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katyshannon

The Empathy Gap: Why Have the Paris Attacks Gotten More Attention Than the Beirut Bombi... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...416121

empathy gap paris attacks attention beirut bombing media the atlantic politics culture crisis

shared by katyshannon on 18 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • It’s become a predictable pattern: One act of violence in the world overshadows a similar, concurrent violent act, inviting a backlash against this imbalance in scrutiny, sympathy, and grief. But that predictability doesn’t make the pattern any less distressing. Each time there’s a major terror attack in an American or European city—New York, Madrid, London, Paris, Paris again—it captures the attention and concern of Americans and Europeans in a way that similar atrocities elsewhere don’t seem to do. Seldom do events line up so neatly, offering a clear comparison, as the bombings in Beirut and the rampage in Paris.
  • Onepotential explanation is simple: There were three times more deaths in Paris than in Beirut. Beyond that are a host of other, intertwined reasons. Perhaps chief among them is familiarity. Americans are much more likely to have been to Paris than to Beirut—or to Cairo, or to Nairobi, or to any number of cities that have experienced bloody attacks. If they haven’t traveled to the French capital themselves, they’ve likely seen a hundred movies and TV shows that take place there, and can reel off the names of landmarks. Paris in particular is a symbol of a sort of high culture.
  • There is also a troubling tribal, or racial, component to this familiarity factor as well: People tend to perk up when they see themselves in the victims.
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  • Closely related is a divergence in expectations. In January, Matt Schiavenza argued perceptively in The Atlantic that one striking difference between the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris and a roughly contemporary suicide bombing by a 10-year-old in Nigeria was that France is not a country with a failing government or chronic conflict. As a result, attacks there are more shocking.
  • Many Americans hear “Paris” and think of the Eiffel Tower; they hear “Beirut” and immediately associate it with war. Yet that’s an outdated impression, as
  • Nor is Paris quite as calm as Americans might imagine. For example: Riots of considerable size are roughly a yearly event, especially in the banlieues; in 2005, during some of the largest riots in recent memory, three people were killed in violence triggered by police chasing three boys, but clearly emblematic of deeper tensions. This may not be the Paris that many Americans think of, but it is Paris just the same. (Both Paris and Beirut even suffered serious garbage-collection strikes this year.)
  • Beirut, in fact, was once known as the Paris of the Middle East. And while that name is no longer in common usage, there are still similarities between the cities. In the centers, prosperous neighborhoods offer fine dining and glamorous shopping. Farther out, less wealthy residents—many of them immigrants or children of immigrants—live in working-class districts. Paris’s suburban districts, known as banlieues, are heavily populated by Muslim immigrants.
  • Or should the empathy gap be attributed to an American and European press that focuses too heavily on attacks in the “West”? It’s far easier to get reporters to Paris than, say, Nairobi, though the critique is unfair to the brave reporters who report from dangerous parts of the globe year-round, not just when violence erupts. It’s a good bet that if American news organizations had devoted every resource that they dedicated to the Paris attacks to the bloodshed in Beirut instead, readers, watchers, and listeners wouldn’t have paid nearly the same amount of attention.
  • In an article for The Atlantic last year, Jacoba Urist reported on the findings of a study of natural disasters around the world, which found that the level of American media attention correlated with geographic proximity to the U.S. and the number of American tourists who had visited the country in question. (Urist noted that a 1976 Guatemalan earthquake with 4,000 fatalities accrued a third of the media coverage of an Italian earthquake with 1,000 deaths.) And as Faine Greenwood suggested after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, journalists and their audience alike suffer from a novelty bias. If it isn’t new—a new attack, a new place—it won’t garner the same buzz.
  • Founder Mark Zuckerberg has said the only reason there was no safety check-in for Beirut was that Facebook decided only after the Paris attack to deploy the feature for non-natural disasters. That aside, it makes sense that Facebook would move faster on Paris. After all, there are twice as many people in the Paris urban area as there are in all of Lebanon. Even assuming 100-percent Facebook penetration in Lebanon (not far off, probably), there are simply more Facebook users in Paris for the company to respond to.
lenaurick

The Paris Agreement is bigger than Trump - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

