Thursday [4 to 6]

(0405) Morning all … slightly better sky. Evets is up across the way, plus new post. Small break now for brek, allowing us to eat, do our rounds, read etc. Feature at 0645 and next post of this kind about 0730. (0613)

6.  DAD at NOWP

a) VTB Bank PJSC filed the suit against JPMorgan and its subsidiaries in the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region on April 17, according to the court’s database. While court documents didn’t detail the main basis for the suit, they said VTB had requested provisional steps because the defendants were “taking measures to withdraw their assets” from Russia while the state-controlled lender was seeking to recover about $440 million from JPMorgan. 

b) A judge is asked...."Why did you decide to join the National Rally Political Party?"

Pascale Piera's reply....  "This is obvious to me given the situation our country is going through. I spent more than thirty years in the legal field, both as a lawyer at the Paris bar and then as a criminal magistrate for nearly twenty years, where I notably exercised the functions of judge of freedoms and of detention.

From this experience, I established a particularly alarming observation about the state of the judicial institution which, faced with the increase in delinquency and the helplessness of victims

Take, for example, the link between immigration and delinquency. It is a great taboo within the body of the judiciary, a symbolic example of the influence of political correctness. However, the facts are there: 17% of crimes and misdemeanours are perpetrated by foreigners, with a particular prevalence for everything relating to thefts with or without violence and burglaries. In a city like Marseille, we reach 67%". 

c) Journalist arrives at Paris. 

"Return from Ecuador, reception committee at Roissy - fake taxis no doubt - who call me Islamophobe and racist. I alerted police officer who cannot do anything, of course.

Welcome to France !" 

d) The violence is coming closer to me. Twenty-six years ago, when I retired to France, something like this was unimaginable. 

"It was around 1 p.m., Saturday April 20, 2024, when the Clou-Bouchet district, in Niort, [Deux-Sevres] was once again the scene of a violent attack. According to our information, a young man was seriously injured by several stab wounds, after having had a violent altercation with a group of individuals...." 

5.  Early roundup

4.  Quick procedural note

… for readers, inc. our Ivan … the redaction decision on every item is how much to include. While the hyperlink issue is acknowledged, sometimes it’s of little value to include among the plethora of headlines early morn … for example, this item:

Everything under the text is pretty unnecessary, except maybe to say it’s from The Telegraph, thus:

But that’s ugly, not unlike the Household Cavalry horses bolting where a part pic appeared.  Why not just include the whole thing? Column space … it just lengthens the scrolling time and after the 14th or so item, it becomes a pain, not to mention the cost to the site in finite space used up … we do have a set allocation you know and ONO is over a third full already, which slows things down.

Juggling act.