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PARIS: Paris police acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defenses on Wednesday — turning this month’s dazzling daylight theft into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.
Paris Police Chief Patrice Faure told Senate lawmakers that aging systems and slow-moving fixes left weak seams in the world’s most-visited museum.
“A technological step has not been taken,” he told lawmakers, noting parts of the video network are even still analog, producing lower-quality images that are slow to share in real time.
A long-promised revamp — a $93 million project requiring roughly 60 kilometers (37 miles) of new cabling — “will not be finished before 2029–2030,” he said.
Faure also disclosed that the Louvre’s authorization to operate its security cameras quietly expired in July and wasn’t renewed — a paperwork lapse that some see as a symbol of broader negligence after thieves forced a window to the Apollo Gallery, cut into cases with power tools and fled with eight pieces of the French crown jewels within minutes while tourists were inside.
“Officers arrived extremely fast,” Faure said, but he added the lag occurred earlier in the chain — from first detection, to museum security, to the emergency line, to police command.
Faure and his team said the first alert to police came not from the Louvre’s alarms but from a cyclist outside who dialed the emergency line after seeing helmeted men with a basket lift.
Suspects’ custody expiring
Officials say two suspects were arrested over the weekend, including one stopped at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport as he tried to leave France. Under French rules for organized theft, custody can run up to 96 hours; that limit expires late Wednesday, when prosecutors must charge the suspects, release them, or seek a judge’s extension. The Louvre values the eight stolen pieces at about $102 million. None has been confirmed recovered.
The theft has also exposed an insurance blind spot: officials say the jewels were not privately insured. The French state self-insures its national museums, because premiums for covering priceless heritage are astronomically high — meaning the Louvre will receive no payout for the loss. The financial blow, like the cultural wound, is total.
Faure pushed back on quick fixes. He rejected calls for a permanent police post inside the palace-museum, warning it would set an unworkable precedent and do little against fast, mobile crews. “I am firmly opposed,” he said. “The issue is not a guard at a door; it is speeding the chain of alert.”
He urged lawmakers to authorize tools currently off-limits: AI-based anomaly detection and object tracking (not facial recognition) to flag suspicious movements and follow scooters or gear across city cameras in real time.
The Oct. 19 heist was swift and simple. In the morning rush, thieves reached the jewel gallery near streetside windows, cut through reinforced cases and vanished in minutes. Former bank robber David Desclos told the AP the operation was textbook and vulnerabilities were glaringly obvious in the layout of the gallery.
Museum and culture officials under pressure
Culture Minister Rachida Dati, under pressure, has stayed defensive — refusing the Louvre director’s resignation and insisting alarms worked while acknowledging “security gaps did exist.” She has kept details to a minimum, citing ongoing investigations.
The reckoning lands at a museum already under strain. In June, the Louvre shut in a spontaneous staff strike — including security agents — over unmanageable crowds, chronic understaffing and “untenable” conditions. Unions say mass tourism and construction pinch points create blind spots, a vulnerability underscored by thieves who rolled a basket lift to the Seine-facing façade and reached a hall displaying the crown jewels.
Faure said police will now track surveillance-permit deadlines across institutions to prevent repeats of the July lapse. But he stressed the larger fix is disruptive and slow: ripping out and rebuilding core systems while the palace stays open, and updating the law so police can act on suspicious movement in real time — before a scooter disappears into Paris traffic and diamonds into history.
For Desclos, the practical answer is unsentimental: vault the originals and display perfect replicas. Romance aside, he argues, the point is that the real objects survive.
Experts fear the stolen pieces may already be broken down and stones recut to erase their past — a prospect that adds urgency to France’s debate over how it guards what the world comes to see.

CHICAGO: A Palestinian-American journalist and social media influencer is tied for first place among 16 other candidates in the March 2026 Democratic primary election for the ninth Illinois congressional district seat.

Kat Abughazaleh, whose father and grandparents originate in Gaza and Bethlehem, was the first to announce her candidacy when incumbent Jan Schakowsky announced her retirement, having been elected in 1998.

Abughazaleh has so far raised more than $1 million for her campaign, dwarfing the fundraising of all but one of her rivals, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss.

Both she and Biss have renounced donations from the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has poured money into the candidacy of Laura Fine.

Abughazaleh, who graduated from George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs in 2020, told Arab News that her popularity is in part driven by her humanity “for all of the victims” of the Gaza war, both Israeli and Palestinian.

“My whole point of view, no matter the country, is that every civilian deserves to live a safe life, that no child deserves to go to bed hungry,” she said.

“Anyone who commits war crimes, and it doesn’t matter what flag they’re under … they need to be accountable,” she added.

“People want to talk about how this issue is too complex to get into, but it’s not that complicated. Civilians must be protected.”

Abughazaleh said: “When people are looking at what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank, there’s the basic humanity of it, and the frustration that so many people in America are struggling with.

“So many of our tax dollars go to bomb civilians and we’re not following our own laws. We’re supposed to investigate any ally we give money or weapons to if they use that money or weapons to commit war crimes. People just want our country to follow its own laws.”

Abughazaleh was referring to the Leahy Act, which prohibits any foreign country from using American funds or arms in “gross violation of human rights.”

She said her message that the priority is to achieve peace, security and safety for all resonates with voters in the district. A recent poll reflects that trend, showing her and Biss in a tight battle for first place.

Although both have said they will not accept money from AIPAC, almost half of the money raised by Fine has come from the lobby group.

“I’ve never seen people care about Palestinian rights for this long,” Abughazaleh said, adding that in the past, “we’ve seen strikes against civilians, then there’s outrage for a few days and then it dies down once there’s a ceasefire.

“But what we’ve seen in Gaza — and to be clear, we haven’t seen the full extent of it as journalists haven’t been allowed in, as international investigators haven’t been allowed in — when that eventually happens, we’ll see horrors beyond our comprehension.”

She said both American public opinion and the attitude of the Democratic Party have changed significantly as a consequence of the Gaza war.

“I wish it didn’t take this many lives to get here, but we’re here, and that’s why I think it’s really important,” she added.

While Gaza is dominant among voters in the congressional race, Abughazaleh said other issues are also of concern, including the crackdowns, arrests and expulsions of undocumented residents.

“Democracy is clearly the top issue followed by basic rights, housing and affordability,” she said, adding that healthcare is another major concern for Americans.

Noting that nearly half of the members of the US Congress are millionaires, she explains on her website KatForIllinois.com: “We deserve representatives who face the same challenges we do or at least have some time in the last decade.

“They don’t deal with out-of-pocket prescription costs or nightmarish rent hikes or existential fear about their lives in 50 years. You and I do.”

The congressional district’s boundaries begin in Chicago and include Evanston, home to the prestigious Northwestern University.

They also include parts of Skokie, Buffalo Grove and Algonquin, suburban areas that have both Jewish and growing Muslim and Arab populations.