Leave it to the French; they really know how to party.
This year’s Champions League final match, which some call futbol but which is actually just soccer, was a contest between teams from Italy’s Inter Milan and France’s Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).
PSG came out on top with 5-0 victory, and unleashed joyful midnight celebrations in Paris marked by cheering, singing, fireworks, rioting, looting and setting cars ablaze. It was topped by extensive personal injury, accidental death, murder and 500 arrests.
There were 294 vehicles set on fire in joyous hilarity, because nothing says “We are proud of our hometown sports heroes!” like the smell of burning rubber in your own neighborhood.
A 17-year-old boy was stabbed fatally. A 23-year-old man on a scooter was killed when run down by a car of celebrants. A police officer — one of the 500 deployed to keep the peace — was critically injured when struck in the face by fireworks. He was subsequently placed in a medically induced coma.
A family of four was smashed — two injured seriously — when a car ploughed into them, but the driver admitted it was an accident, and not on purpose. Good to know.
Twenty-nine police officers and firefighters were injured by jubilant sports fans innocently revelling in their team’s victory. Shops were looted and about 200 fans were injured.
Water cannon and tear gas were employed against crowds on the Champs Elysee.
I love a good city-wide celebration.
French authorities were outraged, of course, but could find a philosophical silver lining. "The toll is lower than what we have seen in the past,” according to the police prefect. He added a word of advice: “Sports fans really shouldn’t get mixed up with gangs of looters and vandals.”
The evening was topped by a special humiliation for French President Emmanuel Macron. Greenpeace activists stole Macron’s full-size wax statue from the Grevin Museum, hustled it out of the building wrapped in a blanket, and carried it across town to the Russian embassy.
In a somewhat confusing statement, the thieves positioned the waxy display in front of the embassy apparently to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Macron, it should be noted, has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine in that bloody war. Placing his effigy in front of the embassy was sure to get Vladimir Putin’s attention, although he and everyone else may have been distracted by the soccer riots.
I recall a statement by my father in about 1980 when he first sampled pizza from a new Pizza Hut restaurant, a real attraction in rural Kansas. Although his comment was directed toward Italy, not France, it seems appropriate here. After extracting a slice of pizza from the platter, stringing melted cheese across the table, he tasted it and said, “Ee gads. No wonder they lost the war.”
Number 3. Breitbart. Alleged terrorist used Molotov cocktails in a smoke-free zone.
As though one were needed, authorities are still investigating what the motive was for a 45-year-old immigrant to attack supporters of Israel with a homemade flamethrower. The immigrant, whose first name is Mohammed — but we generally try not to dignify the evil-doers with full names here at the ANR — applied for entrance to the U.S. two decades ago but was denied at that time.
In recent years, however, Mr. Mohammed reapplied and the Department of Homeland Security inexplicably missed the previous denial in his record. He was admitted entry in 2022 and subsequently received a two-year work visa. The visa was expired at the time of last week’s attack.
According to a CNN report, Mr. Mohammed was consumed with anger toward anyone and anything Jewish. He carefully researched targets in the Boulder area and settled on “Run For Your Lives,” a non-profit organization standing up for Jewish hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
At some point in the last two years Mr. Mohammed took a concealed carry class, but as a non-citizen he was precluded from purchasing a firearm, proving that strong gun control works: Mohammed was in fact unable to shoot anyone. It didn’t stop him from setting them on fire, but at least he didn’t shoot anybody. He turned instead to the homebrew Molotov cocktail as his weapon of choice.
And also, it should be pointed out, no one shot Mr. Mohammed, either, because none of the citizens had guns. More on that below.
Details in the press remain sketchy, but it appears that the attacker — the terrorist, there is really no other word for it — modified the Molotov items to project a jet of flame toward his targets. A witness reports seeing “spears of fire” shot toward a group of Jewish supporters. At least one victim was engulfed by flame and others “were also on fire.”
Here at the ANR, we believe in solid education. If only terrorist Mohammed had understood that his attack, in a popular pedestrians-only area along Pearl Street in downtown Boulder, was actually a smoke-free zone, maybe he would have thought twice about his plans.
What good are rules if no one knows about them? I think Boulder needs to launch a serious Public Service Announcement program to ensure attacks like this don’t ever happen again, along Pearl Street, in the smoke-free zone.
Or maybe, more Boulder citizens should take the same concealed carry course Mr. Mohammed tried, and then legally purchase the related asset with an appropriate carry accessory, i.e., a holster. However, that would actually run afoul of City of Boulder’s Municipal Code, ordinance 5-8-9: “No person shall have a knife or firearm concealed on or about such person’s body.”
You may argue that Colorado is a “shall-issue” state, meaning that any non-felon adult citizen can apply for a concealed carry license, and the jurisdiction “shall issue” it. That is true of the state, and until 2021 no city or county could preempt state law by making a local ordinance that was more restrictive than the state statute.
But then came Senate Bill 21-256, “which repealed preemption and gave counties and municipalities the ability to enact stricter local firearm laws.” So while Colorado is a “shall-issue” state, each county and each city is a “may-issue” jurisdiction.
