French press review 10 November 2015

No French newspapers have been delivered this morning because of a strike by the distributors. But we do have the websites.

DR

Russian athletics is drawing a certain amount of attention with the demand from the World Anti-doping Agency that competitors from the Russian Federation should be banned from all international competition, including the next Olympic Games, because of the widespread misuse of performance enhancing drugs.

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko says it's a plot.

Le Figaro carries the alarming news that, even if we manage to keep global warming down to just 2.0°C, millions of people are going to forced from their homes by rising sea levels.

Shanghai, Bombay and Hong Kong would be among the major cities affected, with the space currently occupied by 260 million people going under water.

If warming goes up to 4.0°, the lower level estimated by ecology group Greenpeace, then 600 million people will have to move.

At the upper end of the Greenpeace spectrum, a 6.0°C increase in global temperature by the year 2100, we're all going to have our feet in the water.

Le Figaro also publishes the results of an opinion poll which shows that 57 per cent of French people are interested by the forthcoming Cop21 climate conference, to be held right here in Paris, but only 21 per cent of the same people feel that the fight against global warming is one of the major current challenges.

It's enough to make your socks damp!

Libération's main story says London is trying to hold the rest of the European Union hostage with its ridiculous threat to leave. Prime Minister David Cameron says his country could survive very well indeed outside the European Union. Cameron is to organise a referendum on that very question sometime in the next two years.

Other stories catching the eye at Libé:

• The huge victory of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in Myanmar's first free elections in 25 years. While we wait for official results, some estimates give the former Burmese opposition nearly 70 per cent of seats in the new national assembly.
• The Catalan parliament has voted to cut itself off from Spain. The Spanish government says that's not constitutional.
• The Greek tragedy moves on to Act V, Scene 27, with the news that Athens won't be getting the next chunk of bailout cash from the European Central Bank because eurozone finance ministers are not convinced the Greeks have initiated the reforms promised to save the country from bankruptcy this summer.
  

And Le Monde delves into the Volkswagen diesel pollution scandal, revealing a climate of fear at the German carmaker, a business run like an absolute monarchy with engineers preferring to cheat rather than fail openly to meet unrealistic targets.

By calling for complete honesty, the new man at the wheel, Matthias Mueller, has opened an embarrassing can of worms.

Expect further revelations.