RFI: On 1 September Reporters Without Borders launched a campaign to support journalists in Gaza. How do you view this initiative?

REM: For me, a long-time journalist for Radio France Internationale, it matters a lot – especially in this crucial period when journalists are being targeted one way or another by Israeli military actions. So we say thank you.

RFI: More than 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza in almost two years. Tell us about the danger.

REM: That is a good question. I think in Gaza, nobody – not even journalists – can feel safe. Wherever I am, as a journalist, as a human being, as a civilian in Gaza, I never feel safe. Even at home, in my own house, I never feel safe.

I come from the Meghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. In January 2024 Israel forced refugees to leave for the south of Gaza because the army was preparing to intervene. I had to pack my things, gather my family and we went by truck to Rafah. I left my home. In that house, in Meghazi, I used to sit in a corner. That exact spot was later hit by a large brick from a nearby house struck in an air raid. The window shattered and the brick fell where I used to sit with my coffee and work, before the Israeli invasion of Meghazi.

RSF says journalists ‘targeted’ in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital

 

RFI: You have escaped Israeli strikes and shooting several times while reporting…

REM: Nowhere in Gaza feels safe. You cross the street and there could be a strike. As soon as you move, you could face death or injury. Sometimes you are forced to go to places where strikes are happening, where Israeli actions are taking place. Even if you take precautions to do your reporting, there is always something that makes you feel in danger.

RFI: Despite this you keep working and reporting on the ground.

REM: As a reporter working in this job for 25 years, it has always felt like a duty to do everything I can to tell this story to the world. Especially now, when there are no foreign journalists here in Gaza. So it is my responsibility. I also have an obligation to myself and my family. Because this is the nature of my work, as a freelancer. If I do not work, it means I starve – I will have nothing to eat and I cannot feed my family. If I work, I can survive. Without it, I cannot live and we will not be able to cope.

RFI: Gaza is now the deadliest place in the world for journalists. Is this always on your mind?

REM: Of course, I always have that in mind. That is why I want to leave and be evacuated from Gaza. Can you imagine? I have been trying, with RFI’s help, since February 2024. Just a few months after the war began. February was my first attempt to get out. Because I always felt the situation was becoming more and more dangerous. It is no longer liveable. Not only for me as a journalist, but also as a father, caring for my children, who need a better present and a better future. Both the present and the future are missing in Gaza now. It is my dream to leave this place with RFI’s help.

Humanitarian aid flotilla sets sail for Gaza to ‘break illegal siege’

RFI: Tell us what a typical day is like for a journalist in Gaza.

REM: A typical day starts with looking for basic needs, like water. You have to make sure you always have water, wherever you are. You have to make sure your family has food – for breakfast, for lunch. You have to make sure the electricity works, to charge your phone, to charge your LED lamps.

So a journalist’s day is quite intense. You are torn between your duties as a reporter and your duties as head of the family, responsible for your loved ones.

I have to wake up early to follow the latest news, take care of daily tasks for my family, then start my working day. I must find a subject, go to dangerous areas to meet people, give a voice to those who do not have one, and produce a report for RFI.

RFI joins 135 NGOs and media groups in urging unrestricted press access to Gaza

RFI: Your colleague Rami Abou Jamous, also a journalist in Gaza, told us recently: “The Israeli army wants to bury reality.” Do you agree?

REM: Honestly, I cannot say. I cannot judge myself whether Israel wants to stifle the truth. But I can ask Israel this question: why do you forbid foreign journalists from entering Gaza?

RFI: How can we help you and all the journalists in Gaza?

REM: How can you help us? Do everything possible so that the French government lifts its decision to freeze the evacuation of journalists from Gaza. Then myself and others will be able to leave.

This interview was conducted by RFI’s Arnaud Pontus.

Dologuele is set to once again challenge Touadera for leadership of the Russia-friendly country, among the world’s poorest nations and plagued by instability for decades.

The economist by training came second to the president in the 2020 ballot, which was marred by unrest and accusations of voter fraud.

Touadera’s critics accuse him of wishing to become the CAR‘s president for life, especially after a change of constitution in 2023 allowed him to seek a third term and barred candidates holding multiple citizenships from running against him.

Though the presidential vote’s first round is scheduled for 28 December, Dologuele questioned whether the authorities would manage to organise the vote “in good time”.

Having insisted he took the “personal” decision to give up his French citizenship with a “heavy heart”, leader of the opposition URCA party also took aim at the national electoral authority’s “incompetence and avowed bias”.

Issues with the electoral roll and funding have long delayed the regional and municipal ballots scheduled to take place alongside the presidential vote’s first round.

Hundreds of first-time voters

By the authority’s count, some 2.3 million voters are expected at the ballot box, of whom 749,000 will have been enrolled for the first time.

Dologuele refused to rule out a boycott of the vote if the conditions for holding free and fair elections were not present.

“It’s like a football match. A team who knows that the referees are biased won’t take to the pitch,” the opposition politician said.

CAR refugees face hardship and uncertainty both at home and abroad

Touadera’s first election in 2016 came in the middle of a bloody civil war, which dragged on from 2013 to 2018.

That half-decade-long conflict was the latest crisis to grip the nation, which has endured a succession of coups, authoritarian rulers and civil wars since gaining independence from France in 1960.

In recent years the intervention of a United Nations peacekeeping mission, Rwandan troops and Russian mercenaries from the notorious Wagner paramilitary group has helped to improve the security situation.

Yet anti-government fighters are still at large on the country’s main highways, as well as in the east near the borders with war-torn Sudan and South Sudan.

(with AFP)

The Futurs Médias group (GFM) – which owns leading Senegalese media outlets including newspaper L’Observateur, radio station RFM and television channel TFM – says it is experiencing an “unprecedented” crisis.

With advertising revenue plummeting, print sales falling, rising costs and tax adjustments, the group has not paid some employees for three months.

For its management there is only one option left: restructuring the company.

The group was founded in 2003 by the internationally renowned musician and former culture minister, Youssou N’Dour, to provide an independent media platform that could offer diverse perspectives, countering the dominance of state-controlled media.  

The group became a dominant force in Senegal’s media landscape; L’Observateur is now the most read daily paper in the country.

But since 2024, amid the national economic crisis and recent political change, GFM has been struggling.

Amid a reduction in public subsidies, the group’s profits have fallen. So to reduce its expenses, it is looking to save on salaries. Dozens of positions are now under threat, among the group’s 400 permanent employees.

Staff representatives have reacted angrily to the plan, as Mamadou Fall, general secretary of the Syndicate of Information and Communication Professionals of Senegal (SYNPICS), GFM section, told RFI.

“The release of a press release to announce a recovery plan took us by surprise,” he said. “For us, it’s brutal, it’s difficult. We don’t want any lay-offs at GFM and we want to try to save as many jobs as possible, because this could create a social tragedy in Senegal.”

Workers affiliated with SYNPICS agreed last week to file a notice to strike.

Media blackout in Senegal as publishers denounce government threats

Plurality under threat

The issues at GFM, which has correspondents across Senegal, pose a real threat to the plurality of the press sector in the country, according to Sadibou Marong, director of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) office in Dakar.

“The crisis probably means that the territorial coverage, the strength of the group… could be fundamentally damaged, and that would impact the pluralism of news,” Marong told RFI.

“News is not something that is needed or happening only in Dakar, it happens throughout the country – the regions and departments where there were correspondents. So, that is the first issue.”

But the situation at GFM is not an isolated case. The Senegalese press has been hit hard by the country’s economic crisis over the past year, and many journalists have already lost their jobs.

Other groups are going through a financial crisis, such as the Sud Communication group, which owns the daily Sud Quotidien, and has been forced to raise funds via crowdfunding.

The Walfadjri group, or WALF, another private media group, is also facing cash flow difficulties.

“This means that good journalists might lose their job and move on to communications positions,” Marong said, “and that will impact the quality of news.”

Senegal passes law to protect whistleblowers in ‘historic moment for democracy’

‘Risk of extinction’

According to the head of the Coordination of Press Associations of Senegal, Ibrahima Lissa Faye, the survival of the press in Senegal is in question.

“For more than 17 months, media companies have been in a cash deficit because of a series of inappropriate measures taken by the state that are weakening the survival of media companies and putting them in an extremely complicated situation,” he told RFI.

“And today, all private media companies are living with salary arrears, rental arrears and outdated equipment that has not been properly maintained. Therefore, there is a risk of extinction for some media outlets.”

Senegal has been suffering from an economic crisis since 2024, facing a budget deficit of 14 percent and an outstanding public debt representing 119 percent of GDP.

When President Bassirou Diomaye Faye came to power in April 2024, he pledged to support a free press and a diversified media landscape. Under Senegal’s previous president, Macky Sall, 60 journalists were arrested, assaulted, questioned or detained between 2021 and 2024, according to an RSF report.

But among the measures to cut public spending out in place by the government of his Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, were a pause on the Press Support and Development Fund (FADP) and a reduction in publicly-funded advertising campaigns.

And according to Lissa Faye, these are among the root causes of the current financial crisis in the media industry.

A regional beacon

Press associations and trade unions have denounced the lack of support from the government. 

A general meeting took place at GFM on 26 August to discuss the job losses, and the Syndicate of Information and SYNPICS has also announced a rally, to be held as soon as possible.

Senegal’s media is considered vital for press freedom across West Africa, as the country boasts the most dynamic press in a region where journalists are under huge constraints. Neighbouring economies, for instance in Niger and Mali, are also much weaker. This means Senegal’s media covers wider regional issues and is read and watched beyond its borders.

In addition, said Lissa Faye, referring to the wider region’s jihadist rebellions and military coups: “We are in a very threatened region, with instability that could, in any case, take over our media or come up with another offer that may not be to our liking.”

Sahel countries navigate uncertainty following split from Ecowas bloc

For Marong, who contributed to an RSF report on reforms needed for the press sector to survive, released in April 2025, private media has also relied on public support and adverts from public sector organisations for too long.

The government has introduced media reform aimed at bringing more transparency to the landscape, he explained, and at encouraging the diversification in revenues.

These reforms include the registration of media outlets on a dedicated platform, as well as the updating of advertising laws to strengthen regulation, according to RSF. 

But the primary challenge remains the economic survival of media outlets.

“The Press Support Fund wasn’t paid in 2024 and 2025, it’s true, and with the lack in advert revenues, this creates a bit of a shortfall,” Marong said.

“But it also shows that, for a long time, the media relied on public subsidies and didn’t have the ability to reinvent themselves, to invest in digital, to invest in other promising niches, for example, mobile money. Le Soleil did it, and it was successful. Unfortunately, not all media outlets have done that yet.”

Rescue teams in Afghanistan are racing against time to save lives after one of the country’s deadliest earthquakes in recent years left more than 800 people dead and at least 2,800 injured.

The 6.0-magnitude tremor struck just after midnight at a depth of 10 km, toppling homes and cutting off villages in remote mountain areas.

Helicopters have been airlifting the wounded to hospital as survivors and emergency crews sift through the rubble of collapsed mudbrick houses.

Military teams, backed by dozens of flights, have already transported hundreds of injured residents to safety.

In some places, entire villages were levelled, particularly in Kunar province, where authorities reported more than 600 fatalities.

Earthquake risk zone

Despite the devastation, scenes of solidarity have emerged. Local residents, health workers and security forces have been working shoulder to shoulder to pull people from the ruins, carry the injured to waiting ambulances, and distribute food and water.

“All our teams have been mobilised to accelerate assistance, so that comprehensive and full support can be provided,” said Abdul Maten Qanee, a health ministry spokesperson speaking to reporters.

Afghanistan, prone to earthquakes due to its position at the collision point of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, has faced repeated tragedies of this kind.

The latest disaster comes just two years after a 6.1-magnitude quake killed around 1,000 people in the east of the country, and less than a year after another tremor struck Herat in the west.

Afghanistan: four years since Taliban takeover

Taliban appeal for help

The Taliban administration, already contending with strained resources and widespread humanitarian needs, has appealed for international help.

Sharafat Zaman, spokesperson for the health ministry in Kabul, urged foreign donors to step in: “We need it because here lots of people lost their lives and houses.”

So far, foreign governments have been slow to respond. Afghanistan’s foreign office noted on Monday that no offers of support had yet been received, although China later signalled its readiness to provide assistance “according to Afghanistan’s needs and within its capacity”.

The United Nations has also pledged to mobilise relief through its mission in the country, with Secretary-General António Guterres writing on social media platform X that the organisation was preparing to help those most affected.

‘Brutal’ funding cuts push UN to slash humanitarian operations

Aid funding cut since 2021

Funding for humanitarian work in Afghanistan has fallen sharply in recent years. International aid once made up the bulk of government revenue, but following the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, financial flows shrank dramatically.

Humanitarian funding has dropped from €3.5 billion in 2022 to just €706 million this year, as donor priorities shift elsewhere and frustration grows over restrictions on women, including bans on female aid workers.

Nevertheless, international agencies stress that the need remains vast: more than half of Afghanistan’s population is estimated to require humanitarian assistance.

Local aid workers point out that communities are still struggling to recover from earlier disasters, with many families in western provinces still living in temporary shelters years on.

For now, the focus is on saving lives. In the hills along the Pakistani border, rescue teams continue to push into isolated districts where communications are down and damage is extensive. 

French Prime Minister Bayrou has vowed not to bow out quietly, insisting that his contested economic programme is about the future of France, not just his own political survival.

Speaking on Sunday evening from his office at Matignon, the 74-year-old head of government gave a sprawling 90-minute interview broadcast live on France’s four rolling news channels.

Switching briefly into his native Béarnais dialect of Occitan, he closed with a rallying cry: “Continuons le combat” – which roughly translates as “keep the fight going”.

Bayrou seeks unity before September vote that could topple government

Fixing France’s finances

Bayrou is facing a make-or-break vote of confidence in the National Assembly on 8 September, prompted by his decision to tie his government’s future to a tough savings package worth €44 billion.

His opponents on the left and the far right, eager to turn the page on his government, have already pledged to vote him down.

For Bayrou, however, the issue at stake is bigger than his premiership. “The question is not the fate of the Prime Minister,” he declared, “but the fate of France.”

Without at least minimal agreement from MPs and citizens on tackling the national debt, he argued, “there is no courageous policy possible.”

The centrist leader warned that if his government falls, France risks sliding into “a laxer, drifting policy” that he believes would endanger the country’s finances.

Macron gives ‘full support’ to embattled PM as crisis looms in France

‘Alternative budget’ dismissed

Yet he also held out an olive branch, promising to meet party leaders this week and signalling room for negotiation on some of the most unpopular measures, including the proposed abolition of two public holidays.

