PRESS REVIEW – Monday, June 30: The heatwave across Europe is making international headlines, with Spain and Portugal recording record temperatures. Next, settler violence is escalating amid what Haaretz calls a "West Bank pogrom". Also, The Washington Post tells the bittersweet story of a seven-year-old girl's last midsummer Christmas. Finally, we test if our anchor can differentiate an AI-generated video from a real one.
The sizzling heatwave is making headlines across Europe. The Financial Times reports that Spain, Greece, Italy, France, Portugal and the UK have all been experiencing "unusually high temperatures" in recent days. British daily The Guardian reports that, in the UK, the heatwave could result in the "hottest ever start to Wimbledon". By Tuesday, temperatures in some parts of England are expected to reach 35°C. France isn't being spared from the heat. French daily Courrier Picard reports that 84 departments have been placed under orange heatwave alert. French left-wing Libération’s headline reads “Heatwave: fire at home”. The paper reports from Aubervilliers – a northern suburb of Paris – where many people live in concrete buildings that retain heat and aren’t equipped with air conditioning. Some apartments can reach 40°C inside when it's 30°C outside. Further south, Portuguese paper Diario de Noticias writes that Portugal reached a new heat record yesterday: 46.6°C was recorded in the region of Evora, in the centre of the country. That's the highest temperature ever recorded in Portugal in the month of June. A record was also broken in Spain, where the mercury reached 46°C in El Granado, Andalusia, the Spanish daily El Pais reports. That's almost one degree more than the previous record set in 1965.
We turn next to the West Bank, where violence has been escalating in the past few days. Last week, settlers set fire to Palestinian property and over the weekend, the IDF said they had detained Israeli settlers in the occupied territory after they attacked security forces. Israeli left-wing paper Haaretz reports that settlers rioted and attempted to break into an army base, after a 14-year-old Israeli was shot, possibly by the IDF. The officer involved said there was another riot, in which rocks were thrown at his vehicle. He shot into the air, thinking the rioters were Palestinian. Right-wing Israeli paper The Jerusalem Post writes that "Violent Jewish settlers are a moral and strategic liability". It says the last thing the country needs, amid the war with Iran and in Gaza, is IDF soldiers having to fight "Jewish extremists". Haaretz says that a "Quiet, West Bank pogrom" is in progress. The paper says that the condemnation of the attacks has been "very weak" and that it was only a matter of time before the settlers would start attacking Israeli soldiers "who prevent them from carrying out their wicked schemes against Palestinians".
Turning to the US, we bring you a bittersweet story reported by The Washington Post. A community in the DC region decorated dozens of houses for Christmas in the middle of summer. They did it to put a smile on the face of a little girl with terminal cancer who might not make it to December. The paper writes that in a period filled with global and local crises, the community felt grateful "to do something tangible" and help the family and little Kasey "find a moment of happiness in the face of a certain tragedy". And it certainly worked: she even got to meet Santa.
Finally, as artificial intelligence keeps progressing, it's getting almost impossible to differentiate an AI-generated video from a real one. The New York Times has generated several AI videos and put them together with real ones to create an online quiz. We test the skills of our presenter.
You can catch our press review every morning on France 24 at 7:20am and 9:20am (Paris time), from Monday to Friday.
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