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Welcome to Friday, where Israeli strikes on Gaza kill 30, Iran and EU countries hold nuclear talks in Geneva and new light is shed on our very distant ancestors. We also feature a piece by German journalist Tillman Pruefer about a trip to Tanzania that confronts colonizer guilt, dusty libraries, stolen skulls and a long lost grand-grandfather.
[*Nǐhǎo - Cantonese]
💡 SPOTLIGHT
The Paris salon to a million selfies — how Europe learned to smile
It was certainly what visitors expected from the Salons held year after year in Paris — to showcase the latest and the best in art: That a marvelous painting would emerge, that the newest societal trends would be on display and that, occasionally, a great scandal would explode.
At the 1787 Salon, Élisabeth Vigée-LeBrun created both that great scandal and a major societal change. Her self-portrait — in which she appears with her daughter Julie – showed her smiling at the viewer, a smile that even revealed her teeth.
Today, smiling at the camera is almost taken for granted. Although how much we smile and at whom varies across cultures. Take, for example, all those reels of Americans sharing their surprise at the fact that no one smiles back in Europe. Smiling is assumed to be the default facial expression to use for memory pictures. We smile in family reunion photos, graduation pictures, or even in our ID photos, resigned to the knowledge that we might not look our best. And, of course, we smile in the hundreds of selfies we take throughout the year. A serious pose in a vacation photo would make viewers wonder what was wrong with us.
But smiling for posterity is a fairly recent phenomenon, something that, as historian Colin Jones explains in The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris, experienced a moment of success, peak, and disappearance during the Enlightenment in Europe. It was in the enlightened world that Europe learned to smile, although the French Revolution and the world that followed put an end to that trend. Thus, Vigée-LeBrun was capturing a social revolution while also creating her swan song.
Of course, it is not that nobody smiled before or that the smile was unknown. What changed, as Jones explains, is how the gesture was socially perceived, and also who could smile and where. This was closely connected to social changes in people's views and their place in the world (and the philosophy of the Enlightenment), but also to something as mundane as the evolution of dentistry in 18th-century Paris.
Until the 18th century, dentistry was more performance material than a proper science. Teeth hurt, decayed and had to be removed, but those who did it were not necessarily medical experts — whatever that meant at that time.
Dentists back then almost turned tooth extractions into circus shows and were accompanied by eye-catching elements (animals, for example) that captured the interest of the public. “One such individual was known for extracting a tooth with one hand while firing a pistol into the air with the other, all while having a bag over his head,” the historian writes. [...]
— Read the full article by Raquel C. Pico for Ethic, translated from Spanish by Worldcrunch.
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Paris-based catholic daily La Croix opens today's edition with a photo of French President Emmanuel Macron wearing a worker's helmet as he visits the construction site of Notre-Dame, renovated after the 2019 fire that destroyed the spire, roof, and wooden interior of the most famous religious building in France. The cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage site and perhaps the world’s finest example of medieval gothic architecture, is set to reopen to the public on Dec. 8.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israel warns Lebanese residents are prohibited to move south, strikes kill 30 in Gaza. Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee on Friday called on residents to not return to more than 60 villages in southern Lebanon until further notice so as not to put “themselves in danger.” Israel said it opened fire on “suspects” with vehicles on Thursday, as it continues to trade accusations with Hezbollah over breaches of the ceasefire, which came into effect on Wednesday. Meanwhile, at least 30 Palestinians were killed overnight in Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, medics said on Friday. For more, check this Daraj piece: The Israel-Hezbollah Truce Will Only Hold If There's A Deal Beyond Lebanon — That Means Iran.
• Putin threatens to strike Ukraine with new missile. Speaking at a security summit in Kazakhstan on Thursday, the Russian President warned he would consider further launches of Moscow’s “Oreshnik” medium-range ballistic missile on Ukraine. This came hours after Russia targeted critical energy infrastructure in Ukraine, in what Putin called a response to “continued attacks” using U.S.-made ATACMS missiles on Russian soil.
