Ambassador Nkosinathi Emmanuel “Nathi” Mthethwa had been reported missing by his wife on Monday evening after she received a text message from him that worried her, the prosecutor’s office said.

The 58-year-old had booked a room on the 22nd floor, according to the prosecutors, and a secured window had been forced open. The body of Mthethwa, a close associate of former South African president Jacob Zuma, was found “directly by the hotel”, it added.

South Africa to examine past failures to prosecute apartheid crimes

‘Untimely death’

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called his death “untimely” and “a moment of deep grief in which government and citizens stand beside the Mthethwa family”.

“Ambassador Mthethwa has served our nation in diverse capacities during a lifetime that has ended prematurely and traumatically,” he said.

In a statement released in Pretoria, South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola said he had “no doubt that his passing is not only a national loss but is also felt within the international diplomatic community”.

The circumstances of “his untimely death” are under investigation by the French authorities, the statement confirmed.

A source close to the case, who asked not to be named, said the ambassador suffered from depression and his death could have been suicide.

Mthethwa had been ambassador since December 2023. He served as minister of arts and culture of South Africa from 2014 to 2019, and then of sports, arts and culture until 2023, according to his embassy website.

He was also police minister from 2009 to 2014 and security minister from 2008 to 2009.

Mthethwa also served on the board of directors of the 2010 football World Cup local organising committee.

South Africa hits back at US over ‘flawed’ rights report and land grab claims

Between 2007 and 2022, he was a senior official in the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party since the first post-apartheid democratic elections in 1994.

He worked underground within the ANC’s military wing during apartheid and was notably arrested during the state of emergency in 1989.

(with AFP)

From May 2022 to early 2023, the Mediterranean went through its longest marine heatwave in four decades, with surface temperatures up to 4.3C above normal.

Scientists examined how that extreme heat affected two invasive species – the Atlantic blue crab and the bearded fireworm – which have spread in the Po River delta in northern Italy and along the Sicilian coast.

In the Po delta, the surge in blue crabs, which feed on shellfish, caused mussel production to collapse by 75 to 100 percent in some lagoons in 2023. The fast-breeding predator appears to have been boosted by warmer waters, threatening seafloor habitats and upsetting the balance of the ecosystem.

The bearded fireworm, a native Mediterranean species that can grow up to 70 centimetres long and live for nine years, also multiplied as the sea warmed.

Its venomous bristles have become a serious problem for small-scale fishers in Sicily, consuming bait, breaking secondary lines attached to hooks and damaging fish, which reduces their market value.

Brittany’s mussel farms ravaged by surging spider crab invasion

Local fishers impacted

“This worm constitutes a threat both to marine biodiversity and to the economic stability of local fisheries,” the report’s authors said. They called for management strategies to curb its spread.

Proposed responses include encouraging local consumption of the blue crab, limiting the release of egg-bearing females and using the fireworm to process shellfish waste.

Beyond invasive species, the 2025 Copernicus Marine report warns that oceans face multiple other pressures – including rising acidification, growing plastic pollution and shrinking sea ice.

“Every part of the ocean is affected by the triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution,” said Pierre Bahurel, director-general of Mercator Ocean International, which runs Copernicus Marine, during an online briefing.

The report said the ocean has absorbed about 90 percent of the excess heat from human activity since the 1960s. Sea-surface temperatures have hit record highs in many regions in recent years, fuelling more frequent and intense marine heatwaves.

Indigenous knowledge steers new protections for the high seas

Warming and acidification

Ocean acidification is also worsening as carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere. “As long as net carbon dioxide emissions are not brought back to zero, ocean acidity will continue to grow,” said Jean-Pierre Gattuso, research director at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research and a senior scientist at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations.

Climate-driven shifts are also affecting other species such as micronecton – small fish, crustaceans and squid that rise to the surface at night to feed on plankton.

With the ocean warming, “cold ecosystems are shrinking and the habitats of Arctic and sub-Arctic micronecton species with them”, said Patrick Lehodey, a modelling expert at Mercator.

That shift has knock-on effects for predators from whales and penguins to commercially valuable fish.

Europe’s climate progress overshadowed by worsening loss of nature

The report said these changes show that the effects of warming are reaching deep into food chains and affecting both wildlife and human livelihoods.

More than 70 scientists from nine countries contributed to the report.

“The science is unequivocal: the ocean is changing fast, with extreme records and worsening impacts. We know why. This knowledge is not just a warning signal, it is a roadmap to restore balance between humanity and the ocean,” Mercator resaercher Karina von Schuckmann told the briefing.

The speed of the changes, scientists warn, is unprecedented in human history.

“These changes are happening very rapidly on the scale of two centuries,” Gattuso said. In contrast, the five mass extinctions in Earth’s history unfolded over thousands of years or more.

Dati, is accused of accepting €900,000 in lawyer’s fees between 2010 and 2012 from a Netherlands-based subsidiary of Renault-Nissan, without actually working for them, while she was an MEP from 2009 to 2019.

The judges who investigated the case believe that Dati’s activity in the European Parliament “amounted to lobbying”, which “appears incompatible both with her mandate and with her profession as a lawyer”.

Ghosn, the former chairman and chief executive of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, was arrested in Japan in November 2018 on suspicion of financial misconduct, before being sacked by Nissan’s board.

The 71-year-old, who holds Lebanese, French, and Brazilian nationality, has been living in Lebanon since late 2019 after a dramatic escape from Japan.

He is due to be tried for abuse of power by a company director, breach of trust, corruption, and active influence peddling.

Ghosn’s presence at the trial appears highly hypothetical since he has been the subject of an arrest warrant since April 2023.

Both Dati and Ghosn have contested the charges.

Requests for annulment

After the announcement of her referral to the criminal court at the end of July, Dati had insisted on the reality of her work as a lawyer and denied any lobbying in the European Parliament.

“As president of the largest automotive industrial group in the world, president of European manufacturers, do you think Carlos Ghosn needed me?” she asked.

Dati’s three lawyers, Frank Berton, Olivier Bluche and Basile Ader, have warned that they intend to file applications for annulment as soon as the proceedings begin.

Resurgent conservative Rachida Dati unveils ambitions to run for Paris mayor

The criminal trial – from 16 to 28 September – will take place six months after the municipal elections on 15 and 22 March, 2026.

A high-profile political figure and mayor of the French capital’s chic 7th district, Dati holds ambitions to become the mayor of Paris.

She is scheduled to run as a candidate for the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) party.

Dati was a key figure in former president Nicolas Sarkozy‘s conservative government, serving as justice minister from 2007 to 2009.

She has served as Culture Minister under President Emmanuel Macron since January 2024 and is yet to find out if she will be part of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s new government lineup.

Dati is also the subject of a judicial investigation into the possible failure to declare luxury jewellery to the French High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP). She denies any irregularity.

(with newswires)

The 20-point plan calls for a ceasefire and the release of hostages by Hamas within 72 hours, as well as a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Hamas still holds 48 Israeli hostages – 20 of whom are believed by Israel to be alive.

In return, Israel would free 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in its prisons, as well as 1,700 people detained from Gaza since the war began.

Under the proposal, Hamas would have to disarm in return for an end to the fighting, humanitarian aid for Palestinians and the promise of reconstruction in Gaza.

“I support your plan to end the war in Gaza which achieves our war aims,” Netanyahu said in a joint press conference with the US president at the White House.

“If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr President, or if they supposedly accept it and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself.”

Trump said that Israel would have his “full backing” to do so if Hamas did not accept the deal.

Sincere efforts

Trump insisted peace in the Middle East was “beyond very close” and described the announcement of the plan as a “potentially one of the great days ever in civilisation”.

Eight key Arab and Muslim nations – Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan – hailed the agreement’s “sincere efforts” in the wake of their own talks with Trump last week.

The Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank but would be set for a role in a post-war Gaza government, also welcomed Trump’s “sincere and determined efforts”.

Washington’s European allies promptly voiced support, with the leaders of France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy sharing strong expressions of support for the plan.

Macron recognises Palestinian state at UN, defying Israel and United States

French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that Hamas now had “no choice but to immediately free all the hostages” and called on Israel to “commit resolutely” to it.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said the UK “strongly” supported Trump’s “efforts to end the fighting, release the hostages and ensure the provision of urgent humanitarian assistance for the people of Gaza”.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez – who has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza – said Madrid “welcomes the peace proposal”.

“We have to put an end to so much suffering,” he said, adding that a two-state solution was “the only one possible”.

European Union chief Antonio Costa urged all parties to “seize this moment to give peace a genuine chance”.

Mixed reactions

Trump’s plan sparked mixed reactions in a region scarred by nearly two years of devastating war.

A senior Hamas official told French news agency AFP that the group would “respond once we receive it”. Qatari and Egyptian mediators later shared Trump’s proposal with Hamas, another official briefed on the talks said.

Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian armed group fighting alongside Hamas in Gaza, called the plan “a recipe for continued aggression against the Palestinian people”.

“Through this, Israel is attempting – via the United States – to impose what it could not achieve through war,” it said.

In devastated Gaza, residents expressed scepticism that Trump’s plan could end the war.

“We as a people will not accept this farce,” Abu Mazen Nassar, 52 – one of 1.9 million Gazans displaced by the war – told AFP.