Denver allows licensed concealed carry but not in public buildings or in public parks. The Ft. Collins municipal code is too hard to decipher. Cripple Creek, part of Teller County, is crystal clear: No carry allowed, either open or concealed. Teller County itself, however, is the opposite: Concealed carry is overtly encouraged. Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Lamar, Estes Park and Buena Vista generally allow concealed carry with a license.
Most jurisdictions have carve-outs for law enforcement officers, allowing carry, but some have confusing language about on-duty vs. off-duty.
Besides all that, there is also lots more Colorado language about whether you can have a handgun in your car. With a license, without a license, in a preempted city, in a rural county, loaded or unloaded, inside the car, outside the car… It’s pretty bewildering, and I have already wasted the better part of an evening trying to understand it. Bottom line, Colorado appears to be deeply conflicted over whether they want anyone armed in their state.
All the gun stuff in this edition of the ANR is from my own understanding, which is no doubt flawed in numerous ways. Study the law yourself to know what’s legal where. And in Colorado, good luck with that.
So: To protect oneself in downtown Boulder, one cannot carry a firearm or a knife. Throwing a Molotov cocktail is a possibility, but that is also illegal along Pearl Street because of the smoke-free zone. And also, as a minor detail, it’s not allowed because it constitutes assault, or maybe intent to murder, which are probably also illegal, even in Colorado.
Therefore, maybe you could carry a brick in your purse or your stylish European man-bag? A sling with five smooth stones? Except that slingshots may also be prohibited.
A baseball bat! Surely no one would object to a baseball bat!
Securing the southern border is proving harder than anyone thought.
While the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security report astonishing results with stopping the flow of illegal immigrants northward, the US Department of Agriculture has its own worries.
APHIS, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, has announced the possibility that the New World Screwworm may be infecting cattle moving north from Mexico into the U.S. A case was discovered in Chiapas (southern Mexico) in an inspection near the Guatemalan border.
The New World Screwworm enters through an open sore and leaves larvae behind. When hatched, these enter the bloodstream and begin to feed on living internal tissue. This eventually kills the host, and sounds as bad as it is.
Bonus feature: Humans are not immune to the New World Screwworm.
The parasite was virtually eliminated a hundred years ago, but a new infestation apparently originating in Nicaragua has traveled quickly through Honduras, Guatemala, and now Mexico.
The U.S. is particularly at risk because of illegal cattle trafficking. Over 1 million head are moved from Mexico into the U.S. each year, and this level of trade has increased substantially in the last year. APHIS has inspection stations at ports of entry, but when cows are smuggled across the border, there is no inspection.
If the parasite enters the domestic beef market, a rapid spread is almost guaranteed. There will be serious economic damage — not to mention another ripe opportunity for a pandemic-level health scare. Stopping the spread is expected to cost billions of dollars.
You can worry about this one when you run out of other things to worry about.
If not for the cattle smugglers — when did rustlers become smugglers, anyway? It sounds undignified — we would all be safer.
Number 1. CyberGuy dot com. Humanoid robot malfunctions and sparks viral panic.
You may have seen the video on this already, but it illustrates that when AI goes bad, it can go real bad, real quick.
The Unitree H1, a robot about the size of a human, sporting arms and legs, is shown in a Chinese laboratory. H1 is hanging from a crane in the lab while computer-types are working at a desk nearby. The robot suddenly begins twitching, jerking and flailing his arms vigorously. Items are swiped off the desk and crash to the floor. The Chinese workers are seen frantically attempting to regain control.
Scary video. H1 is almost 6 feet tall, weighs 100 lbs and can walk and run and do gymnastics. His arms can lift heavy objects and can throw them.
The source of the sudden spasm of H1 seems to be a conflict between a safety tether and his own internal balance programming.
H1 is seen with his head, or what would be his head if he were human, tethered to the crane. In other words, he is hanging by the top of his head. But H1 has internal programming that forces him to flex arms and legs to retain his equilibrium. The tether, immobilizing his head, was seen by his programming as an unexpected outside force. This caused his software to attempt corrective maneuvers to recover his balance.
The more he flexed against the tether, the worse it got. By all appearances, he went berserk.
So you see, it’s not the robot’s fault and there is nothing to fear from an AI creation. The workers had inadvisably restrained him and caused the software to react predictably… and predictably violent.
This sounds like a few people I used to work with: Treat them with kid gloves or they will fly off the handle.
I’m sure it’s all quite safe, although I do wonder how H1 would react in a grocery store when someone bumps into him inadvertently. And by all means, don’t try to handcuff him.
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, June 6, 2025. Today is the 81st anniversary of D-Day, which saw 2,501 Americans killed in action far from home. It was a bloody day. By all appearances that event sparked a growing conviction among U.S. citizens that they should maintain the strongest military on the globe.
George Washington, in his first annual address to Congress (January 8, 1790) put into words what effectively has become U.S. national defense policy ever since: "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
This is probably as true at the personal level on a quiet street in a major American city as it is in international affairs on the world stage.
Have a good weekend.
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