politics us history crisis trump paris

shared by lenaurick on 23 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • That's the promise of the Paris Agreement on climate change, which 132 countries, including the United States, have ratified or accepted, pledging to make the air less deadly and to prevent the most catastrophic consequences of global warming
  • he United States could not actually nullify the global agreement on its own, and withdrawing from the agreement would take one to four years, depending on the approach. But that may not matter much. The White House says it wants to revive coal, oil and natural gas production, all of which pollute the atmosphere, contributing to the likelihood of mass extinction, worsening droughts, deadlier heat waves, flooded coastal cities and other climate disasters.
  • Because the Paris Agreement does not levy sanctions or fines against countries that fail to meet their pollution-reduction pledges, it's possible the Trump administration could choose to remain in the agreement while basically polluting as usual.Either tactic -- defection or de facto not caring -- could weaken the pact, potentially leading other nations to defect. The United States, after all, is the second biggest annual climate polluter, after China, and helped negotiate the Paris deal.
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  • Some policy experts say it can and should survive, with or without the United States.
  • US officials "stand completely alone on being climate deniers," Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, told me. "If you look at the speeches from Paris, all the heads of state who came -- all -- and even fossil fuel providers, identified this as a real, science-based issue that they're working to solve together."
  • There's only so much carbon the world can pump into the atmosphere before we're assured of screwing up the targets set in the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
  • By some calculations, we're only five, 10 or perhaps 20-some years away from those red lines if the world keeps polluting at the same staggering rate.
  • Sterman calculated that the United States pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and canceling many Obama-era climate regulations, including the Clean Power Plan, would increase global temperatures on the order of a few tenths of a degree by 2100. That assumes, however, the rest of the world keeps making aggressive cuts. "Assuming that all nations, including the US, aggressively cut emissions, would yield 1.9 degrees Celsius [of warming] by 2100," he said. "But if the US does nothing, then expected warming rises to 2.2 degrees Celsius by 2100."
  • Current pledges made as part of the Paris Agreement, including US commitments, put the world at about 3.4 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100, according to Sterman and Climate Interactive. If the entire agreement fell apart and global emissions continued at their current clip, the planet could expect 4.2 degrees of warming.
  • That could be truly catastrophic. At 6 degrees of warming, for instance, "most of the planetary surface would be functionally uninhabitable," according to Mark Lynas, author of "Six Degrees."
  • Nearly seven in 10 registered voters in the United States say the country "should participate in the international agreement to curb global warming," according to a November 2016 survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.
redavistinnell

Leaders Move to Convert Paris Climate Pledges Into Action - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...imate-pledges-into-action.html

leaders convert paris climate action new york times

shared by redavistinnell on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Leaders Move to Convert Paris Climate Pledges Into Action
  • PARIS — Before the applause had even settled in the suburban convention center where the Paris Agreement was adopted by consensus on Saturday night, world leaders warned that momentum from the historic accord must not be allowed to dissipate.
  • With nearly every nation on Earth having now pledged to gradually reduce emissions of the heat-trapping gases that are warming the planet
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  • The task may prove most challenging for India, which is struggling to lift more than half of its population of 1.25 billion out of poverty and to provide basic electricity to 300 million of them. But rich countries are intent that India not get stuck on a coal-dependent development path.
  • President Obama has endorsed the idea of a price on carbon — in the form of a tax, or a cap-and-trade system like California’s — and leaders of Canada, Chile, Ethiopia, France, Germany and Mexico endorsed the idea at the start of the Paris conference. But there was not nearly enough support to incorporate it into the Paris Agreement.
  • China, meanwhile, is investing so heavily in clean energy that some observers think its carbon emissions might have hit a peak — a milestone that China had promised to reach only by 2030.
  • Giza Gaspar Martins, an Angolan diplomat who represents the Least Developed Countries, which negotiated in Paris as a bloc, said of the accord: “This puts a system in place to do climate action, but we will have a lot of work to do.” Photo
  • “It is essential that the developing countries are able to transform their energy system before they develop a level of dependence on coal that we have in the industrialized countries,” said Jan Burck of the activist group Germanwatch.
  • The United States will be one of them; through careful legal craftsmanship, the Paris Agreement will not be considered as its own treaty under American law but rather as an extension of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the Senate ratified in 1992.
  • By May, the United Nations climate staff will update its estimate for the combined impact of the national pledges (now known as nationally determined contributions, the qualifying word “intended” having been dropped). Estimates of the first round of pledges suggested that, if carried out, they would still result in a rise of 2.7 to 3.5 degrees Celsius (4.9 to 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels — far above the newly adopted goal of just 1.5 degrees Celsius.
  • But as the Paris Agreement is put into place, the front lines of the battle to stabilize the planet’s atmosphere will shift elsewhere. At the start of the talks, 20 governments pledged to double spending on clean-energy research and development over the next five years, while a coalition of business leaders led by Bill Gates vowed to invest billions on developing renewable energy.
  • Climate activists have long used a “power of the people” approach to promote sustainability and organize globally, and the world leaders who met here credited “civil society” for keeping up the pressure.“Now the work to hold them to their promises begins,” the American environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben wrote on Twitter, moments after the gavel fell on the Paris Agreement. “1.5? Game on.”
mimiterranova

U.S. Officially Rejoins Paris Agreement On Climate Change : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...is-agreement-on-climate-change

climate change paris agreement Politics US

shared by mimiterranova on 19 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • The United States on Friday officially rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change designed to limit global warming and avoid its potentially catastrophic impacts.
  • "The Paris Agreement is an unprecedented framework for global action. We know because we helped design it and make it a reality," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. "Its purpose is both simple and expansive: to help us all avoid catastrophic planetary warming and to build resilience around the world to the impacts from climate change we already see."
  • The U.S. left the Paris Agreement in November after a yearlong waiting period had ended. Former President Donald Trump originally announced his intention to withdraw from the treaty in 2017 and formally notified the United Nations in 2019.
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  • Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. promised to reduce its emissions by about 25% by 2025 compared with 2005 levels. But according to analysts, the country is only on track to achieve about a 17% reduction.
  • In 2020, there have already been 16 climate-driven disasters that cost at least $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
  • mimiterranova on 12 Mar 21
     
