a source familiar with the forecasts told Reuters. The ministry forecasts 1.3% growth for next year and 1.4% growth in 2027. Europe's largest economy has registered little growth at all since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic followed by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the launch of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs, spending 2023 and 2024 in recession. The economy ministry declined to comment on the numbers, which are due to be officially unveiled on Wednesday. (Reporting by Holger Hansen, writing by Thomas Escritt, editing by Kirsti Knolle, Alexandra Hudson and Susan Fenton)

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(Corrects headline to say 0.2% [not 0.25%]) BERLIN, Oct 4 (Reuters) – Germany's economy ministry revised its growth forecast for this year up to 0.2% from an earlier forecast of zero, a source familiar with the forecasts told Reuters. The ministry forecasts 1.3% growth for next year and 1.4% growth for 2027. Europe's largest economy has registered little growth at all since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic followed by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the launch of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs. (Reporting by Holger Hansen, writing by Thomas Escritt, editing by Kirsti Knolle, Alexandra Hudson)

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