‘Recognition brings obligation’: How declaring genocide could reshape war in Gaza

For Hamas, the deal means being excluded from future roles in government, although those who agree to “peaceful co-existence” would be granted amnesty.

Netanyahu could also face trouble selling the deal to far-right members of his cabinet.

He stressed to reporters that Israeli forces would retain responsibility for Gaza security “for the foreseeable future” and cast doubt on the Palestinian Authority’s role.

Trump’s plan, meanwhile, leaves hope for Palestinian statehood – something he said Netanyahu had strongly objected to during the meeting.

Other key points in Trump’s plan include deployment of a “temporary international stabilisation force” – and the creation of a transitional authority headed by him, and including former British prime minister Tony Blair.

Blair, still a controversial figure in much of the Middle East for his role in the 2003 Iraq war, hailed what he called a “bold and intelligent” plan.

(with AFP)

DZ Fest is the only festival focused on Algerian culture outside the country. It has been run every year since 2022 in the United Kingdom.

This year the festival took place in the latter half of September with events in both London and Nottingham.

Spotlight on Africa travelled to London to talk to the organisers and guests of DZ Fest, and to some Algerians living in the UK

Founder and creative director Rachida Lamri – an artist, musician and member of the London-based Arabo-Andalusian orchestra – curated a programme showcasing Algerian music, traditions, and cuisine.

We also met:

• The Algerian chef Djamel Ait Idir, who runs couscous workshop in his restaurant, Khamsa, in Brixton, South London
• Fayssal Bensalah, an Algerian-born novelist and a lecturer teaching creative writing in Cardiff, Wales
• Comedian Mehdi Walker, also born in Algeria, who lives in France but performs his comedy sketches in English
• Artist and filmmaker Leila Gamaz, who lives between Bristol and Morocco. 

Episode mixed by Melissa Chemam and Nicolas Doreau.

Spotlight on Africa is produced by Radio France Internationale’s English language service.

Oswal described it as “a shock” when, on 14 May 2025, he discovered that Axis Minerals’ mining licence had been revoked. The Guinean subsidiary of the Oswal Global group had been operating the site since 2020, following years of exploration and investment in the project.

“I was asleep at home when, around 2am, I received a message on my phone: ‘Our mine is gone.’ At first I thought it was a joke: ‘What? That’s impossible.’ Then I told my daughter, who is managing director, to pick up the phone immediately and call Conakry to find out what was happening. And, in fact, it was true – 51 mining licences had been withdrawn.”

Axi Minerals was among those targeted in the sweeping licence cancellations ordered by the junta and its government.

The clean-up of the national mining register is justified, according to General Amara Camara, spokesperson for the Guinean presidency, on the grounds that “most of the permits were in breach of the mining code”.

Paris prosecutor dismisses case against Apple over DRC conflict minerals

‘No prior warning’

For Oswal, it was a brutal blow. “From one day to the next, our operations were halted. Our 5,000 employees and subcontractors were left without work. We received no prior warning, no letter, no discussion asking us to correct anything.” 

“The government claimed that companies had failed to meet certain obligations, particularly in local processing. But never, at any point before, were we asked to build an alumina refinery or downstream plant,” added the businessman, who now lives in Switzerland.

He wrote to the authorities several times, but received no reply.

In early July, Axis Minerals launched ad hoc arbitration proceedings in New York. “Our claim for damages amounts to more than $1 billion. And that is what will hurt Guinea,” Oswal warned.

“I do not want this, but if they push us that far, I have no choice but to continue on my path. And my path, as a businessman, is legal because I believe in contracts. We do not have weapons. The only power we have is the power of the pen.”

However, Oswal insists he is still open to dialogue and would be ready to invest in Guinea again once the dispute is resolved. Guinea has not yet agreed to arbitration, but has nonetheless been formally served with Axis Minerals’ request to compel it to do so.

The government received the notice on 1 September. Contacted by RFI, the Guinean Ministry of Mines declined to comment.

Guinean workers fearful of mass job losses after mining permits cancelled

Guinea sending ‘wrong message’

Axis Minerals has been in Guinea since 2013. After many years of collaboration, it’s the silence that Oswal finds most troubling. At a time when the Simandou 2040 programme [a $20 billion investment aimed at establishing Guinea as a leading iron ore producer] is meant to accelerate the country’s development, he questions Conakry’s approach to foreign investors.

“Guinea goes to Washington, to Australia, saying ‘come to our country’, but it doesn’t send the right signal to people who are already here. You throw out those who have invested and then tell newcomers to come. Why would they come if you expel those who have already put their money in? Frankly, it makes no sense,” he said.

“First, you must protect those who have invested in your country – not lure in fresh blood only to strip them of their assets five years later,” he added.

French mining group digs in as Gabon tightens grip on manganese exports

Bauxite rock is the principal ore of aluminum. Just before losing its licence, Axis Minerals reported average production of 169,000 tonnes of bauxite per day, most of it exported to China.

Its mines between Fria and Boffa enabled the export of nearly 40 million tonnes of bauxite between 2023 and 2025.

This article was translated from the original in French

French national 73-year-old Lim Kimya, a former opposition lawmaker in Cambodia, was shot dead on 7 January 2025 by a motorcyclist as the ex-MP arrived in the Thai capital.

A Thai citizen, Ekkalak Paenoi, was arrested in neighbouring Cambodia a day later and handed over to Thai authorities. He now faces a premeditated murder charge.

Ekkalak confessed to the killing in a livestream video, but Lim Kimya’s widow, Anne-Marie Lim, said Tuesday she wanted to know why her husband was murdered.

“I want to know the reason for this crime and who ordered it. That’s what I want to know most of all,” she told French news agency AFP outside the court in Bangkok, carrying a portrait of her slain husband.

“His death has turned everything upside down in my daily life,” Lim said, weeping.

A ‘hero’

Cambodian opposition figures have accused the country’s powerful former leader Hun Sen of ordering the shooting.

Cambodia’s leader Hun Manet, has denied his government or his father Hun Sen’s involvement.

Hun Sen led Cambodia for nearly four decades until 2023, and Western nations and rights groups have long accused his government of using the legal system to crush the opposition.

Flanked by her legal team on Tuesday, Anne-Marie Lim said she wanted justice for her husband, who she called a “hero”.

“He defended the Cambodian people, and he only thought about doing good and improving life in Cambodia,” she said. “That’s why he was in opposition to the government.”

Also on trial is Thai national Chakrit Buakhil, who is believed to be the man who drove Ekkalak to the Cambodian border after the shooting, Lim’s lawyer told AFP.

Some Thai media reports said the accused shooter was paid 60,000 baht (€1,500) for the killing but police say he has claimed he did not receive payment and took the job “to pay a debt of gratitude”.

Lim Kimya was an MP in Cambodia from 2013 to 2017, when his party, the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was dissolved by the country’s Supreme Court.

Its leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested, and its co-founder, Sam Rainsy, was exiled and found refuge in France.

Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won all 125 seats in the National Assembly in 2018, in an election that was boycotted by the opposition.

After that, Kimya withdrew from politics and returned to France, according to a statement from his wife’s lawyers.

Thai police said in January that they were seeking to arrest a Cambodian national believed to be the mastermind behind Kimya’s killing.

They identified two Cambodian suspects: Ly Ratanakrasksmey, accused of having recruited the gunman, and Pich Kimsrin, the alleged lookout who local media has reported was on the bus alongside the victim and his wife.

Search for answers

Days after the killing, following media reports that Ratanakrasksmey was a former adviser to Hun Sen, Cambodia’s ruling party released a statement saying he was dismissed from the role in March 2024.

“We have learned that there are two (Cambodians), one of whom organised this crime,” Anne-Marie Lim said before entering the court on Tuesday.

She added that she feared the alleged mastermind may never be held accountable – even though his name is known and he is believed to be in Cambodia.

Nadthasiri Bergman, one of her lawyers in Thailand, told AFP that since the gunman had confessed, she believed he would be convicted.

“But our concern is that we might not get to the bottom of why the assassination happened, and we hope to find that answer today during the witness examination,” Bergman said.

The trial is expected to conclude in March.

(with AFP)

Neutrinos are sometimes called “ghost particles.” They have almost no mass, carry no electric charge, and rarely interact with anything at all. Trillions of them pass through your body every second without leaving a trace. Catching even one requires a detector on an extraordinary scale — which is exactly what researchers in the KM3NeT project are creating.

“These are very different types of telescopes,” explained Paschal Coyle, spokesperson for KM3NeT and research director at the Marseille Particle Physics Centre. “Normal telescopes look up at the sky and collect light. Our telescopes look down through the Earth to detect neutrinos. From the Mediterranean, our best view is actually of the sky above Australia — seen through the planet itself.”

France takes record for longest lightning bolt

Two detectors are under construction:

• ORCA, near Toulon, France, sits 2.5 kilometers underwater. It will help scientists study how neutrinos change from one type to another as they travel through space.

• ARCA, off the coast of Sicily, Italy, is even deeper at 3.5 kilometers. Its mission is to hunt for neutrinos from extreme cosmic events such as exploding stars, colliding galaxies, or black holes.

Each telescope is built from long strings holding hundreds of glass spheres. Inside the spheres are ultra-sensitive photodetectors that can spot the tiniest flash of light.

