Hollywood actors extend contract talks, temporarily averting strike

The agreement gives SAG-AFTRA union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers more time to work out a deal.

By Reuters
July 1, 2023 

Hollywood’s actors union and major Hollywood studios agreed on Friday to keep negotiating through mid-July, staving off the immediate threat of a second labor strike in the entertainment business this summer.

The SAG-AFTRA union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) said they would extend their current contract, which had been set to expire at midnight, through July 12.

The agreement gives the two sides more time to work out a deal and prevent a work stoppage that would have added to ongoing labor strife in Hollywood.

Members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) walked off the job on May 2, forcing many film and TV productions to shut down.

A-list stars including Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep, in a letter to union leadership this week, said they were ready to walk off the job if negotiators failed to reach a “transformative deal” on higher base pay and safeguards around use of artificial intelligence (AI).

Hollywood writers and their supporters from the SAG AFTRA actors’ union walk the picket line outside Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, Calif., on June 30, 2023.AFP via Getty Images

The letter came days after union negotiators issued a video saying their talks had been “extremely productive,” a possible sign that a deal was within reach.

In a message to members on Friday, SAG-AFTRA’s negotiators they had unanimously agreed to the contract extension “in order to exhaust every opportunity to achieve the righteous contract we all demand and deserve.”

“No one should mistake this extension for weakness,” they said.

A supporter holds a “SAG AFTRA Supports WGA” sign outside Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 30, 2023.

AFP via Getty Images

SAG-AFTRA voted in early June to give its leaders the authority to call a work stoppage if talks were to break down.

Negotiations were taking place during a difficult time for Hollywood studios.

Conglomerates are under pressure from Wall Street to make their streaming services profitable after pumping billions of dollars into programming to attract subscribers.

A teacher supporting striking Hollywood writers holds up a sign reading “AI Does Not Have Kids to Feed!” on the picket line outside Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 30, 2023.

AFP via Getty Images

The rise of streaming has eroded television ad revenue as traditional TV audiences shrink.

The walkout by 11,500 writers has shut down a wide swath of TV production and delayed the filming of movies including Marvel’s “Thunderbolts” and “Blade.”

Any ongoing filming would have to halt if actors also strike.

SEE ALSO

Writers Guild won’t picket 2023 Tony Awards, but denies interim agreement for show

Leaders of SAG-AFTRA, which represents 160,000 actors, and the WGA say the entertainment industry has changed dramatically with the rise of streaming television and the emergence of technology such as generative AI, which they fear could be used to write scripts or create digital actors.

The AMPTP, which negotiates on behalf of the studios, has declined to comment about its talks with SAG-AFTRA.

The two sides have agreed to keep negotiating without discussing the talks with the media, according to a joint statement on Friday.

With the writers, the AMPTP said it had offered “generous” pay increases but could not agree to all of the writers’ demands.

The studios and the WGA have not held talks since the writers’ strike began on May 2.
26

The WGA walkout is hitting caterers, prop suppliers and other small businesses that generate a large portion of their income from Hollywood productions.

The last writers’ strike in 2007 and 2008 cost the California economy an estimated $2.1 billion.

Noise is all around us. And it's harming our health

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It may seem like just an annoyance, but noise has an impact on our bodies

Isabelle Gallant · CBC News · Posted: Jul 01, 2023 2:00 AM MDT | Last Updated: 1 hour ago

Studies show that regular exposure to high levels of traffic noise increases the risk of heart disease. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

The Dose22:07How is the noise around me harming my health?

The rumble of trucks passing on the highway. The hammering of a construction site. The roar of an airplane taking off overhead. 

If you live in a big city in Canada, chances are you regularly hear noises that are harmful to your health. 

And though small towns and rural areas tend to be generally quieter, loud sounds like trains passing can still be disruptive. 

"We think of noise as simply an annoyance," said Hugh Davies, a professor in the school of population and public health at UBC. 

"We're bathed in an acoustic sea. And I think it's hard for people to realize that some of that is hazardous," he said. 

Transportation noise is the most common and most studied noise exposure, experts say. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Noise regulations in North America are generally piecemeal, experts say, and tend to focus on things like parties or concert venues, instead of the sources of noise that actually cause us the most harm: noises from transportation. 

But there is plenty of research to show that being regularly exposed to loud traffic noises, as many Canadians are on a daily basis, can have harmful long-term health effects beyond just our hearing.

How do we experience noise? 

Our nervous systems have evolved to be constantly on guard, and that includes hearing, Tor Oiamo told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC's The Dose. 

"While we might not wake up, we might not be annoyed or disturbed by a sound, we're still going to register those sounds and our nervous system is still going to process that," said Oimao, an associate professor in geography and environmental studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. 

This is why our alarms wake us up in the morning, said Davies. 

"You're always listening. Even in the middle of the night, your brain is processing sound," he said. 

Fight or flight 

Hearing a noise sets up our fight-or-flight response, said Erica Walker, an assistant professor of epidemiology in the school of public health at Brown University in Providence, R.I. 

"Your heart rate increases. You begin to sweat. You begin to release these hormones that get you prepared for battle — or prepare you to run away from it," said Walker. 

That ongoing stress response over time can lead to adverse health outcomes. 

How noise harms our health 

For decades, research has shown that rates of cardiovascular disease are elevated among people who are exposed to higher levels of noise. 

Davies has been studying this issue for years, and has used population-level health data in Vancouver to show that heart disease rates are higher for people living in noisy neighbourhoods. 

To do that research, he and his team used a map of the noise levels in B.C.'s lower mainland, which was the first of its kind in Canada at the time the study came out in 2012. 

Studies have shown that students experiencing airplane noise at school have lower reading scores. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

Using the same data, Davies found higher diabetes rates as well as reduced birth weight among babies whose mothers lived in noisy areas. 

