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☆ Facing a Future of Drought, Spain Turns to Medieval Solutions and ‘Ancient Wisdom’
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Constant Méheut | More About Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

He explained that before the acequias, it was hard to grow food in the unstable climate of the Mediterranean, with periodic droughts. The “genius of the system,” he said, is that it slows down the water flow from the mountains to the plains in order to better retain and distribute it. Without acequias, snowmelt from mountain peaks would flow directly into rivers and lakes that dry up during the summer. With them, the melt is diverted to multiple acequias winding through the hills. It spurts from fountains in the region’s typical whitewashed villages.

Persons: Civantos, ” Locations: acequias, Granada, Almeria, Al, Sierra Nevada

When she first heard of a project to exhume and identify the remains of hundreds of Civil War victims — her grandfather possibly among them — Ángela Raya Fernández said she was “filled with hope, a lot of hope.”Ever since she was a girl, she had heard stories about how her father’s father, José Raya Hurtado, was executed during the Spanish Civil War, his body ignominiously dumped in a ravine by forces loyal to Gen. Francisco Franco. She had only ever known him from black-and-white photos: round glasses, a receding hairline and a resolute gaze. “We’ve long hoped that somebody could find him and give him a dignified burial,” said Ms. Raya, a soft-spoken, 62-year-old librarian.

Persons: — Ángela Raya Fernández, ”, José Raya Hurtado, Francisco Franco, Raya

☆ Wildfire Forces Thousands to Evacuate in Canary Islands
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-17 | by ( Constant Méheut | More About Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Spanish firefighters on Monday were battling a wildfire that has raged for three days on the wooded slopes of La Palma in the Canary Islands, temporarily forcing the evacuation of more than 4,000 residents. The fire, which the Spanish authorities say has burned some 10,000 acres, could be a preview of weather-related crises to come this summer in Europe. The southern part of the continent is in the midst of a heat wave that is drying up fields, increasing the risks of wildfires. “The weather has been helping us,” Sergio Rodríguez, the president of the local government council in La Palma, said in a news conference on Monday. More than 500 firefighters were trying to bring the blaze under control, aided by several water-carrying helicopters making regular rounds over the flames in an attempt to douse them.

Persons: ” Sergio Rodríguez Organizations: La Palma Locations: La, Canary, Europe, La Palma

Years before France was inflamed with anger at the police killing of a teenager during a traffic stop, there was the notorious Théo Luhaka case. Mr. Luhaka was wrestled to the ground by three police officers, who hit him repeatedly and sprayed tear gas in his face. When it was over, he was bleeding from a four inch tear in his rectum, caused by one of the officers’ expandable batons. Mr. Luhaka’s housing project, and others around Paris, erupted in fury. He was held up as a symbol of what activists had been denouncing for years: discriminatory policing that violently targets minority youth, particularly in France’s poor areas.

Persons: Luhaka Locations: France, Black, Paris

☆ Jane Birkin, Singer, Actress and Fashion Inspiration, Dies at 76
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-16 | by ( Constant Méheut | More About Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“He wrote for me from 1968 until the day he died,” Ms. Birkin said in an interview with The New York Times in 2018. Ms. Birkin said she had not been able to find a leather bag she liked. Hermès devised the Birkin, which was, as she requested, “four times the size of a Kelly.’'Ms. Birkin was additionally popular in France as an activist for women’s and L.G.B.T.Q. rights and also for her British accent when speaking French, which the French found endearing. “We will never forget her songs, her laughs and her incomparable accent which have always accompanied us.”

Persons: “, ” Ms, Birkin, I’d, Ms, Birkin’s, Kelly, ’ ’, Grace Kelly, Hermès, Jean, Louis Dumas, ’, Anne Hidalgo, ” Organizations: The New York Times, YouTube, Paris Locations: London, France

☆ Bastille Day Is Usually a Fireworks Bonanza. Not This Year.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-14 | by ( Constant Méheut | More About Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Bastille Day in France has long been synonymous with grand fireworks displays over towns and villages, as dancing crowds celebrate their nation’s revolutionary birth. But firework shows have been canceled in parts of the country this year, for fear of a resurgence of the unrest that has just swept France and for the risk of fire in the face of the extreme heat that is a new fixture of French summers. “It’s an unusual convergence of social and environmental issues,” Hervé Florczak, the mayor of Jouy-le-Moutier, a small town west of Paris, said, noting that France had yet to solve either problem. “It’s sad that it should fall on Bastille Day.”Mr. Florczak explained that he had first looked for a site away from a wooded area to organize a fireworks display while avoiding drought-related fire hazards. Then, his city was struck by the riots after a police officer killed a teenager in a Paris suburb in late June.

