A break from tradition means that both Paris and Los Angeles, the two remaining contenders to host the 2024 games, were on Tuesday awarded hosting of the Olympic Games separately for 2024 and 2028, to be decided between them, after the IOC began reforming the process for applicants following withdrawn bids from other cities.
As part of meeting President Emmanuel Macron's election campaign pledge to bring public spending in France to below 3% of output, a requirement of the EU Stability Pact budget rules, his government on Tuesday announced a total of 4.5 billion euros will be cut from the budgets of the defence, interior, foreign affairs, and transport ministries.
Representatives of the competing Paris and Los Angeles bids for the 2024 Olympic games made their formal presentations before the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne on Tuesday, when it appeared likely that the final decision in September will be to separately award Paris with the 2024 event and Los Angeles for that which follows in 2028.
Environment minister Nicolas Hulot has announced a plan to shut down 17 out of France's 58 nuclear reactors as part of a pledge to reduce the share of nuclear production of the country's energy from 75 percent to 50 percent by the year 2025, although he did not detail which plants would be partially or totally closed.
In an interview with New Zealand media on the 32nd anniversary of the infamous sinking of the Greenpeace boat which was due to mount a protest against France's nuclear tests in the south Pacific Ocean, Christine Cabon, a retired French intelligence officer who took part in the operation, admitted the attack, which caused the death of an onboard photographer, was a 'terrorist' act.