There has also been research showing that at schools with chronic airplane noise, elementary students had lower reading scores. 

What is safe sound? 

The World Health Organization recommends that average noise exposure to road traffic should be no louder than 53 decibels during the day, and no more than 45 decibels at night. 

For reference, 53 decibels is about the noise level of a quiet residential street. 

As the traffic noise outside your window gets louder, your risk of ischemic heart disease goes up, said Oiamo, because your body's response to noise can cause elevated levels of stress hormones and an increased heart rate. 

A fairly busy road has an average decibel level of 61, he said. 

"Most of us living anywhere near anything other than a very quiet side street will have that type of noise level," Oiamo said. 

Noise is affected by urban planning 

For Walker, noise isn't just a public health concern — it's also an environmental justice issue.

At Brown University, she runs a lab where she works with people trying to deal with noise in their neighbourhoods. 

Walker said the noise issues she sees are the result of poor urban planning practices, such as building neighbourhoods near airports, industrial activities or major highways. 

Noise is often a community issue, and it can take a lot of time and energy to find solutions, says Erica Walker, assistant professor of epidemiology at Brown University. In this photo from 2021, people are calling for a sound barrier wall along Highway 20 in Beaconsfield, Quebec. (CBC / Radio-Canada)

The communities she works with are usually home to lower-income people who are often racialized. 

"We decide that we will dump our acoustical trash in those communities where they just don't have the power to organize and fight back," Walker said. 

"Do we need to put condominiums or apartment houses next to a highway? Do we need to put schools next to a highway?"

WATCH / The inequalities of noise pollution: 

Low-income communities have fewer resources to fight noise pollution, so the ‘powers-that-be’ dump all of their acoustical garbage right at their front door, leading to 'acoustic inequity.'

The acoustical soundscape — and not just the landscape — needs to be considered in planning decisions, said Walker.

Tor Oiamo in Toronto has a similar perspective. 

"You're not going to eliminate cars. You're not going to eliminate transportation sound. But we can do a better job of keeping those away from people," he said. 

How can we reduce the noise around us? 

For many of us, reducing noise in our environments can be cost-prohibitive, such as moving to a quieter neighbourhood or soundproofing our homes. 

If you have the option, consider which side of the home your bedroom is on, said Davies.

"Noise varies dramatically from one side of the house to another, so you could move to a quieter part of the house to sleep," he said. 

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Experts also recommend informing yourself about the noise around you by measuring the decibel levels on your phone. 

For iPhone users, Oimao recommends an app developed by NIOSH, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The app isn't available for Android, but there are other noise apps users can download. 

Other than that, and stocking up on earplugs, experts say fighting back against noise requires larger policy solutions. 

"I've been working with communities that have been fighting over issues for many years with no moving of the needle," said Walker. 

Her advice? 

"Collect data, show up when your voice is needed, but give input." 

 

This project to be one of most significant historical projects completed in last 30 years - Georgian PM

 1 July 2023 12:33 (UTC+04:00)

The results of the preliminary study on the project for laying an underwater power transmission line in the Black Sea, which aims to deliver green energy from Azerbaijan to Europe, will be known in September, Georgia's Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced, while speaking at the Parliament, Azernews reports.

"This project has full support from the European Union, major financial institutions, and we expect it to be one of the most significant historical projects completed in the last 30 years," said Garibashvili.

He noted that the project is currently in the study phase, with active work being carried out.

"We expect that the research results will be available in September, and after that, we will move on to the second phase," said the PM.

Recall that Azerbaijan, Georgia, Hungary, and Romania signed an agreement in Bucharest on December 17, 2022 to build an underwater electric cable under the Black Sea. The project could become a new power source for the European Union. The 1,100-kilometer cable from Azerbaijan to Romania will provide Azerbaijani energy for the rest of the continent. The project could be completed within three to four years.

China Looms Large Over Thailand's Move to Reengage With Myanmar Junta

July 01, 2023 
Wasamon Audjarint

Bangkok Thailand

WASHINGTON - A recent attempt by Thailand to reengage with Myanmar's junta appears to be aimed at creating an alignment with China, a close ally of the military regime in Myanmar, analysts said.

On June 19, the outgoing Thai government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former general who seized power in a 2014 military coup, hosted informal talks for foreign ministers from member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Myanmar's foreign minister, Than Swe, appointed by the military junta that seized power in February 2021, was among those who attended. Top diplomats from some other countries in the 10-member regional bloc, such as Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, did not.

In August 2022, foreign ministers from ASEAN member states had agreed to bar Myanmar's ruling generals from the group's meetings until they made progress on the so-called Five-Point Consensus reached in April 2021 to end the violence that engulfed Myanmar after the coup.

Protests, a civil disobedience movement and fighting continue in Myanmar.

As China is currently the second-largest aid provider to the Myanmar junta after Russia, Beijing may want the junta to restore order to stabilize the China-Myanmar border and the pipelines running through Myanmar into China, according to Paul Chambers, lecturer and special adviser on international affairs at Naresuan University in Thailand.

Thailand, which is close to China diplomatically and geographically, has sought to take a similar stance, said Chambers.

"[The] Prayut government would want to include China in any ASEAN negotiations concerning Myanmar," he said.

Sek Sophal, a researcher at the Center for Democracy Promotion at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, said Thailand's military-backed government sees China as a key player in the Myanmar issue.

Myanmar nationals living in Thailand hold a picture of former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a protest marking the two-year anniversary of Myanmar's military takeover, in Bangkok, Thailand, Feb. 1, 2023.

The Thai government has continued to engage with Myanmar on a "business as usual" basis and has done "very little" to put pressure on the junta, Sophal said.