Persons: “, ” Hervé Florczak, ” Mr, Florczak Locations: France, Jouy, Paris

☆ This Paris Suburb Burned Before. Has Anything Changed?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-09 | by ( Constant Méheut | More About Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the fall of 2005, Faisal Daaloul was a young adult protesting in the streets of Clichy-sous-Bois, an impoverished Paris suburb seething over the death of two teenagers as they were pursued by police officers. Mr. Daaloul is now a father. Mr. Daaloul is of Tunisian descent and his wife is Black, and he fears that his son would be a perfect target for the police. “Little has changed in two decades,” Mr. Daaloul said. After the 2005 riots, the French government invested billions of euros to revamp its immigrant suburbs, or banlieues, to try to rid them of run-down social-housing blocks.

Persons: Faisal Daaloul, Daaloul, “, ” Mr Organizations: Bois, seething Locations: Clichy, Paris, France

☆ In the Paris Suburb Where Police Shot a Teenager, Violence and Vigilance
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-01 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Nanterre is one such suburb. The public-housing high-rises of Pablo-Picasso, standing just outside the Paris business district of La Défense, stand as examples of that effort. But Nanterre continues to suffer from high unemployment — 14 percent compared with 8 percent nationally in 2020, according to official statistics — and some neighborhoods, including Pablo-Picasso, suffer from drug-trafficking. Still, the violence of recent days has baffled many neighborhood residents who see it destroying property in the place they live, which simply makes people’s lives harder. “The anger is as strong as the violence of the tragedy,” said Ms. Mohamed Saly, who manages Le 35, a popular neighborhood restaurant with her husband, Brahim Rochdi.

Persons: rekindling, Pablo, Picasso, ”, Mohamed Saly, Brahim, “ Organizations: Nanterre Locations: France, Nanterre, Paris, La, Le

☆ French Police Won Authority to Shoot at Drivers, but Got ‘No Training Whatsoever’
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-30 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For years, French police unions argued that officers should get broader discretion over when to shoot at fleeing motorists. Finally in 2017, after a string of terrorist attacks, the government relented. Eager to be tough on crime and terrorism, lawmakers passed a bill allowing officers to fire on motorists who flee traffic stops, even when the officers are not in immediate danger. Since that law passed, the number of fatal police shootings of motorists has increased sixfold, according to data compiled recently by a team of French researchers and shared with The New York Times. Last year, 13 people were shot dead in their vehicles, a record in a country where police killings are rare.

Persons: Eager, ”, Frédéric Lagache Organizations: Alliance Police, The New York Times

☆ Dozens of Migrants Bound for Canary Islands Feared Dead as Boat Sinks
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-21 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Thirty-six migrants were feared dead after an inflatable boat en route to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off northwestern Africa, sank on Wednesday, according to an aid group. At least one body, belonging to a child, has been recovered, according to the aid group, Caminando Fronteras, a nongovernmental organization that tracks the deaths of migrants. The group said that 24 people had been rescued, but that dozens remained missing of the 61 people who had been on the vessel. According to a Twitter post from Helena Maleno Garzón, who founded Caminando Fronteras, “The inflatable had been begging for rescue in Spanish waters for more than twelve hours.”Maritime Rescue, Spain’s sea search-and-rescue agency, did not immediately respond to several requests for comment.

Persons: Caminando, Helena Maleno Garzón Locations: Canary, Spanish, Africa

☆ Once Scorned, Far Right Secures Foothold in Spanish Cities
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-19 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Spain’s far right took office in a string of Spanish cities and in a powerful region over the weekend by forging coalition agreements with the moderate right, in a move that may foreshadow a broader alliance to govern the country after next month’s general elections. The agreements came about three weeks after the center-right Popular Party crushed Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing coalition in regional and local elections. To secure control of dozens of cities, the Popular Party struck coalition deals with the far-right Vox, which also performed well, embracing part of the party’s nationalist, anti-migrant agenda. Both parties will now govern together in some 25 cities of more than 30,000 residents, including five regional capitals, giving Vox, a party once considered anathema by most voters, crucial political leverage. They have also teamed up to run the wealthy Valencia region, which accounts for 10 percent of Spain’s population.