    U.S. Officially Rejoins Paris Agreement On Climate Change
  • mimiterranova on 12 Mar 21
     
    The United States on Friday officially rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change designed to limit global warming and avoid its potentially catastrophic impacts. '"The Paris Agreement is an unprecedented framework for global action. We know because we helped design it and make it a reality," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. "Its purpose is both simple and expansive: to help us all avoid catastrophic planetary warming and to build resilience around the world to the impacts from climate change we already see." The U.S. left the Paris Agreement in November after a yearlong waiting period had ended. Former President Donald Trump originally announced his intention to withdraw from the treaty in 2017 and formally notified the United Nations in 2019. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. promised to reduce its emissions by about 25% by 2025 compared with 2005 levels. But according to analysts, the country is only on track to achieve about a 17% reduction. In 2020, there have already been 16 climate-driven disasters that cost at least $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Javier E

Why has the '15-minute city' taken off in Paris but become a controversial idea in the ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...is-toxic-idea-uk-carlos-moreno

urban design planning Paris culture policy history politics economics

shared by Javier E on 06 Apr 24 - No Cached
  • he “15-minute city” has become a toxic phrase in the UK, so controversial that the city of Oxford has stopped using it and the transport minister has spread discredited conspiracy theories about the urban planning scheme.
  • while fake news spreads about officials enacting “climate lockdowns” to “imprison” people in their neighbourhoods, across the Channel, Parisians are enjoying their new 15-minute neighbourhoods. The French are stereotyped for their love of protest, so the lack of uproar around the redesign of their capital is in stark contrast to the frenzied response in Oxford.
  • Moreno has been working with the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, to make its arrondissements more prosperous and pleasurable to live in. He says there are 50 15-minute cities up and running, with more to come.
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  • “We have an outstanding mayor, who is committed to tackling climate change. She said the 15-minute city will be the backbone for creating a new urban plan. The last time Paris had a new urban plan was in 2000, so this road map will be relevant for the next 10 or 15 years at least,”
  • “I said to Hidalgo, the 15-minute city is not an urban traffic plan. The 15-minute city is a radical change of our life.”
  • He also thinks office should generally be closer to homes, as well as cultural venues, doctors, shops and other amenities. Shared spaces such as parks help the people living in the areas to form communities.
  • They have also often been segmented into wealthier and poorer areas; in the less prosperous area to the north-east of Paris, Moreno says up to 40% of homes are social housing. In the wealthier west of Paris, this drops below 5%.
  • “My idea is to break this triple segregation,” he says.
  • Moreno thinks this segregation leads to a poorer quality of life, one designed around outdated “masculine desires”, so his proposal is to mix this up, creating housing developments with a mixture of social, affordable and more expensive housing so different social strata can intermingle
  • He also wants to bring schools and children’s areas closer to work and home, so caregivers can more easily travel around and participate in societ
  • When many modern cities were designed, they were for men to work in. Their wives and family stayed in the suburbs, while the workers drove in. So they have been designed around the car, and segmented into different districts: the financial district (think Canary Wharf), the cultural area (for example, the West End) and then the suburbs
  • The city has also been regenerating the Clichy-Batignolles district in the less prosperous north-west of Paris to have a green, village-like feel. About a quarter of it is taken up by green space and a new park.“As a 15-minute district, it is incredible,” says Moreno. “It is beautiful, it has proximity, social mixing, 50% of the inhabitants live in social housing, 25% in middle class and 25% own their homes.”
  • Many of his proposals are dear to the culture of the French. In a large, wealthy metropolis such as Paris, it is easy for small shops to be choked out by large chains. The city of Paris, in its new plan, has put measures in to stop this.
  • “We have a commercial subsidiary of the city of Paris which has put €200m into managing retail areas in the city with rates below the speculative real estate market. This is specifically to rent to small shops, artisans, bakeries, bookstores.
  • This is not only a good investment because it creates a good economic model, but it keeps the culture of the city of Paris,”
  • This is in keeping with the 15-minute city plan as it keeps local shops close to housing, so people can stroll down from their apartment to pick up a fresh baguette from an independent baker. “It creates a more vibrant neighbourhood,” he adds.
  • Hidalgo inevitably faced a large backlash from the motorist lobby. Stroll down the banks of the Seine today in the new protected parks and outdoor bars, and it is hard to imagine that it was recently a traffic-choked highway
  • “The drivers were radically very noisy, saying that we wanted to attack their individual rights, their freedom. The motorist lobby said she cannot be elected without our support, that they are very powerful in France,” Moreno says. But Hidalgo called their bluff: “She often says ‘I was elected two times, with the opposition of the automotive lobby’. In 2024, nobody requests to open again the highway on the Seine, no one wants the Seine urban park to be open for cars.”
  • Moreno talks about the concept of a “giant metronome of the city” which causes people to rush around. He wants to slow this down, to allow people to reclaim their “useful time” back from commuting and travelling to shops and cultural areas.
  • “I bet for the next year, for the next decade, we will have this new transformation of corporation real estate,” he says. “Businesses are choosing multi-use areas with housing, schools, shops for their office space now. The time of the skyscrapers in the masculine design is finished.”
katyshannon

