Did you miss the news this early morning? We’ve put together a recap to help you see things more clearly.
Will the French experience the same blockages as the Canadians? The question arises as a “freedom convoy” is activated in France. This initiative launched in Canada by opponents of sanitary measures, has been blocking the center of Ottawa for a week. Thousands of people, nearly 278,000, according to the Facebook group “Le convoy de la liberté”, plan to do the same thing on Saturday in Paris, arriving in convoys of heavy goods vehicles but also private vehicles to protest against the vaccine pass. To arrive in time, several departures are planned from the four corners of the country, including one in Nice this Wednesday.
Times are tough for the wallets of the French, and it’s not over. Inflation should indeed accelerate a little more than expected in the first half of the year to reach “between 3% and 3.5%”, INSEE estimated on Tuesday. In January, the rise in prices had already reached 2.9% year on year, and this movement should continue with a repercussion of the rises in food and industrial production costs, pushed by the increase in the prices of energy and raw materials in recent months. Food prices should, for example, rise by 2.5% in June over one year, against +1.5% in January.
From this Wednesday, the world will focus on its seas and oceans. In Brest until February 11, the One Ocean Summit is the first of a series of international events on the subject: a UN meeting on the environment at the end of February which will address the question of an international agreement on the plastic, negotiations in March on a treaty for the high seas, biodiversity and climate COPs and a UN conference on the oceans in Lisbon in June. In Brittany, the NGOs will try to warn about the mining of the deep ocean. After decades of oblivion, there is indeed today a renewed interest in the mineral resources at the bottom of our oceans. Our journalist Fabrice Pouliquen therefore provides you with an update on the situation just before the opening of the summit.