“When a neutrino finally collides with matter, it creates a charged particle that gives off a burst of blue light in the water,” Coyle said. “Our detectors are sensitive enough to catch that flash.”

Earlier this year, the ARCA detector captured the highest-energy neutrino ever observed — a sign of just how powerful this new tool may become. By mapping where these ghostly particles come from, scientists hope to uncover the sources of cosmic rays and gain new insights into some of the most energetic processes in the universe.

World’s first zero-particle ship sets sail in the Mediterranean

For now, the telescopes are still being built, but their promise is enormous. By listening for whispers of light deep under the sea, scientists may soon unlock secrets written across the cosmos — carried to Earth by particles that almost never leave a trace.

Of the hundreds of people evacuated from Gaza to France since the conflict in the enclave broke out in October 2023, 73 have come as part of a partly state-funded humanitarian programme known as Pause.

Run by the prestigious Collège de France research institute, Pause provides special one-year visas to artists and scientists in danger.  

Since 2017, it has supported more than 700 people from more than 40 countries, including Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan. For Palestinians in Gaza, it represents one of the few pathways to safety. 

‘A life jacket’

“The Pause programme was literally a life jacket for us,” says Abu Joury, a well-known Gazan rapper who arrived in the town of Angers in western France in January, with his wife and three children.

Sponsored by a local organisation, Al Khamanjati, he has been able to provide financial stability and security for his family – something he says has become impossible in Gaza.

But that life jacket is no longer available.

On 1 August, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced that “no evacuation of any kind” would take place until further notice.

The trigger was a Palestinian student at Sciences Po Lille who was accused of sharing antisemitic statements in 2023, and was subsequently expelled to Qatar. 

The student was not part of the Pause programme, but the decision to halt all evacuations has left more than 120 people – 25 approved candidates and their families – stranded in what the UN has described as genocidal conditions. 

France halts Gaza evacuations over antisemitic posts by Palestinian student

“They’ve been waiting for months and are sending us constant messages calling for help,” says Marion Gués Lucchini, head of international diplomacy for the Pause programme. “They’re saying: ‘why are we being condemned for comments made by just one person? Why have we been abandoned?'”

The decision is unprecedented, Gués Lucchini says. “Because of a single person, all the others are condemned to remain in Gaza.

“We’ve been around for eight years. We’ve had people from all over the world, including countries where there may be sensitivities – Russia, Iran and so on. We’ve never had a security problem, we’ve never had anyone who was supposedly close to a terrorist group. Never.” 

She adds that all Pause candidates are subject to rigorous screening by four different ministries, including security checks by the Interior Ministry.

Listen to an audio report featuring Abu Joury on the Spotlight of France podcast:

‘Collective punishment’ 

After President Emmanuel Macron recognised Palestinian statehood at the UN on Monday, the French government now faces mounting pressure to reinstate evacuations.  

A collective of Palestinian and migrant rights groups has filed a case with the Conseil d’Etat – France’s top court – claiming the suspension of evacuations for Gazans is in breach of the constitution.

Last week, some 20 acclaimed writers, including French Nobel laureates Annie Ernaux and J.M.G. Le Clézio, called on Macron to “restore this lifeline” as soon as possible. 

“This suspension of evacuation programmes on the basis of one case of a racist social media post is a form of collective punishment at a time when all signatories to the Genocide Convention should be doing their utmost to save Palestinians from annihilation and should refuse to be complicit in crimes against humanity,” they wrote in an open letter.

While evacuating only writers, artists and researchers was “inadequate and even cruel in the context of the killings and destruction in Gaza”, they underlined that “today this programme is one of the only ways by which a few people in Gaza can be saved from genocide, a part of which is scholasticide”.

The authors called on France to “follow through on its proclaimed humanist values”.

Israeli ambassador slams French recognition of Palestine as ‘historic mistake’ on RFI

‘I fear for my friend’

Mathieu Yon, a 48-year-old fruit farmer from southern France, has become an unlikely advocate for Palestinian evacuation rights.

On Wednesday he took up position on a bench in front of the Foreign Ministry holding a sign addressed to Barrot: “Monsieur le ministre, resume the reception of Gazans.”

Around six months ago, Yon struck up a friendship with Gazan poet Alaa al-Qatrawi after reading her poem “I’m not well”, about losing her four children in an Israeli bombing in December 2023.

“She lost her four children and yet she’s still full of love and without any anger or aggression,” he says. “I fear for my dear friend.”

He, his wife and two friends have raised the necessary €48,000 to cover al-Qatrawi’s year-long residency.

They have work and accommodation lined up for her in their home town of Dieulefit, north of Avignon. “Everything is in place,” Yon said, hoping that his protest will see her file, handed in on 26 August, treated as a matter of urgency.

As Gaza aid flotilla comes under attack, NGOs urge Europe to act

From a refugee camp in Gaza, al-Qatrawi describes the constant danger: “Every Palestinian living now in Gaza is at risk of being killed at any second and in any place you can think of. You are exposed to assassination attempts throughout the day. And if you survive, you think about how you are going to survive the next day.” 

Her four children – Orchid, Kenan, Yamen and Carmel – were killed on 13 December, 2023. “There was a cordon around the area. The occupation [by the Israeli army] prevented ambulances from arriving,” she told RFI’s sister radio station MCD. 

The Ma’an collective, which helps Pause applicants, reports receiving increasingly desperate messages from Gaza.

“These are no longer calls for help, but testaments and farewells,” it said in a statement. One read: “I am writing to you, and maybe my last words. We are starving and losing everything around us.” 

Ahmed Shamia, an architect who had been accepted by the Pause programme, was killed in bombardments on 1 May this year, just days before he was due to be evacuated.

“It was very difficult for us all,” says Gués Lucchini. “It was the first time [someone selected for] the programme had died.”

Conflating Gazans with terrorists

Gués Lucchini laments that a programme offering a lifeline to scientists and artists has become a target for the far right, with Pause dealing with online attacks.

“These accounts created the controversy surrounding the student [in Lille], which led to the suspension of the evacuations. Since then there have been other smear campaigns against [people selected for] the Pause programme. It’s clear there is a desire to confuse aid and support for Gazans – scientists, artists and others – with support for a terrorist group.”

The French Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, which has a controversial far-right editor, recently accused Pause of “opening the door to Hamas”.

Yon, who has Jewish ancestry and whose great-uncle was deported to Auschwitz, rejects any suggestion that Gazans pose an inherent security risk. “There are antisemitic people in Gaza. But I think there are in France, too. There are in all countries, not especially in Gaza.”

He added: “This is a collective punishment without any kind of justice. In France we have the principle of presumption of innocence, but this is presumption of guilt.”

France’s Foreign Ministry has not commented publicly on when evacuations of Gazans will resume. But a diplomatic source told RFI: “Since the Israeli authorities have suspended evacuations, no operation is possible at this stage.”

French services are effectively dependent on local authorities, in this case Israel, who grant or deny exit permits based on lists submitted by the French authorities.

Macron on Gaza and Ukraine: diplomacy, hostages and European security at stake

Race against time 

For those still waiting, time is running out. “Every day that passes is another day that we take the risk that someone supported by a French national programme will die,” Gués Lucchini warns. 

Joury could be considered one of the lucky ones. But despite finding safety and a “very warm welcome” in France,  he remains haunted by those left behind – especially his mother and brother, who didn’t manage to reach Egypt before Israel closed the Rafah crossing.

“I’m physically out. But my mind is still in Gaza. My mother and my brother, I’m thinking of them all the time. My soul is still in Gaza,” he said.

As Yon continues his vigil outside the Foreign Ministry, he reflects on how hard it was to tell al-Qatrawi evacuations had been halted.

“She said, ‘even if it doesn’t happen, this relationship, this poetry exists. Even if the result is sad for our life, all of this poetry, all of this love, all of this kindness is real’.  

“This relationship has a value in itself,” Yon concludes. A lifeline of friendship – but no life jacket.

Republican time began on 22 September, 1792. Gone were the eras BC and AD – the new France needed a new calendar, one that no longer counted years from the birth of Jesus or was paced by Christian holidays.

It was the first day of the “era of liberty”.

One of the most ambitious reforms of the Revolution, it would also prove to be one of the shortest lived.

Symbolic beginnings

People had been talking about an epochal shift since the storming of the Bastille in July 1789, but it took another three years for legislators to found the First Republic, and a year after that to switch to the Republican calendar.

Adopted on 5 October, 1793, it was backdated to begin the day after the proclamation of the Republic – which, by coincidence, was also the day of that year’s autumn equinox.

The committee of politicians, mathematicians, astronomers and geographers tasked with designing the new calendar latched on to the symbolism of day and night reaching equal lengths, just as equality was being enshrined as the founding value of the new Republic.

They declared the new year would begin on every autumn equinox from then on. 

La Bastille – medieval symbol of oppression, modern symbol of liberty

Making a decimal point

A Republican year measured the same as those before it – 365 days, or 366 in leap years – divided into 12 months. 

But its months all had 30 days, followed by five to six days at the end of the year making up the difference. Each month was split into three blocks of 10 days that replaced the seven-day week, dubbed décades. 

Days were named sequentially: a décade started with primidi (“first day”) and ended with décadi (“tenth day”), the designated day of rest.

It chimed with a broader quest for more “rational” ways of measuring. The same era saw France adopt the metric system and a decimal currency, the franc.