Paris Terror Attacks: Officials Searching for Man Involved in Deadly Massacre - NBC News - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...ogether-assailants-ids-n463716

paris terror attacks officials searching massacre nbc news crisis history isis suicide bombers france belgium

shared by katyshannon on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • French authorities were racing Sunday to hunt down any potential accomplices to the wave of terror attacks unleashed in Paris as the investigation widened beyond this nation's borders.
  • A French man believed to be directly involved in Friday's massacre in Paris is on the run and the subject of an international manhunt, French security officials said Sunday evening.
  • Investigators said the man rented a Belgian-registered black Volkswagen Polo, which was allegedly used and abandoned by the hostage-takers who killed at least 89 people inside a Paris concert hall. advertisement He was identified by officials as Salah Abdeslam, 26, from Brussels.
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  • Abdeslam is allegedly the brother of another suspect currently in custody and being questioned — and of one of the deceased attackers, officials said.
  • French officials were working with authorities in Belgium, Spain and Serbia in an attempt to shed more light on the attack, which ISIS claimed responsibility for and which French President Francois Hollande described as an "act of war."
  • Less than two days after the attacks Sunday, French warplanes conducted raids in Syria, targeting ISIS' stronghold in Raqqa, the defense ministry said. Reuters reported that the operation was France's biggest strike against ISIS in Syria to date.
  • "The raid ... including 10 fighter jets, was launched simultaneously from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Twenty bombs were dropped," the ministry said in a statement.
  • The airstrikes, which were carried out in coordination with the U.S., hit a command post, a jihadist recruitment center, a munitions depot and a militant training camp, the statement said.
  • Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said seven terrorists died in the attack on Friday. Officials initially said there were eight attackers — as did ISIS. It seems now Abdeslam is believed to be the eighth attacker.
  • A French prosecutor also said officials have identified two more assailants, whose names were not released to NBC News — a 20-year-old who was part of the attack on the Stade de France and a 31-year-old who was part of the attack on one of the restaurants in the 10th arrondissement. Both were French nationals living in Belgium.
  • "We consider this means they have a network," Francoise Shepmans, mayor of the town of Molenbeek where the individuals were detained, told Belgium's TV RTBF.
lenaurick

Paris attacks: Interview details ringleader's plan - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

paris attacks politics policy

shared by lenaurick on 05 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • he ringleader of the Paris terror attacks boasted that he'd slipped into France without identification papers -- and that 90 people from different countries did the same, according to a widely cited radio interview.
  • Abaaoud was planning to carry out attacks against a police station and a child care center in the Paris business district of La Defense on November 19,
  • The ringleader proudly claimed responsibility for the November 13 attacks, which killed 130 people in the French capital. But he purportedly disputed her accusation that he'd killed innocent people. "No, they are not innocent. You have to look at what is happening to us in Syria," Abaaoud said, according to the woman.
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  • The ringleader's purported comments that 90 people had slipped into France without identification papers and fanned out across the region come as authorities estimate that about 1,900 people have returned to Europe after fighting in Iraq and Syria.
  • Abaaoud, a Belgian-Moroccan ISIS operative, was killed in a raid on an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis six days after the attacks that killed 130 people.
  • France and Belgium are considered to be at the highest risk of a terror attack, a U.S. intelligence official said, while Germany and Britain also face a heightened terror threat.
katyshannon

Leaders due in Paris for COP21 climate change meeting - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...op21-climate-change-conference

leaders paris cops climate change meeting cnn politics US riots demonstrations

shared by katyshannon on 30 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • World leaders arrived in Paris on Sunday for potentially historic climate talks that will play out amid security concerns driven by the November 13 terror attacks in France.
  • Frustrations over restrictions on protests put in place following the attacks gave rise to what French President Francois Hollande called "scandalous" scuffles between protesters and police at the Place de Republique, the site of a memorial to victims.French authorities have clamped down on public demonstrations in the aftermath of the deadly attacks, blocking environmental campaigners' plans for a big march on Sunday.
  • Police arrested more than 200 people Sunday following flare-ups in which protesters pelted police with shoes, bottles and even candles police said were taken from memorials.
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  • Riot police responded with tear gas.Hollande said authorities knew "troubling elements" would arrive in Paris for the talks, and said that was why "these sorts of assemblies were banned and some were ordered to stay home."
  • Despite those tensions, demonstrators were largely peaceful ahead of the crucial climate change session. In place of the big march, protesters lined up thousands of shoes representing climate change activists.
  • The talks will begin in earnest on Monday. Nearly 150 world leaders are expected attend the United Nations climate change summit, called with the aim of reaching a landmark global deal on limiting greenhouse gas emissions.The leaders of the United States, China and India -- the world's top three carbon-emitting countries -- are among those scheduled to attend the opening day of the event, known as COP21.
Megan Flanagan