When asked by VOA about the informal talks hosted by Thailand, the Chinese Embassy in Washington said they were not aware of the matter and referred the question to the Chinese Embassy in Myanmar or Thailand instead and received no reply.

The United States called on Myanmar to comply with the Five-Point Consensus.

"As the secretary noted, Burma's military regime has repeatedly carried out horrific, and extensive violence against the people of Burma since the February 2021 military coup," a State Department spokesperson said last week in an email to VOA.

"We recognize and continue to welcome ASEAN's efforts to address the crisis in Burma. Given the regime's lack of progress on the Five-Point Consensus, we call on ASEAN members to hold Burma accountable for its actions," the spokesperson said.

The U.S. Treasury Department last week imposed sanctions on Myanmar's Defense Ministry and two state-owned banks, the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank and the Myanmar Investment and Commercial Bank.

The measure freezes any assets of the sanctioned entities that are in the U.S. or controlled by a U.S. person. It also prohibits all transactions by U.S. persons or entities carried out within or transiting the U.S. that the targeted entities would benefit from.

Chambers said that the U.S. could use its sanctions against Myanmar's junta and work with its ASEAN opponents, such as Indonesia, to slow down Bangkok's current cooperation with the junta.

"The U.S. is aware that Thailand has, since at least 2013, followed a realist policy of hedging or 'creating balance' between Beijing and Washington," he said.

After more than nine years of China-leaning rule under Prayuth, a surprise win by the Move Forward Party in the May 14 elections means Thailand is slated to have a new government installed in July, according to parliamentary procedure.

Move Forward Party leader and prime ministerial candidate Pita Limjaroenrat talks to the media in Bangkok on June 27, 2023.

Pita Limjaroenrat, who leads the left-leaning, progressive Move Forward Party, is the front-runner to become Thailand's next premier. He has been vocal about how he would shift Thailand's foreign policy direction, including its stance on Myanmar.

"A stable Myanmar is a boon to the entire region, but if Myanmar sneezes, Thailand gets sick as well," Pita told VOA's Thai Service during an interview in April.

Educated at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pita is known to have a natural affinity for the U.S.

Analysts, however, say the Thai politician has to walk a fine line to engage constructively with China, given its economic clout and growing influence in Thailand's foreign policy.

"Thailand might have to continue to bandwagon with China for its economic interests," although Thailand has reset its foreign policy to work with the U.S.-led Western countries, said Sophal.

Chambers said a Pita-led Thailand would distance itself from China, work closely with Washington, and cease cooperating with the Myanmar junta.

Jiha Ham and Christy Lee of VOA's Korean Service contributed to this report.

'Is this a new normal? No, it's a new abnormal': Scientists On Climate Change Making Wildfires Worse

The Canadian wildfires and smoke is getting worse with time claims the scientists as they explain that with the rise in temperature of the Earth and heat-trapped gases being spewed into the air, the smoke of the wildfires is reaching far more areas across the globe than it used to.

Canada Wildfires Air Quality Photo: AP/Kiichiro Sato

AP
UPDATED: 01 JUL 2023 1:17 PM

It was a smell that invoked a memory. Both for Emily Kuchlbauer in North Carolina and Ryan Bomba in Chicago. It was smoke from wildfires, the odour of an increasingly hot and occasionally on-fire world.

Kuchlbauer had flashbacks to the surprise of soot coating her car three years ago when she was a recent college graduate in San Diego.

Bomba had deja vu from San Francisco, where the air was so thick with smoke people had to mask up.

They figured they left wildfire worries behind in California, but a Canada that's burning from sea to warming sea brought one of the more visceral effects of climate change home to places that once seemed immune.

“It's been very apocalyptic feeling, because in California the dialogue is like, Oh, it's normal. This is just what happens on the West Coast,' but it's very much not normal here,” Kuchlbauer said.

As Earth's climate continues to change from heat-trapping gases spewed into the air, ever fewer people are out of reach from the billowing and deadly fingers of wildfire smoke, scientists say.

Already wildfires are consuming three times more of the United States and Canada each year than in the 1980s and studies predict fire and smoke to worsen.

While many people exposed to bad air may be asking themselves if this is a “new normal,” several scientists told The Associated Press they specifically reject any such idea because the phrase makes it sound like the world has changed to a new and steady pattern of extreme events.

“Is this a new normal? No, it's a new abnormal,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said.

“It continues to get worse. If we continue to warm the planet, we don't settle into some new state. It's an ever-moving baseline of worse and worse.”

It's so bad that perhaps the term “wildfire” also needs to be rethought, suggested Woodwell Climate Research Centre senior scientist Jennifer Francis.

“We can't really call them wildfires anymore,” Francis said. “To some extent they're just not, they're not wild. They're not natural anymore. We are just making them more likely. We're making them more intense.”

Several scientists told the AP that the problem of smoke and wildfires will progressively worsen until the world significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which has not happened despite years of international negotiations and lofty goals.

Fires in North America are generally getting worse, burning more land.

Even before July, traditionally the busiest fire month for the country, Canada has set a record for most area burned with 31,432 square miles (81,409 square kilometres), which is nearly 15per cent higher than the old record.

“A year like this could happen with or without climate change, but warming temperatures just made it a lot more probable,” said A. Park Williams, a UCLA bioclimatologist who studies fire and water.

“We're seeing, especially across the West, big increases in smoke exposure and reduction in air quality that are attributable to increase in fire activity."

Numerous studies have linked climate change to increases in North American fires because global warming is increasing extreme weather, especially drought and mostly in the West.

As the atmosphere dries, it sucks moisture out of plants, creating more fuel that burns easier, faster and with greater intensity.