Still, he firmly dismissed the Socialist Party’s alternative budget plan, which would halve the scale of the savings next year and lean more heavily on taxing the wealthy.

“That means doing nothing on the debt,” he retorted, brushing aside suggestions that the PS is ready to take the reins at Matignon.

Socialist leader Olivier Faure has already told Bayrou to start saying goodbye. “On 8 September he will have to go,” Faure said.

Bayrou, quick to counter, shot back: “Olivier Faure wants to be at Matignon. My interview is certainly not a farewell.”

If ousted, Bayrou has no intention of disappearing from the stage. He hinted at a return to activism, perhaps even another presidential run: “When you are overturned, that is when militancy begins, when the fight begins, when meeting the French begins.”

France’s Bayrou puts debt decision to lawmakers, risking fall of government

Reaction from Left and Right

The interview drew sharp reaction, with France Unbowed MP Eric Coquerel mocking it as part of an “endless farewell tour.” Faure himself described it as “pathetic and crepuscular,” while National Rally deputy Sébastien Chenu called Bayrou a “shipwrecked Prime Minister, at the end of his rope.”

Behind the political theatre looms a deeper uncertainty. If Bayrou falls, President Emmanuel Macron will need to appoint a new Prime Minister.

Names already circulating include prominent poltical figures like labour minister Catherine Vautrin, defence minister Sébastien Lecornu and justice minister Gérald Darmanin.

Meanwhile, several senior figures sounded the alarm at the weekend. Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned against “collective suicide, not for the government but for the country,” urging compromise.

Justice Minister Darmanin appealed for responsibility among mainstream parties, while France’s top public spending watchdog, Pierre Moscovici, cautioned that the financial situation was “not critical, but certainly worrying.”

A former officer with Marseille’s police child protection unit will go on trial on Monday, accused of raping and sexually abusing Filipino street children.

The 46-year-old, who has already spent four years in custody, was arrested after the head of a youth shelter reported concerns.

A 17-year-old resident, herself a rape survivor, had allegedly been receiving inappropriate late-night messages from the officer assigned to her case.

Marseille prosecutors launched an inquiry that led to a raid on the man’s home in June 2021, where thousands of child abuse images were discovered on his devices.

French former spy jailed on suspicion of ordering child rapes in Africa

‘Machiavellian scheme’

Investigators soon widened their focus to the Philippines, where the man had been travelling regularly in his role as head of the French branch of a charity working with street children in Manila.

The name of the charity has not been disclosed. 

Two orphaned boys, aged 12 and 15, later testified that he paid them small sums of money for sex, first on a patch of wasteland and later at his apartment.

“This was a Machiavellian scheme – an unprecedented modus operandi in which someone poses as an ambassador for child protection,” said Celine Astolfe, lawyer for France’s Foundation for Childhood, which is a plaintiff in the case.

Four other child protection charities have also joined the prosecution.

Survivors decry failures exposed in France’s biggest paedophilia trial

Online exploitation of children

The case highlights the broader challenges faced by the Philippines, where child abuse and trafficking remain deeply concerning.

According to UNICEF and local authorities, tens of thousands of children fall victim to sexual exploitation each year, both on the streets and online. The Philippines has become a global hotspot for so-called “online sexual exploitation of children”, with perpetrators often targeting vulnerable families in poor communities.

In 2022 alone, the Department of Social Welfare and Development in the Philippines reported handling nearly 13,000 cases of child abuse, including sexual violence and trafficking.

Campaigners stress that while these figures are shocking, they represent only part of the picture, as many cases go unreported.

The trial, taking place in the southern city of Aix-en-Provence, is due to conclude on Thursday.

(With newswires)

On Monday, 1 September, la rentrée will see France’s 12 million school pupils go back to class, with new rules and new exams to contend with.

Meanwhile, former prime minister Borne is facing mounting political uncertainty that could cut short her tenure.

Digital ‘detox’

One of the most visible changes this year is the extension of the “portable en pause” scheme, under which pupils are only allowed to use their phones on their break (pause in French).

While a 2018 law already prohibits mobile phone use in French secondary schools, enforcement has often been patchy.

The new approach obliges students to leave their devices in lockers, pouches or cases during lessons.

Piloted last year in about a hundred schools, the scheme is now being rolled out nationally – although its implementation will be left to each headteacher, in agreement with local authorities.

Education unions have noted that authorities have not seen a surge of requests, suggesting many schools believe their current rules suffice.

The digital detox also extends to the online platforms that have become central to school life.

From this term, the widely used Espaces numériques de travail (ENT) – the online platform used to share timetables, homework, grades and messages – will no longer be updated between 8pm and 7am on weekdays, or over weekends. This also applies to digital workplace software such as Pronote,

The “right to disconnect” is designed to ease screen fatigue and reduce pressure on pupils and parents alike.

France rolls out trial ban on using mobile phones in secondary schools

Exams get tougher

Students in première – the penultimate year of lycée, French high school – face a new two-hour written maths exam next spring.

It will mix multiple-choice questions with short exercises and apply either to the general curriculum or to the specialised maths track.

At the same time, grading for France’s high school diploma, the baccalauréat, is being tightened, with the overall pass mark raised to 9.5 out of 20. There will be tighter restrictions on resits too.

The brevet – the middle-school leaving certificate – is also changing. Exam marks will account for 60 percent of the final grade, up from 50 percent, with continuous assessment dropping to 40 percent.

France to show ‘Adolescence’ mini-series as part of school curriculum

Sex education and new curriculum

Another long-discussed reform comes into force this school year: compulsory sex and relationship education.

Although mandated by law since 2001, the sessions were often overlooked.

From this year, all schools – primary and secondary, public and private – must provide three annual classes under the new EVARS programme, which aims to educate students in empathy, consent and sexuality.

The education ministry has also asked schools to hold parent-teacher meetings early in the year, in order to address concerns and combat misinformation.

Meanwhile, new French and maths curricula are being rolled out from nursery through to the end of primary school, with experimental modules introducing pupils to artificial intelligence launching via the Pix digital platform.

France’s Bayrou puts debt decision to lawmakers, risking fall of government

Minister under pressure

Borne was appointed education minister only eight months ago – after a short and turbulent succession of predecessors – but nonetheless now confronts the possibility that her first rentrée could be her last.

Prime Minister François Bayrou’s decision to seek a confidence vote in the National Assembly on 8 September has placed the entire government at risk, with a negative outcome widely expected.

Borne, herself a former prime minister, insists her “only compass” is ensuring a smooth return to school.

“We’ll see what happens,” she told Le Parisien newspaper, stressing that her focus is on pupils and teachers rather than parliamentary manoeuvres.

Unions, however, have express deep frustration over the revolving door at the education ministry. “We’re tired of changing ministers all the time,” said Elisabeth Allain-Moreno of SE-Unsa.

Others highlight persistent issues that reforms have not addressed: shortages of teachers, poor working conditions and low morale.

A survey by Unsa Education found 77 percent of teaching staff would not recommend their profession, and this year more than 2,600 teaching posts remain unfilled.

Wider budget cuts are adding to the unease in the sector. Although Bayrou’s July savings plan earmarks an extra €200 million for schools in 2026, education unions fear broader austerity measures could bite in the coming weeks.

The best known structures are in the town of Carnac, where nearly 3,600 stones stretch in long rows across six kilometres of land. They were erected about 7,000 years ago.

Carnac’s mayor Olivier Lepick called them “the first experience of human-built structures”. He says the Unesco label will help protect the site and attract more visitors.

Tourists already come in summer for the beaches, but Lepick expects the recognition to bring people year-round.

“They will also come in the spring and autumn seasons which will be very good for the business and the economy of the city,” he says.

Inside France’s perfectly preserved prehistoric Cussac cave

Mysterious function

Experts are still unsure why the vast fields of stone were built. “We don’t see any understandable function,” Lepick says.

“We believe this is related to religion, probably to gods. But there were no writings at this time. So, it’s only a hypothesis.”

The Carnac site is the first in Brittany to be fully inscribed on the World Heritage list. The Vauban Tower in Finistère already appears, but only as part of a wider group of 12 fortifications across France.

France now counts 54 sites on the Unesco list. Spain and China each have 60, and Germany has 55.

Abu Dhabi was the first Gulf capital to join the United States-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan later followed suit.

At the time, Emirati officials said the deal would help bring peace and stability to the region. But critics saw things differently.

“The justifications presented by the Emirati regime for signing the Abraham Accords have proven to be blatant lies,” Muhammad Jamil, director of the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK, told the Middle East Monitor.

He said Israel’s actions after 2020 – such as settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, illegal under international law – had undermined the UAE’s justifications for the accords, yet Emirati leaders still chose to deepen their relations with Israel.

Growing links with Israel

Despite the war in Gaza, trade and business links between Israel and the Emirates have grown. In 2024, bilateral trade rose 43 percent to reach €2.76 billion.

Nearly 600 Israeli companies have opened offices in the Emirates, and around 1 million Israeli tourists visited last year. The only flights to and from Israel not suspended during the Gaza war were those from the UAE.

“In this alliance with Israel, I believe there is both a desire to please the Americans… and also a kind of similarity between two countries that are ‘artificial’,” Middle East researcher Marc Lavergne, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), told RFI.

Gaza’s largest hospital struggles to function in ‘catastrophic’ health situation

Support for Palestinians

The Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, 2023 – and Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza – put the UAE’s dual role under new pressure.

In response, Abu Dhabi launched its “Valorous Knights” humanitarian campaign. In November it opened a field hospital in Rafah, and it has since hosted thousands of Palestinians evacuated for medical treatment at the “Humanitarian City“.

More recently, the UAE announced a project to bring desalinated water from Egypt into southern Gaza.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza has reached a critical and unprecedented level,” foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed wrote on social media in July. “The UAE remains at the forefront of efforts to provide vital aid to the Palestinian people… whether by land, air or sea.”

When several Western governments suspended funding for UNRWA in January 2024, the UAE doubled its contribution to the UN agency.

NGOs accuse Israel of ‘weaponising’ aid to Gaza as France readies airdrop

Palestinian statehood and US ties

The UAE has at times toughened its language in support of a future Palestinian state, while also sticking closely to Washington.

In February 2025 – less than a week after Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a plan to relocate 2 million Palestinians and turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” – UAE ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba told the World Government Summit in Dubai that he saw “no alternative” to the US-backed proposals.

State news agency WAM later reported that Abu Dhabi opposed the forced displacement of Palestinians.

The Emirates have also hosted Mohammed Dahlan, a rival to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas – a move seen as undermining Abbas’s position.

“The UAE may pay for this stance in terms of image and political clout,” said Lavergne.

In September 2024, then-US president, Joe Biden elevated the UAE to the status of “major defence partner “of the US.

Hunger, disease and no escape: Gaza aid worker’s account of life under siege

Domestic sensitivities

The war in Gaza and illegal Israeli settlement growth in the West Bank are highly sensitive issues for the Emirati leadership.

Demonstrations in support of Palestinians are banned, and at Cop28 in Dubai in November 2023 pro-Palestinian protests were tightly monitored.

“How can we maintain relations with Israel when there is no two-state solution? And how can we say that Hamas is a terrorist group without calling the settlers and everything they do terrorists?” a senior Emirati official told the Times of Israel.

Lavergne said Emirati leaders “have chosen the West, or at least globalisation”. But he added they are also “dancing on a volcano” as public opinion grows, especially in the poorer, more pro-Arab emirates.

The first injection came from Heidelberg Materials’ cement plant in Brevik, in southeastern Norway.

“We now injected and stored the very first CO2 safely in the reservoir,” Northern Lights managing director Tim Heijn said in a statement. “Our ships, facilities and wells are now in operation.”

Northern Lights is run by oil companies Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies.

The scheme collects CO2 from smokestacks across Europe, liquifies it and ships it to the Oygarden terminal near Bergen on Norway’s west coast. From there it is pumped through a 110-kilometre pipeline into a reservoir about 2.6 kilometres beneath the seabed.

The project is intended to stop emissions entering the atmosphere and help limit climate change.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is backed by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) as a tool to cut pollution from heavy industries like steel and cement.

Norway launches world’s first commercial carbon storage vault

A smokescreen?

But environmentalists fear it could become a smokescreen.

“I think it’s worrisome because we’ve previously seen that the oil industry which is a very powerful industry in Norway, has used the carbon capture and storage [to justify] prolonging the extraction of oil and gas,” Halvard Raavand, deputy programme manager for Greenpeace Norway, told RFI.

“In itself, storing isn’t necessarily bad, but what we’ve seen so far is that the potential in CCS is overhyped. Even the International Energy Agency has come out and warned against a kind of overoptimism on CCS.”

“This cannot end up as a sleeping pill for Norway and other countries when talking about climate action, because what’s most urgently needed is just to phase out fossil fuels.”

The technology is also complex and costly.

Without subsidies, industries often find it cheaper to buy “pollution permits” on the European carbon market than to pay for capture and storage.

‘Costs are huge’

“The costs are huge. At Greenpeace, we think it would be better if this money were invested in real solutions,” Raavand said.

“We need more investments in offshore wind power. Especially Norway which has a huge potential.”

Northern Lights has signed three commercial contracts so far: with a Yara ammonia plant in the Netherlands, two Orsted biofuel plants in Denmark and a Stockholm Exergi thermal power plant in Sweden.

The project is largely funded by the Norwegian state. Its current storage capacity is 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, with plans to reach five million tonnes by 2030.

Countries including the United States, India and Japan are also moving ahead with carbon capture and storage projects.

(with newswires)

Grape harvests in France are starting on average three weeks earlier than in the 1980s, according to the National Institute for Agricultural, Food and Environmental Research (Inrae).

Rising temperatures – which scientists confirm are due to human-driven climate change – are accelerating vine growth, with grapes ripening earlier. 

In Alsace, eastern France, the harvest has never started so early. The harvest of grapes that make the sparkling white wine crémant officially began on Tuesday – 10 days ahead of 2024, according to the Winegrowers’ Association (AVA).

Harvest dates for winemakers depend on the region and the variety of grape, and adhere to a calendar fixed by the National Institute of Origin and Quality (INAO).

Nationwide trend

In Champagne, in eastern France, the grape harvest officially started last Wednesday.

David Chatillon, co-president of the Champagne Committee said that although the harvest was early due to the intense heat of recent weeks, he was expecting “a very good vintage” this year.

“The vineyard is in remarkable condition, which allows us to approach this harvest with confidence and serenity,” the committee’s press release said.

