mcdol ou le maire mccheese

We learn that the town of Dolus-d’Oléron has staged a four year legal battle to keep one fast food franchise off the picturesque and pristine Île d’Oléron (previously here and here), and amid contentions the courts may arrive at a decision soon.
Opponents, hoping to continue to foster a culture of environmental sustainability and minimising the deleterious effects of human enterprise, present some rather compelling arguments against the famously unwelcome franchise. Above and beyond reasons of aesthetics and how the competition hurts local business, the opposition group, led by the mayor of Dolus, offers that the business model of fast food and drive-thru service is a relic that’s done quite enough damage and has no place in the future. France has had a rather fraught relationship with the fast food giant over the decades not only as an assault on the palette but also a symbol of unchecked globalisation, protests and dialogues prompted over a trade dispute in 1990s when the US retaliated against an array of French products, including Roquefort cheese, over Europe’s refusal to allow hormone-treated beef into its markets.

hungersteine

Weeks of drought conditions have precipitated significant drops in the water level in rivers and lakes across Europe, including the Elbe (Labe), where near the border between Germany and the Czech Republic at Děčín carved boulders, normally submerged, have been exposed. Known as hunger stones, the engravings mark historic droughts and thus failed harvests that have occurred over the past six centuries. While such memorials lends some perspective to our times, the extremes we are experiencing now and unprecedented in combination with intense temperatures that overtax the resilience of ecosystems when there’s no relenting.

press corps

Via Misscellania, we are presented with the crew at Bad Lip Reading’s treatment of the typically disdainful White House press conference. Spokesliar Huckabee Sanders is more nasty and evasive in reality than she is in this lampoon but at least she’s got a wider range of responses and comebacks than her usual blather.

иж 2125

Arms manufacturer Kalashnikov is apparently diversifying its business and has presented its version of an electric automobile capable of speeds upwards of eighty kilometres per hour and a range of three hundred and fifty kilometres per charge called the CV-1.
The chassis is based on the classic IZh 2125 (ИЖ-2125), nicknamed “Kombi,” which was produced in the Soviet Union from 1973 until 1997. Considered the country’s first hatchback, the “Комби” stood for combination but referenced the Combi coupé make and model, which in German signifies a station wagon (an estate car) though the Russian term for that design of body is universal (универса́л).