French authorities blame sabotage for second power blackout
French authorities on Sunday blamed sabotage and ordered heightened security after a fire at an electricity sub-station in Nice caused the second major power blackout in two days along the Riviera.
The latest fire cut power to about 45,000 homes in western Nice for several hours, authorities said. Nice airport was briefly without electricity, the city's deputy mayor Gael Nofri told AFP.
A similar arson attack on a power substation on Saturday partially disrupted the final day of the Cannes film festival, forcing organisers to use backup generators to keep the event going.
Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation and were looking into a claim Sunday by two anarchist groups of "responsibility for the attack on electrical installations on the Cote d'Azur". The claim was posted on an alternative website.
"I vigorously condemn these criminal acts hitting our country," Nice mayor Christian Estrosi said on X.
"We are making images from our monitoring centre available to investigators and will strengthen the city's network at strategic electrical sites in coming days," he added.
"Until the perpetrators of these acts have been arrested, we will not ease up our attention anywhere," Estrosi told reporters.
Nice's chief prosecutor Damien Martinelli said studies had been carried out "to clarify the damage and the methods used to carry out the act" and that police were investigating "arson by an organised group".
Police said that tyre marks had been found near the Nice transformer and someone had broken into a room in the building.
An arson attack at a power substation and a bid to cut the legs of an electricity pylon near Cannes cut power to 160,000 homes in the region for five hours on Saturday.
The cut knocked out traffic lights and bank machines in Cannes, as well as threatening the finale to the film festival.
The festival "switched to an alternative electricity power supply" to keep the closing ceremony and award events going.
Firefighters battled for five hours to put out the flames at the sub-station, officials said.
In the attack on the high-voltage pylon, three of its four legs had been damaged, said prosecutors.
mla-vxm-alc/djt/jj
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News.com.au
6 hours ago
- News.com.au
‘Feral cities': Western countries face civil war within five years, military expert warns
Britain, France and other western countries are dangerously close to collapsing into violent civil conflict characterised by 'feral cities' where authorities can no longer maintain rule of law, a military expert has warned. In a sobering essay in the latest issue of Military Strategy Magazine, David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, argues governments across the west have 'squandered their legitimacy'. He warns they are 'losing the ability to peacefully manage multicultural societies' that are 'terminally fractured by ethnic identity politics' and increasingly gripped by riots, terrorism and unrest. 'The initial result is an accelerating descent of multiple major cities into marginally 'feral' status,' he wrote. The concept of 'feral cities' was defined by US Navy commander Richard Norton, in a 2003 article for Naval War College Review, as 'a metropolis with a population of more than a million people in a state the government of which has lost the ability to maintain the rule of law within the city's boundaries yet remains a functioning actor in the greater international system'. 'As of 2024, a list of global cities exhibiting some or all the characteristics of amber and red ferality, such as high levels of political corruption, negotiated areas of police control if not outright no-go zones, decaying industries, crumbling infrastructure, unsustainable debt, two-tier policing, and the burgeoning of private security, would include many in the West,' Prof Betz said. 'The direction of the situation, moreover, is decisively towards greater ferality. In short, things are manifestly worsening right now. They are, however, going to get very much worse — I would estimate over not more than five years.' He bases this belief on the combination of two other key factors. One is the 'urban versus rural dimension of the coming conflicts which, in turn, is a result of migrant settlement dynamics'. 'Simply put, the major cities are radically more diverse and have a growing mutually hostile political relationship with the country in which they are embedded,' he said. Prof Betz points to recent election results in France, the UK and US which highlighted the deepening split between left-wing voting urban centres and right-wing rural areas. The second factor, is 'the way in which modern critical infrastructure — gas, electricity, and transportation — is configured'. 'Again, simply put, the life support systems of cities are all located in or pass through rural areas,' he said. 'None of this infrastructure is well guarded, indeed most of it is effectively impossible to guard adequately.' Prof Betz predicts the likely trajectory of 'the coming civil wars' based on these factors. 