The Metre Convention: a milestone that’s changed modern life immeasurably

It even attempted to decimalise the days themselves. Along with the Republican calendar came decimal time, which divides days into 10 hours instead of 24. Each hour lasts 100 minutes and each minute 100 seconds.

The change didn’t stick. It was mandatory on official documents for a few months, but the majority of the population never changed their clocks.

The natural world

The Republican calendar wasn’t all logic. Poet Fabre d’Eglantine was responsible for naming the new dates, and he sought to put the natural world at their heart.

Months were named for the season’s weather and crops, with the year starting in autumn in Vendémiaire (from vendange, the grape harvest) and ending in summer in Fructidor (fruit).

In winter, Nivôse (snow) gave way to Pluviôse (rain), and in spring Germinal (germination) was followed by Floréal (flowers). 

Fabre d’Eglantine also replaced the calendar of saints with an almanac of “objects that make up the true riches of the nation” – flowers, fruits, trees, animals and farm tools.

The first day of the Republican year, 1 Vendémiaire, was the day of grapes. The days that followed honoured chestnuts, horses, carrots and parsnips. 

“As the calendar is something that we use so often, we must take advantage of this frequency of use to put elementary notions of agriculture before the people – to show the richness of nature, to make them love the fields,” wrote Fabre d’Eglantine in his report to legislators.

This too was typical of the age. Nature took on the weight of a religion during the Revolutionary period, according to historian Julien Vincent of Panthéon-Sorbonne University. 

“Nature became a value – not only financial, but also religious and moral,” he told RFI. 

Loss of holidays

The loss of the Christian calendar, though, left a gap nothing could fill: holidays. 

People now had to work nine days in a row before getting a day off, and since the break was no longer necessarily a Sunday, many workers found themselves unable to go to church. 

Instead of more than a dozen religious holidays scattered throughout the year, the only official celebrations were a handful of memorable dates from the Revolution.

There were also the five or six bonus days clustered at the end of the year, and dedicated to wholesome Republican values such as virtue, labour and reason. 

The summer France got its first paid leave and learned to holiday

People resented the upending of centuries-old cycles of work, rest and worship.

While, at first, authorities vigorously tried to enforce the Republican calendar, even to the point of forbidding newspapers from giving the “old” date alongside the new, within a few years the public and politicians alike were lamenting the loss of the old ways.

Critics pointed out that starting the year on the autumn equinox, which varies each year, threw off the calculation of leap years.

Meanwhile, the natural rhythms the calendar supposedly tapped into belonged only to the north of mainland France, leaving warmer parts of the country perpetually out of synch. 

And most inconveniently of all, the system put France on a different calendar to the rest of the world.

How Republican time ran out

When Napoleon Bonaparte took power in 1799, it was the beginning of the end for Republican time. 

After he allowed the church to regain some of its former sway, the Republic did away with the 10-day week so that workers could once more take Sundays off. Then four Christian holidays were reinstated. 

Soon the new calendar was just a formality, an extra line on official documents. On 9 September, 1805, little more than 12 years after it was introduced, the Republican calendar was officially retired.

It would return under the short-lived Paris Commune insurrection of 1871 – for all of 18 days. Since then, few have argued for reviving it, although it turns up occasionally on novelty calendars or anarchist newsletters.

But in the main the Republican calendar serves merely as a reminder of the limits of reform: there’s only so much you can overthrow, even in revolutionary France.

“I’m struck by the silence of the Russian press on the latest events in Gaza,” says Jean de Gliniasty, research director at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (Iris) and a former ambassador to Moscow. “So far, there’s been no strong reaction.”

Yet Moscow’s involvement in the Middle East crisis goes back decades, and it has played a significant role.

In 1948, the Soviet Union became the first state to recognise Israel, which at the time appeared to have socialist leanings – partly in hopes of speeding up Britain’s withdrawal from Palestine.

However, as Israel grew closer to the West and with the rise of Arab nationalism, the Kremlin switched tack, forging close ties with Palestinian resistance groups.

By 1988, the USSR had become one of the earliest countries to recognise Palestine.

Russia’s Putin searches for allies in meeting with Iranian and Turkish leaders

Russian diaspora

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia tried to keep doors open on all sides – with Israel, the Palestinians and the wider Arab world.

The controls that had previously prevented Russian Jews from emigrating were lifted. And for more than 75 years, Russia has advocated a two-state solution and the implementation of United Nations resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

When he was elected president in 2000, Vladimir Putin cultivated warm relations with Israel, which is home to 1.3 million Russian speakers – representing 15 percent of the population and making Russian the third most common native language in Israel after Hebrew and Arabic.

He struck up personal ties with prime ministers Ariel Sharon and, later, Benjamin Netanyahu.

“During his various terms as prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu has visited Moscow no less than four times, more than any other capital city – except, of course, Washington,” says David Rigoulet-Roze, a researcher at the French Institute for Strategic Analysis.

“Some of these meetings even took place during the civil war in Syria, when the Israeli army was regularly bombing pro-Iranian militias and Iran’s Al-Quds force, despite the fact that Iran was Russia’s ally in Syria. Moscow pretended not to know what was going on, much to Tehran’s dismay.”

At the same time, Putin has shown his support for the Palestinian cause. In 2022, his foreign minister welcomed former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, in an attempt to capitalise on his role as mediator and on Russia’s return as a new power in the Middle East.

‘A turning point’

However, the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, followed by the devastating war in Gaza, have shifted the dynamics.

“This was a turning point,” said Rigoulet-Roze. “The depth of the ties that had existed until then between Israel and Russia is beginning to be called into question due to Moscow’s continued relations with Hamas.”

The Kremlin received a delegation from the group on 26 October 2023, barely three weeks after the massacre, he noted. Israel denounced this as an “act of support for terrorism”, while the Kremlin insisted the visit was about securing the release of Russian-born hostages.

Putin waited several days before offering condolences to Israeli families, and the Kremlin criticised Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing of Gaza, sparking the fury of Netanyahu – who had always treated Putin carefully due to the situation in Syria.

Moscow then called for a ceasefire, tabled a UN Security Council resolution – vetoed by Washington – and revived talk of the long-dormant Quartet, established in 2002 to facilitate the Middle-East Peace Process negotiations and involving the UN, the European Union, Russia and the United States.

For Rigoulet-Roze: “Russia has felt somewhat marginalised since the launch of its war in Ukraine. It would like to get back in the game. The Quartet was, in a way, the format of the great powers of the Cold War era, for which Vladimir Putin paradoxically feels a kind of nostalgia. It was a kind of consensus for a process that would lead to the implementation of the two-state solution.”

Macron, Putin discuss Iran, Ukraine in first talks since 2022

Between Tel Aviv and Tehran

In February 2024, Moscow hosted numerous delegations from Palestinian organisations, including the Palestinian Authority, Islamic Jihad and Hamas – for whom the support of a member of the UN Security Council is essential.

In January 2024, the Russian deputy minister of foreign affairs also received a delegation of Houthis from Yemen.

At the same time, the Kremlin continued to forge closer ties with Iran, Hezbollah, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia – all hostile to Israel.

Yet links with Israel remain. Daily flights connect Moscow and Tel Aviv, and Russia sees its large diaspora there as an important lever of influence.

However, the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in December 2024 has weakened Moscow’s hand in this regard; without a reliable ally in Damascus, Russia has lost much of its regional leverage.

According to Rigoulet-Roze: “From that moment on, Moscow’s geopolitical position weakened. On the Israeli side, Moscow also lost importance. From the moment Assad fell, in a way, the implicit deal with Putin on Syria was strategically devalued because Israel no longer needed Moscow’s tacit agreement to carry out military strikes against anything that could be seen as maintaining a pro-Iranian presence.”

Russia, Iran harden military and trade ties in new pact

Moscow’s motives

Moscow’s shift in its hitherto moderate approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is motivated partly by the desire to divert attention from the war in Ukraine. Russia also wants to take a stand against the US, which unconditionally supports Israel – with Putin calling the 7 October attacks and their aftermath “a clear failure of US policy”.

The Kremlin hopes to win favour in the Global South too, particularly in Africa, where rhetoric about ending Western colonialism – particularly French – plays well.

Flexing its muscles in the Middle East is a way for Moscow to remind the world that it’s still a global player. “All the skill of Russian diplomacy, which is real, which is very good, is not enough to compensate for the considerable weakening of the country,” points out de Gliniasty.

“They are losing ground in Central Asia and the Caucasus, and the agreement signed in Washington between Azerbaijan and Armenia is a slap in the face for Russia. So they are seeking to remind the world, as much as possible, of the global nature of their power.”

By maintaining good relations with Hamas, Moscow is also seeking to ensure it does not support Islamist groups within Russia – which is home to nearly 30 million Muslims.

Some made their voices heard at the end of October 2023 when they stormed the tarmac at the airport in Makhachkala, capital of the Muslim-majority Russian republic of Dagestan, after the arrival of a flight from Israel was announced.

Bridge builder?

Later this year, Putin plans to host the first Russian-Arab summit in Moscow, hoping to showcase Russia as a bridge builder and power broker, and inviting the leaders of all Arab League member states to participate.

