World
Baguette gets added to UN list of intangible world cultural heritage
The common-or-garden baguette — the crunchy ambassador for French baking all over the world — is being added to the U.N.’s record of intangible cultural heritage as a cherished custom to be preserved by humanity.
UNESCO specialists gathering in Morocco this week determined that the easy French flute — made solely of flour, water, salt, and yeast — deserved United Nations recognition, after France’s tradition ministry warned of a “steady decline” within the variety of conventional bakeries, with some 400 closing yearly over the previous half-century.
The U.N. cultural company’s chief, Audrey Azoulay, mentioned the choice honors extra than simply bread; it acknowledges the “savoir-faire of artisanal bakers” and “a each day ritual.”
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“It’s important that such craft information and social practices can live on sooner or later,” added Azoulay, a former French tradition minister.
The company defines intangible cultural heritage as “traditions or residing expressions inherited from our ancestors and handed on to our descendants.”
With the bread’s new standing, the French authorities mentioned it deliberate to create an artisanal baguette day, known as the “Open Bakehouse Day,” to attach the French higher with their heritage.
Again in France, bakers appeared proud, if unsurprised.
“In fact, it ought to be on the record as a result of the baguette symbolizes the world. It’s common,” mentioned Asma Farhat, baker at Julien’s Bakery close to Paris’ Champs-Elysees avenue.
“If there’s no baguette, you’ll be able to’t have a correct meal. Within the morning you’ll be able to toast it, for lunch it’s a sandwich, after which it accompanies dinner.”
Though it looks like the quintessential French product, the baguette was mentioned to have been invented by Vienna-born baker August Zang in 1839. Zang put in place France’s steam oven, making it potential to provide bread with a brittle crust but fluffy inside.
The product’s zenith didn’t come till the Nineteen Twenties, with the appearance of a French legislation stopping bakers from working earlier than 4 a.m. The baguette’s lengthy, skinny form meant it might be made extra shortly than its stodgy cousins, so it was the one bread that bakers may make in time for breakfast.
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Regardless of the decline in conventional bakery numbers at the moment, France’s 67 million folks nonetheless stay voracious baguette customers — bought at quite a lot of gross sales factors, together with in supermarkets. The issue is, observers say, that they’ll typically be poor in high quality.
“It’s very straightforward to get unhealthy baguette in France. It’s the standard baguette from the standard bakery that’s in peril. It’s about high quality not amount,” mentioned one Paris resident, Marine Fourchier, 52.
In January, French grocery store chain Leclerc was criticized by conventional bakers and farmers for its a lot publicized 29-cent baguette, accused of sacrificing the standard of the famed 26-inch loaf. A baguette usually prices simply over $1, seen by some as an index on the well being of the French economic system.
The baguette is certainly severe enterprise. France’s “Bread Observatory” — a venerable establishment that carefully follows the fortunes of the flute — notes that the French munch by 320 baguettes of 1 kind or one other each second. That’s a mean of half a baguette per individual per day, and 10 billion yearly.
The “artisanal know-how and tradition of baguette bread” was inscribed on the Morocco assembly amongst different international cultural heritage objects, together with Japan’s Furyu-odori ritual dances, and Cuba’s mild rum masters.
World
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World
Togo cracking down on media, opposition ahead of parliamentary elections: report
Authorities in Togo have repressed the media and prevented civilians from gathering to protest peacefully, Amnesty International said in a report published Wednesday, ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled to take place at the end of this month.
Amnesty International said in its annual report on human rights around the world that two newspapers in Togo were forced to close for several months last year, while a number of journalists were arrested or hit with hefty fines after reporting on corruption.
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Two journalists in Togo were sentenced to three years in prison after reporting about a minister’s involvement in corruption, but both fled the country to avoid detention. The human rights organization said it had recorded instances in which detainees in prison were tortured or mistreated.
The report comes at a time of heightened tension in Togo, a country of about 8 million people that has been ruled by the same family for almost 60 years. Parliamentary elections have been pushed back until April 29, and the government have arrested opposition figures and quashed efforts to organize protests ahead of the vote.
At issue is a proposed new constitution that would scrap presidential elections permanently, giving parliament the power to choose the president instead. It is awaiting sign off by President Faure Gnassingbe. The opposition and the clergy say the legislation is an effort by Gnassingbe to prolong his rule after his mandate expires in 2025.
World
US secretly sent long-range ATACMS weapons to Ukraine
The weapons, which can hit targets as far as 300km (186 miles) away, have been used twice already.
The United States quietly sent long-range ballistic missiles to Ukraine as part of a package of military support in March, and Ukraine has used the weapons twice, according to US officials.
The longer-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) can hit targets as far as 300km (186 miles) away, nearly double the range of the mid-range ATACMS that the US began sending towards the end of last year.
Washington had long been reluctant to provide Ukraine with the longer-range weapon amid concerns they could be used on targets deep inside Russian territory and escalate the conflict.
But in February, Biden approved the delivery of the missiles and a “significant” number was included in a $300m aid package announced the following month, officials said.
“We’ve already sent some, we will send more,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said the delivery had not been announced “in order to maintain operational security for Ukraine at their request”. Neither official confirmed the number of ATACMS sent.
Ukraine has been forced to ration its weapons amid a protracted delay to a $61bn military assistance package that was finally passed in the US this week. ATACMS are expected to be included in the first $1bn tranche of that aid package.
The weapons sent this month were used on April 17 to strike an airfield in Dzhankoi in Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014. They were also used this week against Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine, near the occupied city of Berdyansk.
‘Time is right’
Admiral Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the White House and military planners had looked carefully at the risks of providing long-range weaponry to Ukraine and determined that it was the right time.
The weapons were sent on the condition they be used only inside Ukrainian sovereign territory.
“I think the time is right, and the boss [President Biden] made the decision the time is right to provide these based on where the fight is right now,” Grady said.
A US official told the Reuters news agency it was Russia’s use of North Korean-supplied long-range ballistic missiles against Ukraine in December and January that led to the change of heart.
Russia’s continued targeting of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure was also a concern.
“We warned Russia about those things,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They renewed their targeting.”
The protracted delay in US funding and weapons deliveries has given Russia the space to push its advantage in firepower and personnel to step up attacks across the front line in eastern Ukraine, where it claims to have taken control of a number of settlements this month. It has increasingly used satellite-guided gliding bombs – dropped from planes at a safe distance – to pummel Ukrainian forces.
Ukrainian officials have not publicly acknowledged the receipt or use of long-range ATACMS.
But in thanking Congress for passing the new aid bill, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stressed the significance of such weaponry to the war effort.
“Ukraine’s long-range capabilities, artillery and air defense are extremely important tools for the quick restoration of a just peace,” he wrote on social media platform X.
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