• Iran holds nuclear deal talks with France, Germany and UK. Iranian diplomat Majid Takht-Ravanchi will represent Iran in a meeting with representatives of the three European countries in Geneva on Friday to discuss the country’s nuclear program. The UN’s nuclear agency, the IAEA, said Iran plans to install around 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium, the AFP reported on Friday. The meeting comes less than two months before Donald Trump returns as U.S. president. Read more in this analysis translated from Persian by Worldcrunch: A Trump Carrot-And-Stick For Iran? New Nuclear Talks, Crushing Sanctions.
• China says it’s ready to assist in severed cables probe. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Friday that Beijing was “willing to work with relevant countries to find out the truth” after Sweden asked for the country’s cooperation in the investigation into the rupture of two data cables in the Baltic Sea last week. Suspicions have been directed at a Chinese ship, which was seen in the area at the time of the rupture. As of Friday morning, both cables were restored. For more on this topic, here’s a Die Zeit article, translated from German by Worldcrunch: Cyclones To Sabotage, New Threats To The Submarine Cables That Carry The Internet.
• Ireland votes in snap general election. Voting began on Friday morning for the country’s general election to choose representatives to serve as Teachtaí Dála (TDs) in the lower chamber of parliament, in a tight race between the incumbent coalition parties and the opposition party Sinn Fein. The ballot comes after Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris called a snap election earlier this month.
• Australia officially bans social media for under-16s in world first. The country’s parliament passed a law that bans children under 16 from using social media on Friday, one of the strictest regulations targeting the platforms in the world. The law, which will not take effect for at least 12 months, will make platforms liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million). Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the ban was needed to protect children from the “harms” of social media. But Gen Z may actually be using social media more wisely than adults, says this La Stampa analysis, translated by Worldcrunch.
• Footprints reveal two ancient human species coexisted. Thanks to the analysis of muddy footprints left on a Kenyan lakeside, scientists found that two extinct branches of the human evolutionary tree, Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei, literally crossed paths some 1.5 million years ago. “They probably saw each other, probably knew each other was there and probably influenced each other in some way,” said a paleoanthropologist who co-authored the research published Thursday in the journal Science.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
999
Indian airlines and airports this year have received 10 times more hoax bomb threats than in 2023: 999 in total, as of Nov. 14. More than 500 threats occurred in October alone, causing widespread flight delays, disruptions, and international incidents. Despite no actual bombs being found, authorities arrested 12 people and filed 256 complaints, but the motives and culprits behind this dramatic rise remain largely unclear.
📹 ON THIS DAY VIDEO — 4 HISTORY-MAKING EVENTS, IN 57 SECONDS
➡️ Watch the video: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🇳🇮 Nicaragua moves away from rule of law as President Ortega and his wife Murillo severely alter the country's constitutional structure to reinforce their power.
— CLARÍN
🇮🇳 Why is corruption in India so widespread? Lawyer Sarayu Pani tries to answer this complicated question.
— THE WIRE
🇹🇿 A German journalist travels to the former colony of Tanzania to find out the truth about his missionary grandfather: Was he really one of the good white guys?
— DIE ZEIT
👓 WORLDCRUNCH MAGAZINE
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📣 VERBATIM
“We will not allow anyone to keep us in a constant state of blackmail and manipulation.”
— Georgia has postponed its bid for European Union membership until 2028, with Pro-Russian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accusing the EU of "blackmail" after the European Parliament rejected the results of Georgia's October elections due to alleged fraud. Opposition groups in Georgia are also claiming the elections, won by the ruling Georgian Dream party, were illegitimate. Democratic backsliding and fraud concerns have further strained Georgia's EU prospects, despite public support for EU membership remains high. International agencies are demanding investigations into the alleged electoral irregularities and stronger commitments to democratic governance, a cry apparently left unheard as dozens of protesters are arrested in Tbilisi.
📸 PHOTO DU JOUR
Supporters of the Assisted Dying Bill gather in London as Members of Parliament vote on a bill to legalize assisted dying. — Photo: Vuk Valcic/ZUMA
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet & Gabriele Magro
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