I-Spy Paris: war memorial to the Tsar's troops

In 1916, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia sent 20,000 Russian troops to help France fight the Germans on the Western Front. Above is the memorial in Paris to the 5,000 who were killed.

Tsarist Russia was part of the Triple Entente with France and Britain, lining up against the Central Powers of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. 

Tsar Nicholas would be killed by the Bolsheviks as the Russian Empire collapsed. The First World War also brought an end to the German Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires were dismantled.

Europe's migrant crisis - facts and numbers

Last month, more than 218,000 migrants reached Europe by sea according to the United Nations – about the same as the number for the whole of 2014. More than 10,000 arrived in Greece alone on a single day. So far this year, nearly 3,500 are estimated to have died trying to get to Europe.

The vast majority have come via Turkey to Greece. This has replaced the route to Italy via Libya which used to be more popular. The highest number come from Syria – about 53 per cent, with Afghanistan next – 18 per cent.

The United Nations has been heavily critical of Europe’s response, but the organisation’s own predictions for the number of migrants expected have been gross underestimates. It forecast 700,000 for the whole year, but at the end of October with two months still to go, that figure had already been exceeded by 44,000.

Normally the numbers fall during the winter months, but that may not happen this year as the people traffickers seem to be offering bad weather discounts. The fact that some of the Islamic fanatics who carried out the mass murders in Paris apparently slipped into Europe as ‘refugees’ has heightened alarm.

Remember Paris, but don't forget Beirut, Nigeria, Mali, Egypt, Cameroon....

is not every week that English football supporters sing the Marseillaise when a French team is playing England, nor every week that British prime ministers and home secretaries break into French, but then it is not every week that 129 people are murdured in Paris by Muslim fanatics.

But that was only one of a spate of recent Islamist attacks across a number of countries. In Beirut, ISIS said it carried out two suicide bombings that killed 40 people. In Nigeria, more than 40 people died in bombings by Boko Haram, which killed more than 6,640 in 2014, making it the world’s deadliest terror organisation.

In Mali, 20 people perished in an attack on a hotel claimed by two Islamist groups, one affiliated to al-Qaeda, while ISIS claims it brought down the Russian airliner that crashed in Sinai on October 31 with the loss of 224 people.

Just today, suicide bombers, suspected to be from Boko Haram, claimed another four victims in Cameroon. It is not only the dead and injured of Paris that we need to remember.

Terrorism: Remember Paris....but don't forget Nigeria

The murders by Muslim fanatics in France have attracted widespread condemnation, and an impressive demonstration of international solidarity. What a pity the same cannot be said of the massacres committed by the Islamic terrorists of Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Amnesty International, after compiling eyewitness reports and studying satellite pictures, says last week’s attack on the villages of Baga and Doron Baga killed at least 150, including small children and a woman in labour.

The terrorists are said to have opened fire indiscriminately, and some say the death toll could be as high as 2,000. The villages were razed to the ground, with about 3,700 buildings, mainly people’s homes, destroyed.

In April 2013, the Baga area was raided by the Nigerian military in response to a Boko Haram attack that killed a soldier. Human Rights Watch say local people were killed, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed, though the Nigerian government denied the claims.

(See also my blogs of March 3 and June 23, and December 19, 2014.)

Malaria - a glimmer of hope?

Some hopeful signs from a new anti-malaria vaccine.    Preliminary trials had begun in Burkina Faso to test its safety, but it soon became clear that children who had been given the injection were getting a high degree of protection.

The results are described as ‘most encouraging’, and a bigger trial is about to start in Mali.  About 100 different vaccines have been tried against the disease, and this one, developed by the Pasteur Institute in Paris, is only the second to have shown promise.

The Burkina Faso study involved only 45 children, but the incidence of malaria was three or four time lower among those who were given the vaccine.    Eight hundred children will be enrolled in the new trial in Mali.

Malaria still kills around 1 million people a year, 90 per cent of them in Africa, and most of these are young children.  (See also my blogs of 11 April, 30 May, 24 Sept and 21 Oct, 2009.)

Concorde crash trial + Haiti update

In France, Continental Airlines and five individuals have gone on trial over the Concorde crash at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on July 25, 2000. The aircraft came down on the nearby town of Gonesse, killing four people on the ground and all 109 passengers and crew on board. It was the only fatal accident the supersonic airliner was ever involved in, but it never recovered, and was retired from service in 2003.

An investigation concluded that one of Concorde’s tyres had burst after it hit a piece of metal left on the runway by a Continental DC-10. Debris from the tyre then ruptured a fuel tank, which made the airliner burst into flames. Continental denies this, and claims that Concorde had caught fire before it hit the metal.

Among the individuals facing manslaughter charges alongside Continental are one of its mechanics and a maintenance official, as well as Concorde’s former chief engineer, a former head of the Concorde division at Aerospatiale and a former member of France’s civil aviation watchdog.

** I’ve been quoted by Newsweek in an article on the Haiti earthquake and its aftermath. The link is http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/wealthofnations/archive/2010/01/25/why-haiti-is-without-parallel.aspx

Caribbean catastrophe

On this day....107 years ago, the volcano Montagne Pelée erupted above the town of St Pierre on the Caribbean island of Martinique. Apart from a minor eruption in 1851, there hadn’t been a peep out of the mountain for a long time, but in April 1902, it started to grumble, and on the bright sunny morning of May 8, 1902, it went berserk.

As people gathered in the churches of St Pierre - the “Paris of the West Indies” – for eight o’ clock mass, smoke blotted out the sun, and boiling lava poured down the hill into the town killing everyone in its wake. More than a dozen ships were destroyed in the harbour; one having its masts and funnel sheared off “as if they had been cut by a knife.”

Of St Pierre’s 26,000 inhabitants, only a handful survived. One was a convicted murderer awaiting execution who was saved thanks to the thick walls and tiny windows of his prison. He was reprieved, and began a new career with Barnum & Bailey’s circus – sitting in a replica of his cell as the “lone” survivor of the “Silent City of Death”.

St Pierre would be partially rebuilt, only to be hit by another eruption in 1929, and would never again recover its colourful and rather racy reputation. For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Iraq + strangest anniversary

It was six years ago today that Labour launched its illegal, ill-judged, unnecessary and disastrous war in Iraq (see my blogs passim) – a classic example of invade in haste, repent at leisure. Any fool can start a war, it’s ending one that’s difficult. The Iraq madness has now gone on longer than the Second World War.

The anniversary has been marked by fresh demands for a full independent inquiry into the war. Now you can’t depend on Labour MP’s for many things, but you can be sure that they will pull out all the stops to ensure that no one is called to account for the Iraq disaster. How did the party of Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson transmute into this shower?

Another anniversary today, and perhaps the most bizarre I have ever had to record. It was an unfortunate astrological configuration on March 20, 1345 and it caused the Black Death. At least, that was what the medical faculty of the University of Paris said when the French king told them they had better come up with an explanation of perhaps the greatest disaster mankind has ever had to endure, though they had the good grace to admit that some things were “hidden from even the most highly trained intellects.”

For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.