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    I grew up on American food. Trust me, it’s the last thing Europe needs | Alexander Hurst

    All over European media, the take seems to be similar – that the EU is “under pressure” to conclude some sort of deal with the US in order to avoid Donald Trump’s 9 July deadline for the unilateral imposition of broad tariffs. What might be on the table in the attempt to secure that? In early May, the EU trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, was already suggesting that a deal to increase purchases from the US could include agricultural products – a possibility that seems to remain even though Šefčovič later clarified that the EU was not contemplating changing its health or safety standards.Since I have failed to Abba (“Always be boldly acronyming”) and don’t have anything as good as Taco (“Trump always chickens out”) – coined by the Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong – at the ready, I’ll simply reach for the easy line: opening the door even slightly to more US food imports into the EU would leave a bad taste in all our mouths. Trump’s hostage-taking approach to trade should not be rewarded, certainly not with something that hits as close to home as food does.“The European Union won’t take chicken from America. They won’t take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak,” declared the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, in April. Laughter aside, every time I go back to the US I become a vegetarian for the duration of my trip – even though US grocery store vegetables are themselves generally big, blemish-free and bland. Why? Call me paranoid, but I simply don’t want to ingest the same growth hormones that Lutnick’s “beautiful” meat probably contains traces of and that are banned in the EU.Growing up in Ohio, I experienced the full force of US food culture. It was the 90s, which meant that margarine was most definitely in and butter was out; an example that highlights how processed everything took root, including – in my vegetarian family – highly processed meat alternatives. The people around me meant well, but how do you fight a system that, from top to bottom, was designed to push high fructose corn syrup into practically everything (and most worryingly into school lunches)?To be fair, all of this has since generated a domestic backlash, but there’s an intense amount of momentum behind it still: almost without fail, I find that the standard sugar level in the US soars far beyond what I now find appealing. Even in places I wouldn’t expect to find added sugar at all, like pizza.And why would the Trump administration’s full-scale savaging of the US government’s administrative and regulatory capacity, including the Food and Drug Administration, increase anyone’s trust that what US regulation does exist is actually being followed?Some of you are perhaps rolling your eyes, thinking: Alexander Hurst, a naturalised French citizen, has gone full “chauvin”; converts are the worst. Except it’s not just me. There is an entire internet subgenre of content extolling the virtues of French butter, or involving Americans who come to France and realise that this is what peaches, or strawberries, really taste like.Beyond the question of whether or not Europeans want to eat US agricultural output, a hypothetical trade deal would involve hugely negative climate impacts. The distance that food travels already accounts for 20% of global agriculture-related emissions pollution, and Europe’s share in imported agriculture emissions is already high. We need to be reducing it, not adding to it through foodstuffs carted unnecessarily across the Atlantic.How can we ask European farmers to accelerate their transition to regenerative agriculture (which offers the potential to drastically reduce agriculture emissions) if, at the same time, they are being undercut by US producers who face far lower regulatory standards?“Europe already produces and grows everything it could possibly need. The last thing we want to see circulating is hormone-pumped beef or chlorinated poultry,” says Lindsey Tramuta, the author of The Eater Guide to Paris. “Even beyond the goods themselves, there’s the issue of distance: why bring food over from the US if Europeans can get their needs met from much closer to home?”Yannick Huang, who manages the Vietnamese restaurant Loan in Paris’s Belleville neighbourhood, agrees. “At a time when we’re trying to do organic, local, it’s pointless to want to import anything from the US,” he told me. Huang, who is obsessive about ingredient quality, only serves French beef. To him, US agriculture comes tainted with the connotation of “GMOs and other problems”.Hold on, you might say. Isn’t it inconsistent to oppose Trump’s tariffs while also promoting food protectionism? Fair point: it’s hard to find a “one size fits all” approach to globalisation. It has harmed some workers in wealthy economies while also reducing the gap between low-income nations and high-income ones. No country on Earth has a fully self-contained advanced semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, and in sectors where globalisation has become excessive, it might be even more economically harmful to roll back. None of that, though, means that things that have resisted becoming fully global should all of a sudden be opened up – food most of all.Ramzi Saadé is a Lebanese-Canadian chef whose Paris restaurant, Atica, is dedicated to a fiercely regional approach to haute cuisine. But taking his diners on a voyage of discovery doesn’t mean his food has to go on one too; despite focusing on first Basque, and now Corsican cuisine, he sources almost all of his ingredients from the area surrounding Paris. For a lamb dish involving 13 different elements, only the nepeta, a Corsican herb, had travelled, he said. “Is my role today to bring you Japanese culture via wasabi flown to Paris?” Saadé asked. “No, my role is to explain to you that it’s grated this way and put on fish for this reason, and I can do that with wasabi from France.”I couldn’t help but think that it’s actually far more interesting to do it his way – to interpret a cuisine rather than attempt to transpose it.We are what we eat. A cuisine is a medium of communication; it is, indelibly, tied up with the stories we tell about who we are. Perhaps that’s why it’s so disturbing to see food held hostage, or weaponised, in the pursuit of economic or geostrategic goals.Europe’s intense and varied regionality is an enormous part of how it eats and therefore what it is. Opening the market to mass penetration by US agriculture would, little by little, nibble away at that richness. It’s the kind of proposition that, if it ever makes it out of the kitchen, should be sent back straight away.

    Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist More

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    French Lawmaker Says He Was Denied Entry Into the United States

    Pouria Amirshahi, a leftist member of Parliament, hopes that the decision will be reversed so that he can travel to meet lawmakers to understand life under President Trump. A French member of Parliament has urged American authorities to reverse a decision to deny him entry to the United States, after he said they rejected his request for a visa to meet with progressive lawmakers and intellectuals about life under the Trump presidency. Pouria Amirshahi, a member of the Green party, said he had planned to travel to Washington D.C., New York and Boston this month. The trip was supposed to be the first taken by a member of La Digue, or The Dike, a group that he created a month ago with a handful of other leftist and centrist French lawmakers, to “counter the spread of neo-fascism” in liberal democracies. At a news conference at the French National Assembly on Thursday morning, Mr. Amirshahi said he had told U.S. authorities that the purpose of his trip was to ask lawmakers, activists, professors and journalists to understand “what the new situation was in the country since Mr. Trump came to power.” He was set to meet with progressive lawmakers, he said, including Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, and Representative Maxine Dexter, Democrat of Oregon. But, he said, on Tuesday, he was told that his visa application had been rejected. “The door was shut in a rather abrupt and unexpected manner,” Mr. Amirshahi said in a telephone interview. “This is a decision that we consider to be both hostile and unfriendly.”A member of his team said later on Thursday that the embassy was “reconsidering the reasons for the refusal.” We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Walls Are Put Up Walls Around Israeli Displays at French Weapons Show

    Israel called the move “outrageous.” A French official said Israeli companies were defying an agreement not to display so-called offensive weapons.Last year, Israeli weapons producers were initially barred from attending a prestigious arms industry show in Paris over objections to the war in Gaza. This year, the Israelis were allowed in — but then walled off from other global competitors.Israel’s Ministry of Defense said on Monday that the French government built a black wall overnight around some weapons systems displayed by Israeli companies, blocking them from view at the Paris Air Show, one of the world’s largest arms exhibitions.It marked the second time in as many years that French authorities have sought to stop Israel from marketing its tools of military might amid its massive bombing campaigns in Gaza. And it comes at a fraught moment between the two countries as President Emmanuel Macron of France considers whether to recognize a Palestinian state, a move that Israel strenuously opposes.The decision did not appear to be linked to Israel’s new military offensive in Iran, which aims in part to destroy Tehran’s nuclear program. France also has long worried about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.The wall was built “in the middle of the night, after Israeli defense officials and companies had already finished setting up their displays,” the ministry said in a statement on Monday.The wall was put up after Israeli officials objected to what they described as an earlier order by the French government to remove offensive weapons — a category that typically includes missile and rocket launchers, tanks, drones, cannons and a range of ammunition — from Israeli displays. The air show is expected to draw as many as 300,000 visitors, and feature defense displays from more than 2,400 companies in 48 countries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Palestinian Authority President Says Hamas Must Exit Gaza

    Mahmoud Abbas gave assurances to President Emmanuel Macron of France, who has set conditions for possible recognition of a Palestinian state at a U.N. conference next week.Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, has called for Hamas to “hand over its weapons,” immediately free all hostages and cease ruling Gaza, the French presidency said on Tuesday after receiving a letter from him.The letter was addressed to President Emmanuel Macron of France and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who will jointly chair a U.N. conference in New York next week to explore the creation of a Palestinian state. Mr. Macron has set a number of conditions for the possible French recognition of such a state at that meeting, including the disarmament of Hamas.“Hamas will no longer rule Gaza and must hand over its weapons and military capabilities to the Palestinian security forces,” Mr. Abbas said in the letter, according to a statement from the Élysée Palace. He added that the Palestinian forces would oversee the removal of Hamas with Arab and international support, an undertaking that is certain to provoke skepticism in Israel, and probably also in Washington.“Hamas must immediately release all hostages and captives,” the letter said, reiterating a demand that Mr. Abbas has made before.A bitter feud has divided Mr. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza for many years. The rival factions in the two Palestinian territories have defied several attempts at reconciliation, something that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has seized on to dismiss a two-state solution.Mr. Abbas condemned the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people in some of the strongest terms that he has used, calling it “unacceptable and reprehensible.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Macron Will Visit Greenland This Month, Defying Trump