Paris terror victims of 2015 remembered - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

paris terror politics crisis

shared by Megan Flanagan on 12 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • housands gathered for a moving memorial service in Paris on Sunday, as a city and a nation paused to remember the scores of lives lost in a spate of terror attacks last year
  • honor the 17 victims of the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo office and a Jewish supermarket last January, as well as the 130 victims of the coordinated massacre in November.
  • has become an informal memorial and a rallying point for free speech and democratic values after the attacks
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  • a song referring to the march on January 11 last year, in which more than 1 million people joined world leaders to march in solidarity
  • Hollande also made an unannounced visit to the Grand Mosque of Paris
  • A state of emergency is still in place in France, and people there are still struggling to come to terms with the horrendous events of last year.
  • The French are hesitating between anger and fear
  • It's very difficult for the Parisians, because they know they have been touched in the heart, but at the same time they would like their lives to go on like before -- but they also know that is not possible
  • ISIS claimed responsibility.
  • Paris, already on edge, faced a fresh scare Thursday as police shot dead a knife-wielding man on the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks
  • "I am here to show my support and to say that we must continue to live," he told CNN.
anonymous

Only U.S. and Syria Now Oppose Paris Climate Deal, as Nicaragua Joins - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...aris-climate-agreement-us.html

u s paris climate deal nicaragua

shared by anonymous on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Only U.S
  • Nicaragua has announced that it will join the Paris Climate Accord, leaving only two countries that have either not joined the deal or signaled their plans to leave it: Syria and the United States.
  • The deal, reached in December 2015, was a major diplomatic achievement for former President Barack Obama, committing almost every country in the world — 195 in all — to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, a leading cause of climate change.
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  • President Trump said in a Rose Garden speech that the United States would withdraw from the accord, fulfilling one of his frequently repeated campaign promises.
  • Nicaragua, however, was critical of the deal as insufficiently ambitious.
  • Nicaragua has now said, however, that it will endorse the deal.
  • Despite its widespread adoption, the future of the Paris accord has been thrown into doubt by the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw.
  • White House officials are set to travel to Germany next month for United Nations climate change discussions, effectively putting them in the position of negotiating a deal they have said they are leaving.
  • Under the terms of the agreement, the soonest any country can withdraw from the pact is Nov. 4, 2020. That is less than three months before the end of Mr. Trump’s current term in office
Javier E

Paris Wanted a Green Olympics. Team USA Wants Air Conditioning. - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-usa-air-conditioning-f0b93ebf

air conditioning olympics US

shared by Javier E on 25 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • That’s not to say organizers are letting athletes slow-broil for three weeks. The Village here, located just north of Paris, was built with a cooling system that runs cold water through the floors, which officials say can reduce the ambient temperature by 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit and achieve a target range of 73 to 79 Fahrenheit. The effort is part of the hosts’ larger plan to make Paris the greenest Olympics in modern history, which includes measures such as reducing the number of vehicles by 40% from previous Games, building fewer new venues, and cutting the Games’ carbon footprint by half compared with the average of London 2012 and Rio 2016. 
  • But for those athletes who remain unconvinced and worry about their performance being derailed by sleeping in sweatbox apartments, Paris 2024 has made air conditioning units available for hire. And there are no gold medals for guessing which delegation leads the way. 
  • The 592-strong Team USA delegation isn’t risking the slightest discomfort. Every single U.S. room and some common areas have been equipped with portable A/C units, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. The Americans will all be able to take on any Paris heat wave by hanging out in meat-locker conditions, even though temperatures over the next 10 days aren’t expected to top 90.
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  • Out of the 7,000 rooms in the Village, 2,500 have been supplied mobile air conditioning units at the teams’ requests, a Paris 2024 spokesman said
  • Keeping cool at all times is that much more important given the erratic schedules that some of the athletes here are facing, said Carroll, the Australian Olympic committee executive. Since many athletes’ events are at night, they’ll need to sleep during the hottest part of the day. So the decision to pay for air conditioners was a no-brainer.
  • But not everyone is all-in on A/C. Germany’s Olympic sports federation will have one of the larger contingents in the village with around 350 athletes. That includes 6-foot-7½-inch decathlon medal favorite Leo Neugebauer, who recently won the NCAA title competing for the Texas Longhorns in Austin, where air conditioning isn’t merely a suggestion—it’s a way of life.
  • When Germany asked its individual sport federations if they wanted to order air conditioning units for the athletes’ village, demand for frigid air was lukewarm, according to Olympic committee spokesman Michael Schirp.
  • “A total of 11 AC have been ordered. Eleven,” he wrote, adding an emoji of a face wearing sunglasses.
davisem