“It remains to be seen which countries will actually attend and at what level of representation,” Rigoulet-Roze told RFI. “He wants to reposition himself in the Middle East and maintain a foothold in the region, because the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime has largely pushed him out of the game.”

In this regard, it is no coincidence that Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has been invited to the event.

However, according to de Gliniasty: “The problem is that Arabs are even less responsive than Westerners to what is happening in the Gaza Strip.

“If there were suddenly a chorus of protests from the Arab side, the Russians would probably raise their voices. They are very much aligned with Saudi Arabia because Riyadh controls the price of oil, which is vital for the Russians. So if Saudi Arabia raises its voice, the Russians will do the same.”

This article was adapted from the original French version by RFI’s Anne Bernas.

Since its creation in 1981, the event, which takes place every second year, has brought together kite enthusiasts from around the world. This year they have come from as far afield as Russia, Israel, Malaysia, Indonesia and Canada.

“In today’s geopolitical climate, that’s important,” Gérard Clément, artistic director of the festival, told RFI. “We don’t want to get caught in conflicts that aren’t ours. That’s why we always say [there are] no borders in the sky. The wind unites us.”

For Clément, another thing that makes Dieppe’s festival special is its enduring commitment to artistic creation. 

“We’ve stayed true to the festival’s original spirit. While kites have become more commercial and visually spectacular elsewhere, we continue to focus on creativity,” he said.

This year, only artists who design and build their own kites were invited to participate.

Archaeological discoveries

Kite flying has a long and complex history, with its origins most commonly traced back to China more than 2,000 years ago.

But recent archaeological discoveries in Indonesia suggest the practice may be even older and more widespread than previously thought.

“It’s possible the Chinese didn’t invent the kite,” Clément says cautiously. “There’s evidence of kite-like images in cave paintings on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Maybe during their voyages, the Chinese discovered and developed the tradition further.”

In Asia the tradition of using natural materials for kite construction such as paper and bamboo continues, while in the West there is a focus on modern, synthetic materials such as fibreglass and carbon fibre or spinnaker cloth – two approaches Clément says co-exist in Dieppe.

‘Talibanned’: From kite-running to breakdancing, Afghan pastimes again under threat

‘A rich tradition’

Among the artists featured at this year’s festival is Kadek Armika, an Indonesian kite flyer from Bali whose work bridges tradition and modernity.

“Kadek’s creations are deeply rooted in Balinese culture. But as an architect who has travelled widely, he also brings a modern, even Western influence into his work. He manages to preserve the Balinese spirit and craftsmanship while incorporating contemporary design,” said Clément.

While kite designs vary around the world, some shapes are commonly seen across various cultures. 

“In North Africa and around the Mediterranean, there is a rich tradition of kite flying,” Clément said.

“You’ll find hexagonal kites with long tails in Spain, called ‘cometas‘. The same shape appears in Greece, Lebanon, across the whole Mediterranean basin, even in Egypt.”

Clément says that no matter where the participants have come from, the festival provides a unique opportunity.

“For one week, we step away from the news, the conflicts and the noise.”

Embroiled in legal problems since losing the 2012 election, Sarkozy, 70, had already been convicted in two separate cases but managed to avoid going to jail.

But after a judge sentenced him on Thursday to five years for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to find funding from Libya‘s then-leader Moamer Kadhadi for his 2007 campaign, Sarkozy appeared to acknowledge that this time he will go behind bars.

Prosecutors have one month to inform Sarkozy when he must report to jail, a measure that will remain in force despite his promised appeal.

“I will assume my responsibilities, I will comply with court summonses, and if they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison but with my head held high,” he told reporters after the verdict.

“I am innocent. This injustice is a scandal. I will not accuse myself of something I did not do,” he added, declaring that hatred towards him “definitely has no limits”.

The drama and defiance were typical of Sarkozy, who is still seen by some supporters on the right as a dynamic saviour of his country but by detractors as a vulgar populist mired in corruption.

France’s Sarkozy ordered to serve prison time in historic first

‘Won’t hear about me anymore’

Born on January 28, 1955, the football fanatic and cycling enthusiast is an atypical French politician.

The son of a Hungarian immigrant father, Sarkozy has a law degree but unlike most of his peers did not attend the exclusive Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the well-worn production line for future French leaders.

After winning the presidency at age 52, he was initially seen as injecting a much-needed dose of dynamism, making a splash on the international scene and wooing the corporate world. He took a hard line on immigration, security and national identity.

But Sarkozy’s presidency was overshadowed by the 2008 financial crisis, and he left the Elysee with the lowest popularity ratings of any postwar French leader up to then.

Few in France have forgotten his visit to the 2008 agriculture show in Paris, when he said “get lost, dumbass” to a man who refused to shake his hand.

Sarkozy failed to win a second mandate in 2012 in a run-off against Socialist Francois Hollande, a bruising defeat over which he remains embittered more than a decade on.

The 2012 defeat made Sarkozy the first president since Valery Giscard d’Estaing (1974-1981) to be denied a second term, prompting him to famously promise: “You won’t hear about me anymore.”

That prediction turned out to be anything but true, given his marriage to superstar musician and model Carla Bruni and a return to frontline politics. But the latter ended when he failed to win his party’s nomination for another crack at the presidency in 2017.

The series of legal woes left Sarkozy a behind-the-scenes political player, far from the limelight in which he once basked, although he has retained influence on the right and is known to meet President Emmanuel Macron.

But Sarkozy is tainted by a number of unwanted firsts: while his predecessor and mentor Jacques Chirac was also convicted of graft, Sarkozy was the first postwar French former head of state to be convicted twice and the first to be formally given jail terms.

Already stripped of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest distinction, he will now be the first French head of state to go to jail since Philippe Petain, France’s nominal leader during the Nazi occupation.

Police have responded with a heavy hand, firing teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds, called to action on social media through a movement called Gen Z.

The days-long protest, led mostly by young demonstrators, has left at least 22 people dead and more than 100 injured, according to a United Nations tally rejected by the government as unverified and “based on rumours”.

“I have decided to terminate the functions of the Prime Minister and the government. Pending the formation of the new government, those in office will act as interim ministers,” Rajoelina said in a televised national address late Monday.

New premier?

Applications for a new premier will be received over the next three days before a new government is formed, he said.

The president on Friday sacked his energy minister “for not doing his job”.

Deadly protests erupt in Madagascar over chronic blackouts and water cuts

Madagascar, among the world’s poorest countries despite vast natural resources, has experienced frequent popular uprisings since gaining independence in 1960, including mass protests in 2009 that forced former president Marc Ravalomanana from power.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk condemned Madagascar’s “violent response” to the protests.

On Monday, crowds marched through the capital Antananarivo, many dressed in black and chanting calls for Rajoelina to resign.

He first came to power following a coup sparked by the 2009 uprising.

Some demonstrators held signs reading “We want to live, not survive” – a central slogan of the movement.

Energy crisis looms large as Macron makes rare visit to Madagascar

Police detained an opposition lawmaker during the march in Antananarivo, footage shared on social media showed, prompting calls from his colleagues for his release.

At least one other protester was also arrested, prompting the UN’s Turk to urge the authorities to “ensure respect for freedom of expression and peaceful assembly”.

Widespread looting

A statement released by the protest movement late Sunday called for the government and Antananarivo’s prefect to resign. They have also targeted figures close to the president including Prime Minister Christian Ntsay and businessman Mamy Ravatomanga.

The movement has adopted as its rallying symbol a pirate flag from the Japanese anime series “One Piece”, a logo also used recently by youth-led, anti-regime protests in Indonesia and Nepal.

Thursday’s protests in the capital were followed by widespread looting throughout the night, which encountered no police response.

The Gen Z movement said in its Sunday statement that “groups of anonymous individuals were paid to loot numerous establishments in order to tarnish the movement and the ongoing struggle”.

The movement was named after Generation Z, a nickname attributed to people born between the late 1990s and early 2010s.

Protests were also widespread in Antsiranana at the northern tip of Madagascar.

The demonstrations were the largest since 2023 when protests erupted ahead of the presidential elections, which were boycotted by opposition parties.

Poverty and corruption

Rajoelina, a former mayor of Antananarivo, stepped down after 2013 general elections but triumphed in the 2018 presidential election, winning re-election in contested polls in 2023 in which less than half of registered voters cast their ballots.

The 51-year-old leader on Monday vowed to find a solution to the country’s problems, saying he had heard the grievances.

“When the Malagasy people suffer, I want you to know that I feel that pain too, and I have not slept, day or night, in my efforts to find solutions and improve the situation,” he said.

Southern African leaders meet in Madagascar to chart path for self-reliance

Despite its natural resources, Madagascar remains one of the poorest countries in the world and is among the most corrupt, ranked 140 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

Nearly 75 percent of the population lived below the poverty line in 2022, according to the World Bank.

The unrest is the latest to hit Madagascar since the end of French rule. Philibert Tsiranana, who led the country through the post-independence era, was forced to hand over power to the army in 1972, after a popular uprising was bloodily suppressed.

(with AFP)

The warning comes in the European Environment Agency’s Europe’s Environment 2025 report, a flagship assessment published only once every five years.

Drawing on data from 38 countries, it offers the clearest picture yet of how climate change and damage to nature are threatening Europe’s future well-being and prosperity.

“Significant progress has been made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, but the overall state of Europe’s environment is not good,” the report said.