Early harvests are now being seen across all of France’s wine-growing regions.

Bordeaux saw the first pruning last Monday in plots dedicated to crémant, according to the Bordeaux Wine Interprofessional Council (CIVB).

The harvest is expected to be around 10 September for other white and red wines – which make up 85 percent of production.

The harvest now begins “10 or 15 days” earlier than it did 40 years ago due to climate change, according to the interprofessional association.

In Saint-Emilion, near Bordeaux, the harvest has begun around 15 September since 2010, instead of 26 September as seen in most of the 20th century, according to the Ministry of Ecological Transition.

As temperatures climb, is the future of French wine in England?

Vine cycle affected

At the Beaunes grape harvest in Burgundy, in recent years Pinot Noir has begun on the 6 September on average.

However, from the end of the Middle Ages up to 1988, this harvest usually took place around 27 September, according to a study that compiled data going back to 1354, cited by Le Monde newspaper.

This database has become a historical indicator of climate change, also cited in the sixth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Hervé Quénol, a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) told Franceinfo that, in reality, “it is the entire cycle of the vine that is earlier, from the budding [the opening of the buds] which occurs earlier and earlier in the spring, and therefore makes it more vulnerable to the frosts of late winter”.

Climate change helps France’s Beaujolais wine find its sweet spot

Maximum daily temperatures during the grape growing season have increased by around 3C since 1980, according to an Inrae ​​study published in May.

This phenomenon means grapes are gaining in alcohol content (the sugar content that will become alcohol) and acidity.

In Languedoc, for example, wines have had an average alcohol content of nearly 14 percent since 2015, compared to 11 percent in the 1980s, according to Inrae.

Loss of crops

Climate change caused by carbon emissions from fossil fuels has been linked to an increase in extreme weather events including intense heat, drought and heavy rains, which can destroy crops and even plots of land, particularly due to erosion, Inrae ​​notes.

Production drops can be drastic – up to 50 percent in the Hérault and Gard departments in southern France in 2019, for example, when grapes were burned by a heatwave.

Dilemma for French winemakers as alcohol content rises while consumption falls

Heat also brings an increase in vine diseases and pests, due to humidity. This was the case in Gironde, southwest France, in 2020, when mildew attacked Bordeaux vineyards, which had been flooded by heavy rains in May.

More frequent and larger wildfires also directly affect vines, as seen in early August when several hundred hectares burned in Aude, in the south of France.

According to a study published in 2024 in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, if global warming exceeds +2C compared to the pre-industrial era, 90 percent of coastal and lowland wine regions in southern Europe could be unable to produce quality wine at economically sustainable yields by the end of the century.

(with newswires)

Raanti A, who is 27, says she was repeatedly raped between 2018 and 2022 by various men at the invitation of her late father’s cousin – a 47-year-old public servant working at the Ministry of Planning.

One of the men she accuses of participating in the rapes is the Comorian Minister of Justice and Islamic Affairs, Anfani Hamada Bacar.

She told RFI she recognised him last April when she saw that he had been appointed as a minister.

She says this shock led her to file complaints two months later, in June 2025, in both France and in the Comoros.

In these documents, which RFI has seen, Raanti A says that around 10 people subjected her to rape, sexual assault, acts of deliberate violence, false imprisonment, human trafficking and forced abortions.

Bacar told RFI that he knows the victim, but “categorically denies” the rape allegations.

“These allegations are completely false and without any basis. I have no idea what could have motivated this person to accuse me of these alleged rapes,” he said in a written response.

‘I just had to keep quiet and endure’

Raanti A says that her ordeal began in 2018, when her mother suggested she ask her late father’s cousin for money to pay her university admission fees. The man is regarded as an influential figure in the community. She says she went to meet him at his home.

“He said that he would help me, but that he wanted something in return. Suddenly, he pushed me on to a mattress and positioned himself on top of me. I panicked, I screamed, I cried. He kept saying ‘it’s going to be OK, relax’,” she told RFI. She said he then raped her.

 

“When I got home, I took a shower immediately and scrubbed my body to try and get rid of his smell,” she continued.

She said she attempted suicide the following day.

 

‘A very difficult ordeal’: Gisèle Pelicot’s statement after mass rape trial

 

In the complaint registered by the police, Raanti A alleges that he subjected her to several sexual assaults and also handed her over to other men who raped her.

“He would ask people he met by chance or people he knew if they wanted a girl or a woman to have sex with. And most of the time, people accepted,” she said.

According to Raanti A, the man was present during the alleged rapes by other men, which she says took place in isolated houses, huts and cars, in the town of Moroni, on the island of Anjouan and in Tanzania.

She also alleges that the man forced her to terminate eight pregnancies resulting from rape, including one at six months that required surgery. Abortion is illegal in the Comoros, except in cases of serious medical reasons confirmed in writing by two doctors.

Raanti A told the police officer who took her statement in France: “It wasn’t just sexual violence, it was an attempt to completely dominate my body, my will, my freedom. “

She continued: He deleted my social media accounts, changed my passwords, confiscated my phone and my credit card. Then he forbade me from seeing friends or going to university. I felt possessed. I followed him without asking questions. I had to keep quiet and endure. I think he was afraid I would end up talking about it.”

RFI contacted the man several times in order to put the allegations to him, but received no response.

France set to include consent in legal definition of rape

‘You’re not alone’

Raanti A has lived in France as a refugee since 2022.

After she arrived in the country, she says she moved three times, because the man always managed to track her down. She also alleges that he raped her in France.

On one occasion, French police intervened on grounds of physical assault, but the case did not progress.

She showed RFI two psychological reports from examinations carried out in June and in July, which conclude that she is suffering from “post-traumatic generalised anxiety disorder, which may be linked to the repeated assaults, particularly sexual, that she reports”.

After Raanti A filed the complaints, she claims her mother was intimidated into attempting to convince her to withdraw them.

She also says that her partner received messages from an unknown person with offers of €10,000 to take her to Italy.

The lawyer representing her also claims to have been intimidated by “judicial authorities”, saying: “Certain people have an interest in seeing this case buried.”

Raanti A believes that the case has a better chance of being heard in France than in the Comoros.

She added that her mother and brothers have assured her of their support and that her mother told her: “Do what you can, you’re not alone, we must prevent other women from going through what you’ve been through.”

According to the United Nations, 17 percent of women in the Comoros have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence.

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This article has been adapted from the original version in French.

Trump announced during his electoral campaign that he intended to deport “one million people a year”. But while imposing new global tariffs, the White House is also scrambling to find countries willing to take in those who Washington is forcing out.

Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Gabon and Guinea-Bissau have all refused to cooperate. The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration even approached Ukraine, without success.

Some proposals, however, have found takers in Latin America and Africa. But are these agreements motivated by lucrative rewards, or made under duress?

On the American continent, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, Venezuela and El Salvador have agreed to take in individuals deported by the US. For most, the economic balance tips in Washington’s favour, with the 2004 CAFTA free trade agreement between Central America, the United States and the Dominican Republic serving as the main lever.

Three African nations – South Sudan, Eswatini and Rwanda – have also agreed to take in US deportees. According to Thierry Vircoulon, of the French Institute of International Relations think tank, these are countries that want to “get into Washington’s good books”. “Most of them also want to avoid being victims of a total visa ban,” he added.

However, motivation to answer Trump’s call looks different for each of the three.

South Sudan

On 8 July, South Sudan received eight men – only one of whom was South Sudanese – who had been deported from the US. Juba has expressed its willingness to accept more deportees, but has reportedly set certain conditions, according to Politico.

A legal challenge in the US had halted their removal, but a Supreme Court ruling cleared the way.

The country is asking Washington to reverse the revocation of visas for its nationals, which came into effect in April 2025.

South Sudan is also seeking the lifting of sanctions on several senior officials, including Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel, who has been accused of corruption by the US.

It has further requested American support in prosecuting First Vice President Riek Machar, accused of inciting rebellion to block elections due in December 2026.

None of these demands have yet been met, but South Sudan continues to present itself as an ally of the US – with accepting deportees from the US seen as one way to do this.

South Sudan turns US deportations to its diplomatic advantage

Eswatini

The small monarchy of Eswatini has followed South Sudan’s lead by signing a similar agreement with the US, announced on 16 July. Only five people have so far been sent to this landlocked state in Southern Africa.

The five deportees – who are originally from Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos – are all said to be criminals “of unparalleled barbarity”, said Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security.

The men are being held in solitary confinement until they can be deported to their home countries, which could take up to a year.

The government of Eswatini, like South Sudan, cited its close ties with the US as a key motivator for the agreement.

According to Jean-Claude Katende, lawyer and vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the country is seeking to “polish its image in the eyes of the United States and also attract financial income”.

Outcry mounts in Eswatini over ‘illegal aliens’ deported from US

Rwanda

Rwanda is preparing to receive 250 people deported by the US – but this is not Kigali’s first attempt at such an agreement.

In 2022, a similar deal with the United Kingdom was announced, but was then invalidated the following year by the UK Supreme Court, which ruled it unlawful. This did not prevent Rwanda from receiving part of the promised financial compensation – some €280 million.

According to Katende, there is a similarly “purely financial reason” for Kigali to accept the US proposal, but also an interest in “benefitting from an easy workforce paid low wages”.

Rwanda agrees to take migrants from US in deal that includes cash grant

According to Vircoulon, Kigali is also “trying to appease the Trump administration in the context of negotiations between Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the United States” to end the conflict between the DRC and Rwanda – negotiations in which Rwanda is far from being in a position of strength.

“It’s about giving Trump something, while the Congolese government is offering him access to its mining sector,” said Vircoulon.

South Sudan, Eswatini and Rwanda, he added, “are among the poorest countries in the world and are also the source of migratory flows“.

“It goes without saying that the deportees they take in will leave these ultra-poor countries and return to the illegal immigration trails.”

Uganda

The latest country to sign an agreement with Washington, a Ugandan Foreign Ministry official announced on Thursday that the country had agreed to accept third-country nationals who had not been granted asylum in the US but were unable to return to their home countries.

However, there are some caveats. Uganda stressed that this was a temporary arrangement and that it would not accept anyone with a criminal record or unaccompanied minors.

It also added in its statement Uganda would prefer to receive people with African nationalities.

Uganda, a US ally, is home to 1.8 million refugees – the largest number on the African continent – mostly hailing from neighbouring South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, although Sudan’s civil war has in the past year triggered a sharp spike in arrivals.

The US embassy in Uganda declined to comment on what it called diplomatic negotiations, but the US State Department said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken by phone with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni about migration.

The department said the call focused on “migration, reciprocal trade and commercial ties” and that Rubio had “thanked Uganda for providing a model of regional stability including its valuable contributions to peacekeeping in East Africa”.

Ugandan opposition MP Muwada Nkunyingi suggested that the deal with the US would give the Ugandan government legitimacy ahead of elections, and urged Washington not to turn a blind eye toward what he described as human rights and governance issues in Uganda.

Uganda’s leaders will rush into a deal to “clear their image now that we are heading into the 2026 elections,” he said.

Uganda has had challenges with the US after it passed an anti-homosexuality bill in 2023 that punishes consensual same-sex conduct with penalties including life imprisonment. Washington threatened consequences and the World Bank withheld some funding.

In May 2024, the US imposed sanctions on Uganda’s parliamentary speaker, her husband and several other officials over corruption and serious abuses of human rights.

Human rights lawyer Nicholas Opio likened the deportee deal to human trafficking, and said it would leave status of the deportees unclear. “Are they refugees or prisoners?” he said.

“The proposed deal runs afoul of international law. We are sacrificing human beings for political expediency, in this case because Uganda wants to be in the good books of the United States,” he said. “That I can keep your prisoners if you pay me… how is that different from human trafficking?”

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(with newswires and partially adapted from this article by RFI’s French service)

A “record” 37.5 tonnes of cocaine were seized in France in the first six months of this year, compared to 47 tonnes in the whole of 2024 – an increase of 45 percent.

These figures – revealed in a confidential note from late July from the national anti-drug trafficking agency (Ofast) – prompted Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau to describe the proliferation of cocaine in France as a “white tsunami”.

More than half of those 47 tonnes came from, or was intercepted in, the French Caribbean territories of Guadeloupe and Martinique – whose combined population is little more than 750,000. 

“It’s easy to imagine the impact this has on the local population,” says investigative journalist Jerome Pierrat, an expert on organised crime. “An explosion in violence, in the use of firearms and in local drug use… it’s a major destabilisation of society.”

According to a recent report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Martinique and Guadeloupe have become major gateways for cocaine and marijuana entering mainland France.

Cocaine and synthetic drugs power new era of global trafficking

From South America to Europe

The reasons for the French Caribbean becoming a key entry and transit point for South American cocaine en route to Europe are largely geographical.

The French Antilles are on the doorstep of South America’s cocaine-producing countries of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, and close to Venezuela – one of the two exit countries for cocaine, along with Brazil.

Global production continues to increase, with the Andean countries producing 2,700 tonnes in 2022, more than double the amount produced in 2010.

Yet the traditional North American market has plateaued, Peirrat explains, with some users there turning to synthetic drugs such as fentanyl. The United States’ anti-drug trafficking measures have also forced cartels to look elsewhere – notably further south.

“Traffickers are looking for people with money to sell cocaine to, so they tend to turn to Europe, Australia, Asia, Japan and a part of China. The second biggest market in terms of purchasing power is Europe,” explains Pierrat.

In addition, because they are part of France the Antilles are not subject to extra customs checks when transporting goods to the mainland. And Guadeloupe, with its 700 kilometres of coastline and small islands, is particularly difficult to monitor.

More than 2 tonnes of cocaine washes up on shores of northern France

Record seizures

In late February, the French Navy seized 8.3 tonnes of cocaine from a cargo ship off the coast of Martinique. In March, 1.2 tonnes were seized near Martinique.

In June, 2.4 tonnes were seized on a “go-fast vessel” – a type of a small, fast powerboat favoured by smugglers – near the US Virgin Islands, while in July, French Armed Forces intercepted close to five tonnes on two ships in the Caribbean.

On the French mainland, authorities made a major haul in January – two tonnes of cocaine, valued at €130 million – in the northern port of Le Havre, France’s main maritime gateway.

Further along the chain, Pierrat highlights a recent haul on the Balzac housing estate in Vitry-sur-Seine, a working class suburb of Paris: “160kg of pure cocaine that had come over from Guadeloupe in a fake removals vehicle.”

