Palestinian militants fight off with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Jenin on July 3. Five Palestinians were killed and dozens injured as part of a large-scale Israeli air-and-land operation in the area.
👋 Aniin!*
Welcome to Monday, where at least five are killed as Israel launches a large-scale operation in the West Bank, China sees hottest six months on record, and a Filipino advertising agency gets caught using videos from foreign countries. Meanwhile, we look at the origins of France’s particular “tradition” of car burning.
[*Ojibwe, Canada]
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🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israel launches military operation against Palestinian camp: At least five people have been killed Monday after the Israeli army launched a major military operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank against "terrorist infrastructure." The Jenin camp, which has existed since the 1950s, is home to around 14,000 people.
• Ukrainian children’s fate: Russia has responded to international accusations of Ukrainian children being illegally deported, with Russian Member of Parliament Grigory Karasin saying that “700,000 children have found refuge with us, fleeing the bombing and shelling from the conflict areas in Ukraine.” Meanwhile, the Hague has opened an international probe to investigate the ‘Crime of Aggression’ associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Fewer arrests in France as rioting continues: Rioting in the outskirts of major French cities continued for a fifth night, with some 300 cars torched. Police note what appears to be a gradual decrease in violence, with 157 arrests overnight, compared to some 700 arrests the night before and more than 1,300 on Friday. The upheaval began after a teenager was shot dead by the police during a traffic stop on Tuesday.
• Illness rampant as fighting reignites in Sudan:A suspected measles outbreak at displacement camps in Sudan’s White Nile state has killed at least 13 children, reports Doctors Without Borders. This comes as health conditions in Sudan worsen amid fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)in the capital Khartoum.
• Record breaking number of hot days registered in China: Over the past six months, China has recorded its highest number of hot days since record-keeping began, in the latest sign of the worsening climate crisis. Beijing suffered 14 days of record breaking heat since the beginning of the year, only beaten by the capital of Hebei province’s 17 days.
• “Visit Philippines” ad uses foreign footage: A Filipino advertising agency has come under fire after it used foreign stock footage in a promotional video for the country’s new tourism campaign, “Love the Philippines.” The ad used "non-original shots" showing places in Brazil, Indonesia, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
French tightrope walker Nathan Paulin had Barcelona crowds tilt their head back yesterday, as he walked along a cable installed “70 meters above the ground,” as Barcelona-based daily El Periódico reports. The performance, part of the GREC arts festival, saw Paulin walk 350 meters between two buildings on the Plaça Catalunya and Passeig de Gràcia. Last year, the 29-year-old daredevil made headlines by setting a new tightroping world record, completing a 2.2 km-long trip between a crane and the famous Mont Saint-Michel abbey in northern France.
🔢 BY THE NUMBERS
446,915
Tesla surpassed expectations in the second quarter of 2023, announcing on Sunday that it produced 460,211 vehicles and delivered 446,915. The figures are a major improvement from last year, where in the second quarter of 2022, Tesla reported 254,695 deliveries and produced 258,580. The company has set an ambitious target of 1.8 million deliveries this year, as Reuters reports.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Why do French protesters burn so many cars?
Cars burning in French streets has been a familiar site at protests for decades. What explains this particular "tradition" of public lashing out?
🚘 Following a police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel M. during a traffic stop on Tuesday, France has been plunged into the kind of popular uprising and street clashes that we've seen elsewhere in the world against police violence. Police say that at least 2,000 cars were set on fire, and 3,880 other blazes were reported at the protests around the country. It would seem counting the number of burned cars after nights of social unrest has become something of a tradition in France. But why?
🔥 Oddly, the practice is believed to trace back to something of a twisted "celebration." During the late 1990s, a trend of burning cars on New Year's Eve emerged in certain neighborhoods of the eastern city of Strasbourg. The car fires spread across France and acquired an almost ritualistic nature. Two French sociologists, Gérard Mauger and Michel Wieviorka, explained that the phenomenon evolved from a competition between suburb districts, trying to outdo each other in the number of times their district makes the headlines.
📺 The level of attention from the media is of course a factor. The sight of cars engulfed in flames on dimly lit streets captures interest and highlights the collective frustration experienced by a community in response to certain events. “If it's not too shocking to say, it seems to me that this ‘French phenomenon’ is the result of cooperation between the media and the gangs living on the estates,” Mauger told France Info.
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📣 VERBATIM
“To the people breaking things right now, I say: Stop it.”
— Five days after the killing of her 17-year-old grandson by a police officer in the Paris suburb of Nanterre sparked widespread violence across the country, Nahel's grandmother, Nadia, is calling for calm. "We don't want them to break things," She told French news channel BFMTV, adding that she believes "It's a good thing the police are here,” and that vandals and looters “are using Nahel as a pretext.”
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✍️ Newsletter by Yannick Champion-Osselin, Emma Albright, Michelle Courtois and Anne-Sophie Goninet
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