Then you add more lightning strikes from more storms, some of which are dry lightning strikes, said Canadian fire scientist Mike Flannigan at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia.

Fire seasons are getting longer, starting earlier and lasting later because of warmer weather, he said.

“We have to learn to live with fire and smoke, that's the new reality,” Flannigan said.

Ronak Bhatia, who moved from California to Illinois for college in 2018 and now lives in Chicago, said at first it seemed like a joke: wildfire smoke following him and his friends from the West Coast.

But if it continues, it will no longer be as funny.

“It makes you think about climate change and also how it essentially could affect, you know, anywhere,” Bhatia said. “It's not just the California problem or Australia problem. It's kind of an everywhere problem.”

Wildfires in the US on average now burn about 12,000 square miles (31,000 square kilometres) yearly, about the size of Maryland.

From 1983 to 1987, when the National Interagency Fire Centre started keeping statistics, only about 3,300 square miles (8,546 square kilometres) burned annually.

During the past five years, including a record low 2020, Canada has averaged 12,279 square miles (31,803 square kilometres) burned, which is three and a half times larger than the 1983 to 1987 average.

The type of fires seen this year in western Canada are in amounts scientists and computer models predicted for the 2030s and 2040s.

And eastern Canada, where it rains more often, wasn't supposed to see occasional fire years like this until the mid 21st century, Flannigan said.

If the Canadian east is burning, that means eventually, and probably sooner than researchers thought, eastern US states will also, Flannigan said.

He and Williams pointed to devastating fires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, that killed 14 people in 2016 during a brief drought in the East.

America burned much more in the past, but that's because people didn't try to stop fires and they were less of a threat.

The West used to have larger and regular fires until the mid-19th century, with more land settlement and then the US government trying to douse every fire after the great 1910 Yellowstone fire, Williams said.

Since about the 1950s, America pretty much got wildfires down to a minimum, but that hasn't been the case since about 2000.

“We thought we had it under control, but we don't,” Williams said. “The climate changed so much that we lost control of it.”

The warmer the Arctic gets and the more snow and ice melt there — the Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of Earth — the differences in the summer between Arctic and mid-latitudes get smaller.

That allows the jet stream of air high above the ground to meander and get stuck, prolonging bouts of bad weather, Mann and Francis said. Other scientists say they are waiting for more evidence on the impact of bouts of stuck weather.

A new study published on June 23 links a stuck weather pattern to reduced North American snow cover in the spring.

For people exposed to nasty air from wildfire smoke, increasing threats to health are part of the new reality.

Wildfires expose about 44 million people per year worldwide to unhealthy air, causing about 677,000 deaths annually with almost 39 per cent of them children, according to a 2021 study out of the United Kingdom.

One study that looked at a dozen years of wildfire smoke exposure in Washington state showed a 1 per cent all-ages increase in the odds of non-traumatic death the same day as the smoke hit the area and 2 per cent for the day after.

Risk of respiratory deaths jumped 14 per cent and even more, 35 per cent, for adults ages 45 to 64.

Based on peer-reviewed studies, the Health Effects Institute estimated that smoke's chief pollutant caused 4 million deaths worldwide and nearly 48,000 deaths in the US in 2019.

The tiny particles making up a main pollutant of wildfire smoke, called PM2.5, are just the right size to embed deep in the lungs and absorb into the blood.

But while their size has garnered attention, their composition also matters, said Kris Ebi, a University of Washington climate and health scientist.

“There is emerging evidence that the toxicity of wildfire smoke PM2.5 is more toxic than what comes out of tailpipes,” Ebi said.

A cascade of health effects may become a growing problem in the wake of wildfires, including downwind from the source, said Ed Avol, professor emeritus at the Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California.

Beyond irritated eyes and scratchy throats, breathing in wildfire smoke also can create long-term issues all over the body.

Avol said those include respiratory effects including asthma and COPD, as well as impacts on heart, brain and kidney function.

“In the longer term, climate change and unfortunately wildfire smoke is not going away because we really haven't done that much quick enough to make a difference,” Avol said, adding that while people can take steps like masking up or using air filters to try to protect themselves, we are ultimately “behind the curve here in terms of responding to it.”

NOT INTERSECTIONALITY

Climate activists disrupt London Pride march to protest corporate sponsorship



LONDON (AP) — The technicolor, dance-filled London Pride march briefly came to a halt Saturday as climate activists blocked a Coca-Cola float to protest event organizers accepting sponsorship money from “high-polluting industries.”

Seven members of the group Just Stop Oil were arrested for public nuisance offenses, police said.

The demonstration was the latest in a long line of actions by the group to stop traffic or disrupt high profile events as part of its campaign to stop new oil and gas projects. Two protesters were arrested earlier in the week after charging onto the pitch of the Ashes Test cricket match at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London.

“These partnerships embarrass the LGBTQ+ community at a time when much of the cultural world is rejecting ties to these toxic industries,” the group said. “High-polluting industries and the banks that fund them now see Pride as a useful vehicle for sanitizing their reputations, waving rainbow flags in one hand whilst accelerating social collapse with the other.”

The protest halted the march that drew tens of thousands of participants. It was the 51st year of the march and the theme was “Never March Alone” in support of transgender and non-binary people.

Related video: Arrests made as Just Stop Oil protesters disrupt London Pride over 'high-polluting' sponsors of parade (PA Media)   Duration 0:54  View on Watch

Metro  Just Stop Oil protesters disrupt London Pride over 'high-polluting' sponsors

1:08

Daily Mail   Just Stop Oil protestors halt London Pride as seven are arrested

5:15

Metro  Thousands attend Pride in London parade

5:01

Will De’Athe-Morris, a spokesperson for Pride in London, the organization that runs the U.K. capital's Pride events, told the BBC he did not want the demonstration to distract from the parade’s message.