'First, the major cities become ungovernable, i.e., feral, exhausting the ability of the police even with military assistance to maintain civil order, while the broader perception of systemic political legitimacy plummets beyond recovery. The economy is crippled by metastasising intercommunal violence and consequent internal displacement,' he said. 'Second, these feral cities come to be seen by many of those indigenes of the titular nationality now living outside them as effectively having been lost to foreign occupation. They then directly attack the exposed city support systems with a view to causing their collapse through systemic failure.' Any civil war would be 'long and bloody' — using casualty figures from height of the Northern Ireland conflict as a guide, Prof Betz estimates more than 23,000 per year killed in the UK. He urges politicians, defence leaders and the public to avoid falling victim to 'normalcy bias' and begin planning for the very real possibility of civil conflict, including by the identification of suitable 'secure zones' for displaced populations, and the protection of important cultural property. 'At the time of writing the countries that are most likely to experience the outbreak of violent civil conflict first are Britain and France,' he said. 'The conditions are similar, however, throughout Western Europe as well as, for slightly different reasons, the United States; moreover, it must be assumed that if civil war breaks out in one place it is likely to spread elsewhere.' Prof Betz has previously outlined how 'the conditions which scholars consider to be indicative of incipient civil war are present widely in Western states' — namely 'a combination of culturally fractured societies, economic stagnation, elite overreach and a collapse of public confidence in the ability of normal politics to solve problems'. These factors have long been applied to the analysis of countries outside the west, but he says politicians must accept the danger internally is now 'clear and present'. 'According to the best guess of the extant literature, in a country where the conditions are present the chances of actual civil war occurring is 4 per cent per year,' Prof Betz said. 'With this as an assumption, we may conclude that the chances of it occurring are 18.5 per cent over five years.' Assuming there are at least 10 countries in Europe that face the prospect of violent civil conflict, 'the chances then of it occurring in any one of these countries over five years is 87 per cent'. Prof Betz notes both France and the UK have experienced 'precursor incidents' targeting critical infrastructure. In July 2024, co-ordinated arson attacks disabling Paris' rail network were followed by a major sabotage on the long-distance fibre-optic cable network. In London, vigilantes known as 'Blade Runners' have damaged or destroyed more than 1000 surveillance cameras intended to enforce the city's ultra-low-emission-zone (ULEZ) scheme. 'The precariousness of contemporary urbanity is a thing which geographers have worried over for at least a half century,' Prof Betz said, noting the viability of large cities 'has always been contingent' on the supply of resources from the surrounding country. 'Their apparent stability is, in fact, an astonishing balancing act requiring constant and competent maintenance. On current trajectory, that balancing act is going to fail.' It comes as France was again gripped by rioting over the weekend, with two people killed and nearly 200 injured as violent mobs took to the streets following Paris Saint-Germain's (PSG) Champions League victory. One distressing clip on social media showed two young women in a car being surrounded by young men before the passenger window was smashed open. Far-right politician Marine Le Pen said on Monday that the 'atrocities committed last night throughout France' were 'the result of 40 years of laxity and renunciation'. 'Today in France, it is no longer possible to have moments of popular fervour without thugs coming to smash and burn everything and deprive the French of the serenity to which they should be entitled,' she wrote on X. A growing number of European leaders have sounded warnings about political unrest in increasingly fractured multicultural societies. British Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer last month announced a surprise crackdown on immigration, warning the UK risked 'becoming an island of strangers'. In 2023, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the country was being gripped by a wave of violent crime the likes of which it had 'never seen before'. 'Irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration have brought us to this point,' he said. Mette Frederiksen, Denmark's centre-left Prime Minister, said in March that 'I consider this mass migration into Europe as a threat to the daily life in Europe'. 'If I ask people about security and their security concerns, many of them will reply that Russia and defending Europe is top of mind right now,' she told Politico.