    President Emmanuel Macron of France plans to travel to the island nation, which President Trump has vowed to take control of, on the way to Canada for a Group of 7 meeting.In a challenge to President’s Trump’s vow to take control of Greenland, President Emmanuel Macron of France will visit the enormous Arctic island on June 15 with the aim of “contributing to the reinforcement of European sovereignty.”The French presidency announced the visit on Saturday, saying that Mr. Macron had accepted an invitation from Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister, and Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, with whom it said Mr. Macron would discuss “security in the North Atlantic and the Arctic.”Greenland, a semiautonomous island that is a territory of Denmark, a NATO ally, has been thrust in recent months from a remote, uneventful existence to the center of a geostrategic storm by Mr. Trump’s repeated demands that it become part of the United States, one way or another.“I think there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force,” Mr. Trump told NBC in March, but added that he would not “take anything off the table.”Mr. Macron, who has seen in the various provocations directed at Europe by the Trump administration an opportunity for European assertion of its power, will be the first foreign head of state to go to Greenland since Mr. Trump embarked on his annexation campaign this year.JD Vance, the American vice president, visited Greenland in March. The trip was drastically scaled back and confined to a remote military base after the threat of local protests.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Power Outage in Cannes During Film Festival Is Sabotage, Officials Say

    An arson attack and damage to a transmission tower cut off power in the area, the authorities said. The festival’s closing ceremony on Saturday is scheduled to proceed normally.French authorities said on Saturday that a power outage in the Cannes area in southeastern France that briefly disrupted the film festival there was caused by acts of sabotage, including arson at a substation and damage to a transmission tower.About 160,000 homes in Cannes and the surrounding area were left without power for hours, according to RTE, France’s electrical grid operator, which said service was gradually being restored. The outage interrupted some screenings at the film festival, which quickly switched over to its own generators. Organizers said the closing ceremony Saturday evening — when the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize, is awarded — would proceed normally.Laurent Hottiaux, the state representative for the Alpes-Maritimes area, which includes Cannes, said the outage was caused by “major damage to network installations” near the city, including the arson attack and damage to the tower. “All resources are being mobilized to identify, track down, arrest and bring to justice the perpetrators of these acts,” Mr. Hottiaux said in a statement.RTE said the outage started with an overnight fire at a substation west of Cannes. Firefighters brought the blaze under control, and electricity was restored by diverting power from other lines.But around 10 a.m., the company also detected an unstable pylon on a separate line east of the city that was threatening to topple, forcing crews to cut power in the area once more. “We need transparency and fast answers,” Éric Ciotti, a right-wing lawmaker representing the Alpes-Maritimes, said on X, where he posted a photo of a leaning electrical pylon.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Grandpa Robbers’ Go on Trial in Paris Over 2016 Kim Kardashian Heist

    The reality TV star and entrepreneur was tied up and held at gunpoint, and jewelry worth nearly $9 million was stolen in the incident.Ten people tied to a group nicknamed the “grandpa robbers” went on trial in Paris on Monday over accusations that they plotted and carried out a brazen robbery against Kim Kardashian in the French capital nearly a decade ago.The defendants are accused of involvement in a violent attack on the reality TV star and entrepreneur that prosecutors have attributed to a group of veteran criminals, some of whom are in their 70s.Ms. Kardashian was gagged, tied up and robbed at gunpoint of jewelry worth at least 8 million euros, or nearly $9 million, at a luxury residence she had rented during Paris fashion week in October 2016.The overnight robbery of a prominent American celebrity shocked the world and raised safety concerns for tourists in Paris, which at the time was still traumatized by a string of terrorist attacks.Five men dressed in police uniforms and wearing balaclavas burst into Ms. Kardashian’s residence. They forced the night watchman to guide two of them to her apartment and to translate as they tied her up. They took jewels, including her diamond engagement ring, and other valuables and left on foot and on bicycle minutes later.Most of the jewelry was not recovered. But investigators found DNA, including on the zip ties that were used to bind Ms. Kardashian’s hands and feet, and police made a number of arrests three months later. Prosecutors said several of those arrested, who were in their 50s and 60s at the time, were longtime criminals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Attackers Target Prisons in France, Burning Vehicles and Firing Shots

    The office of France’s counterterrorism prosecutor said it would begin an investigation into the violence. The justice minister blamed drug traffickers.Attackers targeted a prison near the French port city of Toulon overnight Monday to Tuesday, burning vehicles and firing shots at its walls, French authorities and a union said on Tuesday, adding that this was part of a series of attacks on the country’s prisons.There were no reports of casualties. A union for prison workers, FO Justice, posted photos on X, formerly Twitter, of bullet holes in prison walls, saying that prisons had been attacked in the north, center and south of the country.The office of France’s counterterrorism prosecutor said it would begin an investigation into the violence, which it said started on Sunday. The justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, said he would visit the Toulon-La Farlède prison on Tuesday in support of the officers there.Bullet holes in a wall of the Toulon-La Farlède prison on Tuesday.Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Darmanin suggested that drug traffickers had organized the attacks. The French newspaper Le Monde said the attacks were coordinated and mentioned other incidents in Villepinte and Nanterre, both suburbs of Paris; Valence, a city in southern France; and the southern port city of Marseille.“Prisons are facing intimidation attempts ranging from the burning of vehicles to automatic gunfire,” Mr. Darmanin said in a post on social media. “The republic is confronted by drug trafficking and will take measures that will massively disrupt these criminal networks.”France’s interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, condemned the attacks, saying the prisons had been targeted by thugs, and ordered the authorities to reinforce security at prisons and protect their workers.France’s official prison watchdog warned in 2023 of overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and violence in the country’s prisons. More