While some drugs are still transported by plane, the cartels prefer to use sea routes for ever-larger quantities. Shipments are dispatched from Colombia’s and Venezuela’s Caribbean coasts and routed via islands such as Dominica, before landing on the many beaches of the French Antilles aboard fast boats.

Once in the Antilles, cocaine is stored locally and then shipped on to ports in northern Europe such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, and Le Havre.

Belgian port of Antwerp says record volume of cocaine seized in 2022

Surge in violence

In the fight against trafficking, French authorities are facing criminal networks capable of changing their strategies regularly.

“They are now highly structured, no longer work with intermediaries, deal directly with South American drug producers and are capable of exporting cocaine to Europe,” Guadeloupe’s Attorney General Eric Maurel recently told France Info. 

He has also warned that criminal gangs in Guadeloupe “seem to be evolving towards mafia-style structures”.

Pierrat says local officials in the Antilles have been “sounding the alarm for two or three years now,” – but to little effect.

In June this year, Maurel, alongside another judge, Michael Janas, gave a press conference warning that drug trafficking and the proliferation of firearms was driving an unprecedented surge in violence in Guadeloupe.

“All warning lights are flashing red. We are facing a wall of crime,” they told reporters. “We are at a tipping point. It’s now or never.”

The judges said that between January and June this year, Guadeloupe recorded 28 violent homicides, along with 111 attempted murders and 300 armed robberies.

Neighbouring Martinique has also seen a rise in violence, with 16 homicides since January, 13 involving firearms.

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“This is no longer a series of isolated incidents; it is a spiral of death taking root in our daily lives. And yet, the State looks the other way,” wrote Serge Letchimy, president of the executive council of Martinique, in an op-ed published in Le Monde in June. 

According to Letchimy’s figures, only 1,400 of the 188,000 containers passing through Martinique’s port in Fort-de-France in 2024 were inspected by customs – the result of chronic understaffing.

On 19 August, four MPs from Guadeloupe published a letter to the Interior and Economy ministers, demanding immediate reinforcement to fight the growing instability fuelled by drug trafficking.

Cocaine use in France doubles as workplace pressures drive demand

New measures

The French government appears to have heard their call. On a recent visit to the Antilles, Retailleau announced a raft of measures, including 13 additional investigators to bolster the ranks of Ofast.

A local ballistics lab will be opened, meaning forensic samples will no longer have to be sent to the mainland, and two mobile gendarmerie squads and two marine units are to be deployed.

Paris will also provide radar systems to monitor the strategic Dominica and Les Saintes channels and a drone to survey Guadeloupe’s coastline. Checks at ports and airports are to be reinforced.

While acknowledging that France’s planned budget cuts meant it was limited in what it could provide, Retailleau insisted: “The Republic will not give an inch on public order. We will not let these territories become a lawless zone.”

France to build supermax prison to isolate drug lords and Islamists in Amazon

‘No quick fix’

Guadeloupe MPs Olivier Serva and Max Mathiasin, two of the authors of the open letter, expressed their “relative satisfaction” after months of lobbying for reinforcements.

“I heard announcements, not empty words,” Serva told local radio. “I’m satisfied. But we expect more on regional cooperation and faster implementation.”

Mathiasin called the measures “a step in the right direction” but warned they’d have to see them in action.

In Pierrat’s opinion, given the size of the territory and its waters, 13 more investigators may not make much difference. He added that there is no quick fix for the situation, and suggesting otherwise is political posturing.

“The problem is Retailleau doesn’t have time. Elections are fast approaching, all this stuff has to be visible, talked about, it has to look like they’re doing something. But if you really want to curb trafficking you’d lay on 200 more investigators, 200 drones, you’d throw in a billion euros. And it will still take time,” he says.

Another concern is the expansion of the main ports in Guadeloupe and Martinique as part of the “Antilles Hub” project, which aims to transform them into a major regional logistics and maritime centre. 

An additional 300,000 containers are expected to transit through the ports each year. While this is intended to give the region a much needed economic boost, Pierrat fears it will also boost trafficking.

“Traffickers are very happy,” he says “It’ll be very hard to monitor all the extra containers, even with a couple of extra radars or mobile scanners. And even if you could afford to install loads more scanners that would slow traffic down, [which] makes no commercial sense when you’re trying to attract new business.”

Acknowledging these concerns, Retailleau said a mission from the General Secretariat of the Sea will be conducted within the coming weeks to “audit all port processes” both in Guadeloupe and Martinique.

France transfers first drug traffickers to be isolated in ultra-secure prison

Forgotten territories

With unemployment in the Antilles more than double that on the French mainland – 15.7 percent in Guadeloupe and 12.8 percent in Martinique, compared to the national average of 7.4 percent – plus a far higher cost of living and lower wages, the economic conditions are ripe for spreading corruption.

“The French overseas departments have the highest corruption rates in France, including civil servants,” says Pierrat. “But that’s the corollary of drug-trafficking – corruption and violence.”

He also points out that the French Antilles are no longer just a transit hub for cocaine, but indeed a growing local market for it – spurred on by the fact local traffickers are paid in cocaine. 

“I’ve been writing and making documentaries about drug trafficking for 30 years now,” he says. “It’s been growing for decades. We saw it coming. And yet all of a sudden you get the impression it sprung up over the last couple of years.

“For years it was a forgotten corner of France. The guys in French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe… nobody really gives a damn. So I’m not very hopeful or optimistic that the situation in the French Antilles will change any time soon, unfortunately for them.”

Dozens of vessels set off from the Spanish port city with hundreds of people aboard, including delegations from some 44 countries. 

The operation will take humanitarian aid, food, water and medicine to Gaza as Israel steps up its offensive in Gaza City.

The aim is to “open a humanitarian corridor and end the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people”, said the Global Sumud Flotilla. Sumud is the Arabic term for “resilience”.

The group defines itself as an independent organisation which has no affiliation to any government or political party.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza has worsened in recent weeks.

The United Nations declared a state of famine in the territory this month, warning that 500,000 people face “catastrophic” conditions. Israel rejected the accusation as “a lie”.

Also aboard were actors Susan Sarandon, Liam Cunningham, European lawmakers and public figures including former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau.

The convoy will be joined by other ships from ports in Italy, Greece, and Tunisia in the coming days as it makes its way through the Mediterranean to Gaza, organisers said.

It is expected to arrive at the coastal enclave in mid-September.

“The story here is about Palestine,” Thunberg said at a press conference in Barcelona. “The story here is how people are being deliberately deprived of the very basic means to survive.”

Thunberg, a member of the flotilla’s steering committee, told AFP the goal was to open up a humanitarian corridor to break an “illegal” and “inhuman” blockade of Gaza.

Gaza aid flotilla ‘should not have to exist’ says Thunberg

Largest solidarity mission in history

Activists will also stage simultaneous demonstrations and other protests in 44 countries “in solidarity with the Palestinian people”, Thunberg wrote on Instagram.

“This will be the largest solidarity mission in history, with more people and more boats than all previous attempts combined,” Brazilian activist Thiago Avila told journalists in Barcelona last week.

“We understand that this is a legal mission under international law,” Portuguese lawmaker Mariana Mortagua, who will join the mission, told journalists in Lisbon last week.

NGOs accuse Israel of ‘weaponising’ aid to Gaza as France readies airdrop

Previous attempts

Israel has already blocked two attempts by activists to deliver aid by ship to Gaza, in June and July.

In June, 12 activists on board the sailboat Madleen, from France, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands, were intercepted by Israeli forces 185 kilometres west of Gaza.

Its passengers, who included Thunberg, were detained and eventually expelled.

In July, 21 activists from 10 countries were intercepted as they tried to approach Gaza in another vessel, the Handala.

Israel sends military to block Gaza-bound aid boat carrying activists

Among them was Emma Fourreau, an MEP with the hard-left France Unbowed party. She told RFI she was more hopeful this time.

“You can see that the scale has changed, that the balance of power is totally different. Maybe we can get some boats through… to break this blockade.”

Activists are calling for their countries to protect the flottilla. 

The Spanish government says it will “deploy all of its diplomatic and consular protection to protect our citizens” sailing with the flotilla, the country’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Saturday.

Madrid last year recognised Palestine as an independent state.

Israel launched its massive offensive in Gaza following the 7 October attack by Hamas in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken as hostages. At least 63,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war since then, mostly civilians, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

(with AFP)

“If we consider that singing is vocalising with breath, then humans have always sung,” said Nathalie Henrich Bernardoni of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), who specialises in vocal sciences.

“I think that they even started before they spoke, because ultimately it’s easier to vocalise before structuring syllables and words – that’s what babies do.”

The first songs are impossible to date, but the earliest traces appear in Antiquity once writing developed to record them. Egyptian civilisation used song in rituals.

The oldest known piece comes from Mesopotamia: The hymn to Nikkal, dedicated to the deity of the same name. It is written almost in its entirety in cuneiform script, a writing system that developed in Mesopotamia around 3000 BC, on tablets dating from 1400 BC.

From this period onwards, singing had a religious dimension – in Mesopotamia, then Greece and the Roman Empire – a tradition seen today in church hymns, Hindu bhajans and Islamic nasheeds.

“In all forms of spiritual practice, the singing voice is omnipresent. It is also a characteristic that shows that singing has powerful virtues and accompanies the development of the self, by seeking what is deepest within,” said Bernardoni.

How France’s songs keep world dreaming of French freedom and glamour

More generally, vocal expression plays a crucial role in the cohesion of human groups – and therefore also plays a part on a political level.

Pierre Loiret, an author and expert in Gregorian chanting, gives this example: “For Charlemagne, who spread Gregorian chant throughout his empire, it was a way of unifying through song.”

Bernardoni adds: “Singing is both an intimate discovery of oneself and a source of identity. It allows you to explore the possibilities of your own instrument, but also to connect with a community.”

Transmission of traditions

Many regimes have feared this unifying and mobilising effect, and have sought to censor voices raised in song.

In 1985, American singer Stevie Wonder had his music banned in South Africa after he criticised the apartheid regime in his song It’s Wrong (Apartheid) and dedicated the Oscar he won the same year (for I Just Called to Say I Love You) to Nelson Mandela, who was a political prisoner at the time.

In Canada’s residential schools, which removed indigenous children from their families for nearly a century, traditional songs were banned. Authorities saw them as an obstacle to “civilising” First Nations children and breaking their ties with ancestral culture.

Cameroon’s indigenous Baka sing to save their vanishing forest home

Canadian influencer Shinanova, who is of Inuk descent, is among those reclaiming this part of her heritage. She shares traditional Inuit vocal practices on TikTok.

“For many of us Indigenous people, throat singing was forbidden. Christian priests considered it a sin. We almost lost this tradition, but today we are stronger and we sing for those who couldn’t,” she says.

Singing is an essential vehicle for cultural transmission between generations, particularly in oral societies. In West Africa, this is embodied by the figure of the griot.

As storytellers, historians, poets and musicians, they are local authority figures and play a central role in preserving traditions, particularly through song.

Interpretation of song is also an important marker of local culture.

“We specialise in the sung use of our [voice] according to the aesthetics we are immersed in, according to the culture in which we evolve,” points out Bernardoni.

Yodelling in the Alps or among Central African Pygmies, beatboxing, Mediterranean polyphony – all show the range of what the voice can do. Some traditions demand years of training.

Some of these vocal traditions require rigorous training and expertise that is passed down from generation to generation.

“What’s fascinating is that in traditions that are geographically very distant, such as Mongolian overtone singing and the deep voices of Sardinian singing, we find the same fundamental vocal gestures,” added Bernardoni.

With singing bringing together people who share the same culture and creating cohesion, it can also play an important role in the face of adversity, as with war songs.

They serve as much to galvanise troops as to impress and intimidate, such as Lakota war songs – traditional songs sung by the Lakota people to accompany various stages of warfare, from recruiting and departure to battle and victory. In this sense, singing becomes a weapon in the arsenal.

Celtic Connections festival experiments with tradition

Connecting with nature

This idea of a song imbued with power is also found in many shamanic traditions. Power songs are used in rituals to invoke various forces. In the Amazon, shamans use icaros, songs sung during ayahuasca ceremonies.

They are also found in Inuit, Siberian and Aboriginal practices, where the vocal organ becomes a medium of communication between humans and the invisible world, or the natural world.

This link between vocal expression and nature is fundamental in many traditional societies. For many indigenous peoples, singing is a way of connecting with the earth, ancestors and animals.

Many indigenous songs follow natural cycles, from the seasons to animal migrations. They mark rain, harvests, births and hunts. Some imitate birds or other creatures to connect with the natural world.

Beyond its cultural, spiritual and identity-related dimensions, singing also has profound physiological and psychological benefits.

“Singing activates a different type of breathing than speech, one that is fuller and more dynamic, which may explain the feeling of wellbeing it provides,” explains Bernardoni. This deeper breathing has a calming, meditative effect. Singing can also help to limit cognitive and physical decline in people with neurodegenerative diseases.

All the more reason, she concludes, to “fight for a world where people dare to sing more”.

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This article was adapted from the original version in French.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit is being held in the northern port city of Tianjin until Monday, days before a massive military parade in the capital Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.

The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus – with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down in Tianjin on Sunday with an entourage of senior politicians and business representatives.

Meanwhile Xi held a flurry of bilateral meetings with leaders from the Maldives, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and one of Putin’s staunch allies, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Xi also met India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday, who arrived the evening before, in his first visit to China since 2018.

Modi told Xi that India was committed to taking “forward our ties on the basis of mutual trust, dignity and sensitivity”, according to a video the Indian leader posted on X.

The two most populous nations are intense rivals competing for influence across South Asia and fought a deadly border clash in 2020.

A thaw began last October, when Modi met with Xi for the first time in five years at a summit in Russia.

“The interests of 2.8 billion people of both countries are linked to our cooperation. This will also pave the way for the welfare of the entire humanity,” Modi told Xi.

China to bolster non-Western alliances at summit, parade

‘Project influence’ 

The bilateral talks were held at the Tianjin Guest House, an intimate venue surrounded by lush greenery.

Security guards positioned themselves around and inside the venue, their eyes scanning reporters and guests carefully, as Chinese diplomats hurried through the halls.

Large sections of Tianjin were closed to traffic, with a significant police presence deployed around the city.

Official posters promoting the SCO lined the streets, displaying words such as “mutual benefit” and “equality” written in Chinese and Russian.

China and Russia have sometimes touted the SCO as an alternative to the NATO military alliance. This year’s summit is the first since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

As China’s claim over Taiwan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have seen them clash with the United States and Europe, experts say that Beijing and Moscow are eager to use platforms such as the SCO to curry favour.