“Pride is a protest and pride is a celebration,” De'Athe-Morris said. “Anyone who tries to disrupt that protest and parade is really letting down those people who use this space once a year to come together to celebrate and protest for those rights.”

The Just Stop Oil demonstration began with a person laying down in front of the Coke float as participants danced to the thumping beat of “I Love It” by Icona Pop.

Two other protesters carrying gold-colored fire extinguishers began spraying pink and black paint on the road and the side of the sparkly red float truck. They then sat down with four others in front of the truck and chanted “Just stop oil!”

The protest lasted just over 15 minutes before police carried the protesters from the road. The crowd lining the route cheered when they were carried away and the march resumed.

France: A chronicle of police violence

Oliver Pieper

Riots have gripped France for days after the fatal police shooting of a teenager. It's just the latest in a series of allegedly racist incidents that protesters say the state has failed to adequately address.

Portraits of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore in Clichy-sur-Bois at a community center near Paris

Image: EPA/LUCAS DOLEGA/picture alliance/dpa

In 2022 alone, there were 138 documented incidences of French police firing shots at moving cars, while 13 people died in shootings that took place during traffic stops.

On Tuesday, the police killing of a 17-year-old of Algerian descent named Nahel in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre sparked unrest that has spread has far as Belgium. While not every deadly police action provokes protest, there are a number of allegedly racist killings that stand out in the collective French memory.

October 27, 2005: Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore die in Clichy-sous-Bois

Ten youths are on their way home from a soccer match, among them 15-year-old Bouna Traore and 17-year-old Zyed Benna. Around the same time, police receive an emergency call: A construction shack has been broken into. During the search for the perpetrators, police check the group of youths. Traore, Benna and their friend Muhittin Altun are without identification documents and flee.

Police reinforcements are called and a chase ensues. The three teenagers run into a fenced area, hiding in a power substation, where Traore and Benna die of electrocution. Their friend survives with severe burns.

A recording of a police radio message sparks controversy: "If they go onto the EDF site, I don't give much of a damn about their lives," one of the pursuing officers says when he sees the youths climbing over a fence toward the site, which belongs to the electricity operator EDF. According to the officer's own account, however, he had assumed that they were not there after all.

Mourners in Clichy-sous-Bois Conor following the deaths of the two youths in October 2005

Image: AP Photo/Christophe Ena/picture alliance

The officer and a colleague in the police station who followed the chase by radio are both tried on charges of failing to render assistance. Ten years later, they are acquitted by a criminal court in Rennes in the final instance. The court finds that there was no immediate danger to the teens and that the police officers acted proportionately.

June 17, 2007: Lamine Dieng dies in Belleville

After an argument between Lamine Dieng and his girlfriend, police pick up the 25-year-old and load him into a police van. According to the the human rights organization Amnesty International's reconstruction of the incident, officers force him down with a clamp grip, pressing his body and face to the ground for half an hour, his feet bound together. Dieng loses consciousness and suffocates.

A demonstration in Paris in honor of Lamine Dieng 10 years after his death

Image: Francois Guillot/AFP via Getty

Thirteen years later, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg orders France to pay Dieng's family €145,000 ($158,000) to end proceedings and avoid a new conviction. After the crime, Dieng's sisters founded the first Truth and Justice Committee to clarify what really happened during the incident. Many more such incidents would follow.

June 9, 2009: Ali Ziri dies in Argenteuil

The 69-year-old Algerian is visiting France to buy wedding gifts for his son. He has a few alcoholic beverages with a friend after the shopping trip. When the pair later undergo a police traffic stop, passenger Ali Ziri reportedly resists. Three police officers handcuff the intoxicated pensioner, put him in a police vehicle and restrain him on the way to the station, with his head between his knees.

A sign reads ‘Justice for Ali Ziri' at a demonstration in Paris on June 17, 2017

Image: Francois Guillot/AFP

Ziri vomits several times, falls into a coma and later dies at the hospital. Cause of death: suffocation. Again, the European Court of Human Rights condemns France for "negligence." Ziri's daughter receives €30,000 in moral damages and €7,500 for costs and expenses.
July 19, 2016: Adama Traore dies in Beaumont-sur-Oise

The 24-year-old, whose parents are from Mali, initially escapes the police during a chase, but is ultimately arrested. Three police officers kneel on his back, and according to the arrest report, Adama Traore says he can't breathe. Police call an ambulance, but Traore is dead by the time it arrives.

The case of Adama Traore had many similarities to the later police killing of George Floyd in the US

Image: Jerome Gilles/NurPhoto/picture alliance

In this case, there are no witnesses or video recordings. The exact cause of death is disputed, with a court citing previous illness. The autopsy commissioned by Traore's family concludes that he suffocated due to external force.

January 5, 2020: Cedric Chouviat dies in Paris

The 42-year-old food delivery driver is on his scooter near the Eiffel Tower when police stop him for allegedly talking on the phone while driving. The routine check spirals out of control, with the four officers and Cedric Chouviat get into a shouting match that ends in him being forced face down to the ground while still wearing his helmet.

In January 2021, demonstrators marked the one-year anniversary of Cedric Chouviat's death in police custody

Image: PHOTOPQR/LE PARISIEN/Olivier Corsan/picture alliance

The father of five shouts "I'm suffocating!" seven times, video and audio recordings show. But the officers do not react, and Chouviat loses consciousness and dies 48 hours later in the hospital. Autopsy result: death due to a laryngeal hernia.

The article originally appeared in German.

 

Oliver Pieper Reporter on German politics and society, as well as South American affairs.

