French press review 17 August 2016

Concern on the storage of US nuclear weapons in Turkey, the demise of British bee populations due to pesticides and President François Hollande's visit to the Vatican today are among the stories in today's French dailies.

"Concern over US nuclear weapons stored in Turkey" is one of the headlines of Le Monde.

In a report released this week, the Washington-based thinktank and public policy institute the Stimson Center asks if it amounts to a game of Russian roulette, reports the paper.

"From a security point of view, to store approximately 50 US nuclear weapons at the Incirlik airbase is paramount to that," charges the report's co-author Laicie Heeley.

The report warns against the risk of the weapons, being stored 110 kilometres from the Syrian border, falling into the hands of "terrorists or other hostile forces".

Fears over the dangers of the arsenal have been revived after the failed Turkish coup of 15 July.

"It is impossible to know whether the United States could maintain control over the weapons in case of prolonged civil war in Turkey," says the Stimson Center.

Pesticides prompt bee woes

In another story, Le Monde claims that pesticides are tripling the mortality of bees.

Reporting on the findings of a British study published yesterday in the scientific journal, Nature Communications, it says insecticides from the neonicotinoids family are killing wild bees and bumblebees en masse.

Though agrochemical companies deny it. Or at least seriously underestimate the role of these pesticides in the catastrophic decline of colonies of these pollinating insects.

The neonicotinoids are the most efficient synthesised insecticides ever manufactured, it says, and researchers have shown they are accelerating bee death at unprecedented rates.

But the companies prefer to blame the fatality on a pathogenic factor - such as viruses; monocultures, fragmenting habitats, hornet invasions and global warming.

The report was signed by seven researchers from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford and Fera Science Limited, a research centre
on sustainable agriculture and plant protection in York.

Hollande heads to Vatican

The context of the terrorist attacks in France will dominate the meeting between the Pope and President François Hollande in Rome today, saysLe Figaro.

"The charisma of Pope Francis has won over the crowds around the world, Catholic or not ... and heads of state, religious or not," it writes. "They flock to Rome to meet in an official capacity but the waiting list is long."

Apparently Hollande has more than made it to that list - and jumped the queues. Perhaps because of the tragedies that have hit France and particularly the French church with the murder of Catholic priest Jacques Hamel in Normandy in late July by Islamic extremists.

More open than his predecessors to visits, says Le Figaro, the Argentinian pope receives very famous guests, privately in the Domus Sanctae Marthae (Casa Santa Martha) where he lives, a few steps from Saint Peter's Basilica.

The "encounter" has has become one of the leitmotifs of his pontificate, writes Le Figaro. But his attitude is not limited to a handshake, even less so to chitchat, but to "seeking out the other person's inner depths".

Greece asks Germany for Nazi payout

Le Figaro says Greece is seeking compensation from Germany for a crime committed under the Nazi occupation.

While it's usually Greece looking to Berlin to help it repay its debts, it writes, now Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says he "will do everything necessary on a diplomatic level" to get compensation for the massacre of 317 civilians by Nazi troops in 1943 in the village of Kommeno, in Greece's north-west.