9 June
France
It’s been a century since a French president was attacked by one of his own citizens, says Maxime Tandonnet in Le Figaro. So it was quite something to see Emmanuel Macron being slapped in the face while meeting crowds in southern France yesterday. In 1899 Emile Loubet was bashed on the head with a cane by a furious royalist.
Covid-19
There’s a temptation to pin Covid failures on populist leaders, says Niall Ferguson in UnHerd. Whether it’s Trump in the US, Boris in Britain, Bolsonaro in Brazil or Modi in India, they’ve been branded “stunningly reckless” and chiefly responsible for their nations’ high death counts.
Masterchef: The Professionals finalist Adam Handling will be plating up “the best of British” for foreign bigwigs at the G7 summit, says the I newspaper. That means offal, herbs foraged from the beach, English caviar and shepherd’s pie. “If it’s good enough for my mum, it’s good enough for the world leaders,” he says.
A wall of bubbles across a river in Amsterdam stops 86% of rubbish that would otherwise flow into the North Sea, says CNN. Plastic waste as large as a windsurf board and as small as 1cm across is blocked by a mechanism that produces bubbles on the bed of the River IJssel. The barrier, which co-inventor Philip Ehrhorn compares to “a Jacuzzi”, lets shipping and wildlife pass through while filtering out waste. About 80% of the 11 million tons of plastic waste that flows into the world’s oceans each year comes from rivers and coastlines.
Specially designed overpasses and underpasses are helping animals safely cross America’s rural roads. This deer bridge in Wyoming has cut car collisions in the area by 90%. Wildlife biologist Nicki Frey was impressed by the success of an overpass in Utah: “We had coyotes hunting on it,” she tells The New York Times. “We had bobcats hunting on it. We have marmots that just come and lounge in the sun, then leave.”
Former Baywatch star David Hasselhoff is encouraging Germans to get vaccinated in a social media video that begins “Armel hoch!” (“Roll your sleeve up”). The 68-year-old continues: “I, David Hasselhoff, am supposedly a hero because of Baywatch and Knight Rider and the Berlin Wall, but I found freedom with vaccination. You can too.” He concludes: “Hoff off.” The actor inspired lasting affection in the country after performing his hit Looking for Freedom in front of 500,000 Germans at the Brandenburg Gate shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Quoted
“Diplomacy is the art of letting somebody else have your way.”
It’s Winston Churchill. This oil painting by our wartime PM was a present to the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis and is being auctioned on 23 June. The value of his art has skyrocketed in recent years – Angelina Jolie flogged a Churchill for $11.5m in March and the Onassis landscape is expected to fetch up to $2m.