LAGOS (Reuters) -- Armed men killed at least 34 people in two villages in the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna, the state government and two residents said. The Kaduna government said in a statement that 34 people were killed in the village of Madamai. One resident, speaking by phone, said he counted 44 corpses in the local mortuary from attacks on Madamai and neighboring Abum village. Another local resident said around 30 people had died. The government statement said security forces who had gone to the scene came under fire but forced attackers to withdraw after an intense exchange. Two suspects had been arrested in connection with the attack, it said. Wielding guns and machetes, the men entered the Madamai and Abum on foot around 1 or 2 a.m., said resident Bobby Gwaza. “The men came and killed my wife and four of my sisters,” he said, and provided photographs of corpses he said were discovered later on Monday. The attackers, whose numbers were obscured in the night, burned down many houses and sent most residents fleeing before leaving after about an hour without meeting any resistance from Nigerian law enforcement or security forces, Gwaza said.

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PARIS (Reuters) -- French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said that if she is elected president in the 2022 election, she will call a referendum proposing drastic limits on immigration. Le Pen said on France 2 television the referendum would propose strict criteria for entering French territory and for acquiring French nationality, as well as giving French citizens priority access to social housing, jobs and social security benefits. Referendums are allowed under the French constitution but are rarely used. The last major referendum was in 2005, when French people voted against France ratifying a European Constitution. In 2017, Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential election, but was defeated by centrist Emmanuel Macron, who won more than 66% of the vote. Macron has not yet said whether he will stand for re-election, but opinion polls show him and Le Pen as the likely two candidates to make it through to the second round, with Macron seen as the eventual winner.

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PARIS (AFP) -- French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi said Tuesday it was stopping work on an mRNA vaccine against Covid-19 despite positive test results as it lags behind rivals on producing a coronavirus shot. The company said it would focus instead on another type of jab it is developing with British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline and which is in the final phase of human trials. Sanofi’s mRNA vaccine -- the ground-breaking technology used by rivals Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna -- had positive results in phase one and two of clinical trials, the firm said. But Sanofi said it will not take it into the third and final phase, arguing that it would arrive too late to market with 12 billion Covid doses due to be produced by the end of the year. Instead, the company will use the mRNA technology for vaccines against other pathogens, including the flu.

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TAIPEI (Reuters) -- Lawmakers from Chinese Taipei’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT) scuffled with members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in parliament on Tuesday and stopped the premier from addressing the assembly in a dispute over the COVID-19 pandemic. The KMT has been demanding that Premier Su Tseng-chang apologize for his government’s handling of the coronavirus, especially quarantine lapses that might have led to a spike in cases beginning in May, though infections have since dropped back to at most a handful a day. KMT lawmakers prevented Su from getting to a podium to take questions and then occupied it, though he did manage to speak briefly. The KMT members then scuffled with DPP counterparts and threw things at the dais where deputy speaker Tsai Chi-chang was sitting.

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TBILISI (Reuters) -- Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, late on Monday announced plans to fly home on the day local elections are held this week in order to help “save the country” and called for post-election street protests. Saakashvili, who is based in Ukraine, said he planned to fly back on Saturday, despite facing imprisonment on charges he says are politically motivated. Tensions between the ruling Georgian Dream party and the opposition, which Saakashvili supports, have been severely strained since a parliamentary election last year which the opposition alleged was rigged. International observers said at the time that the election had been competitive and that fundamental freedoms had generally been respected. A Georgian court in June 2018 sentenced Saakashvili in absentia to six years in prison for abuse of power and seeking to cover up evidence about the beating of an opposition member of parliament when he was president. Irakli Garibashvili, the prime minister, said the police would arrest Saakashvili if he came back.