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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

26 Olympic fan zones planned for Paris during Games

The French capital is planning to host 26 free fanzones during this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games, City Hall has announced.

People walk down the stairs painted in the colours of the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics in front of the Sacre Coeur Basilica on top of the Montmartre hill in Paris.
People walk down the stairs painted in the colours of the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics in front of the Sacre Coeur Basilica on top of the Montmartre hill in Paris. (Photo by Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP)

Events at Stade de France and further afield will be broadcast on giant screens at the events, which will be open to the public until 11pm, when the day’s activities end, officials said.

A fanzone will be located in every arrondissement of Paris, apart from the seventh. 

READ ALSO Keep-fit in the Louvre: Museum offers Olympic sessions among masterpieces

The forecourt of the Hôtel de Ville, which will be renamed La Terrasse des Jeux after the elevated terrace that will be installed there, will be open from July 14th and the passage of the Olympic flame – when it will accommodate 6,000 people. 

The rest of the time, 2,500 people will be able to enter at the same time to, “follow the events, take part in sports, attend cultural events”, according to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

The three Paris Plages sites – the right bank quays of the Seine, the Bassin de La Villette and the Canal Saint-Martin – will also offer broadcasts, sports and cultural events. Rosa Bonheur’s barge Rosa sur Seine, moored at Les Invalides, will host the “Pride House” fanzone dedicated to LGBTQ+ people and their inclusion in sport.

Following the Opening Ceremony, The Jardins du Trocadéro will be transformed into a ‘Park of Champions’, at which the previous day’s medal winners will be able to meet and greet up to 13,500 fans, Martin Fourcade, president of the Paris 2024 Athletes’ Commission, told AFP.

On medal day itself, the athletes will go to the Parc de La Villette, transformed into a “Park of Nations” with the various national clubs.

In the run-up to the Olympics, an “olympiade des arrondissements” will give Parisians the chance to test themselves at various sports. The mayor also plans to take a dip in the Seine before the Olympics, with a “grand plongeon” to be organised sometime around June 23rd. 

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CRIME

One dead, several injured in Paris suburb shooting

One person was killed and six injured overnight in a gritty northern Paris suburb in a shooting likely linked to drug trafficking, prosecutors and the mayor said Saturday.

One dead, several injured in Paris suburb shooting

The attack in a parking lot near a cultural centre at Sevran, which lies between central Paris and the city’s main airport Charles de Gaulle, took place around 11:45 pm (2145 GMT) Friday, prosecutors said.

Upon arriving on the scene, police found four injured people strewn on the ground. One died soon after and the three others were taken to hospitals in a serious condition, a police source said.

Three more people injured by bullets were later taken to hospital, the source said, adding that two men had arrived in the parking lot in a car and one of them got out and opened fire.

The attackers then fled.

Sevran mayor Stephane Blanchet told AFP “it was clearly a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking.”

“There is a need to establish order and eradicate trafficking,” he said. “Those idiots fired live bullets and did not heed appeals for calm”.

Police have opened an investigation into intentional homicide by an organised gang, they said. No arrests had been by Saturday morning.

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