Paris attacks: A year of grief, anger, change - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by davisem on 16 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Salines' 29-year-old daughter, Lola, had gone to a concert at the Bataclan by US rock band the Eagles of Death Metal. Midway through the show, ISIS-linked gunmen opened fire on the audience and detonated suicide vests; 90 people were killed in the raid, one of a series of coordinated attacks across Paris
  • Lola Salines was killed in the attack on an Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan in Paris.
  • French President Francois Hollande unveiled plaques at attack sites in the city -- at the Stade de France, outside the Petit Cambodge restaurant, in the Boulevard Voltaire, and at the Bonne Biere and Belle Equipe cafes.
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  • It followed an emotional performance on Saturday night by musician Sting, a fundraiser for victim support charities at the newly opened Bataclan. He began with the words: "We shall not forget them."
  • "For three hours, we had to listen to the shooting," he remembers. "That was terrible. Every time we thought it would end, it was just time for the terrorists to get their weapons reloaded, and then they would shoot again."
  • davisem on 16 Nov 16
     
    ISIS attacked audience an audience in Paris.
dpittenger

Claiming Paris Massacre as Its Own, Al Qaeda Seizes Spotlight - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-peninsula-charlie-hebdo.html

paris massacre al qaeda crisis

shared by dpittenger on 15 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen formally claimed responsibility on Wednesday for the deadly assault a week ago at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people, saying that the target was chosen by the Qaeda leadership and referring to the attackers as “two heroes of Islam.”
  • If the claim of direct responsibility holds up, it would make the attacks in France the most deadly strike planned and financed by Al Qaeda on Western soil since the transit bombings in London in 2005 that killed 52 people.
  • An English version of the claim, distributed online, showed a chilling image of the Eiffel Tower in Paris seeming to dissolve into a wisp of smoke. The headline reads, “Vengeance for the Prophet: A Message Regarding the Blessed Battle of Paris.”
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  • “In this case both the Kouachis and A.Q.A.P. insist that A.Q.A.P. financed this operation, trained the brothers for it and formulated the target,” he said, using the acronym for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. “Rather than being suggestive of a sleeper cell that sat and waited for three years, some subsequent contact seems likeliest although at this point not definitely proven.”
  • dpittenger on 15 Jan 15
     
    Al Qaeda claims responsibility for the Paris attacks.
manhefnawi

Napoleon III, Lord Palmerston and the Entente Cordiale | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...almerston-and-entente-cordiale

