Will Paris summit help kickstart Europe’s AI ambitions?

Trump‘s controversial statements on Gaza continue to dominate headlines. The international community is still reeling from his proposal for the US to take over Gaza and turn it into a luxury resort. The comments drew intense backlash from US allies and a stern rebuke by the United Nations. For French paper Libération, it’s earned him the Fortnite reference Chaos Agent – provoking disorder and chaos, literally. British tabloid the Daily Star calls him a “wingnut leader of the Free World”, “thick as a brick” and someone who wants to solve the decades-long Middle East crisis by turning the ruins of Gaza into a luxury resort. Chaos is also the word on Israeli centre-left daily Haaretz’s front page. The paper calls the proposal “impractical, illogical and illegal”. It also highlights fears that Trump’s reckless proposition could negatively impact the second round of ceasefire and hostage release negotiations between Israel and Hamas. Saudi Arabia‘s Arab News notes that the kingdom is leading the opposition to Trump’s comments. The paper reiterates the viewpoint that peace is intrinsically linked to the Palestinian people obtaining their legitimate rights.

Trump is not the only one making eye-raising offers this week. The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has offered to open up the country’s supermax prison to US prisoners. The notorious mega facility opened in 2023 and houses thousands of Salvadoran gang members. The Wall Street Journal reminds us that it’s a facility where prisoners have no visits from family and where inmates sleep on stainless steel cots stacked several layers high in large cells. When it first opened, Bukele released videos on social media of handcuffed inmates, who were barefoot, shirtless, with their tattooed bodies and shaved heads being corralled by prison guards. These conditions sparked accusations of a lack of respect of prisoners’ rights. For the moment, it’s just an idea – even the Trump administration has said the legal basis for such a proposal would need to be studied.

Here in France, an important summit on artificial intelligence kicks off in Paris this Thursday, with business leaders and AI experts gathering over the next few days. It comes at a time when US AI efforts have been shaken up by the explosive arrival of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI player. Let the best one win, French current affairs mag Courrier International says on its weekly front page. French newspaper L’Opinion notes that when it comes to AI development, Europe is lagging behind. The writer says that while Europe can boast of the quality of its science education and training of high-level engineers, and of its culture and multilingualism, the continent is suffering from a lack of investment and a delayed growth in technological leadership. The Paris summit should be the spark that France and Europe need to kickstart their AI ambitions.

Staying in France, Olympic gold medal-winning biathlon athlete Martin Fourcade has renounced the presidency of the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps. His withdrawal is a huge blow to the Winter Olympics campaign that has faced quite a few setbacks already. The Games will be held in 2030 in a host of French cities and riding high on the success of Paris 2024, Fourcade seemed like the ideal person to lead the campaign. But he renounced earlier this week, saying that he and organisers could not agree on the Games’ vision and governing style and that he was not willing to sacrifice his convictions. The French sports paper L’Equipe reports that disagreements over the environment were a contributing factor. An environmental protection advocacy group dedicated to combating climate change in the French Alps hailed Fourcade’s decision to withdraw from the Games. The group cites an email sent by him to founding members, urging that the Games take into consideration the environmental and ecological challenges and that saying this vision was not shared by everyone.

Finally, a new study reveals some interesting insight into why some of us might be suffering from Zoom fatigue. Five years after many of us were forced to work on Zoom for three months of the pandemic, it appears that Zoom fatigue is a real thing. The Times of London reports on a new study which says Zoom weariness can be attributed to facial appearance dissatisfaction. Basically, people who use video meeting technology regularly may be sick of the sight of their own face staring back at them from the corner of the screen. It’s also led to an increase of people using filters or avatars to alter their appearance. Other studies say that some people even went a step further – using cosmetic surgery to change their appearance, a move brought on in part by an excessive use of this virtual video technology.

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