French press review 8 July 2017

From the tiny human dramas involved in moving several thousand migrants from inner Paris, to the Hamburg meeting of those mighty men, Trump and Putin.

Centrist paper Le Monde looks at yesterday's evacuation of 2,771 people from the area under the motorway at the northern Porte de la Chapelle here in Paris.

Fifty-two buses were used to relocate those who've been living rough to 20 school gymnasiums in the area around the capital. The problem is that yesterday's action was the 34th forced relocation from the same area since June 2015.

One local resident says her 11th-floor apartment offers unbeatable views of human misery, with camps of Roma gypsies, drug addicts on the pavements, migrants under the motorway.

The nearly 3,000 migrants have been living in appalling conditions, with just three taps providing drinking water and seven toilets.

Yesterday's exercise went off calmly, with migrants being given bread, fruit and water before being bussed to their new, temporary homes outside the capital.

Some of them have already made this trip several times, only to return to Paris where there are greater opportunities for finding odd jobs, usable leftovers and charity.

One man, from Afghanistan, spent his last five euros on a backpack so that he could take his belongings with him. Le Monde asked him what was in the five-euro bag. He showed them: a sweater, a cap, a telephone charger, headphones and a notebook.

The locals are fed up with what has now become a routine: the migrants are rounded up, bussed out and the area under the motorway is hosed down. Then it starts all over again.

"If it was an expensive part of the city," says one resident, "they'd have found a solution long ago. Here, it's the poor who are left to look after the even poorer."

"They wouldn't have let 2,000 cats live in such conditions," says another. "There'd have been a scandal."

The testosterone troopers

Le Figaro devotes its editorial to "Donald and Vladimir" the US and Russian leaders who are taking part in the G20 summit in the northern German city of Hamburg.

The right-wing paper's main story is devoted to this first face-to-face meeting of the two men against a background of unrelenting crisis with divergences on Syria and Ukraine, to say nothing of suspicions of Russian technological interference in the election which brought Donald Trump to power.

They should get on well together, say Le Figaro, describing them as two blocks of testosterone. They've already publicly expressed their mutual admiration, Trump saying he likes Vladimir Putin's strongman style; the lord of the Kremlin finding the billionaire president "brilliant".

But Putin is part of a minority, says Le Figaro, suggesting that Trump's standing with the men behind the throne in Washington is in rapid decline. The US president is erratic, unpredictable, influenced by the last person to whom he has spoken. And his determination to live up to his promises may prove to be either embarrassing or outright dangerous. Especially when you confront him with that other block of nuclear-powered testosterone, North Korea's Kim Jong-un.

Between them Donald and Vladimir could sort out much of what is currently wrong with the planet says Le Figaro. The crucial question is, will they manage or will the testosterone get in the way?