Unrest sparked by an incident in which a motorcyclist hit a police car in a Paris suburb has been reported across France, highlighting growing tensions caused by a strict lockdown.
In a fourth night of violence and vandalism, a primary school was on Tuesday evening partially destroyed by a fire in a northwest suburb of Paris and police in another district said that fireworks had been aimed at them.
In Toulouse, several garbage cans and vehicles were set alight, and incidents were also reported in Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Versailles and Lyon.
The unrest spread after a trail motorbike ridden at speed on Saturday last week by a man not wearing a helmet hit the door of a police car, which was stopped at a red light in the suburb of Villeneuve-la-Garenne.
Witnesses said that an officer had deliberately opened the door, which the police denied.
Investigations have begun.
The 30-year-old unnamed motorcyclist who sustained a broken leg on Tuesday evening issued a plea for calm to those on the streets through his lawyer.
“I understand that you’ve smashed up cars. I ask you to go home and calm down,” he said in a video filmed in a hospital.
French lawmaker Stephane Peu, who representse the Seine-Saint-Denis area outside of Paris — home to some of France’s most run-down outer-city housing projects — on Wednesday told a legislative committee: “Compared to what sadly happens far too often and too easily, the number of people involved and the seriousness of the incidents is still quite low.”
The Paris police prefecture has banned the purchase or possession of fireworks in the city and three surrounding departments until Monday next week.
In the Rillieux-la-Pape commune of Lyon, a group of 30 young people on Monday evening destroyed a bus stop, burned garbage cans, smashed the windshields of several cars and damaged the entrance of the primary school, reportedly shouting: “That’s for Villeneuve-la-Garenne.”
Describing the young people as “cretins, idiots and imbeciles,” Rillieux-la-Pape Mayor Alexandre Vincendet said: “They wouldn’t even know where to find Villeneuve-la-Garenne on a map... It’s just an excuse to smash things up.”
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant
‘TERRORISM’: Israel slammed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, saying that he has revealed his ‘true face’ by embracing the ‘rapists and murderers of Hamas’ Hamas yesterday announced that it had signed an agreement in Beijing with other Palestinian organizations, including Fatah, to work together for “national unity,” with China describing it as a deal to rule Gaza together once the war ends. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), who hosted senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzuk, Fatah envoy Mahmud al-Aloul and emissaries from 12 other Palestinian groups, said they had agreed to set up an “interim national reconciliation government” to govern post-war Gaza. “Today we sign an agreement for national unity and we say that the path to completing this journey is national
Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge would soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China. The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time. However, its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers. India’s military brass say the strategic benefits