Security, unemployment insurance: the executive enters the hard way

More police and gendarmes, a prolonged tightening of the conditions of compensation for the unemployed: the executive presents Wednesday two sensitive bills in the Council of Ministers, on which he hopes to rally the right against a left decided to fight. With these two texts, Emmanuel Macron and his Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne enter the hard of this beginning of the five-year term, in the absence of absolute majority, after a first more consensual exercise this summer on the purchasing power, in full explosion of the prices of energy due partly to the war in Ukraine.

The reform of the unemployment insurance is shaping up to be one of the most divisive bills, along with the 2023 budget, while waiting for the highly inflammatory pension reform, which the head of state said he was aiming for to come into force next summer.

The quality of the air threatened by the "climatic backlash", warns the UN

Heat waves and forest fires will become more frequent, more intense and longer under the effect of climate change, degrading air quality and human health, warned the UN on Wednesday. A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, says a mutually reinforcing dynamic between pollution and global warming will lead to a "climate backlash" that will affect hundreds of millions of people.

The WMO's annual Air Quality and Climate Bulletin focuses specifically on the impact of smoke from forest fires in 2021 when, as in 2020, heat and dryness have exacerbated the spread of wildfires.heat and dryness exacerbate the spread of wildfires in western North America and Siberia, resulting in significantly higher levels of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) that are harmful to health. "According to projections, even if emissions are low, global warming will cause an increase in forest fires and the air pollution they cause," says WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.

French rugby boss on trial for corruption

The strong man of rugby before the judges: Bernard Laporte, powerful boss of the French Federation (FFR), appears in Paris for corruption and influence peddling alongside other pillars of the ovalie, in a trial scrutinized one year before the World Cup in France. Summoned at 1:30 p.m. before the criminal court, the former coach of the French national team (2000-2007) is suspected of having, in return for payment, favored his friend and co-defendant, the multi-billionaire businessman Mohed Altrad, whose construction group won in 2017 the first shirt sponsorship contract in the history of the French national team.

Montpellier Hérault Rugby, the Top 14 club owned by Mr. Altrad, also reportedly benefited from several favorable rulings, through Mr. Laporte, who will have to answer for "passive corruption", "illegal interest taking" and "passive influence peddling". Claude Atcher, who was recently suspended from his position as general manager of the 2023 World Cup, and the vice-president of the FFR, Serge Simon, are also among the five defendants who will take the stand until September 22.

IN BRIEF

New York courts returned 58 looted and stolen works of art to Italy on Tuesday, including some dating back to Roman antiquity that had been trafficked internationally to the United States and the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"Red alert" in Amazonia: 26% of the ecosystem of the green lung of the planet is irreversibly destroyed because of the deforestation, the narcotrafic and the contamination, warned Tuesday of the indigenous leaders gathered in Lima, in Peru.

Caroline Garcia was waiting for it since the beginning of her career, the French tennis since 2013: the Lyonnaise qualified Tuesday at the US Open for her first Grand Slam semifinal thanks to a major performance against the American nugget Coco Gauff.