From LeMonde, May 24:
A suspected arson attack on electrical infrastructure plunged 160,000 homes into darkness and disrupted early events at the Cannes Film Festival.
A major power outage struck southeastern France on the morning of Saturday, May 24, threatening to jeopardize the Cannes Film Festival's closing celebrations, including the much-anticipated Palme d'Or ceremony. Police said they have opened an investigation into possible arson.
Power was restored hours before the ceremony, around 3 pm local time, as music began blasting again from beachfront speakers. The end of the blackout was greeted with loud cheers from locals.
Earlier, about 160,000 households in the Alpes-Maritimes department lost electricity after a high-voltage line fell Saturday morning, electricity network operator RTE said on X. The outage came hours after a fire at an electrical substation near Cannes overnight had already weakened the grid.
The fire reportedly broke out at the Tanneron substation, about 12 kilometres northwest of central Cannes, at around 2:00 am, local authorities told Agence France-Presse. Seven fire engines were called to the scene and the blaze was extinguished at 07:00 am, it said.
Cannes Mayor David Lisnard said that it had been "targeted in a criminal act." The pylon in Villeneuve-Loubet, 15 kilometres to the northeast of the city of Nice, was also sabotaged, with three of its legs found to have been cut, the local prosecutor's office said.
"We are looking into the likelihood of a fire being started deliberately," said a police spokesperson for the French national gendarmerie. In a statement, Laurent Hottiaux, the prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes department, condemned "serious acts of damage to electrical infrastructures." "All resources are mobilized to identify, track down, arrest and bring to justice the perpetrators of these acts," said Hottiaux.....
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