In the headlines: Lebanon, one year after the double explosion that ravaged the port of Beirut
Audio 04:17
The periphery of the port area is severely affected.
© RFI / Thibault Lefébure
By: Christophe Paget Follow
14 mins
Publicity
A man holds his young son in his arms. Together, they look at the city, Beirut, through the window of a building destroyed by explosions last year. This is the front page of
La Croix
: "
Lebanon, one year of paralysis
", headlines
the newspaper
, which explains that the explosion has further aggravated poverty already increased tenfold since 2019 by an economic and financial crisis. Rana, in her forties, explains that she had to "
swallow (her) pride in December to register for a food aid program provided by Italy
": a kilo of meat, she explains, "
costs around 60
euros, I barely earn 130 per month
".
Shortly after the explosion, her husband was fired without compensation from the shipping company where he had worked for over 20 years.
In Beirut, “
we have repaired houses, not people
” headlines
Le Monde
: “
Customers are coming back little by little,
explains a barman
, but they come to drink and forget
:
that their salary is no longer worth anything, that their savings are prisoners of the banks and that they cannot travel.
"
In fact, for the buildings destroyed by the explosion, it is not much better: the associations, underlines
Le Figaro
, took over the rehabilitation while the State was unable to do so, "
but too little inhabitants returned to live with them
”. "
When you walk in these neighborhoods
, explains the reporter from
Le Monde
,
you come
across the facades of freshly painted buildings as well as houses that threaten to collapse and piles of rubble still not evacuated
". As for the reconstruction of the port of Beirut, it is "
at a standstill
, underline
Les Echos
,
blocked by the absence of government.
".
In its editorial,
La Croix
regrets that the political class is "
incapable of ensuring the prevalence of the national interest
", and the newspaper points to the regional context and the Lebanese Hezbollah as "
largely responsible for the blockage
".
"
Faced with this obstruction, a similar stubbornness, but in favor of change, must be shown by international actors who are interested in Lebanon
" judges the daily.
Greece in flames
To see, impressive photos of blaze and smoke on the
Figaro
site
. It all started on Saturday July 13, “
it was very windy
,” explains a 17-year-old on vacation in Lampiri, interviewed by
Liberation
,
and suddenly we saw the fire hurtling down the mountain. He surrounded the villages
”. "
I had never seen such a fire,
" confirms Haristos Panagopoulos, 89, in front of the ruins of his house in Ziria.
Liberation
questioned the president of the regional council of Aigion, on which these two villages depend. He sees in the lack of water during the fire "
a consequence of the privatizations carried out in the country during the years of austerity.
": The DEI company"
cut off the electricity to cushion the damage to its network. But suddenly, the water reserves, which are electrically controlled, could no longer function
”.
In Turkey, it is President Erdogan who is criticized: 156 fires broke out in one week, says
Le Monde
, nine are still active.
Nearly 95,000 hectares were devastated by fires in 2021, says
L'Humanité.
Result: eight dead.
The main criticism addressed to President Erdogan is a "
disorderly
management
of means of protection and fire-fighting
", including the dismantling of an organization equipped with water bombers.
"
Taken aback, the government was quick to accuse
, reports
L'Humanité
,
the Kurdistan Workers' Party of being behind its fires
."
"
OSS 117
: SOS, laughter no longer responds
"
Cinema release this Wednesday on French screens: the third OSS 117,
Red Alert in Black Africa
, with Jean Dujardin. The third episode of the adventures of the French secret agent Hubert Bonisseur of the Bath comedy version would be the episode too many, according to
Liberation
and
Le Monde
, for whom "
by wanting to mock political correctness, the secret agent misses his target
". In a way, "
the film sends back to back on one side the machos and whites who believe they are superior, and on the other the activists who are currently leading the feminist struggle and producing a critical reflection on the colonial era
." A message "
that we are entitled to dispute
", writes
The World
.
On
the contrary,
Le Figaro
celebrates in its editorial a "
frank, massive and obviously offbeat humor
", which "
liberates
" by "
breaking with the weighty reign of frail and susceptible minds who take offense at nothing
".
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