Napoleon III France Britain Political Relationships

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  • In July 1830, the ‘bourgeois revolution’ in France ousted Charles X and the Second Bourbon Restoration, and a new era in Anglo-French relations ensued. The terms set down at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 following Napoleon’s defeat were now considered academic. Britain, as victor against France, had been obliged to uphold the articles of the various treaties, designed, as one of them stated, for the purpose of ‘maintaining the order of things re-established in France’. The quasi-constitutional Orleans monarchy of Charles X’s successor Louis-Philippe was therefore recognised by Britain
  • In a diplomatic dispatch of 1832, Lord Granville, British ambassador in Paris, noted that Perier, then president of the Council, believed that ‘the welfare of France and England and the peace of Europe depended upon an intimate alliance and concert between the two governments’
  • By 1848, once more heading foreign affairs (June 1846 to December 1851), the ‘Jupiter Anglicanus of the Foreign Office’ allowed Anglo-French relations to sink to a level not witnessed since 1814. He had orchestrated the creation of Belgium in 1831, a supposedly neutral country but one which would naturally  be pro-British and often anti-French
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  • Five years later he had attempted to manipulate the outcome of the marriage of Isabella II of Spain against French interests in order to align Britain with a liberal Spain
  • In February 1848, a new revolution in Paris threatened to upset Anglo-French relations altogether
  • he Second Republic was therefore seen as unstable and potentially militaristic, and Palmerston’s reaction was to issue a confidential  paper outlining government preparations for an imminent invasion of Britain
  • There was considerable relief in London, then, when in October the political body in France agreed to usher in a republic under the authority of a president elected for four years by universal adult manhood suffrage. The future of Anglo-French relations would now hinge  on the identity of the new president
  • In December, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew to the great defeated enemy of England, was elected first president of the Second Republic, gaining 74.3 per cent of the 7,449,471 votes cast in metropolitan France
  • In Britain, initial reaction to the news was mixed. Louis-Napoléon had spent three years in exile in England between 1831 and 1848, and over five separate visits had acquired a respect for, and knowledge of, the country unrivalled among European heads of state
  • The sepoy revolt in India in May 1857 could hardly be blamed on Napoleon III, but in some quarters the suggestion was made that he was secretly helping them. A short visit to Osborne in August to meet the Queen and Palmerston put the matter straight (though none there had believed it).
  • When the French navy was not seen to be steaming up the Thames the panic dissipated, but the fears were resurrected after Louis-Napoléon’s coup d’état of December 2nd, 1851, dissolving the National Assembly and declaring a new constitution. Opinion polarised both in France and Britain; on the one hand Louis-Napoléon was declared a ‘saviour of society’ and on the other the ‘Antichrist’
  • even the Queen hoped that Louis-Napoléon’s enemies abroad would remain ‘perfectly passive’. But the press and its public were united in bitter condemnation. By January 1852, the poet Coventry Patmore had persuaded nineteen friends to form the first Rifle Club as part of a nation-wide army of volunteers to repel, as he put it later, ‘the threats of the French colonels and by suspicions of the intentions of Louis-Napoléon
  • The second invasion panic did not subside until a formal alliance was established in March 1854, preceding the Crimean War. In April 1855 the Emperor Napoleon III (as Louis-Napoléon had declared himself in December 1852) enjoyed a successful state visit to Britain, reciprocated by an equally successful visit by Victoria to Paris in August. Throughout the Crimean War, Napoleon III allowed Britain to lead affairs
  • personal relations between Palmerston and Napoleon III continued to deteriorate throughout the early 1860s
  • The incident most dangerous to Franco-British relations occurred on January 14th, 1858, when an attempt was made to assassinate Napoleon III in the streets of Paris, the plot hatched in London by political refugees
  • But popular opinion in England remained suspicious of the Second Republic, and the economic upturn was accompanied by the first of three intense ‘invasion panics’, which recalled to mind those set in motion many years earlier by Napoleon I
  • Outright war between France and England might have resulted had two different players been involved: Napoleon III apologised to Lord Cowley, Britain’s ambassador in Paris, for having overlooked the jingoistic pronouncements in Le Moniteur universel, while Palmerston attempted to introduce a Conspiracy Bill, which would have elevated the crime of conspiring to murder persons abroad from a misdemeanour to a felony.
  • To Napoleon III from Queen Victoria’ promised to him in 1855 but somehow ‘forgotten’. The entente had been saved by an imperial whisker
  • In the wake of the assassination attempt Napoleon III was keen to demonstrate that his improvements to the naval base at Cherbourg were not a threat to Britain, and in August 1858 he invited Victoria and Albert, several politicians and naval men, to inspect them as a mark of trust.
  • The third invasion panic, the following year, originated in Napoleon III’s military attempt in May 1859 to oust Habsburg influence in Italy and prepare the peninsula for some form of unification and self-government
  • France’s annexation of Nice and Savoy in 1860 as a reward from Piedmont-Sardinia following the war in Italy was wholeheartedly approved by the local populace in a referendum
  • Napoleon III’s attempt to set up by direct intervention a European monarchy in Mexico from October 1861 (when a French, Spanish and British naval fleet worked in concert to extract the payment of debts from a corrupt Mexican administration) was approved by Palmerston but again vigorously opposed by Albert and all the royal family – and was unpopular in Britain, although offset by several other actions. Napoleon III’s vigorous support of free trade resulted in the pioneering Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860 which, while it undoubtedly harmed a minority of trades, vastly improved the majority, increasing prosperity and mutual trust
  • Napoleon III was careful to appear subservient, enabling Palmerston to acknowledge that the British ‘throughout had their own way and ... led the way’
  • The Duruz were the aggressors in this instance, and thousands of Christians were killed during a period resolved only through French diplomacy, Turkish aid and Algerian sympathy
  • Napoleon III reacted by sighing that once he used to say ‘avec Lord Palmerston on peut faire les grandes choses’ but now he seemed determined to prevent him doing anything at all
  • The most bizarre was that Napoleon III was looking for the nephew of Marie Cantillon, a man who had attempted to assassinate the Duke of Wellington in Paris in 1818, to pay him money Napoléon I had bequeathed Cantillon in his recently published will
  • Napoleon III’s attempt to set up a European monarchy in Mexico was his only independent action undertaken in the 1860s to meet with Palmerston’s general approval, but only for what the scheme potentially meant for British trade
  • Following military defeat by Prussia and deposition by Parisian ideologues in 1870, Napoleon III died in England on January 9th, 1873.
  • Gladstone soon came to terms with the new Third French Republic, and the rest of Europe again took Britain’s lead in officially recognising the new French regime
  • The Napoleonic wars did not end at Waterloo, but in Paris in the hands of Napoleon III. Punch stated why on January 18th, 1873
manhefnawi

U.S. Exits Paris Climate Agreement | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...-exits-paris-climate-agreement