“China has long sought to present the SCO as a non-Western-led power bloc that promotes a new type of international relations, which, it claims, is more democratic,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

More than 20 leaders including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan are attending the bloc’s largest meeting since its founding in 2001.

China’s Xi vows greater support for Russia as meets Lavrov

Talks on the sidelines

Putin is expected to hold talks on Monday with Erdogan and Pezeshkian about the Ukraine conflict and Tehran‘s nuclear programme respectively.

The Russian president needs “all the benefits of SCO as a player on the world stage and also the support of the second largest economy in the world”, said Lim Tai Wei, a professor and East Asia expert at Japan’s Soka University.

“Russia is also keen to win over India, and India’s trade frictions with the United States presents this opportunity,” Lim told AFP.

The summit comes days after India was hit by a sharp bump up in US tariffs on its goods as punishment for New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil.

Many of the assembled leaders will be in Beijing on Wednesday to witness the military parade, which will also be attended by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“We strive to show all the latest world news – and it’s not very cheerful this year,”Jean-François Leroy, the festival’s director, told French news agency AFP.

Six of this year’s exhibitions focus on the consequences of climate change.  

Dutch photographer Cynthia Boll immersed herself in the daily life of Indonesians in Jakarta, punctuated by floods, while Armenian photographer Anush Babajanyan took her camera to the Aral Sea, the exploitation of which has led to the disappearance of 90 percent of its volume.  

Sebastião Salgado’s 40-year journey in photographs celebrated in Deauville exhibition

California-based AFP photographer Josh Edelson illustrates “a decade in the heart of the inferno” through his images of the wildfires in the state that are arriving earlier in the season and becoming “more intense and more devastating”.

Photographers in Gaza

Human violence is the other thread linking several of the exhibitions, which delve into the heart of the crisis in Gaza.  

“Every day is worse than the last,” says Leroy, referring to the fate of local journalists – more than 200 of whom, including many photographers and camera operators, have been killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).  

Recognition for journalists who bear burden of showing world the Gaza war

Fatima Hassouna, a 25-year-old photographer from Gaza, was killed by an Israeli missile on 16 April. A documentary on her life and work was screened at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Her photos will be presented alongside those of another Palestinian photographer, Saher Alghorra, winner of the 2025 Humanitarian Visa d’Or award from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The festival also displays photographic reports from Cédric Gerbehaye in Kashmir, Paloma Laudet in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Carolyn Van Houten in Somalia, Gaëlle Girbes in Ukraine and Salwan Georges in Syria. 

These photojournalists often choose to capture the plight of the victims of global conflict, as seen in the work of Deanne Fitzmaurice, who for 20 years followed the journey of Saleh, an Iraqi child seriously injured in 2003 and nicknamed “Lionheart” for his resilience.

(with AFP)

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► Visa pour l’Image runs from 30 August to 14 September, 2025.

RFI: Modou Lô, you’ve been Senegal’s “king of the arena” since July 2019. How important is this title in Senegal?

Modou Lô: You need to understand that wrestling is Senegal’s most popular sport – ahead of football, even if there’s no big event like the AFCON or the World Cup. When you’re king of the arena, you’re champion of all wrestlers.

Our discipline is wrestling with strikes – a very tough sport for diambars (warriors) that demands strength, discipline and courage. Being the best in the field is a huge source of pride. But being a champion doesn’t mean you can do whatever you like, just because you’ve beaten everyone. You have to embody the status – in the way you speak, behave and carry yourself. It comes with great responsibility.

RFI: So it comes with a lot of pressure…

Less than you might think. You don’t become king overnight. The journey to get there is a form of training in itself – it builds you mentally so that by the time you reach the top you’re ready to handle it naturally.

RFI: When did you first start dreaming of the crown?

I dreamed of the title from the moment I began wrestling. From my very first fights in the mbapatt [small traditional tournaments held in working-class neighbourhoods], I had that ambition. Mbapatt is like a school – it’s where I tested myself against tough opponents and convinced myself I could make a real career in the arena.

The turning point came in a tournament sponsored by Dakar City Hall. I won the title in the second edition after losing the final in the first. After that tournament, Birahim Ndiaye – a former wrestling champion, coach and TV pundit – drove me home to talk to my parents. He told my father I had real talent and that with a bit of support, I could make a living from wrestling and improve life for the whole family. That really gave me a boost.

It wasn’t easy for my parents though. For my father, who had never had a wrestler in the family, the idea of seeing me in the arena was unimaginable. My mother was less shocked because my grandfather, whom I never met, had wrestled. So, even if it was far back, I still had wrestling blood in me. I took it as a sign of destiny.

RFI: You’ve recently become more active on social media, made more public appearances and started working with the agency Off the Pitch. Is this another way of embodying the king of the arena status?

Yes, it’s good to get closer to the fans and people who follow wrestling. I’ve had a long journey to get here – not an easy one – so sometimes it’s good to share that, to inspire young people. To show them nothing happens overnight; you need to make sacrifices, work hard.

Right now [21 August], I’m in Paris at the invitation of Next Sénégal – a diaspora platform – to talk about my career as a sportsman and entrepreneur. It’s a great initiative and I’m delighted to take part.

RFI: Does being king of the arena mean getting involved in politics?

I think when it comes to politics, everyone has the right to an opinion – to share it, to discuss it – because no one knows everything. I feel I have that right, but not necessarily by joining a party or asking people to support a particular politician. I’m not in that position yet, but I won’t hold back from giving my view on affairs concerning working-class neighbourhoods.

As someone from Parcelles Assainies [a suburb of Dakar] who wants the best for my neighbourhood, I wouldn’t rule out local involvement after retiring from sport. If politics gives me an opportunity to develop Parcelles and improve people’s lives, I wouldn’t hesitate.

RFI: At 39, how much longer do you see yourself in the arena, given that the age limit has been raised from 45 to 48?

Honestly, I don’t think I’ll go that far – not even 45. I have a lot of projects lined up. I’ll do a few more fights and then leave the stage to my younger brothers. They’re very talented: Franc, Gora Sock, Petit Lô, Calva, Seydina… the list goes on. They have great potential, and with the right guidance they can achieve great things.

Women step into the ring at west African wrestling tournament

RFI: You seem very close to Franc, the new sensation who’s beaten Bombardier, Ama Baldé and Eumeu Sène in succession. How do you know one another?

We’re both from Parcelles Assainies. He lives in Unit 7, I’m in Unit 10. We share the same “curse”: a love of wrestling. He’s young and building a great career. We got close because I needed sparring partners and he came highly recommended. Along with others like Gora Sock, he helped me to progress. He’s been by my side for years, always there for my fight preparations, very loyal. Now he’s making his own way. He’s an incredible talent, really strong, and making waves in the arena. We all believe he’ll go far.

RFI: Do you see him as your successor?

Of course. He’s already done something unique: 15 fights, 15 wins. That’s a huge achievement. He’s young but experienced – he’s put in the miles, travelling across the country to compete in tournaments, train and develop his skills. We’re here to support him and help him reach the very top.

RFI: You’ve fought 26 bouts since starting in February 2006. Which fight stands out the most?

My first fight against Eumeu Sène in 2014 [Modou Lô also won the rematch in July 2019 to claim the crown]. That was a major moment – a battle that lasted nearly 30 minutes, full of strikes and pure wrestling. It was brutal, and by God’s grace, I won. It was the longest and toughest fight I’ve ever had.

RFI: Many Senegalese athletes – especially footballers – have to go abroad to earn a decent living. Does wrestling pay in Senegal?

Absolutely! Wrestling has grown massively in recent years. Even before us, there were stars like Falaye Baldé, Double Less and Mbaye who made a living from it. Then Tyson and Yékini took it to the next level, bringing huge excitement and big money. Now, our generation – mine and Balla Gaye 2’s – is pushing it further. So yes, you can make a very good living from wrestling in Senegal, support your family and even help people you don’t know.

That said, your sporting career is short – you can wrestle until about 45, which is still young. Sport, wrestling, opens doors to other opportunities. I’m also an entrepreneur now. The money I earn from wrestling allows me to  invest in other areas, create jobs and share the benefits with many others.

No pain, no gain: Chinese pro wrestlers fight for recognition

RFI: Many wrestlers have moved into MMA in recent years. Is that an option for you?

No, honestly, MMA is for my younger brothers. One of them, Petit Lô, is already involved, along with other hopefuls from Parcelles. I have no desire to fight in MMA – I just want to finish my wrestling career quietly and then retire. But it’s true MMA is a great opportunity for Senegalese wrestling. Not everyone gets fights every year, so it gives wrestlers a reason to keep training.

RFI: We can’t talk about Senegalese wrestling without mentioning mysticism. It’s seen as essential to winning, beyond strength and technique. Wrestlers use ritual baths and charms to ensure victory. You were once considered one of the most mystical wrestlers, but in your last three winning fights you wore no charms, which worried your fans. Why?

For me, mysticism isn’t as important as people think. First and foremost, this is a sport. I see mysticism as part of wrestling culture – like the pre-fight dances – a bit of folklore for the fans that helps keep wrestling alive. Sporting competitions happen all over the world, but only in Senegal do we mix mysticism and sport, thinking it can influence the result.

It’s true I once believed in it, but over time I realised mysticism wasn’t what made me win. Victory comes through giving everything you’ve got – 100 percent effort in training.

Grease, sweat and tears for Turkey’s Ottoman oil wrestlers

RFI: The big news is your next fight against Sa Thiès on 5 April, 2026. What do you think about the hype around it?

It’s true – it’ll be a huge fight. I can even say this was a demand from society; everyone wanted it. I’ve always said that as king, I’d give young wrestlers their chance – I did it with Ama Baldé, Boy Niang and Siteu, and I’m still on that path. Sa Thiès has had some great fights lately, but he’s never had the chance to fight for the crown. People talked about a bout with Tapha Tine, but the fans chose Sa Thiès. And it’s only right to give them what they want.

RFI: Sa Thiès is the younger brother of Balla Gaye 2, who beat you twice in your three career defeats. Is this a proxy revenge fight?

Not at all! Sa Thiès is Balla Gaye 2’s younger brother but this isn’t about revenge. They’re brothers, but they fight differently. It’s simply the logic of wrestling – he’s on my path, so I’ll move him aside and continue on mine.

RFI: Can fans still hope for a rematch against Balla Gaye 2?

It could have happened, but it didn’t. And I really don’t think it ever will.

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This interview was adapted from the original in French.

It was a David and Goliath final: Madagascar, who’d never made it beyond the semi-finals, against African football giants Morocco – CHAN title holders in 2018 and 2020.

Few expected the Malagasy side to get this far, but their victory over hosts and tournament favourites Kenya in the quarter-finals (4-3 on post-match penalties after a 1-1 draw) had begun to turn heads.

In the end, Morocco’s star striker Oussama Lamlioui scored twice to help the Atlas Lions to a 3-2 victory and claim a record third CHAN title.

It makes Morocco the most successful nation in CHAN –  the men’s football competition reserved only for players active in their home countries.

Morocco seek record third CHAN title against Madagascar

Madagascar, playing in the final of a major continental football competition for the first time, took a surprise lead in the ninth minute with a long-range strike from Felicite Manohatsoa. 

But Youssef Mehri broke clear of the Malagasy defence to level in the 27th minute and Lamlioui gave the Atlas Lions a 2-1 lead heading into the break.

The underdogs hit back in the second half, with Toky Rakotondraibe – who scored an extra-time winner in Madagascar’s semi-final victory over Sudan – drawing his side level midway through the second half.

Just as the game seemed destined for extra time, Lamlaoui produced a stunning 40-yard strike to restore Morocco’s lead and ensure Morocco matched their title wins from the 2018 and 2020 editions.

Morocco’s Mohammed Hrimat was named Player of the Tournament, Lamlioui took home the Golden Boot award with his 6 goals. Senegal goalkeeper Marc Diouf won the Golden Glove and Senegal also took the Fair Play Award.

The result continues a great year for Moroccan football, after their youth sides won the Under-17 Africa Cup of Nations and reached the final of the Under-20 tournament.

The North African country is preparing to host the senior AFCON for the first time since 1988, with this year’s event set to get under way on 21 December.

CAF announce new dates for 2025 AFCON in Morocco

(with AFP)

NASA confirmed in a directive signed at the end of July that it will appoint a nuclear power czar and select two commercial proposals for the project within six months.

The aim is a 100-kilowatt reactor, ready to launch by 2029 or 2030. Unlike solar panels, nuclear systems can work around the clock – vital in a place where one night lasts 14 days.

Why nuclear, why now?

The announcement comes as the US prepares for Artemis III – the first planned crewed Moon landing since Apollo, now delayed to 2027.

NASA hopes to build a permanent base near the lunar south pole, but that requires a reliable energy source.

“The sunlight would not be continuous enough to produce the electricity needed for a facility where crews would live,” Xavier Pasco, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, told RFI.

Many analysts therefore see nuclear power as the only practical option. A constant energy supply would allow life-support systems, communications and even mining equipment to run without interruption.

“A nuclear reactor would allow great flexibility of use,” explained Paul Wohrer, who leads the space programme at the French Institute of International Relations. He told RFI that such a system would “provide greater electricity availability”.

Mona Luna takes off: Europe’s all-new lunar rover set to land by 2030

Investment and delays

NASA has spent around $200 million since 2000 developing compact nuclear systems, although none have yet flown.

In 2023, it funded three contracts worth $five million each, aimed at building units that could generate 40 kilowatts – enough to power 30 households for a decade.

Yet the schedule looks tight. The Artemis III landing has already slipped to 2027 – a date many still doubt is achievable given the planned lander, SpaceX’s Starship, is far from ready.

China, in contrast, is targeting 2030 for its first crewed mission and has been more consistent in meeting deadlines.

“According to all the specialists, 2030 seems extremely optimistic,” Pasco said.

Earthcare satellite to probe the impact of clouds on climate

Technical obstacles

Even if the timeline holds, the challenges are enormous.

“We are starting to talk about SMRs – small modular reactors capable of generating energy in a compact version,”said Pasco.

“But we also have to make sure they work well in extreme temperature conditions and can dissipate heat. There are major questions that are not resolved.”

Cooling is one of the toughest challenges. On Earth, nuclear reactors use water for this – but that is not possible on the Moon.

“It will require the development of particular technologies, notably in terms of reactor cooling capacity, since the reactors we know on Earth are cooled with water,” Wohrer explained. “But there is no way to circulate water intelligently on the Moon.”

There are also questions about transporting uranium and managing nuclear risks in space.