FRANCE
‘We are seen as less human.’ Inside Marseille’s quartiers that the police have abandoned

Story by Mark Townsend in Marseille • The Guardian

Photograph: Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images

Inside, Emmanuel Macron was sharing a typically polished vision of a rejuvenated, safer Marseille. Yet it was outside the spruced-up gym in the impoverished Busserine district - tensions building on the hottest day of the year – where the real story was playing out.

Little more than 12 hours before the police killing of a 17-year-old boy 500 miles north in Nanterre would convulse the country, scores of officers clutching assault rifles and bulletproof riot shields clashed with teenagers of north African descent, trading insults as officers profiled potential troublemakers.

Wassida Kessaci had decided not to join the crowd monitoring the French president’s trip to Marseille last week. Partly because Macron disappointed her; partly because she had been visiting Busserine too often of late.

Most recently on 24 April, when she met a mother whose teenage son was shot in the head as he sat on a sofa, metres from where the French president now held court. Weeks earlier, she comforted another mother of a young man whose blackened body was found in the locked boot of a torched car. “All this in the same place where Macron was speaking,” she said.

As evening approached on Monday, Macron continued with his vision for the quartiers nord, the deprived swath of the city that contained Busserine. Outside, the jostling continued. More officers arrived.

Within the gym, Kessaci’s 19-year-old French-Algerian son, Amine, asked Macron if he intended to reintroduce community policing to repair the broken relationship between Marseille’s north African heritage community and an increasingly aloof, militarised force.

Amine spoke with urgency, reflecting the anguish he had encountered since Macron last came to Marseille in 2021.

Since then Amine and his mother had visited 55 grief-stricken families from the quartiers nord, each having lost a child to the city’s unrelenting drug wars. Both knew the tempo of killings and the levels of brutality were accelerating. But Macron offered little in response. “He didn’t really answer,” said Amine.

The president of France could say he had ventured into the notorious cités – council estates – that dominate the north of Marseille, but everyone knew he hadn’t, at least not properly.


French president Emmanuel Macron speaks during a public meeting with residents in the Busserine district of Marseille on Friday.

 Photograph: Reuters© Provided by The Guardian

Instead, Busserine’s residents joked about the mammoth police presence required to guarantee Macron’s safety.

“So that’s where all the police are hiding. How many does one man need?” shouted Hamid, 18.

The presidential convoy would never learn firsthand that just hundreds of metres away, parts of the Marseille road network were no longer governed by the state. Access routes to nearby estates were shut by roadblocks controlled by drug gangs, who decided who came and went – pockets of France’s second city surrendered to traffickers.

As questions mount over levels of racial profiling by French police in the wake of the shooting in Nanterre, Marseille serves as a warning of what happens when the police lose control – or abandon – a community.

More broadly, the port is seen as a litmus test for France; if its most multicultural city can foster vast Muslim enclaves viewed with broad suspicion or hostility by the police, then what hope is there elsewhere?

For many, it came as little surprise that the southern port city witnessed some of the fiercest rioting on Friday night, when 88 people were arrested, a gun shop looted and police engaged in running battles with what they called “violent groups”.

Fearing the worst is yet to come, Marseille’s mayor has urged the government to immediately send more troops to help retain control.

Speaking hours after the video first began circulating of the shooting of the teenager named as Nahel M in a Paris suburb on Tuesday, Amine said the police had already lost all credibility among the residents of Marseille’s cités.

Heavily armed officers occasionally poured into the estates in huge numbers, said Amine, before rapidly retreating, having dished out fines to passersby.

“They come for a few hours and fine everybody for lack of insurance or stupid things. Yet if they put 20 police all day and night in front of the traffickers, it would stop the violence.”

Joseph Downing, a senior lecturer in politics and international relations, who grew up on a London council estate and lives in Marseille, where he has studied the relationship between the cités and police, said it is impossible for Britons to grasp how awful the estates are.

“In terms of the disrepair of the housing stock, the absence of the state – the absence of anybody – we can’t comprehend it’s possible.

“The police are even scared to go there – for us this is unthinkable. These places are literally outside the state. If you call the police as a resident, they will not come.”

Setting Marseille slightly apart from other French cities is the proliferation of Kalashnikovs owned by gangs within the estates, a deadly variable that Downing said offers another excuse for police to swerve such places.

Rafiq, another teenage Busserine resident, added: “They are happy for Arabs to kill one another – for the police, it’s one less Arab.”

The bottom line is that almost two years since Macron last visited Marseille and unveiled a grand plan to improve conditions in the cités, relations with the police and security have both deteriorated dramatically.

Last year a record 32 people were killed in score-settling by the city’s drug gangs. Already this year there have been 23 murders, with more than 50 wounded.

Amine, like everyone else in the quartiers nord, is in no doubt the violence has never been worse.

“It’s become very violent. It’s happening near schools; we have collateral victims all the time – the victims are getting younger.”

Standing like monoliths in front of the Provençal hills that encircle Marseille, the brutalist tower blocks of Frais Vallon constitute its biggest and arguably grimmest cité.

Here, about 7,000 people – average age 36 and mostly of Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian descent – are crammed into a slither of land hemmed in by motorways.

By Tuesday evening, most of them had seen the footage of Nahel M, who came from a similar high-rise estate in Nanterre, being shot at point-blank range.

Groups of teenagers – known as choufs, the Arabic word for “watchman”, and the lowest rung of gang hierarchy – became animated as they stared at their phones.

By the nearby stairwell of a decrepit 23-storey tower block, a group of “soldiers” stood by one of Frais Vallon’s brazen selling points for cannabis and cocaine. Somewhere inside were the “managers”, who organise the supply of drugs and stash the AK-47 assault rifles.

Above them, invisible, stand the grands barons, stationed in north Africa, occasionally the UK and increasingly Dubai.