Carbon Emissions UN Greenhouse Gases Global Warming Trump

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  • At a rose garden ceremony on June 1, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump declared his intention to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. 
  • would have negative effects on job growth, hinder manufacturing, and bring about dramatic declines in the coal mining, natural gas, steel, and cement industries
  • The Paris Agreement, which was designed to control and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, was the centerpiece of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
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  • Although many of the world’s other leaders have expressed their disappointment with Trump’s decision, they have also underscored their commitment to solving the problem of global warming, with or without American participation
  • To date there are only two other countries that have not yet signed on to the Paris Agreement: Syria and Nicaragua. Syria, which remains in the throes of a destructive civil war, noted that it was not in a position to sign such agreements because of ongoing sanctions from Western countries. The government of Nicaragua, however, refused to sign on for different reasons. Nicaragua believes that the Paris Agreement does not go far enough to reduce emissions, arguing that wealthy countries such as the United States should have been forced to make deeper commitments.
johnsonle1

Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...p-paris-climate-agreement.html

trump paris climate agreement

shared by johnsonle1 on 02 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • johnsonle1 on 02 Jun 17
     
    "It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Mich.; and Pittsburgh, Pa., along with many, many other locations within our great country, before Paris, France," he said. "It is time to make America great again." The mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, responded on Twitter, "I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future."
jlessner

Ultra-Orthodox Newspaper Appears To Have Edited Women Out Of Paris March Image - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...en-photoshopped_n_6462866.html

newspaper paris march image culture politics

shared by jlessner on 18 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • An ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper in Israel appears to have edited out female world leaders from a photograph of Sunday's anti-terrorism rally in Paris, Israeli media reported.
  • Israeli site Walla!, however, noted that when ultra-Orthodox paper HaMevaser (The Announcer) ran the iconic photo, female leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo were all of a sudden missing from the scene.
  • In fact, it's not the first time in recent years that an ultra-Orthodox publication has cut a female leader from a photo in its print. The New York-based paper Di Tzeitung decided in 2011 to erase then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from the image showing American leaders during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, The Telegraph noted.
horowitzza

Morocco Arrests Belgian With 'Direct' Link to Paris Attacks: State Media - NBC News - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...is-attacks-state-media-n498956

morocco paris attacks state news

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  • horowitzza on 18 Jan 16
     
    Morocco Arrests Belgian With 'Direct' Link to Paris Attacks: Stat
malonema1

Why Trump's Exit From the Paris Agreement Could Spark a Trade War - 0 views

www.worldpoliticsreview.com/...eement-could-spark-a-trade-war

paris agreement trump environment trade politics

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  • Why Trump’s Exit From the Paris Agreement Could Spark a Trade War
  • “America First” trade policy
  • generate renewed anxiety over the stability of the international trading system
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  • imposing a 45 percent tariff on all imports from China. However, in addition to exiting the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Trump’s provocative rhetoric continues to keep U.S. trading partners on edge.
  • Trump used his participation in the NATO and G-7 summits in part to criticize German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the U.S.-Germany trade relationship
  • To create future disincentives for free-riding, parties to the agreement may seek ways to punish the U.S. for its behavior.
  • rump has proposed significant budget cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency that, if adopted, would cut spending by 31 percent and eliminate 25 percent of the agency’s 15,000 jobs
  • Second, Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement politically isolates the U.S. from many of its key trading partners
  • Given its policy decisions on climate change and the environment, the Trump administration may have difficulty achieving this objective in future settings, such as NAFTA renegotiations
  • The administration also risks appearing hypocritical if it brings disputes over environmental commitments or dumping in green technologies such as solar panels up for resolution at the WTO
  • Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement is a terrible misjudgment that will have lasting ramifications for the Earth’s climate and U.S. global leadership of the postwar liberal international order. The decision could also undermine America’s trading competitiveness, an issue Trump claims to champion, while causing the kind of economic harm that he says he wants to avoid by leaving the climate accord. U.S. policymakers must remain vigilant to avoid a trade war that could further damage the economic interests of American companies, workers and citizens.
carolinehayter

City Of Paris Is Fined 90,000 Euros For Naming Too Many Women To Senior Positions : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-many-women-to-senior-position

politics international culture policy sexism

shared by carolinehayter on 17 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • The city of Paris has been fined 90,000 euros for an unusual infraction: It appointed too many women to senior positions in the government.
  • in violation of a rule that dictated at least 40% of government positions should go to people of each gender.
  • Mayor Anne Hidalgo said she would deliver the check to the Ministry of Public Service herself — along with the women in her government. "So there will be many of us," she said.
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  • Since 2019, French law provides a waiver to the 40% rule if the new hires do not lead to an overall gender imbalance, Le Monde explains. That's the case for the city of Paris, according to the newspaper: Women still make up just 47% of senior executives on its government. And female city officials are paid 6% less than their male counterparts.
  • "It is paradoxical to blame us for appointments that make it possible to catch up on the backlog we had," Antoine Guillou, the mayor's deputy in charge of human resources, told Le Monde.
  • the aim is to resolve an existing imbalance toward men
  • "In Paris, we are doing everything to make it a success, and I am very, very proud of a large team of women and men who carry together this fight for equality," Hidalgo added.
  • Amélie de Montchalin, France's Minister of Public Service, lamented the fine and called the provision "absurd."
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