Senegal joins space pact shaping the next era of Moon missions

Race with China

NASA says the project is not just about technology, but geopolitics too.

Its directive notes that since March 2024 “China and Russia have announced on at least three occasions a joint effort to place a reactor on the Moon by the mid-2030s”.

The memo warns that the first nation to place a reactor could “declare a keep-out zone, which would significantly prevent the US from establishing its planned Artemis presence if it is not there first”.

“China seems more advanced than Russia in the space field,” said Wohrer, adding that human missions to the Moon are “the main priority for NASA in this geopolitical contest between the US and China”.

This rivalry is also shaping how NASA presents its plans.

“The interest for its current leadership – which is a political leadership – is of showing that there is momentum and that the agency wants to invest in this programme in a determined and stable manner,” Pasco added.

Space arms treaty should cover threat posed by debris – EU

A long history

Nuclear power in space is not a new idea. Since the 1960s, it has powered probes sent far from the Sun. The US even tested nuclear propulsion rockets.

“They had gone quite far in the tests. There was a model that was almost ready to fly at the time,” said Wohrer.

The Soviet Union has also experimented in the field.

“Spacecraft have already used nuclear technologies, for example for very distant scientific probes. There were even Soviet satellites that used nuclear reactors in space,” Pasco said.

The idea of developing reactors for long missions arrived back on the table in the early 2010s.

At that time NASA began work on a programme called Kilopower, which focused on developing nuclear reactors for lunar missions and possible future missions to Mars.

European space mission seeks out new life on Jupiter’s icy moons

International law does not forbid nuclear power in space – a 1992 UN resolution allows it if no other energy source is possible.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans countries from owning the Moon but says they must take the interests of others into account.

In 2020, the United States launched the Artemis Accords, signed by 56 countries including France. They propose “safety zones” on the Moon to prevent interference between missions.

China and Russia, however, refused to sign, and critics argue such zones could be used to block rivals once a country is established.

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Partially adapted from this story by RFI’s French-language service

Friday’s protest, led by Ghana’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) and backed by the International Trade Union Confederation-Africa (ITUC-Africa), called for a radical overhaul of the global debt system, which unions say is suffocating Africa’s economic prospects.

Ghana is on the frontline. Despite being the continent’s leading gold producer and world’s second-largest cocoa exporter, its external debt stood in March at $28.5 billion, or more than a quarter of its economic output. 

The country is only now starting to recover from one of its worst economic crises in decades, which included a 2022 debt default and inflation that at one point exceeded 50 percent.

“We will not pay!” protestors shouted as they marched through the capital Accra, carrying placards accusing creditors along with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank of strangling the African continent.

“When you look at the process, the creditors and the agreements that led to our debt, it’s like an elephant and a small animal facing off in a boxing ring, thinking they’re fighting on equal terms. We’re in a system that needs to be changed,” Andrews Adoquaye Tagoe, a Ghanaian and one of the rally’s organisers, told RFI.

Ghana to default on most international debt

Cancelling debt as reparative justice

Africa’s external debt has now surpassed $1.3 trillion, with Ghana among more than 20 countries restructuring its obligations.

In Ghana, the crisis led former president Nana Akufo-Addo to request a $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A petition signed by ITUC-Africa’s general secretary Joel Akhator Odigie and submitted to Ghana’s government, called for the “total and unconditional cancellation of Africa’s unsustainable external debts as an act of reparative justice”.

“More than half of African countries are already in or at high risk of debt distress, leaving governments unable to finance essential services,” the petition said, adding that any freed-up resources should go towards job creation, wages, social protection, climate resilience and structural transformations.

“This is not just a financial challenge; it is a human development and democratic crisis,” it added.

Zambia asks France to use ‘influence’ to speed up debt restructuring

Receiving the petition on behalf of President John Mahama, Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson echoed their concerns.

“There is a difference between not being able to pay and not being willing to pay,” Forson said, while underlining that how debt is used “is also important”.

In 23 African countries, debt servicing is outpacing money spent on health and education.

“In the case of these 23 African countries, their debt service cost has crowded out very important spending… they simply cannot pay,” Forson added.

Foreign aid stalls as Africa’s debt spirals

(with AFP)

The French municipalities of Paris, Lille, Lyon, Grenoble, Montpellier, Rennes, Bègles and Mouans-Sartoux have “temporarily removed” the popular fish in their school meals.

The decision came after a study last year by campaign groups Bloom and Foodwatch revealed the tinned fish can contain toxic levels of mercury. Samples from the 148 cans of tuna bought in France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy all tested positive for mercury contamination. Some cans contained levels four times higher than EU regulations allow, the study said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies mercury as one of the 10 most dangerous chemicals threatening public health.

“Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin that binds to the brain and is very difficult to get rid of,” said reseacher Julie Guterman, one of the report’s authors.

Green light for greens as French health watchdog backs veggie diets

Alerts can’t be ignored

The eight cities said they felt obliged to take the initiative. 

“No action has been taken by national and European political leaders or the tuna industry to protect consumers, especially children” the eight deputy mayors responsible for food said in a joint press release sent to France Inter public radio on Thursday.

“We try to be consistent and serve food that respects both health and the environment,” said Gilles Pérole, deputy mayor of Mounas-Sartoux. “So when we get alerts like this, we can’t ignore them.”

The EU and French regulations set the mercury limit in tuna at 1mg/kg – three times higher than the 0.3 mgs/kg threshold set by the WHO and which applies to other fish species. 

“So why is there an exemption for tuna, with a level of one milligram per kilo? It’s because, in reality, they realised that tuna couldn’t meet this standard,” Pérole said. “So we decided to suspend tuna until the mercury level accepted in tuna returns to the standard for other fish.”

French brand tops mercury contamination in Europe’s tuna

Why is there mercury in tuna?

Over the past two centuries, the concentration of mercury in the oceans has increased by 300 per cent.

The toxic metal first builds up in the air, released by mining and burning coal. Some 2,500 tonnes are emitted into the atmosphere in this way every year.

Mercury then passes into the oceans through rainfall, but mainly through gas exchange.

Once in the water – scientists have found traces of mercury down to depths of 4,500 metres, with bacteria transforming the mercury into methylmercury.

This organic form is particularly dangerous since it’s easily absorbed by living organisms and stored in their bodies.

As a predator at the top of the food chain, tuna accumulate heavy metals from the already-contaminated smaller fish they consume.

NGOs file complaint against France, Germany, and Italy over destructive fishing practices

Respecting EU thresholds

According to the Bloom and Foodwatch report, the highest concentration of mercury was found in French brand Petit Navire at 3.9 mg/kg. 

But the supplier has denied the claims and maintained it respects French and European mercury threshold regulations.

“Consuming Petit Navire products is perfectly safe for consumers. The safety and well-being of our consumers is a top priority” Petit Navire spokesperson Cyrine Triki said in an interview, adding that monthly test on tuna species in various supply zones were carried “with the support of independent laboratories accredited by French and European health authorities”.

“The results of these tests have never revealed mercury levels in excess of current European standards, averaging between 0.2 and 0.3 mg/kg, or 70 to 80 per cent of mercury levels” she said.

The eight local councils are calling on the agriculture and health ministries to defend the lowering of tuna-specific standards both within France and at the EU level.

In recent years, forest fires have destroyed millions of hectares of vegetation in North America, southern Europe, Australia, and especially in Africa.

Once the flames die down, forests can regenerate naturally or with intervention. Depending on the trees and the location, recovery can take anywhere from three to 60 years.

Forests can recover if the right conditions are in place – whether through natural regrowth, human intervention or replanting. These techniques differ slightly depending on geographic zones and climate patterns.

Many experts say natural regeneration is usually the most effective.

Éric Rigolot, a research engineer at France’s National Institute for Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Research (Inrae), specialises in Mediterranean forest ecology.

“For the most part, the forest will manage to regenerate on its own,” he told RFI.

“Mediterranean forests, for example, are adapted to a certain fire regime. They have developed effective methods for post-fire regeneration.”

Fire-resistant bark

Some species, like the cork oak, are especially resilient. “Three weeks after a fire, there can already be young shoots appearing on the trunk,” Rigolot said.

Other trees survive thanks to their bark.

“Those with more fire-resistant bark won’t necessarily die: they’ll sprout again with buds that will reform in the following years,” Jonathan Lenoir, an ecologist and research fellow at CNRS, said.

Forests can turn green again quickly after rainfall.

“If there is good natural regeneration capacity, we will see a return of trees in the following years,” said Rémi Savazzi, head of the National Forestry Office’s (ONF) fire division.

Underground roots can also survive, allowing vegetation to “grow back from the stump”.

Protecting the soil is the first priority after a forest fire.

“The forest has a role in protecting the soil and against other natural hazards,” Savazzi explained.

Measures are taken to repair walking trails and to identify damaged trees or trees about to fall.

Trees affected by fire can be repurposed into anti-erosion barriers that “slow down runoff and maintain the soil”, Savazzi added.

Climate change made LA wildfires ‘more likely’ according to international study

Human intervention

For some scientists, human involvement helps forests recover faster.

“We need to ensure that invasive species like weeds don’t proliferate. This will help native species regrow more easily,” said Patrick Norman, a researcher at Griffith University in Australia.

In Canada, some trees sow seeds when they burn, thus participating in natural forest regeneration. This is the case for certain conifers in the country’s boreal forests.

Victor Danneyrolles, a researcher at the University of Quebec and a specialist in fire ecology told RFI that this is a very effective mechanism in allowing trees to regenerate after a fire.

“There are seed systems enclosed in serotinous cones. There is a resin in the cone, which will melt when the fire passes, opening the cone, and allowing all the seeds to be released,” he said.

While natural regeneration is prioritised where possible, sometimes a helping hand is needed – particularly when it comes to planting.

For many years in France, the planting of new trees and new seeds by humans was an integral part of the forest healing process but it hasn’t always been effective.

“We have examples of our colleagues 30 or 40 years ago who replanted as soon as there was a gap. We realise that some plantations have unfortunately failed,” ONF’s Savazzi said.

In the Mediterranean region, the last planting programs took place in the 1980s, according to Inrae, but this has become too expensive to maintain. 

Danneyrolles indicates that in Quebec, the price of replanting corresponds to $8,000 per hectare, or nearly €5,000.

“You have to produce the seeds, then plants in nurseries, build forest roads to access the areas to be reforested, labour costs,” he said.

France’s worst wildfires in 30 years force a rethink on managing forests

Choice of tree species

Furthermore, replanting, while still used in many countries, can be risky if done poorly or if the species planted are not well chosen.

“We may be tempted to plant species that are more resistant to fire, and which sometimes come from far away. These species can be invasive and cause other problems,” said Jonathan Lenoir of the CNRS.

Lenoir instead advocates replanting a “mixture of species” to “avoid the spread of fire, which can be more prevalent when tree species are homogenous.

Australian researcher Patrick Norman insists on planting something that’s native to the area, “something that should originally grow there,” he says.

“Planting an exotic species like a eucalyptus (a species widely found in Australian forests), which burns very well, would significantly exacerbate the problem” in unsuitable forests.

In many countries, the regeneration of forests is a combination of techniques.

In Morocco, the National Agency for Water and Forests (ANEF) sets aside closed areas to allow vegetation to regrow without disturbance, alongside reforestation with drought-resistant native species.

After fires in the Landes de Gascogne region of France in 2022, “most of the maritime pine forests were replanted,” Rigolot said. Planting is also taking place along the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal.

New tools like drones are being tested in Canada, Spain and Mexico. In Michoacan, some drone models can carry nearly 20 kilos of seeds, Danneyrolles said.

Indigenous input

Some countries, such as Australia, draw on the knowledge of indigenous communities to develop more sustainable regeneration strategies for fire-affected areas.

“They are an incredible source of knowledge; they have maintained the environment and lived with fires for nearly 50,000 years. Who knows the affected regions better than the First Nations’ people?” Australian researcher Patrick Norman said.

Victor Danneyrolles agrees with this when it comes to Canada.

“They are generally the most exposed to the risk of fires, because some live in somewhat isolated areas. We work with them as much as possible to understand their needs and realities.”

Traditional techniques such as controlled burns are now widely used in Australia and Canada. Indigenous groups are also exploring the use of drones, which avoid building roads or bringing in heavy machinery.

Generations to grow

Even when regeneration is quick, full recovery can take decades.

“It will take 20 to 30 years for small trees to become adult trees and be able to reseed,” Savazzi said.

Norman recalled Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-2020, when “trees that were thought to be dead sprouted two or three years later.” Still, he noted that some ecosystems can take “up to 20 years to return to the state they were in before the fires.”

When it comes to ancient forests, an even longer period is required, according to Rigolot from Inrae – who points to the fires earlier this month in the Aude department of France.

“To rebuild a mature forest, like the one that burned in the Corbières, it takes many years, almost a human generation, or almost 60 to 70 years. The forest is an ecosystem with a very long life cycle,” he said.

The process of reforestation and restoration that can take even longer if disrupted by repeated or overly massive fires.

Biggest French wildfire since 1949 a ‘catastrophe on an unprecedented scale’

Resilience as key

In Quebec, after the mega-fires that ravaged several million hectares in 2023, some forests, for example, have been unable to regenerate on their own.

“It is estimated that more than 300,000 hectares will not be able to reforest themselves. We are capable of reforesting ourselves, but only up to 50,000 hectares per year,” Danneyrolles said.

For Jonathan Lenoir, climate change will involve a different adaptation of forest ecosystems, to put the emphasis on resilience. This may lead to the disappearance of certain species better adapted to a more humid climate.

“We risk having species better adapted to hot and dry climates naturally, or, through assisted migration, humans will seek to favour species adapted to these new conditions,” he said.

With already 8 to 10 million hectares of natural forests disappearing each year, the NGO World Wildlife Fund says helping forests adapt will be essential. Forests provide livelihoods for more than 300 million people and are home to 80 percent of terrestrial biodiversity.

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This report was adapted from the original version in French by RFI’s Léo Roussel.

In Ambohidranandriana, a village about an hour’s drive south of Antsirabé, in the volcanic Vakinankaratra region, music and laughter rise from a noisy procession weaving between the family tombs.

For Fitahina, 25, the day is deeply personal. She came to honour her grandmother, who died before she was born.

“I am happy to meet her because I never knew her. I have been waiting for this moment for a very long time. I miss her a lot,” Fitahina tells RFI.

“When the body comes out of the tomb, I will go closer and talk with her. I will tell her the good and the bad things in my life. I know she can still hear me.”

Nearby, guests share plates of vary be menaka – rice with fatty zebu meat – while men begin to open the vast family tomb, buried under dust.