The police were nowhere to be seen. Near the selling point, one of Frais Vallon’s first-ever residents approached.uartie

Abdi arrived in 1961 to be reassured her concrete high-rise was temporary accommodation. “It was a place to crash, not a place where I thought I’d be 60 years later,” she said. The 74-year-old accused the state of forgetting about Frais Vallon, allowing it to be taken over by drug cartels.

For the first time since arriving, Abdi wants to return to Tunisia. “It’s become too dangerous. I need to leave and take my 19-year-old grandson to save him,” she said

Amine was born in Frais-Vallon in 2004 and watched as the drugs networks became the dominant employer on the quartiers nord, where youth unemployment can reach 70%.

Out of his former classmates, the teenager can name about 50 who work for the drug gangs. Another 10 are in prison.

Amine beckoned the Observer deeper into the estate, stepping over a dead rat on the pavement, towards the second-floor flat where he grew up. “There,” he said, pointing to a boarded-up window. “That was once the police station on our block, holding 10 officers who everybody knew. Police would play with the children, know who was up to no good, who had begun keeping bad company.”

Amine said it was no surprise that the station’s closure more than 10 years ago coincided with the rapid expansion of Frais Vallon’s organised criminals.

“The police allowed the small-time players to grow bigger, to become international,” said Amine.

The vacuum of effective policing has also allowed a twisted cycle of brutality to fester; ferocious violence that Amine knows too well.

On 29 December 2020 his brother disappeared. For six days his mother scoured the city until tipped off that the 21-year-old would not be coming home.

Brahim Kessaci was found beside another body in the boot of a burned- out car on a road heading out of the city. A third body had been sliced into pieces with a chainsaw and images sent to his traumatised father.

“Without realising, Brahim became friends with someone who was a target. I had brought my kids up to be trusting. I regret that,” said Wassida Kessaci.

Several months before his brother’s death, Amine had set up Association Conscience, a grassroots organisation that demanded better opportunities for young people in the quartiers nord.

His brother’s death shifted its focus to tackling what lay behind Marseille’s soaring youth violence. For the last two years, he has visited dozens of grieving families of victims, most of them barely out of school.

“When I hear about a shooting, I go to give my condolences. At first, it was really hard, but now it’s so frequent, sometimes three times a week. It’s become so normal. I don’t even cry any more.”Often Kessaci volunteers to help inconsolable mothers deal with their loss.

“At the moment I have five who refuse to leave their house,” she said. One has the dried blood of her teenage son on her doorstep, murdered moments after they ate couscous together.

Even the mere mention of the word “barbecue”, or the waft of sizzling meat on a warm evening, can prompt suicidal thoughts for some of the mothers. A “Marseille barbecue” refers to a common gangland killing, where, like Kessaci’s son Brahim, a target is burned, sometimes alive, inside a vehicle.

“Hearing the word ‘barbecue’ causes huge trauma to mothers, some turn to alcohol or drugs. One received a Snapchat of her son’s burned remains.” Each killing leads inevitably to another.

Another grieving mother, Rahem Fana, said the boy who murdered her only son was himself killed a fortnight later.“Nobody knows why, what happened,” she said, blinking back tears. “I no longer have a taste for life. It’s not possible to overcome this pain.”

Fana’s son was stabbed to death on 26 July 2022 by a boy, known to the police, who was jealous of the girl he had dated since he was 14. The police did nothing. Eventually, Kessaci contacted them to at least look into the killing, but still received no response.

Fana said: “They made me feel unworthy. Because I am Muslim, I feel judged, treated differently, less deserving.” Kessaci nodded and added: “We are seen as less human.”

On Friday the United Nations said the unrest sweeping France was an opportunity for its police to “address deep issues of racism”.

Back in Frais Vallon, it was evident that treating its residents as second-class citizens guaranteed a stead supply of young recruits for the trafficking networks.

A battered car was waved down by Amine; inside was a good friend of his murdered brother. “Most of us really want to work,” said the friend. “I’ve applied for so many jobs, even a street cleaner, but was rejected because of my address and because of my [Arabic] name.

“I know friends who receive three rejections and just join the trafficking gangs. It’s dangerous, you might die, but people need something.”

Downing said that another attraction is that in such a discriminatory society, the criminal underworld of Marseille operates as a comparative meritocracy. “Unlike French society that will look down on you for being an Arab, or black, in the criminal world, as long as you’re a decent thief, you’re a decent thief,” he said.

When Amine questioned Macron last week, the teenager might have expected a better response. After all, during the president’s previous trip, Macron was so impressed with the teenager’s determination to help the quartiers nord that the president subsequently invited him to the Élysée Palace to discuss ideas.

Aged just 17 - the same age as Nahel M when shot by French police last week - Amine also received condolences over the death of his brother from Macron’s wife, Brigitte.

His mother also got the five-star treatment during Macron’s previous trip to the port.

“He took my hand and congratulated me for Amine,” she said, noting the irony of someone who had survived decades in the quartiers nord being allocated a bodyguard during the visit.

This time around, she was in no rush to see him. Macron, she said, had indicated their organisation would receive €30,000 but only €10,000 materialised.

His promise to send hundreds of elite police to Marseille did happen, though with apparent little impact. As the failure to adequately police the cités unfolded, trust with their residents collapsed and the flow of vital intelligence to officers dwindled to a trickle.

Within the high-density estates, everybody knows their neighbour. In Marseille, every grieving mother quickly learns who killed their child.

“Every time we know. All the families even know where the weapons are hidden. If the police wanted to solve the killings, they could – the simple fact is they don’t,” said Kessaci .

The lack of police intervention means that bereaved families remain living in the same building as the men they know murdered their son. So far, Amine’s organisation has managed to move 20 mourning families from tower blocks where they would routinely bump into the people who killed their brother or son.