Persons: Spain’s, Pedro Sánchez’s, Vox, Sandra León, ” Organizations: Popular Party, Carlos III University Locations: Valencia, Madrid

☆ French March in New Pension Protests, but Are They a Final Stand?
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Street demonstrations and transport strikes disrupted France again on Tuesday as another day of protests against a widely unpopular pension overhaul took place, in what appeared to be a last-ditch effort to pressure the authorities into scrapping the changes. Tuesday’s protest, the 14th day of nationwide demonstrations since January, reflected the lingering anger at the government’s decision to raise the legal retirement age to 64 from 62 — a move that put France on edge and led to the biggest political threat in President Emmanuel Macron’s second term. But after months of exceptionally large protests that have failed to budge Mr. Macron, and with key parts of the overhaul already enshrined in law, opponents of the reform acknowledge that the chances of turning the tide now are slim and that Tuesday’s actions may be a last stand. “The game is about to end whether we like it or not,” Laurent Berger, the leader of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, the largest union in France, said on Tuesday as he was getting ready for the march in Paris.

Persons: Emmanuel Macron’s, Mr, Macron, ” Laurent Berger Organizations: French Democratic Confederation of Labor Locations: France, Paris

☆ An Amateur Sleuth Heads to the Sierra in Search of the Zodiac Killer’s Tracks
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( Thomas Fuller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Late last year, Fayçal Ziraoui, a French-Moroccan business consultant, was at his home in the Paris suburbs scrolling through satellite pictures of the Sierra Nevada when he came across an image that startled him. It looked to him like the symbol that the Zodiac killer used on his correspondence a half-century ago. In December, Ziraoui searched satellite images of the Sierra after believing that a postcard and a cipher sent by the Zodiac killer pointed to those coordinates. Ziraoui spent the winter counting down the days until the snow melted, and in mid-May, he flew to San Francisco. It’s a four-hour drive from the Bay Area, the last dozen miles on rough dirt roads blocked at times by the remnants of collapsed trees killed in the 2014 King fire.

Persons: Fayçal, Constant Méheut, Ziraoui Locations: French, Moroccan, Paris, Sierra Nevada, New York, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, It’s, Bay

☆ France’s Latest Way to Sound Anger Over Pensions Law: Saucepans
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Spreading across a highway so that no cars could pass, 100 or so protesters banged saucepans in a deafening racket that echoed through this remote valley of eastern France last month. They were marching toward a nearby castle where the French president was due to arrive, determined to stand in his way and create cacophony around the visit. Suddenly, a helicopter carrying President Emmanuel Macron appeared overhead, the sound of its blades briefly drowning out the din. For weeks, opponents of the change have been harassing Mr. Macron and his cabinet members by banging pots and pans on their official trips. In a country with no shortage of kitchenware, the protests, known as “casserolades,” after the French word for saucepan, have disrupted or stopped dozens visits by ministers to schools and factories.

☆ French Resistance Fighter Goes Public About Execution of German P.O.W.s
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Shortly after D-Day during World War II, French resistance fighters took 47 captured German soldiers to a small wooden area in southwest-central France. “We were ashamed,” the witness, Edmond Réveil, who is now 98 and was part of the resistance group, told the French newspaper La Vie Corrézienne. “We knew that we should not kill prisoners.”French historians have confirmed the general outlines of his story, but his version of events could not be independently verified. His public statements have sent shock waves through the Limousin, a rural area in central France that has long prided itself on its history of resistance during the war and paid a heavy price for it. German Nazi officers from the military arm of the SS, the Waffen-SS, slaughtered hundreds of civilians there in retaliation.

☆ ‘We Can’t Believe That’s Happening Here’: Serbia Reflects After Shootings
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Serbia on Saturday mourned the loss of 17 people in two mass shootings in two days, as the nation grappled with its own culture of guns. The funerals of several victims took place on Saturday, the second of three official days of mourning for the consecutive killings at a school in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, and in nearby farming villages. A day later, another gunman raced through villages in a car with an assault rifle, killing eight people and wounding at least 14 others. “We can’t believe that’s happening here,” Milana Vanovac, 56, said as she looked at the impromptu memorials on Saturday. “We thought mass shootings were a problem for other countries, not for us.”

☆ A Day After a School Shooting, Belgrade Is Consumed With Grief
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The wax ran in streaks on the sidewalk outside a school in Belgrade, left by the hundreds of candles lit by residents of the Serbian capital mourning the deaths of eight children gunned down by a 13-year-old classmate. On Thursday, the morning after the shooting by a teenager armed with pistols he had taken from his father’s home, hundreds more people came to express their grief outside the school in an upscale neighborhood of Belgrade after the attack that also left a security guard dead. Their eyes brimming with tears, they lit more candles, lay white flowers and hung messages scrawled on paper on fences near the Vladislav Ribnikar primary school in a central part of the Serbian capital. “We’re all shocked and saddened,” said Luka Zivkovic, 18, a student from a nearby school who had come with dozens of schoolmates to pay his respects.