Meet the tiny tuft-tailed saviour of Madagascar’s endangered baobabs

Fitahina’s aunt, Claudine, wears an elegant hat for the commemoration of her late mother.

“I am proud that my family is gathered for this famadihana,” she says. “I will pray for my mother and ask her for blessings – health and a long life for my children.”

One by one, the bodies are carried out. Descendants lift them high in their arms as the crowd moves in jubilation.

Alphonse, a neighbour invited like hundreds of others, describes the ritual.

“We wrap the ancestors in a new silk shroud, the lambamena,” he explains. “It is a sign of love and consideration for the good they did for us. This is how we honour them.”

A little toaka gasy – traditional Malagasy rum – is poured on to the fresh silk. Only at nightfall, when dusk settles over the rice fields, are the ancestors returned to their family tombs.

Financial pressures

The famadihana usually takes place every five or seven years, depending on a family’s means, but it is a costly event. Food, drink, musicians and services for hundreds of guests add up, and donations rarely cover the full expenses.

The financial demands are pushing some families away from the ritual, anthropologist Annie Raharinirina, from the University of Antananarivo, tells RFI.

“Some families go into debt to organise the famadihana, but young people in the cities do not really practise it any more,” she says.

Others still commit to large-scale celebrations, calling on professional event organisers for their famadihana.

“They invite famous artists, hire catering services. Families save for years. They sell their zebus [humped cattle, a traditional sign of wealth] or use them as food for the guests,” Raharinirina says.

“Some sacrifice a lot, and there are even some who go into debt to organise a celebration worthy of the name. Some people say it is better to save and spend money for the living than for the dead.”

Madagascar’s master artisans sail through time to revive lost ships

Tradition in transition

However younger generations are increasingly divided over the practice of this centuries-old ritual, Raharinirina explains.

“Young people in the cities no longer really practise the famadihana, but young people in rural areas like the Itasy region or Antsirabé, many still do,” she adds.

For now, in villages like Ambohidranandriana, the tradition remains a major event. Families and neighbours gather in large numbers, carrying out rituals passed down for centuries.

For participants like Fitahina, it is a chance to come face to face with ancestors and speak with them across generations.

---

This story was adapted from RFI’s original version in French

Macron has given his “full support” to French Prime Minister François Bayrou after his decision to call the 8 September confidence vote on budget policies, which risks toppling the government.

Bayrou’s move has also raised questions for Macron, who has less than two years of his mandate left, with the hard left France Unbowed party calling on the president to resign – something he has always rejected.

“The mandate entrusted to me by the French people… will be served out until its end, in line with the commitment I made to them,” Macron told a press conference on Friday, as he hosted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Macron said Bayrou was not facing “an insurmountable challenge” and called on political players to find “ways to agree” on his proposed budget.

French PM unveils radical plan to tackle ‘deadly danger’ of national debt

Bayrou, 74, wants to save about €44 billion, but his proposal to scrap two public holidays and freeze increases on public spending has angered many in France.

The PM has survived several no-confidence motions since he was appointed late last year thanks to abstentions from either the far-right National Rally or the Socialists. But both parties have said they will not support Bayrou on 8 September.

If he loses the vote, he must resign along with his entire government.

Macron could either reappoint him, select a new figure who would be the head of state’s seventh premier since taking office in 2017, or call snap elections to break the political deadlock that has now dogged France for over a year.

Macron rules out quitting, vows new PM after French government collapse

(with AFP)

The Russian paramilitary group Wagner has left behind a troubled record in Mali, according to a report published by the United States-based war crimes watchdog The Sentry.

The organisation assessed Wagner’s impact in the Sahel country between January 2022 and June 2025 – when its mercenaries were replaced by the Africa Corps, a new force directly under Moscow’s command.

When the Wagner Group announced its departure earlier this year, it claimed its “mission was accomplished”.

However, the report’s findings detail three and a half years of insecurity and strategic failure.

How Moscow is reinventing its influence machine across Africa

‘A triple failure’

The report outlines what it calls Wagner’s “triple failure”.

The first is a military one: the Russian fighters proved unable to secure northern and central Mali, despite high expectations from Bamako’s transitional authorities.

Secondly, their arrival coincided with a “significant increase” in attacks against civilians.

And third, far from strengthening ties between the army and local populations, their actions “gravely undermined” confidence, creating fertile ground for jihadist groups to boost recruitment.

Wagner’s presence, the Sentry argues, also destabilised the Malian security apparatus.

“The fighters of Wagner sowed chaos and fear within the military hierarchy,” the report notes, describing a chain of command now plagued by mistrust and poor communication.

Malian army and Wagner Group abduct and execute Fulani civilians, NGO claims

Fragile partnership

Speaking to RFI, Justyna Gudzowska, executive director of the Sentry, said Malian authorities turned to Wagner believing the Russian mercenaries would “take greater risks and truly commit to fighting terrorists”.

Instead, she explained, “Wagner fighters refused to act without payment, refused to help without financial compensation, and in some cases flatly refused to take risks“.

What was intended to be a partnership with the Malian armed forces quickly soured, she said. “Wagner treated Malian soldiers as subordinates, perpetrated grave abuses, and instilled such fear that even Malian troops were afraid to speak out.”

These issues culminated in a decisive defeat in July 2024, when rebels from the Azawad region of northern Mali and jihadists from the al Qaeda-linked JNIM group ambushed Malian and Wagner forces at Tinzaouatène, killing more than 80 Russian mercenaries and around 50 Malian soldiers.

This blow, according to Gudzowska, tarnished Wagner’s reputation well beyond Mali’s borders: “More than a year later, it has still not recovered.”

Five years after the 2020 coup, where is Mali today?

While Wagner has departed and Russia’s Africa Corps has stepped into its shoes, Mali’s security crisis shows little sign of abating.

Jihadist groups remain active across wide swathes of the country. Earlier this week, they reportedly seized the strategic town of Farabougou in central Mali, days after forcing the army to abandon one of its largest camps in the region.

JNIM fighters now control the town, imposing their rule on returning residents, including bans on secular music, alcohol and cigarettes.

Hello everyone! Welcome to The Sound Kitchen weekly podcast, published every Saturday – here on our website, or wherever you get your podcasts. You’ll hear the winners’ names announced and the week’s quiz question, along with all the other ingredients you’ve grown accustomed to: your letters and essays, “On This Day”, quirky facts and news, interviews, and great music … so be sure and listen every week.

The ePOP video competition is open!

The ePOP video competition is sponsored by the RFI department “Planète Radio”, whose mission is to give a voice to the voiceless. ePOP focuses on the environment and how climate change has affected “ordinary” people.

The ePOP contest is your space to ensure these voices are heard. 

How do you do it?

With a three-minute ePOP video. It should be pure testimony, captured by your lens: the spoken word reigns supreme. No tricks, no music, no text on the screen. Just the raw authenticity of an encounter, in horizontal format (16:9). An ePOP film is a razor-sharp look at humanity that challenges, moves, and enlightens.

From June 12 to September 12, 2025, ePOP invites you to reach out, open your eyes, and create that unique bridge between a person and the world.

Join the ePOP community and make reality vibrate!

Click here for all the information you need. 

We expect to be overwhelmed with entries from the English speakers!

Erwan and I are busy cooking up special shows with your music requests, so get them in! Send your music requests to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr Tell us why you like the piece of music, too – it makes it more interesting for us all!

Facebook: Be sure to send your photos to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr for the RFI English Listeners Forum banner!

More tech news: Did you know we have a YouTube channel? Just go to YouTube and write “RFI English” in the search bar, and there we are! Be sure to subscribe to see all our videos.

Would you like to learn French? RFI is here to help you!

Our website “Le Français facile avec RFI” has news broadcasts in slow, simple French, as well as bilingual radio dramas (with real actors!) and exercises to practice what you have heard.

Go to our website and get started! At the top of the page, click on “Test level” and you’ll be counselled to the best-suited activities for your level.

Do not give up! As Lidwien van Dixhoorn, the head of “Le Français facile” service, told me: “Bathe your ears in the sound of the language, and eventually, you’ll get it.” She should know – Lidwien is Dutch and came to France hardly able to say “bonjour” and now she heads this key RFI department – so stick with it!

Be sure you check out our wonderful podcasts!

In addition to the news articles on our site, with in-depth analysis of current affairs in France and across the globe, we have several podcasts that will leave you hungry for more.

There’s Spotlight on France, Spotlight on Africa, The International Report, and of course, The Sound Kitchen. We also have an award-winning bilingual series – an old-time radio show, with actors (!) to help you learn French, called Les voisins du 12 bis. 

Remember, podcasts are radio, too! As you see, sound is still quite present in the RFI English service. Please keep checking our website for updates on the latest from our journalists. You never know what we’ll surprise you with!

To listen to our podcasts from your PC, go to our website; you’ll see “Podcasts” at the top of the page. You can either listen directly or subscribe and receive them directly on your mobile phone.

To listen to our podcasts from your mobile phone, slide through the tabs just under the lead article (the first tab is “Headline News”) until you see “Podcasts”, and choose your show. 

Teachers take note! I save postcards and stamps from all over the world to send to you for your students. If you would like stamps and postcards for your students, just write and let me know. The address is english.service@rfi.fr  If you would like to donate stamps and postcards, feel free! Our address is listed below. 

Independent RFI English Clubs: Be sure to always include Audrey Iattoni (audrey.iattoni@rfi.fr) from our Listener Relations department in your RFI Club correspondence. Remember to copy me (thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr) when you write to her so that I know what is going on, too. N.B.: You do not need to send her your quiz answers! Email overload!

This week’s quiz: On 12 July, I asked you a question about our article “Seven Nobel laureates urge France to adopt a tax on the ‘ultra-rich’”. The open letter, written by seven Economics Nobel laureates, urged the French government to implement a minimum tax on the wealthiest households in France.

The laureates noted that while global billionaires hold assets equivalent to 14 percent of global GDP, French billionaires control wealth worth nearly 30 percent of France’s GDP.

Our article cited a proposed wealth tax, which was voted down by the French Senate (it did pass in the lower house, the Assembly). I asked you to send in the name of the bill and why it has that name.

The answer is: The bill is called the Zucman bill, after Gabriel Zucman. As noted in our article, “The bill was based on proposals by French economist Gabriel Zucman. Initially passed by the National Assembly, the bill would have introduced a ‘differential contribution’ ensuring that individuals with more than €100 million in assets pay at least 2 percent of their annual wealth in taxes.

“The aim was to curb the kinds of avoidance strategies employed by some ultra-wealthy individuals, who are often able to structure their assets in ways that greatly reduce their tax burdens.”

In addition to the quiz question, there was the bonus question, suggested by Sultan Sarker, the president of the Shetu RFI Fan Club in Naogaon, Bangladesh. Sultan’s question was: “What do you do when tragedy enters your life? How do you deal with the sorrow, the grief?”

Do you have a bonus question idea? Send it to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr

The winners are: RFI Listeners Club member Admand Parajuli, the president of the Bandhu Listeners Club in Sunsari, Nepal. Admand is also the winner of this week’s bonus quiz. Congratulations, Admand, on your double win.

Also on the list of lucky winners this week are Ferhat Bezazel, the president of the RFI Butterflies Club Ain Kechera in W. Skikda, Algeria, and Nahid Hossain, a member of the Shetu RFI Listeners Club in Naogaon, Bangladesh. Last but not least, RFI Listeners Club members Rasel Sikder from Madaripur, Bangladesh, and Father Steven Wara, who lives and serves in the Cistercian Abbey at Bamenda, Cameroon.

Congratulations, winners!

Here’s the music you heard on this week’s programme: “Les Sauvages” from Jean Philippe Rameau’s opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes; “Hail, Hail the Gang’s All Here” by Theodora Morse and Arthur Sullivan, sung by the The Childen’s Music Band; “Money Makes the World Go Around” from John Kander and Fred Ebb’s musical Cabaret, sung by Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey; “The Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov; “The Cakewalk” from Children’s Corner by Claude Debussy, performed by the composer, and “Azúcar pa’ ti” by Eddy Palmieri, performed by Eddy Palmieri and La Perfecta.  

Do you have a music request? Send it to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr

This week’s question … you must listen to the show to participate. After you’ve listened to the show, re-read our article “French PM puts government on line with call for confidence vote”, which will help you with the answer.

You have until 13 October to enter this week’s quiz; the winners will be announced on the 18 October podcast. When you enter, be sure to send your postal address with your answer, and if you have one, your RFI Listeners Club membership number.

Send your answers to:

english.service@rfi.fr

or

Susan Owensby

RFI – The Sound Kitchen

80, rue Camille Desmoulins

92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux

France

Click here to learn how to win a special Sound Kitchen prize.

Click here to find out how you can become a member of the RFI Listeners Club, or form your own official RFI Club.   

European and US military chiefs last week reportedly presented ideas to their national security advisers on how to guarantee Ukraine’s security if there is a peace deal with Russia.

The discussions followed a summit of European leaders in Washington with US President Donald Trump on ending the conflict.

“It’s going to be a big challenge, but they will find ways of tackling that challenge without the US troops on the ground,” said Serhat Guvenc, professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University.

“It will be a novelty because Europe has never carried out any peacekeeping or stabilization operation of this magnitude before.”

Turkey, with NATO’s second-largest army, is seen as a possible option.

“Turkey is an option, you know. And it seems that there is some talk of Turkish contribution,” Guvenc added.

Armenia and Azerbaijan peace deal raises hopes of Turkish border reopening

Ankara signals readiness

On the same day, French President Emmanuel Macron held a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss Ukraine’s security.

Ankara has already signalled it could take part in monitoring any peace deal, but Moscow’s approval would be necessary.

“If the parties agree, Turkey may send our troops to peacekeeping operations,” said Mesut Casin, a former presidential adviser and professor at Istanbul’s Yeditepe University.

Casin pointed to Turkey’s past record in UN operations.

“Turkey joined many UN peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Korea, and in many other peacekeeping operations. The Turkish army is very powerful,” he said.

“Also, remember Putin is talking many times with Erdogan, and at the same time, Zelensky is visiting Ankara.”

Turkey and Italy boost cooperation in bid to shape Libya’s political future

Balancing Moscow and Kyiv

Since the start of the war, Erdogan has kept good relations with both Russia and Ukraine.

Ankara has refused to apply most international sanctions on Moscow, while at the same time selling vital military hardware to Kyiv. That balancing act has raised questions among European partners.

“Turkey ought to have been at the Washington meeting,” said Soli Ozel, an international relations scholar at the Institute for Human Studies in Vienna.