In Brahim’s case, his mother said that only a multitude of tip-offs from the cités encouraged police to act - placing bugs in the cars of the suspected killers, which quickly recorded a confession.

Last week, Amine also asked Macron if he intended to legalise the cannabis trade, a move many feel would promptly destabilise the ever-powerful drug gangs.

Many of Marseille’s victims of violence are killed over the cannabis in a country that is the biggest consumer of the drug in Europe, despite having some of its most repressive laws.

“He didn’t want to talk about cannabis legalisation. But it’s a basic topic that we need to discuss. We’ve lost the war against cannabis – it’s time to legalise it,” said Amine.

Many in the cités view Amine as a mayor of Marseille in waiting. He has stiff competition. Macron has already suggested he would like to one day take the top job in France’s second city. For now, he must contend with nationwide riots that expose a France fractured on race and religion.

For Amine, the events of last week underline his call for community policing and the hope that, at some stage, teenagers such as himself and Nahel M are viewed without fear or prejudice.

Violent protests challenge French view on race

Story by Joshua Berlinger • Yesterday 

What does it mean to be French?

It’s been more than 1,500 years since the first French kingdom was founded; more than 480 years since French became the state’s official language; more than 200 years since the French Revolution; and more than 60 years since the establishment of the Fifth Republic.

Yet an answer to the question of how to define French identity remains a point of contention that helps to explain why, three days after a 17-year-old boy was shot to death by a French police officer, burnt-out cars, shattered glass windows and other signs of furor surround the makeshift memorial where the teen took some of his last breaths.

Though the violence has been committed by a small number of protesters, anger and frustration has been palpable among many young people of color who live in France’s multiethnic suburbs, who believe race was a factor in the death of Nahel, who was reportedly of Algerian descent.

Activists have long claimed that police treat French people of color differently than their White peers, pointing to cases like that of Adama Traore, a black man who died of asphyxiation while handcuffed in 2016. According to a 2017 study by one independent human rights group, young men perceived as Black and Arab are 20 times more likely to be stopped by police than their peers.

The state, however, rebuts claims that racism in the police force is a problem. And a longstanding ideal that the state is colorblind and all citizens are French first has made it particularly difficult to convince government officials to broach the possibility that implicit biases may play a part in the treatment of France’s ethnic minorities.

“Many young people in the suburbs, in the poorest neighborhoods, those whose parents in Paris are immigrants (from) Africa, the Caribbean and also Asia, know they are the first target of police brutality,” journalist and activist Rokhaya Diallo told CNN.

“Many of them express concerns about racism, about police brutality – it’s something that really comes to them at an early age.”

A colorblind republic

Official French philosophy is that all citizens are French first and that the state must resolutely avoid differentiating between them, even to the point that civil servants must refrain from wearing religious symbols.

That vigorous adherence to equality often prevents the government from doing anything that would appear to categorize French citizens based on race, including collecting statistics.

“We have this mythology of the Republic, a colorblind Republic … an egalitarian society where you don’t judge people based on their religion or skin color,” said Daniele Obono, a French lawmaker from the far-left France Unbowed party. “But at the same time, there’s a big gap between our ideals and the reality.”

Those idealistic virtues clash with the reality of race relations in France’s post-colonial 21st century society, a melting pot of diverse communities, many of whose families trace their roots back to former French colonies.

“Foreignness” is often something that is seen as inherited by blood, explained Mame-Fatou Niang, the director for the Center for Black European Studies & the Atlantic at Carnegie Mellon University.

“We’re talking people who have been in France for 100 years or half a century, but are still considered foreigners, strangers foreign to France, even though they are French citizens,” she said.

Racism itself is often treated as a foreign concept in France, so much so that the French language often doesn’t have its own words to discuss race-related issues, Niang pointed out.

French people often use anglicisms to address issues of race rather than the French equivalent – for example, Black people are referred to as “Black” rather than “noire,” the French word for black – despite the aversion of the francophone world to the rising usage of English in French culture.

“It’s akin to someone being sick, having cancer and asking his doctor to remove the word cancer from the dictionary,” said Niang. “We have to accept that we’re sick. We have to accept that this disease of racism is not exclusive to the United States.”

‘This is not about disenfranchised neighborhoods’

Several French officials have so far rejected the idea that racism was at play in Nahel’s death.

An Elysee spokesperson on Friday emphasized that this was an “individual act” that does not represent the police at large. The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that “any accusation of systemic racism or discrimination by the police in France is totally unfounded.”

“France, and its police forces, fight with determination against racism and all forms of discrimination. There can be no doubt about this commitment,” the ministry said.

“This is not the revolt of neighborhoods, this is not about disenfranchised neighborhoods,” the Elysee spokesperson said. “These are the acts of a delinquent minority.”

Suburbs like Nanterre, where Nahel was shot, have historically been home to more immigrants and face higher unemployment rates than city centers. A quarter of the population of Nanterre, the Paris suburb where Nahel lived and was killed, was made up of immigrants as of 2018, the latest years figures are available. Unemployment there among those 15-24 years old in Nanterre was 23.1% as of 2020.


Workers clear a street filled with charred cars in Nanterre, France, on Friday. 

- Joshua Berlinger/CNN© Provided by CNN

To what extent the government will be able to stymie the unrest is unclear. Support for Macron and his ministers has plummeted since they pushed through extremely unpopular pension reforms that were divisive enough that the government felt it necessary to launch a 100-day plan to heal and unite the country.

Nahel’s mother has suggested that race did play a part in her son’s death, though she has also said she does not blame the entire police force – just “the one who took my son’s life.”

“He saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life,” she said.

CNN’s Dalal Mawad and Joseph Ataman contributed to this report.