☆ Anger Over Pensions Law Fuels May Day Protests in France
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

French workers headed to the streets across the country on Monday, as the annual May Day demonstrations in France coincided with smoldering anger over an unpopular pension overhaul that President Emmanuel Macron pushed through last month. From Le Havre in the north to Marseille in the south, tens of thousands of people had taken to the streets by midmorning, and the protest was set to culminate in the afternoon with a march in Paris, the capital. Laurent Berger, the leader of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, the largest union in the country, presented the marches as a way to continue the fight against the pension overhaul. “I don’t accept the 64 years,” he said on Sunday. “I will never accept them.”

☆ Spain Bakes in Summer-Like Heat, and Worries About What Comes Next
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In Madrid, where it hit around 90 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday, schools were allowed to close early to avoid the heat. In Catalonia, it’s so dry that the valves of an irrigation canal have been closed for lack of water. With temperatures over 100 degrees in early April, people in Spain have moved into summer mode, looking for shade, hitting the beach. But the extreme heat — so early in the year — has prompted fears that it is no longer a seasonal phenomenon but a new daily reality. And in several areas of the country, thermometers have exceeded seasonal norms by more than 25 degrees Fahrenheit, reaching values typical of summer.

☆ Macron Honors Haitian Revolutionary, but Leaves Much Unsaid
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Constant Méheut | Catherine Porter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The president of France on Thursday stepped into the cold mountain prison where Toussaint Louverture, a famed leader of the Haitian Revolution, died 220 years ago after being tricked, kidnapped and secreted across an ocean and into the French hinterland. Standing in the armory, not far from the cell where Louverture spent his last days, President Emmanuel Macron called the man who took on France after being freed from slavery a hero who embodied the true values of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. “Toussaint Louverture strove to give life to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,” Mr. Macron said in a speech delivered on the 175th anniversary of France’s abolition of slavery. “That which offered freedom, equality, fraternity to all.”It was the first time a French leader paid official tribute to Louverture at the prison where he died, a powerful gesture from a president determined to reconcile the France of today with the shadows of its past.

PinnedThe United States military airlifted embassy officials out of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, amid continuing violence as rival military leaders battled for control of Africa’s third-largest country, President Biden said late on Saturday. (Mr. Godfrey — the first U.S. ambassador to Sudan in a quarter-century — arrived in the country about eight months ago.) They had lived in the same apartment buildings as some American diplomatic staff and arrived together at the embassy, he said. “I am proud of the extraordinary commitment of our embassy staff, who performed their duties with courage and professionalism and embodied America’s friendship and connection with the people of Sudan,” Mr. Biden said. Credit... Ebrahim Hamid/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesU.S. officials have said that about 16,000 American citizens were living in Sudan, many of them dual nationals.

☆ 43 Years After Paris Synagogue Bombing, Canadian Man Is Found Guilty
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Forty-three years ago, a bombing outside a Paris synagogue killed four people and stunned France, prompting huge crowds to protest antisemitism and exposing the country to violence it thought had disappeared with the end of World War II. The defendant, Hassan Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian sociology professor, was convicted in the bombing and sentenced to life in prison. Judges also issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Diab, who lives in Canada and was tried in absentia. Mr. Diab has long denied any involvement in the attack. The deadly attack, the first on the French Jewish community since World War II, took place in the Rue Copernic, in an upscale western Paris neighborhood, on Oct. 3, 1980.

☆ Dutch Court Convicts 3 of Murder for 2014 Downing of Airliner in Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Constant Méheut | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

On Thursday, the court said there was “very convincing evidence” that the Buk missile had been deliberately fired from an agricultural field near Pervomaiskyi, a city in eastern Ukraine. Even if separatist forces had intended to shoot down a Ukrainian military aircraft and not an airliner, the court said, the strike was nevertheless premeditated and constituted a crime. The downing of MH17 occurred against a backdrop of vicious fighting between the separatists and the Ukrainian military after an uprising that deposed the country’s Russian-aligned president in February. The crash scattered bodies and wreckage across fields of wheat and sunflowers, in scenes both harrowing and poignant. Most of the victims were Dutch, but the flight also carried passengers from Australia, Britain, Malaysia and several other countries.

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