France is bitten by a fear of bedbugs as it prepares to host Summer Olympics

By ELAINE GANLEY
Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — Bedbugs go wherever people go, and they have become a nightmare haunting France for weeks. The government has been forced to step in to calm an anxious nation that will host the Olympic Games in almost nine months — a prime venue for infestations of the crowd-loving insects. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne called a meeting of ministers for Friday to tackle the bedbug crisis. The country’s transport minister, Clement Beaune, met this week with transportation companies to draw up a plan for monitoring and disinfecting — and to try to ease what some have called a national psychosis inflamed by the media.