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WHAT THE WORLD

Fed-Up French Mayor Bans Snow From Falling

Icy roads, electricity outages, whiny city folk … There's only one solution to ending winter chaos.

Google Street View screenshot of Cerdon, in eastern France

No snow (for now, and forever?) in Cerdon

Rozena Crossman

No one’s dreaming of a white Christmas in the town of Cerdon, in eastern France. Marc Chavent, mayor of this municipality tucked into the Jura mountains, apparently has a very different dream: So frustrated by the difficulties his community faced due to snowfall that earlier this week, the mayor banned the chilly precipitation altogether.


Wait, what? The bonafide decree (see below) was of course an act of legislative symbolism, drawing attention to very real issues: As French news website actuLyon reports, the town’s electricity often gets cut as soon as it begins to snow, and a few weeks ago Cerdon’s snow removal tractor broke down.

The plague of neo-rurals


“It’s difficult to invest 150,000 euros in new snow removal material,” Chavent wrote in the mandate, blaming the larger French government’s endless red tape for hampering the financial autonomy of small cities and towns.

The mayor also took a swipe at a new part of Cerdon’s population — “neo-rurals who, despite having made the choice to live in a mountainous region during winter, believe themselves to be in downtown Lyon” — who apparently find that snow is cold, wet and slippery.

Well, if Chavent's law can't stop the snow, maybe there's an app for that?

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

That Man In Mariupol: Is Putin Using A Body Double To Avoid Public Appearances?

Putin really is meeting with Xi in Moscow — we know that. But there are credible experts saying that the person who showed up in Mariupol the day before was someone else — the latest report that the Russian president uses a doppelganger for meetings and appearances.

screen grab of Putin in a dark down jacket

During the visit to Mariupol, the Presidential office only released screen grabs of a video

Russian President Press Office/TASS via ZUMA
Anna Akage

Have no doubt, the Vladimir Putin we’re seeing alongside Xi Jinping this week is the real Vladimir Putin. But it’s a question that is being asked after a range of credible experts have accused the Russian president of sending a body double for a high-profile visit this past weekend in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

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Reports and conspiracy theories have circulated in the past about the Russian leader using a stand-in because of health or security issues. But the reaction to the Kremlin leader's trip to Mariupol is the first time that multiple credible sources — including those who’ve spent time with him in the past — have cast doubt on the identity of the man who showed up in the southeastern Ukrainian city that Russia took over last spring after a months-long siege.

Russian opposition politician Gennady Gudkov is among those who confidently claim that a Putin look-alike, or rather one of his look-alikes, was in the Ukrainian city.

"Now that there is a war going on, I don't rule out the possibility that someone strongly resembling or disguised as Putin is playing his role," Gudkov said.

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