Paris airports under intense pressure for 2024 Olympics

PARIS, France—Paris’ airports face a double challenge during the Olympics next year—already under huge pressure, they will also be the first impression that many foreign visitors get of the Games.

France’s main international airport, Charles de Gaulle (CDG), and the smaller Orly will be two crucial gateways to the Olympics, which open in around a year on July 26, 2024.

and officials will be accredited for the Olympics and the Paralympics, excluding spectators, said Renaud Duplay, the deputy director of CDG.

“In terms of numbers, it’s a drop in the ocean” compared to the approximately 340,000 people who pass through CDG and Orly on peak summer days, he said.

SAN FRANCISCO, United States—

Twitter’s owner Elon Musk and its new CEO said Sunday that the social media network would ditch its bird logo, be rebranded with the name X and move quickly into payments, banking and commerce.

Founded in 2006, Twitter takes its name from the sound of birds chattering, and it has used avian branding since its early days, when the company bought a stock symbol of a light blue bird for $15, according to the design website Creative Bloq.

Tweeting a picture of the company’s new logo—a white X on a black background—late Sunday night, Twitter chief executive Linda Yaccarino said “X is here! Let’s do this.”

Also late Sunday night, Musk changed his profile picture to the company’s new logo, which he described as “minimalist art deco,” and changed his Twitter bio to “X.com,” which now redirects to twitter.com.

Musk had earlier tweeted that “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make (it) go live worldwide tomorrow.”

Musk also tweeted that under the site’s new identity, a post would be called “an X.”

The changes were not visible on the website as of 0630 GMT Monday.

PARIS—France on Sunday blamed Russia, after the G20 failed to agree on a roadmap to phase down the global use of fossil fuels during a meeting of energy ministers in India.

A final statement after the meeting on Saturday, does not even mention coal,, a major contributor to global warming.

Explaining the stalemate, G20 president India said that some members had emphasized the importance of seeking a “phase down of unabated fossil fuels, in line with different national circumstances”.

But “others had different views on the matter that abatement and removal technologies will address such concerns,” it added.

France’s minister of energy transition on Sunday pointed the finger of blame at Russia.

“I profoundly regret that there was no common declaration at the end of this meeting, notably because of Russia,” Agnes Pannier-Runacher told AFP.

The G20 failure to agree the roadmap came despite G7 leaders agreeing in Hiroshima in May to “accelerate the phase-out of unabated fossil fuels”.

A coalition of key EU economies -including Germany and France -- and some of the most vulnerable island states this week urged the G20 group of wealthy nations to accelerate plans to reach net zero emissions and phase out fossil fuels, adding: “Humankind cannot afford to delay”.

But many developing economies argue that the developed West must pay more as a legacy polluter and greenhouse contributor.

They insist that any transition needs huge capital and new technology, while giving up on polluting fuels without affordable alternatives will condemn their huge populations to poverty. AFP

The Parisian airports’ authority ADP believes it can cope with the increased traffic in July and August next year in what is already one of the world’s most visited cities.

What is keeping managers awake at night is the exceptional nature of tens of thousands of the arrivals -- and their outsized baggage. Some 85,000 competitors, coaches

On the other hand, the Olympic arrivals have expectations that are “different from those for which our infrastructure is designed”.

The canoeists, for example, will bring kayaks, there will be crates and crates of bicycles and unwieldy poles for pole vaulters.

“There will be a volume of oversized luggage that is just not the one we usually have,” Jerome Harnois, the top state official in charge of Paris’ airports, said.

Lost or misplaced equipment could mean competitors missing out on Olympic glory, and trigger a storm of negative publicity for the organizers and France as a whole.

Access to the centre of Paris is also a concern.

The upcoming extension of the Metro’s line 14, which will link Orly to the centre of the capital and several key Olympic venues in Seine-Saint-Denis to the north of Paris, should help alleviate some pressure.

On the other hand, a long-planned fast rail link between CDG and Paris will not be ready, leaving the often-derided RER B suburban train line as the alternative.

Coach and bus traffic between the two airports will be strongly regulated “to avoid chaos,” Duplay said. AFP

Musk had already named Twitter’s parent company the X Corporation, and previously said his takeover of the social media giant was “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app” -- a reference to the X.com company he founded in 1999, a later version of which went on to become payments giant PayPal.

Such an app could still function as a social media platform, and also include messaging and mobile payments. “Powered by AI, X will connect us in ways we’re just beginning to imagine,” Yaccarino tweeted earlier on Sunday.

Yaccarino, an advertising sales executive at NBC Universal who Musk poached last month to become Twitter’s CEO, said the social media platform was on the cusp of broadening its scope. AFP