Nature under strain

The EEA says Europe has cut greenhouse gas emissions by 37 percent since 1990 and more than doubled the share of renewable energy since 2005. Cleaner air has saved lives – deaths linked to fine pollution particles have fallen by nearly half since 2005.

But nature is still being degraded. More than four out of five protected habitats are in poor condition. Much of the soil is exhausted, and only about a third of rivers and lakes are healthy.

One in three Europeans lives in areas where water is under serious stress.

Europe is also warming faster than any other continent, making heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods more frequent and more destructive.

In 2022 extreme heat was linked to more than 70,000 deaths. Floods in Slovenia in 2023 caused damage equal to 16 percent of that country’s economy.

Air pollution continues to cause about 239,000 premature deaths a year across the EU, and traffic noise contributes to another 66,000 deaths.

“This report is a stark reminder that Europe must stay the course and even accelerate our climate and environmental ambitions,” said Teresa Ribera, the EU executive vice-president for clean transition.

Indigenous knowledge steers new protections for the high seas

She warned that recent extreme weather had shown how fragile Europe’s prosperity and security become when nature is damaged and the climate crisis intensifies.

“Protecting nature is not a cost. It is an investment in competitiveness, resilience and the well-being of our citizens.”

Others in Brussels echoed similar concerns.

EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the wildfires and floods of recent years showed that “the costs of inaction are enormous, and climate change poses a direct threat to our competitiveness”.

Meanwhile environment commissioner Jessika Roswall said Europe’s economy ultimately depends on healthy ecosystems.

“Healthy nature is the basis for a healthy society, a competitive economy and a resilient world, which is why the EU is committed to stay the course on our environmental commitments,” she said.

France’s green challenge

The country profiles underscores the mixed picture in individual member states.

France has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent since 1990, including an 8 percent drop between 2022 and 2023. It now protects nearly a third of its land, and water quality has improved.

But France still relies heavily on fossil fuels. Renewables supplied just 22 percent of its energy use in 2023 – well short of the 33 percent target for 2030. Only about one in 10 French farms is organic, far below the goal of nearly one in five by 2027.

Recycling and reuse of materials also lag behind.

A national water plan launched in 2023 set 53 steps to safeguard supplies as droughts become more common. The EEA says Europe as a whole could save up to 40 percent of its water in farming, energy and daily use with better management and modern technology.

Economy at risk

The report warns that the loss of healthy ecosystems threatens Europe’s economy.

Nearly three-quarters of businesses in the eurozone depend on natural systems such as pollination and clean water. Most bank loans go to companies that rely on these resources.

“Human survival depends on high-quality nature, particularly when it comes to adaptation to climate change,” said Catherine Ganzleben, head of the EEA’s Sustainable and Fair Transitions unit.

“Sustainability is not a choice, it is a question of when we do it. Do we do it in the short term and start now, or do we park it, in which case it is going to be harder and the costs of inaction will be higher?”

Could peatlands protect Europe’s eastern borders from a Russian invasion?

Environmental groups have urged the EU not to weaken its laws.

“Delaying the EU Deforestation Regulation or weakening our nature and water laws would be historic and irreversible mistakes,” said Ester Asin, head of WWF’s European policy office.

Her call for strong rules was echoed by the European Environment Agency itself.

“We cannot afford to lower our climate, environment and sustainability ambitions. What we do today will shape our future,” said EEA director Leena Ylä-Mononen.

The agency says reaching climate-neutrality by 2050 will require faster cuts in emissions from transport and farming, much greater recycling and the large-scale repair of damaged natural areas.

Sunday’s parliamentary elections – won by the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) – were seen as crucial for the ex-Soviet republic to maintain its push towards European Union membership, launched after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“Yesterday’s vote is a strong mandate for the process of Moldova’s accession to the EU,” President Maia Sandu of the PAS told reporters on Monday.

“We have shown the world that we are brave and worthy, that we did not allow ourselves to be intimidated,” she said at a press conference.

The win is seen as a relief for both the current government and the EU, both of which are keen to keep Moldova out of Russia’s sphere of influence.

Loud and clear

“The people of Moldova have spoken and their message is loud and clear,” European Council President Antonio Costa said on Monday.

“They chose democracy, reform and a European future, in the face of pressure and interference from Russia,” he added, referring to concerns about vote buying and unrest and what the EU claimed was a disinformation campaign from Russia.

Moldova’s pro-EU ruling party wins majority in parliamentary elections

“No attempt to sow fear or division could break your resolve,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X.

“Our door is open. And we will stand with you every step of the way,” she said, referring to Moldova’s potential accession to the EU.

A common future

Other European leaders including France’s Emmanuel Macron also welcomed what he said was a pro-European victory.

“France stands with Moldova in its European project and its drive for freedom and sovereignty,” he said.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France “warmly welcomes the sovereign choice of the Moldovan people to confirm their desire to turn towards Europe”, adding that “nothing can stop a people who choose democracy and freedom – not even desperate attempts at foreign interference”.

How Russian disinformation flooded Moldova’s media landscape ahead of election

In a joint statement, Macron, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that “the EU and Moldova share a common future”.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “a victory” for the continent. “Russia failed to destabilise Moldova even after spending huge, huge resources to undermine it and to corrupt whoever they could,” he said.

Moscow has denied allegations of meddling and has called the victory a result of fraud and manipulation.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed that “hundreds of thousands of Moldovans” were prevented from voting in Russia due to an insufficient number of polling stations.

“Evaluations will have to be made later when we understand how the Moldovan political forces themselves intend to position themselves regarding these elections,” he said.

EU integration versus Russian influence: Moldova’s future on the line

Moldovans were divided on the results, with some hailing another step towards the EU while others were sceptical of the allegations against Russia.

About 200 people gathered briefly outside parliament on Monday, chanting “freedom” and “Moldova”, following a call to protest by one of the leaders of the pro-Russian opposition Patriotic Bloc, Igor Dodon.

Dodon, a former president, has accused PAS of stealing the vote and said complaints have been filed to the election commission.

(with newswires)

Sarkozy was sentenced last Thursday to five years in prison – with an order for imminent detention – for allowing his closest aides to court former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in search of campaign funds for his successful 2007 run for the presidency.

Reports emerged on Friday that judge Nathalie Gavarino had received death threats and messages threatening her with “serious violence” after she convicted Sarkozy a day earlier.

Paris prosecutors on Friday opened two investigations into the threats made against Gavarino.

On Sunday, Macron firmly defended the rule of law as the “foundation” of France’s democracy.

“Attacks and death threats, old or recent, against several magistrates are unacceptable,” he wrote on social media platform X.

“The independence of the judiciary, its impartiality, as well as the protection of the magistrates who uphold it, are its essential pillars.

The outgoing justice minister Gerald Darmanin also condemned the threats against the judge in a statement on Saturday.

Sarkozy found guilty of conspiracy but cleared of graft in ‘Libya cash trial’

Macron called on the justice and interior ministers in the incoming government to prosecute those responsible as soon as they had been identified.

“Decisions of the courts can be commented on or criticised in public, but always in a spirit of mutual respect,” he said.

Assault on democracy

Earlier, the magistrates union (USM) had denounced the “deafening” silence of Macron, arguing that under the terms of article 64 of the constitution, the president was meant to be the guarantee of the independence of the judiciary.

Sarkozy himself railed against what he called a politically motivated judgment, suggesting the court acted out of hostility rather than according to the law.

Jean-François Bohnert, head of France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s Office, flatly rejected the charge.

Speaking on RTL radio on Monday, Bohnert insisted: “We have no hatred to express. Our compass is the law, the rule of law.”

He branded the threats against Gavarino as “unbearable and unacceptable”, pointing out that undermining the judiciary with violence or death threats is itself an assault on democracy.

Peimane Ghaleh-Marzban, president of the Paris judicial court, told France Inter radio on Monday that the decision to delay Sarkozy’s incarceration – sparing him handcuffs in the courtroom – showed the court had, if anything, exercised discretion in recognition of his status.

“Many ordinary defendants go straight to prison even while appealing,” he noted.

The court ordered that Sarkozy should be placed in custody at a later date, with prosecutors to inform him on 13 October when he should go to prison.

He has already been convicted in two separate trials but has so far avoided incarceration.

The fall of France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, from palace to prison

Serious drift

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012 and still retains influence on the right, has remained defiant after the verdict, which he said in an interview published on Sunday had “violated… all the limits of the rule of law”.

He told the weekly newspaper Journal du Dimanche that France was suffering a “serious drift” in its democracy and he would in “no way” ask for a pardon from Macron.

“To be pardoned, you must accept your sentence, and therefore acknowledge your guilt. I will never acknowledge my guilt for something I did not do. I will fight until my last breath to have my honesty recognised,” he said. “I will win.”

Some of his political allies have rallied to his defence.

Speaking to broadcaster RTL, Henri Guaino, a former special adviser to Sarkozy, called the conviction “a humiliation for the state and its institutions”.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who has herself been convicted of embezzlement and says she is a target of a “witch hunt”, drew parallels between her own case and that of Sarkozy.

Her ban on standing for office for five years could scupper her chances of running in France’s 2027 presidential election, unless she wins her appeal.

“A number of magistrates have a kind of scorecard where they try to pin down as many politicians as possible,” she told broadcaster LCI.

