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Glance around France: US banking giant to invest $30 million in deprived Paris suburbs

Our round-up of stories from around France this Wednesday includes a US banking giant investing $30 million in deprived Paris suburbs, award nominations in Dijon and volunteers being attacked in Cannes.

Published: 7 November 2018 17:34 CET
Glance around France: US banking giant to invest $30 million in deprived Paris suburbs
Saint Denis is one of the impoverished areas outside Paris set to benefit from a $30 million fund from JP Morgan. Photo: Myrabella/Wikicommons
JP Morgan to invest $30 million in impoverished areas around Paris
 
JP Morgan, the biggest US bank by assets, has said that it has selected impoverished areas around Paris as the first foreign focus of an urban economic development strategy it started four years ago in Detroit, according to a report in Reuters. 
 
The report said that the bank will contribute $30 million over five years to programs to teach job skills and expand small businesses in Saint Denis and other places with high unemployment and poverty, JPMorgan said in a statement provided to Reuters.
 
Located north of Paris, Saint Denis has the highest poverty and crime rates in France. Dotted with large social housing projects, the area is separated from wealthy Paris only by an extremely congested highway circling the city. The area was in the center of the riots that devastated suburbs all over France a decade ago.
 
 
Dijon nominated for World Smart City Award
 
The city of Dijon’s ‘On Dijon’ project has made it on to the shortlist for the World Smart City Award.
 
One of seven global finalists, ‘On Dijon’ will connect services such as road signs, street lighting and transport into one online network.
 
The project also features an app which the city’s inhabitants can use to instantly report issues that might affect the network such as road accidents, signal failures, rubbish pile-ups and broken street lamps.
 
The winner of the World Smart City Award will be announces at the Smart City Expo World Congress on November 14th in Barcelona.
 
 
 
Homeless people attack volunteers in Cannes
 
Volunteers from the humanitarian emergency services SamuSocial were insulted and had their vehicles tagged as they were delivering food and drink to the homeless in Cannes.
 
Their attackers were the homeless themselves, who were dissatisfied with being given dehydrated coffee and cold sandwiches and pastries instead of hot food.
 
Volunteers claim that the homeless could have gone to a night shelter for hot food and have reported the incident to the police.
 
 
 
Violent Paris Saint-Germain supporters jailed in Troyes
 
A total of 13 PSG supporters known as the ‘K-Soce Team’ have been found guilty of violent affray following clashes with Ligue 1 rivals Reims, which occurred in a bar in April 2016.
 
Sentences for the guilty football fans vary from 6 month suspended terms to 10 months in jail, but all have been fined 500 euros and been banned from entering the Aube department in north eastern France for two years. 
 
Paris looks into cleaning up dirty Metro air 
 
No doubt there will be some relieved commuters out there. 
 
The French capital is on the hunt for ways of purifying the air in its underground Metro and RER stations. 
 
Several experiments have been launched to find a suitable solution to the air problem which will be carried out by five companies. 
 
Each of these companies will test a different technique and AirParif, the air quality monitoring association in the greater Paris region of Ile-de-France, will evaluate them at the end of 2019, with the hope of finding a solution for the entire network.
 
And they certainly need to. 
 
According to a report that came out in 2017 the air quality on the Paris Metro is ten times worse than in the streets above.
 

 
 
 

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WEATHER

IN PICTURES: French town hit by freak June hailstorm

A French town has been hit by a freak hailstorm that left locals clearing drifts of ice in the streets with shovels and snow ploughs.

Published: 29 June 2021 16:44 CEST
IN PICTURES: French town hit by freak June hailstorm
Photo: Sapeurs-pompiers des Vosges

The hail struck the town of Plombières-les-Bains in the Vosges mountains on Tuesday morning.

Romain Munier, head of communications for the local emergency services, told French media: “There were up to 60 centimetres of accumulated hail” while in the wider area, “up to 10 millimetres of water accumulated in six minutes”.

https://twitter.com/timbaland57/status/1409881345741012994

Locals were pictured clearing the street of ice with shovels and snow ploughs after the storm passed and the fire and rescue crews for the Vosges area said they had received 56 callouts in total.

Large areas of France are on weather alert for storms until Thursday, as a ‘cold drop’ passes over the country leading to extremely unsettled weather.

In most areas, however, the storms will be confined to heavy rain and thunder.

In neighbouring Switzerland, the Swiss news agency ATS reported giant hailstones up to seven centimetres wide in the canton of Lucerne.

In the canton of Fribourg, the police and fire brigade were called 300 times, including to rescue a class of 16 children and two adults caught in the hail.

Six of the children and one adult were taken to hospital.

At least five people were injured in the German-speaking Swiss cantons, including a cyclist who suffered head injuries from hailstones, according to ATS, whilst in Germany severe flooding has hit parts of the country including Stuttgart.

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