PARIS (AP) — A resurgence of anti-police violence has emerged in the long-troubled towns around Paris, signs that lawlessness still simmers in French urban hotspots that exploded in three weeks of rioting in 2005.

Violence on Saturday night in Chanteloup-les-Vignes and recent flare-ups in other tough neighborhoods west of Paris have not matched the intensity or destructiveness of the unrest that spread to hundreds of towns in 2005. But French authorities are alarmed because the violence appears pre-planned, with ambushes deliberately set to target police.

Police union officials suspect that rival gangs from different tough neighborhoods are competing for bragging rights in their attacks and are reveling in the media coverage they’re generating, even egging each other on in social media.

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Communist authorities destroyed a 3,000-seat megachurch over the weekend, using a large excavator to tear apart the building as members and citizens watched helplessly, according to China Aid.

The large building – which resembled many large church buildings in the United States and was topped with a spire and cross – was located in the province of Anhui, which rests in the eastern part of the country and has about 60 million residents.

Un Funking believable

Artists and fashion designers are coming up with novel ways to stay private in public

Emily Roderick, 23, and her cohorts in “The Dazzle Club” walked around the British capital last week with blue, red and black stripes painted across their faces in an effort to escape the watchful eye of facial-recognition cameras.

The artists took their silent stroll through the city’s King’s Cross area hoping their bold make-up would act as camouflage and confuse the cameras.

“We’re hiding in plain sight,” Roderick told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, explaining that bright colours and dark shades of make-up are known to hamper a camera’s ability to accurately recognise faces.

In Hong Kong, for example, protesters against a bill that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial have sought to avoid surveillance by wearing masks and dressing in black.

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