Even though Turkey borders both Ukraine and Russia, Erdogan was excluded from this month’s summit between Trump and European leaders.

“The fact that it wasn’t backs the observation that the bigger players or the major partners are not bringing Turkey center stage, they’re sidelining it,” Ozel added.

Despite this, Ankara remains strategically important.

“They keep it in the play, it’s important because if you’re going to need troops, you’re going to need Turkey. If you’re going to talk about the Black Sea security, you need Turkey. And so you cannot really dismiss Turkey,” Ozel said.

But he warned that mistrust is limiting Ankara’s role.

“You’re not making it part of the process that will hopefully lead to a conclusion or a peace treaty between Ukraine and Russia. There is a lack of trust, and I think that has something to do with the way Turkey has conducted its diplomacy,” Ozel said.

Peace or politics? Turkey’s fragile path to ending a decades-long conflict

Doubts over influence

Some analysts suggest Ankara hopes Europe’s reliance on Turkish forces or its navy for Black Sea security could help restore influence. But others see limited gains.

“There is no automatic increase in Turkey’s influence and credibility as a result of taking part in such operations,” said Guvenc.

“It does have a certain impact, but on the other hand, such contributions do not change other Western partners’ views of Turkey.”

Rather than a reset with Europe, Guvenc sees a continuation of the current dynamic.

“What might happen is yet another manifestation of transactionalism on both sides. And if Turkey contributes to peacekeeping in Ukraine, probably President Erdogan expects concrete benefits that will help him manage the deteriorating economic situation in Turkey.

“Therefore, you cannot build a comprehensive and sustainable relationship built on that transactionalism on both sides.”

Hello everyone! Welcome to The Sound Kitchen weekly podcast, published every Saturday. This week, you’ll hear musical requests from your fellow listeners Heimer Sia, Hossen Abed Ali, and Debashis Gope. 

Be sure you send in your music requests! Write to me at thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr

Here’s the music you heard on this week’s program: “Angelina” by Pierre Perez-Vergara, Stéphane Planchon, and Yassine Dahbi, performed by PSY; “Like Jesus to a Child”, written and performed by George Michael, and the traditional 18th-century French drinking song “Chevaliers de la Table Ronde”, sung by the Quatre Barbus with André Popp and his ensemble.

The ePOP video competition is open!

The ePOP video competition is sponsored by the RFI department “Planète Radio”, whose mission is to give a voice to the voiceless. ePOP focuses on the environment and how climate change has affected “ordinary” people.

The ePOP contest is your space to ensure these voices are heard.

How do you do it?

With a three-minute ePOP video. It should be pure testimony, captured by your lens: the spoken word reigns supreme. No tricks, no music, no text on the screen. Just the raw authenticity of an encounter, in horizontal format (16:9). An ePOP film is a razor-sharp look at humanity that challenges, moves, and enlightens.

From June 12 to September 12, 2025, ePOP invites you to reach out, open your eyes, and create a unique bridge between a person and the world.

Join the ePOP community and make reality vibrate!

Click here for all the information you need.

https://concours.epop.network/en/

We expect to be overwhelmed with entries from the English speakers!

 

The quiz will be back next Saturday, 30 August. Be sure and tune in!

The deal, brokered by US President Donald Trump, commits both countries to respect each other’s territorial integrity – the issue at the centre of bloody wars.

The agreement is seen as paving the way for Turkey to restore diplomatic ties with Armenia.

“Ankara has been promising that once there is a peace agreement, it will open the border,” says Asli Aydintasbas, of the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

“There was a brief period in the post-Soviet era when it [the border] was opened, but that was quickly shut again due to the Armenian-Azeri tensions.”

Aydintasbas says reopening the border could have wide-reaching consequences.

“Armenia and Turkey opening their border and starting trade would be a historical moment in terms of reconciliation between these two nations, which have very bitter historic memories,” she adds.

“But beyond that, it would help Armenia economically because it’s a landlocked country entirely dependent on Russia for its protection and its economy.”

Turning point

In June, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul. The meeting was seen as a turning point in relations long overshadowed by the memory of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, which Ankara still officially denies.

“There’s now a degree of personal chemistry between the Armenian prime minister and Erdogan. This was seen in a June historic meeting, the first ever bilateral contact, a face-to-face meeting,” says Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Centre, a think tank in Yerevan.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 after ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan seized the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

The enclave was retaken by Azerbaijani forces in 2022. Giragosian says the peace deal, along with warmer ties between Pashinyan and Erdogan, could now help Yerevan reach a long-sought goal.

“In the longer perspective for Turkey and Armenia, this is about going beyond the South Caucasus. It’s about Central Asia. It’s about European markets, potentially a new Iran in the future,” he says.

Erdogan congratulated Pashinyan on Monday over the deal, but made no official pledge on reopening the border. That decision may lie with Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev.

“They [Ankara] will be looking to Baku. Baku is basically able to tell Turkey not to move on normalisation with Armenia, not to open the border,” says Aydintasbas.

“Part of the reason is that Turkey has developed an economic dependency on Azerbaijan, which is the top investor in Turkey. In other words, little brother is calling the shots, and I think that Ankara, to an extent, does not like it, but has come to appreciate the economic benefits of its relationship with Azerbaijan.”

Azerbaijani demands on Armenia

Azerbaijan is also pushing for changes to Armenia’s constitution, which it claims makes territorial claims on Nagorno-Karabakh.

“The Armenian constitution refers to the Declaration of Independence of Armenia, which has a clear clause on the unification with Armenia, with Nagorno-Karabakh,” says Farid Shafiyev of the Centre for Analysis of International Relations, a Baku-based think tank.

Shafiyev warned that without reform, the peace deal could unravel.

“Let’s say, imagine Pashinyan losing elections, a new person says: ‘You know, everything which was signed was against the Armenian constitution.’ For us, it is important that the Armenian people vote for the change of the constitution,” Shafiyev says.

Analysts note that changing the constitution would require a referendum with more than 50 percent turnout – a difficult and time-consuming process.

Time, however, may be running short. Russia is seen as the biggest loser from lasting peace in the Caucasus. For decades Moscow exploited the conflict to play Armenia and Azerbaijan against each other.

Pashinyan is now seeking to move away from Russian dominance and closer to Europe.

Giragosian warned that Armenia’s window of opportunity is limited.

“There is a closing window of opportunity – that is Russia’s distraction with everything in Ukraine. We do expect a storm on the horizon, with an angry, vengeful Putin reasserting or attempting to regain Russia’s lost power and influence in the region.”

Weakening Russia’s grip remains key, he adds. “Armenia, after all, is still a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Russian-dominated trade bloc.

“But it’s also a country that has a Russian military base. Russia still manages the Armenian railway network, for example. This is why, for Armenia, the real key here is going to be Turkey and normalising relations with Turkey.”

At present, Armenia’s only open land borders are with Georgia and Iran – both close to Russia. Opening the Turkish border would give Armenia a vital new route, while also benefiting Turkey’s economically depressed border region.

But for now, Azerbaijan may seek further concessions before allowing any breakthrough.

Hello everyone! Welcome to The Sound Kitchen weekly podcast, published every Saturday. This week, you’ll hear three different versions of a song requested by Jayanta Chakrabarty from New Delhi, India.

Be sure you send in your music requests! Write to me at thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr

Here’s the music you heard on this week’s program: “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” by Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Frank Wilson, Berry Gordy, in three versions: Brenda Holloway, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Alton Ellis.

The ePOP video competition is open!

The ePOP video competition is sponsored by the RFI department “Planète Radio”, whose mission is to give a voice to the voiceless. ePOP focuses on the environment and how climate change has affected “ordinary” people.

The ePOP contest is your space to ensure these voices are heard.

How do you do it?

With a three-minute ePOP video. It should be pure testimony, captured by your lens: the spoken word reigns supreme. No tricks, no music, no text on the screen. Just the raw authenticity of an encounter, in horizontal format (16:9). An ePOP film is a razor-sharp look at humanity that challenges, moves, and enlightens.

From June 12 to September 12, 2025, ePOP invites you to reach out, open your eyes, and create a unique bridge between a person and the world.

Join the ePOP community and make reality vibrate!

Click here for all the information you need.

We expect to be overwhelmed with entries from the English speakers!

Earlier this month, the leaders of Italy, Turkey and Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) met in a tripartite summit – the latest sign of growing cooperation between the three Mediterranean nations.

“Turkey and Italy have both differing interests, but interests in Libya,” explains international relations professor Huseyin Bagcı of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.

“Particularly, the migration issue and illegal human trafficking are big problems for Italy, and most of the people are coming from there [Libya], so they try to prevent the flow of migrants.

“But for Turkey, it’s more economic. And Libya is very much interested in keeping the relations with both countries.”

Turkey and Italy consider teaming up to seek new influence in Africa

Migration, legitimacy concerns

Turkey is the main backer of Libya’s GNA and still provides military assistance, which was decisive in defeating the rival eastern-based forces led by strongman Khalifa Haftar. An uneasy ceasefire holds between the two sides.

Libya security analyst Aya Burweilla said Turkey is seeking Italy’s support to legitimise the Tripoli government, as questions grow over its democratic record.

“What it means for the Tripoli regime is very positive. This is a regime that has dodged elections for years,” she says.

“Their job was to have democratic elections, and one of their ways to make sure they stay in power was to get foreign sponsors, like Turkey… Now, with this rubber stamp from Meloni in Italy, they can keep the status quo going at the expense of Libyans.”

Years of civil war and political chaos have turned Libya into a major hub for people smugglers. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, elected on a pledge to curb irregular migration, sees stability in Libya as key to that goal.

“The migration issue has become very, very urgent in general for Europe, but of course for Italy too,” says Alessia Chiriatti of the Institute of International Affairs, a think tank in Rome.

Trump and Erdogan grow closer as cooperation on Syria deepens

Mediterranean ambitions

Chiriatti said Meloni’s partnership with Turkey in Libya also reflects broader foreign policy goals.

“There is another dimension – I think it’s directly related to the fact that Italy and Meloni’s government want to play a different role in foreign policy in the Mediterranean space,” she says.

“Italy is starting to see Africa as a possible partner to invest in … But what is important is that Italy is starting to see itself as a new player, both in the Mediterranean space and in Africa, so in this sense, it could have important cooperation with Turkey.”

She points out that both Italy and Turkey share a colonial past in Libya. That legacy, combined with the lure of Libya’s vast energy reserves, continues to shape their diplomacy.

Ending the split between Libya’s rival governments is seen as vital for stability. Moscow’s reduced military support for Haftar, as it focuses on its war in Ukraine, is viewed in Ankara as an opening.

“Russia is nearly out, and what remains are Turkey and Italy,” says Bagcı.

He added that Ankara is making overtures to the eastern authorities through Haftar’s son Saddam, a senior figure in the Libyan military.

“The son of Haftar is coming very often to Ankara, making talks. It’s an indication of potential changes… But how the deal will look like I don’t know, we will see later. But it’s an indication of potential cooperation, definitely.”

Turkey steps into EU defence plans as bloc eyes independence from US

Shifting alliances

Libya was discussed when Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo on Saturday.

Sisi backs Haftar’s eastern government. Libya had been a source of tension between Turkey and Egypt, but with relations thawing, both say they will work together on the country’s future.

Turkey’s position in Libya is strengthening, says Burweilla.

“Saddam is pro-Turkey – there is a huge difference between son and father – and the younger generation is pro-Turkey,” she says.

Such support, Burweilla said, stems from Ankara allowing Libyans to seek sanctuary in Turkey from fighting in 2011, when NATO forces led by France and the United Kingdom militarily intervened against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

“I think the Europeans underestimated the political capital that gave Turkey. Turkey is winning the game in Libya,” Burweilla says.

She adds that Ankara’s rising influence is also due to a shift in tactics towards the east.

“What they [Ankara] realised was that you can’t conquer the east of Libya by force; they tried and they failed. And the Turkish regime is very much motivated by business… They don’t care about anything else, and they’ve realised they want to make a business,” Burweilla says.

They’ve reached out more to the east, and the east, in turn, has realised that if they don’t want to be attacked by Turkey and its mercenaries, they need to make peace with Turkey as well.”

Madhya Pradesh is often referred to as the Heart of India. Located right in the middle of the country, the Indian region shows everything India has to offer through its abundant diversity. The IFTM trade show, which took place in Paris at the end of September, presented the perfect opportunity for travel enthusiasts to discover the region.

Sheo Shekhar Shukla, Managing Director of Madhya Pradesh’s tourism board, sat down to explain his approach to sustainable tourism.

“Post-covid the whole world has known a shift in their approach when it comes to tourism. And all those discerning travelers want to have different kinds of experiences: something offbeat, something new, something which has not been explored before.”

Through its UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Shukla wants to showcase the deep history Madhya Pradesh has to offer.

“UNESCO is very actively supporting us and three of our sites are already World Heritage Sites. Sanchi is a very famous buddhist spiritual destination, Bhimbetka is a place where prehistoric rock shelters are still preserved, and Khajuraho is home to thousand year old temples with magnificent architecture.”

All in all, Shukla believes that there’s only one way forward for the industry: “Travelers must take sustainable tourism as a paradigm in order to take tourism to the next level.”

In partnership with Madhya Pradesh’s tourism board.

Also known as the Land of the Beautiful Islands, Malaysia’s landscape and cultural diversity is almost unmatched on the planet. Those qualities were all put on display at the Malaysian stand during the IFTM trade show.

Libra Hanif, director of Tourism Malaysia, explained the appeal of the country as well as the importance of promoting sustainable tourism today: “Sustainable travel is a major trend now, with the changes that are happening post-covid. People want to get close to nature, to get close to people. So Malaysia being a multicultural and diverse [country] with a lot of natural environments, we felt that it’s a good thing for us to promote Malaysia.”

Malaysia has also gained fame in recent years, through its numerous UNESCO World Heritage Sites, which include Kinabalu Park and the Archaeological Heritage of the Lenggong Valley.

Green mobility has also become an integral part of tourism in Malaysia, with an increasing number of people using bikes to discover the country: “If you are a little more adventurous, we have the mountain back trails where you can cut across gazetted trails to see the natural attractions and the wildlife that we have in Malaysia,” says Hanif. “If you are not that adventurous, you’ll be looking for relaxing cycling. We also have countryside spots, where you can see all the scenery in a relaxing session.”

With more than 25,000 visitors at this IFTM trade show this year, Malaysia’s tourism board got to showcase the best the country and its people have to offer.

In partnership with Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board. For more information about Malaysia, click here.