News.com.au
15 hours ago
- News.com.au
Mystery as arsonists target items left out for collection in Inner West suburb
A Sydney suburb has been targed in a series of arson attacks after locals left out items for a local giveaway group. Locals in Leichardt, in the city's Inner West, took to a community social media group to reveal items classified as 'street bounty', including a couch, boxes and a mattress, had been set alight. It is understood there were up to three different incidents on Sunday. One woman warned others to be careful where they place pay-it-forward items out. 'Anyone with things outside their house as bounty or council pick up items: beware, I just had some small items set alight outside my house in Leichardt,' she wrote. 'The fire brigade was called and they said it was the 3rd one this afternoon. 'Then another pile of things was (sic) alight around the corner.' A spokesperson for Fire and Rescue NSW told NewsWire there was no information on how the fires started but the most likely cause was deliberate. Just after 3.40pm firefighters responded to a lounge on fire on the side of the road on Percival Street. A nearby vehicle was damaged by the heat. A short time later, at about 4.30pm, they extinguished a rubbish fire on Albert Street and at 4.50pm, another on National Street. Police confirmed they attended the fires to determine whether they were suspicious. Numerous residents said they had also seen sporadic fires across the streets of Leichardt. 'I walked past a house tonight where someone had set alight the council pickup,' one resident said. 'The homeowners had just arrived home to find it.' A second added: 'We saw some boxes alight this afternoon after soccer on MacKenzie Street.' '(A) bag of stuff was on fire in (the) park on the corner of Elswick and William St,' another wrote. 'It looks like a mattress or something has been set on fire on the footpath at the top of Hill St near Balmain Rd,' a fourth said. 'Dumped office chair and a bag of junk set alight on corner Albert/Elswick this afternoon,' another local said. 'The Firies said they had just put out another similar fire and there were more yesterday.' Many were shocked to see that items that had been left out in acts of goodwill, had been destroyed. Others saw the lighter side of the situation, writing: 'Someone's been arson around'.
ABC News
a day ago
- ABC News
Victorian jury hears triple-0 call, views images of human remains in Christmas Eve murder trial
A former CFA captain has told a jury about finding human remains in a burnt car, as three people face trial accused of kidnapping and murdering 19-year-old Charlie Gander. Kylie Stott, Danny Clarke and Dimitri D'Elio, all residing in Shepparton at the time, have been charged with kidnapping, murder and arson following the death of the Benalla teenager on Christmas Eve in 2022. At the time of the alleged offending, Ms Stott was aged 37, Mr D'Elio was 24, and Mr Clarke 38. The trio have pleaded not guilty to all charges. Mr Gander's body was found after emergency services responded to a car fire on Loch Garry Road, in Bunbartha, about 15 kilometres north of Shepparton. Current CFA volunteer and former captain of the Tallygaroopna brigade, Jeffrey Gleeson, told the Victorian Supreme Court of crews finding the car near bushland, "fully engulfed" with "smoke emitting from the car". As two men in breathing apparatus began to put out the fire, Mr Gleeson said he inspected the car's interior and exterior. "I was walking around near the passenger side. I glanced inside the vehicle, saw what I thought were human remains," he told the court. Mr Gleeson conferred with a colleague and then decided to halt the fire suppression process to leave the scene as intact as possible for investigators, he told the court. The jury also viewed photos of the skeletal remains taken by crime scene investigators, including a skull and internal organs. Bunbartha resident Pauline Dempsey, who alerted emergency services via a triple-0 call, was brought as a witness, and an audio recording of her call played to the jury. Mrs Dempsey told the court she saw "billowing black smoke" and was concerned for her home and neighbourhood because of the hot and dry conditions. She told the court she saw the car explode and could be heard telling the triple-0 operator that the car had exploded for a second time while on the call. The jury was also shown footage from police's body-worn cameras as they arrived to inspect the scene. The footage showed Leading Senior Constable Steven Turpin walking towards the burnt-out car, which is situated near trees in a remote area. During the opening days of the trial, crown prosecutor Mark Gibson KC told the the court they would hear a case "about retribution" and "a desire to punish a person" for what they believed they'd done. He alleged the trio acted as a team to kidnap, kill and incinerate Mr Gander in an "unnecessary, senseless and callous" act. He presented evidence to the court including Google searches from Mr D'Elio's phone for a "dead body in burned car" several days before media coverage of the death, as well as records from Ms Stott's phone labelling the victim as "Charlie dead dog Gander". Mr Gibson alleged their motive was that Mr Gander had told police about the criminal conduct of a person called Tyson May, to whom the trio had a "misplaced alliance". On Monday, two of the trio's lawyers rejected the prosecution's argument that the matter was linked to a desire for retribution against the teenager. The jury members are expected to travel to Shepparton and the surrounding area this week to view the sites mentioned in the case as part of court evidence.