French court hands Le Pen five-year election ban in fake jobs case

Former justice minister Éric Dupond-Moretti called the reactions part of a “trend” for undermining democratic institutions. “If you can prove a judge has abused their power out of hate, then challenge it with appeals. But you don’t fling accusations into the air without evidence,” he told BFMTV.

Meanwhile, recently ousted prime minister François Bayrou appealed for calm, saying judges should be protected and decisions respected, even if some have questioned aspects like “provisional execution” – which means Sarkozy must begin serving his sentence despite having lodged an appeal.

On the left, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure accused the right and far right of trying to “take down the judges” whenever one of their own is convicted, even though they routinely demand harsher justice for others.

“Respect for judicial decisions that are perfectly reasoned is essential,” he said.

(with newswires)

The Danish authorities ordered a ban on civilian drone flights as of Sunday after drones were observed at several military facilities at the weekend.

The ban, which will be in place all week, is intended to “remove the risk that hostile drones can be confused with legal drones and vice versa,” Danish Transportation Minister Thomas Danielsen said in a statement.

 A violation could result in a fine or imprisonment for up to two years.

Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, is preparing to host EU leaders on Wednesday, followed by a summit of the 47-member European Political Community on Thursday.

Denmark has been beefing up security since last week, after unexplained drones disrupted air traffic at six airports.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the drone disruptions “a hybrid attack” on her nation.

Several European countries have said they will help with the effort to curb the threat.

France said Monday it would send a Fennec military helicopter and a team of 35 anti-drone-trained staff, “in response to the recent upsurge in unidentified drone flights in Danish airspace”, the defense ministry said in a statement, calling the drones a “serious threat”.

Europe on high alert

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said that Sweden would send anti-drone systems, and that the country had already shipped radar systems to Denmark.

At Demark’s request, Swedish police said they would send a significant force, which will work alongside Norwegian law enforcement officers.

Germany will deploy around 40 troops with equipment to detect, identify and defend against drones, and a German air defence frigate arrived in Copenhagen on Sunday to assist with airspace surveillance.

Poland calls NATO talks after downing Russian drones in airspace breach

While Frederiksen stopped short of identifying who is behind the attacks, she has suggested it could be Russia, which she described as the primary “country that poses a threat to European security”.

The Kremlin denies involvement.

Europeans have been on high alert after a series of drone and aircraft incursions into Polish, Romanian and Estonian airspace in the last two weeks.

 Defence ministers from around 10 EU countries agreed Friday to make a so-called “drone wall” a priority for the bloc.

The NATO military alliance on Saturday said it was upgrading its mission in the Baltic Sea in response to the situation in Denmark.

(with Reuters)

On 1 June 2009, Air France flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris was cruising over the Atlantic when the pilots lost control of the aircraft and plunged into the ocean.

All 216 passengers and 12 crewmembers on board were killed, including 72 French and 58 Brazilian nationals.

A lower court cleared Air France and Airbus of corporate manslaughter in 2023 in the trial that focused on faulty sensors that measured flight speed, which became blocked by ice crystals during a storm over the Atlantic.

French investigators had concluded that the flight’s pilots had mishandled the temporary loss of data from the blocked sensors, called pitot tubes, and pushed the plane into an aerodynamic stall or free fall, without responding to alerts.

The companies blamed the crash on pilot error, denying any criminal responsibility.

Lawyers representing the victims’ families argued that both Air France and Airbus knew about the problems with the sensors and had failed to provide adequate high-altitude emergency training to pilots.

Faulty equipment

The lower court ruled that while the airline and aviation giant had committed negligent acts, they could not be proven to have directly caused the crash.

The judge ruled that Airbus committed four negligent acts, including withholding information about problematic tubes from flight operators, and Air France was negligent in how it communicated technical information about the faulty equipment to its pilots.

Prosecutors lodged an appeal, under pressure of victims’ families, despite having initially requested the charges be dropped.

If convicted in the retrial, which starts Monday and runs through 27 November, the companies face €225,000 fines each, alongside significant reputational damage.

(with newswires)

Barnier, of the centre-right party Les Républicains won over 62 percent of the vote in the second round Sunday, defeating Socialist candidate Frédérique Bredin, a former Sports Minister under François Mitterrand, who secured 38 percent.

The seat, which represents Paris’ second constituency, which stretches along the Seine, from the Latin Quarter to the Eiffel Tower, was left open in July after Jean Laussucq’s 2024 victor was annulled over campaign finance irregularities.

Both rounds of voting were marked by low turnout, with only 24 percent of registered voters casting ballots on Sunday.

Bredin said the low turnout revealed “a real crisis of democracy”.

Former French PM on course for comeback as Paris by-election frontrunner

Barnier, who served as Prime Minister for just three months, from September to December 2024, when he lost a confidence vote over his budget proposals, becomes the first Les Républicains MP in Paris since 2022.

Though known as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Barnier has long been known in France as an MP, senator and local councillor in the southeastern Savoie region.

He justified his candidacy in Paris because he has lived in the capital for the past 12 years.

(with newswires)

The Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) headed by President Maia Sandu won 50.06 percent of the vote, compared to 24.25 percent for the pro-Russian Patriotic Bloc, according to preliminary results published on the election commission’s website

The election was seen as the most important since the country gained independence, as it will determine whether the country maintains its accelerated path toward European Union membership, or pivots back toward deeper ties with Moscow. 

Voting was overshadowed by fears of vote buying and unrest, as well as “an unprecedented campaign of disinformation” from Russia, according to the EU.

Stanislav Secrieru, Sandu’s national security adviser, said election infrastructure and government websites had come under cyber attack, and that fake bomb threats were called in to polling stations in Moldova and abroad.

Former President Igor Dodon, and a leader of the Patriotic Electoral Bloc, claimed the government was preparing to annul the vote should PAS lose its majority, and called on people to “peacefully protest” on Monday.

Turnout in the country of 2.4 million people stood at around 52 percent, similar to that of the last parliamentary elections in 2021.

Other parties set to enter parliament include the nominally pro-European Alternativa bloc, with eight percent of the vote, and the populist Our Party which won 6.2 percent.

An official final tally is expected later on Monday.

(with newswires)

The park in the north of the largely desert nation is home to 114 species of mammals, notably the critically endangered black rhinoceros, and is a major tourist attraction.

The fire started on 22 September and spread rapidly because of strong winds and dry vegetation, causing extensive ecological damage, the environment ministry and presidency said.

The tourism ministry announced it had closed certain tourist routes and warned visitors to be cautious as the wind direction could change unpredictably.

After an emergency cabinet meeting Saturday, the government deployed 500 troops and two helicopters to the area on Sunday to help fire-fighting efforts, the presidency said in a statement.

How jackals’ taste for melons helps fruit flourish in Namibian desert

The reinforcements joined 40 soldiers who arrived on Saturday to assist police, locals and people from nearby farms and private enterprises who had already been fighting the flames, it said.

The extra troops “are deployed from various regions and will be deployed to all affected areas,” Namibia‘s Defence Minister Frans Kapofi told French news agency AFP.

“An unknown number of wildlife had been killed, whilst, thankfully, no human casualties have been reported,” the presidency said, adding that the blaze had spread into some communal areas.

Threat to biodiversity

“The fire poses a significant threat to the biodiversity, wildlife and livelihood of the communities in the affected areas.

Approximately 30 percent of the grazing in the park has been destroyed by the fire,” it said, adding it was still trying to establish what ignited the blaze.

The environment ministry said Saturday at least nine antelopes had been killed in the blaze, which was believed to have started from charcoal production activities on commercial farms bordering Etosha National Park (ENP).

Namibia’s unique desert lions threatened by drought and human conflict

“The ecological damage inside ENP is extensive, with an estimated 775,163 hectares (1.9 million acres), approximately 34 percent of the park, burned,” it said.

The presidency said information provided by teams on the ground indicated that the fire was under control Sunday in some regions but mainly continuing in the Omusati region near the border with Angola.

The park stretches across 22,270 square kilometres (8,600 square miles) and its main feature is the ancient Etosha salt pan, which is around 130 kilometres long and 50 kilometres wide and draws huge flocks of migratory flamingoes during the rainy season.

(with AFP)

Fifty countries came together in the aftermath of World War II to sign the UN Charter in June 1945, in San Francisco, and it came into force on 24 October that year.

Current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has insisted that the Charter “is a promise of peace, dignity and cooperation among nations”.

But critics say the organisation has been utterly helpless in stopping the countless conflicts that have broken out since its inception and which continue around the globe today.

US President Donald Trump mocked the international body in his address on 22 September, blasting it for failing to bring peace.

“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” he asked.

“All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter. It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war.”

He even took a swipe at Guterres’s leadership, after a meeting on the sidelines, telling reporters: “The UN could be unbelievable with certain people running it.”

This came after Guterres warned in his opening remarks that aid cuts led by the United States were “wreaking havoc” in the world.

As Trump rails at UN and shifts Ukraine stance, Macron urges US to end Gaza war

Other countries have also spoken of frustration over how the UN is run.

In an interview with France 24 from the UN in New York, Kenya’s President William Ruto warned that “unless the UN is reformed, its own survival is at stake”.

He called for changes to the UN Security Council and international financial architecture.

