Libération

For a long time considered the coldest city in France, Aurillac cooks under a blazing sun.

Worn down by decades of showers, hail and snow, the famous cantaloupe umbrellas now serve as parasols.

July was the driest month ever recorded in Cantal.

The rare storms, like that of Sunday, have hardly changed the situation

: the flow of the rivers has collapsed, with "particularly severe" low water levels, according to the prefecture, which has placed the entire department in drought crisis.

Le Figaro

The water of the Rhine evaporates every day and no precipitation on the horizon in the basin of the river before tomorrow Wednesday,

The barges often only carry a quarter of the usual load, so that they can continue to sail along the increasingly exposed and cracked bed to the shores.

(…) In places, the majestic river seems practically reduced to a modest stream

Le Monde

In the middle of summer 2022, water is lacking everywhere and the small port of the Vosges prefecture looks gray.

The waters are particularly low and the traffic zero, because circulation is no longer possible there.

An exceptional situation

Rivers

: fishermen catastrophized

Sud-Ouest

Sud-Ouest

if rain is announced this week in the Basque country, it will probably not be enough, at first, to raise the level of rivers like the Nivelle which have never been so low

heat stroke on fruits and vegetables

Parisian

The fruit and vegetable stalls will undoubtedly have a pale face at the start of the school year,

The exceptional drought that is raging in France is affecting orchards and vegetable gardens throughout the country.

Without water despite recent rains, and in oppressive heat, peaches, kiwis, apples, pears, carrots, cucumbers, potatoes, turnips, leeks, tomatoes and other lettuces are struggling to develop properly.

Endangering the production of arborists and market gardeners.

Le Parisien

there will be fewer vegetables, that's for sure.

(…) The consumer will have to show restraint.

And get used to higher prices (back to school).

In its Observatory of everyday consumer prices, published at the end of July, the association of consumers Rural Families has already recorded an increase of 11

% over one year in the prices of fruit and vegetables

What meaning would literature have if it did not unfold in the most total freedom

?

None, and an author like Salman Rushdie, who has never stopped writing and living as he wishes, has understood this well, despite threats.

"This attack is aimed at all of us who believe in a pluralist democracy", affirms the American author Siri Hustvedt, also evoking all those who, today in the United States, "are ready to ban books in the name of purity Christian nun".

Because fanaticism and obscurantism are first of all "the paroxysm of hatred, stupidity and ignorance", as the Franco-Moroccan novelist Leïla Slimani puts it so well.

Salman Rushdie will survive, we breathe,

Liberation

but his attack is a reminder that, all over the world, writers and journalists live under police protection and that nothing, ever, should encourage us to get used to it