Peaceful settlement of disputes

Conceived in the early years of World War II and signed on 26 June, 1945 in San Francisco, the Charter paved the way for the creation of the United Nations on 24 October, 1945.

In 19 chapters and 111 articles, the Charter lays out the principles of international relations, including the peaceful settlement of disputes, sovereignty and equality between states, humanitarian cooperation, and respect for human rights.

If there is a threat to global peace, Chapter VII gives the UN Security Council the power to impose sanctions to enforce its decisions or even deploy military force.

Macron recognises Palestinian state at UN, defying Israel and United Sates

The Charter, which is very difficult to amend, also establishes the Security Council, with its five veto-wielding permanent members (US, China, Russia, France, UK), the General Assembly and the Secretariat, as well as the International Court of Justice.

The United Nations currently has 193 member states.

It has also over the years, developed a number of missions that were not envisioned by its founders in 1945.

These include sustainable development goals for 2030, and an agreement by members on climate action to limit global warming.

Despite the body’s best intentions when it comes to conflict, the Charter’s principles have been continually violated across the planet for eight decades.

Member states rarely agree whether self-determination trumps non-interference in a state’s internal affairs, or if the right to self-defence can justify acts of aggression.

UN Climate Summit gathers momentum in New York ahead of Brazil’s Cop30

Collective self defence

In a recent example, Iran, backed by veto-wielding China, accused Washington of violating the UN Charter by striking Iranian nuclear sites in June – an act the United States justified by the right to “collective self-defense”.

And the international community has never really addressed the “crime of aggression,” said Gissou Nia, a fellow with the Atlantic Council think tank – be it Russia’s war against Ukraine or the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“Once impunity reigns on one set of violations, one that’s never dealt with, it continues, and countries use it as justification for the actions that they take,” Nia told French news agency AFP.

She added: “For self-defence, you really have to show evidence of an imminent attack. I think that it’s one of the more contentious issues that involve the UN Charter and the narrative has really gotten away from us.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was denounced as a clear violation of the Charter by Guterres and the General Assembly, but not by the Security Council, where Russia has a veto.

And even though the Charter allows for persistent violators to be expelled from the UN, that has never happened.

In 1974, the UN did, however, suspend South Africa from the General Assembly over crimes of apartheid – a ban that lasted two decades.

(with newswires)

Sixty ratifications pushed the treaty over the line, with Morocco’s kick-starting the 120-day countdown to 17 January.

The treaty offers a tool for nations to create marine protected areas (MPAs) – central to the goal of safeguarding 30 percent of the ocean by 2030.

It also recognises indigenous knowledge, and requires “free, prior and informed consent” – in other words, clear permission in advance – for the use of marine resources linked to that knowledge.

From the sacred waters of Papahanaumokuakea in Hawaii to the hand-built islands of the Solomons, indigenous communities say culture and conservation work hand in hand.

Niue, the tiny island selling the sea to save it from destruction

Culture steers conservation

Stretching northwest from Kauai across roughly 1,500 kilometres of ocean – about the same distance from Paris to Rome – Papahanaumokuakea is one of the world’s largest fully protected MPAs.

It covers around 1.51 million square kilometres, larger than all the national parks in the United States combined, and shelters more than 7,000 marine species, many found nowhere else on earth.

The area is vital for endangered Hawaiian monk seals, green turtles and millions of seabirds.

For native Hawaiians it is also a sacred realm – a place tied to creation stories and ancestral routes at sea.

“I’ve been involved for more than half my life in protecting a place that we now call Papahanaumokuakea,” Aulani Wilhelm, a native Hawaiian conservationist who played a central role in creating the marine monument, told RFI.

“It was a movement started by native Hawaiian fishermen who partnered with conservationists to protect the coral reefs and endangered species.”

Wilhelm, who also heads the non-profit organisation Nia Tero, said elders had pushed for a refuge rooted in local principles and direct community engagement.

In her words, “not just another model of Western conservation” – but instead protection anchored in values and participation.

Stewardship, not ownership

Papahanaumokuakea is co-managed by four entities: native Hawaiian leaders, the US Federal Government, the state of Hawaii and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

Joint decisions cover both nature and culture, and include protecting reefs and endangered species, safeguarding creation stories and traditional navigation routes, and setting rules for access and research.

Instead of talking about “managing” a resource, Wilhelm describes a relationship of care.

“People used to call me the manager of Papahanaumokuakea,” she said. “And I said, I don’t manage anything. You don’t manage your grandmother. You don’t manage your elder cousins. This is a relationship. You ‘care for’ instead.”

The big blue blindspot: why the ocean floor is still an unmapped mystery

From sanctuary to survival

Indigenous people manage around a quarter of the world’s land and many of those places hold rich biodiversity. Advocates say the lesson is simple – when communities have a say, nature often fares better.

In the Solomon Islands the stakes are high. In lagoons such as Langa Langa and Lau, some families still live on artificial islands first built centuries ago. They now face rising seas, chaotic weather and stronger storm surges that push water into their homes.

Lysa Wini, a researcher from the Solomon Islands who works with Nia Tero, told RFI that communities are using what they know and are asking for resources so that guardianship can continue.

“That would be not just merely putting indigenous knowledge or wisdom into text, but actually into practice,” she said.

Nations vow to cut shipping noise as sea life struggles to be heard

Next steps

Once the treaty takes effect – and once the first Conference of the Parties (Cop) is held – countries can file formal proposals for MPAs under the new global system. The first Cop must meet within one year of the treaty coming into force.

States will agree basic rules, set up a secretariat, create a science panel and open an information hub to share data. Decisions are taken by consensus where possible, or by a three-quarters majority.

Each proposal must say where the area is, why it should be protected, which measures will apply, how long they will last and how progress will be checked.

Wilhelm told RFI the planet will need 53 more protected areas the size of Papahanaumokuakea in order to meet global targets.

“This fills me with sheer joy,” Pogacar said clutching his mascot gorilla, troops of which live in the mountains near Kigali.

Defending his 2024 title the 27-year-old finished 1min 28sec ahead of the Olympic champion Belgian Remco Evenepoel, who crossed the line with his head down cursing his luck.

“I didn’t come here for the silver, I wanted the gold. Destiny had other ideas for me,” he said smiling later.

“I hit a pothole and my saddle dropped, so I was getting cramps when Tadej attacked,” Evenepoel explained.

Ireland’s 2025 breakout star Ben Healy also wore a broad smile as he took bronze over the balmy, 1500m altitude course leading the chase to catch Pogacar over the 33 hills and earning a place on the podium at 2min 16sec.

Just as impressive was Paul Seixas, the 19-year-old Frenchman tipped as a future Tour de France winner, who came in 13th on a day where officials said crowds of around one million turned out for the final day of the week-long worlds, the first ever on African soil.

The course was made up of 15 loops around the city with two climbs and one longer, even harder loop with an extra cobbled climb.

Teenagers take centre stage at road world championships in Kigali

‘Felt so good’

Pogacar broke away with Mexican Isaac del Toro and Spain’s Juan Ayuso, who were both on the books of Team UAE this season, but Ayuso had a mechanical and Del Toro ran out of steam.

Pogacar though was a man transformed just a week after a humiliation in the time-trial where he was overtaken by Evenepoel who started 2min 30sec later than him.

“It wasn’t the original plan, to attack so far out. The boys tried to stop me but I felt so good,” said Pogacar, a four-time Tour de France winner.

This time Evenepoel displayed frayed nerves when he suffered a mechanical, waving away a reserve bike and kicking away stones while waiting for his team car.

He lost valuable time with his tantrum but when his car arrived he set off again on another of his golden-framed bikes, denoting his Olympic champion status.

He swiftly caught Healy and the Pogacar pursuit, but never at any time was able to chip away at a constant 1min 20sec lead held by the Tour de France champion.

Hopes were high for Briton Tom Pidcock after his third place at the Vuelta a Espana and the Yorkshireman was in the mix until late on and finished 10th.

“That was the most enjoyable race I’ve done this year,” said Pidcock.

Kigali hosts historic first road world cycling championships in Africa

For Pogacar the gorilla mascot he picked up for his win may not be the last of yet another dominant season.

He won four stages on his way to the Tour de France title in July, and of the five massive one-day races known as Monuments he won the Tour of Flanders and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, was second at Paris-Roubaix, third at Milan-San Remo and is favourite to win the upcoming Tour of Lombardy in two weeks.

In the women’s race Saturday rank outsider Magdeleine Vallieres of Canada pulled off a surprise win.

The winners are awarded a rainbow jersey that they wear for the year, a much-coveted prize in a race where riders represent their nation rather than a professional team.

Sixteen years after the Conakry stadium massacre, Guineans are reminded of one of the darkest chapters in their recent history.

On 28 September 2009, security forces stormed a peaceful opposition rally at the capital’s main stadium.

By the time the violence subsided, at least 156 people had been killed and more than a hundred women had been subjected to brutal sexual violence, according to a UN investigation.

For the survivors, the long road to justice has finally begun to show some results.

Human rights activists want answers to Conakry stadium massacre

Reparation for survivors

This year’s anniversary comes just months after the Guinean government opened the first phase of reparations for victims.

At a ceremony in May inside the Court of Appeal in Conakry – where the long-awaited trial unfolded – survivors wept as they were handed cheques in compensation from the state.

“We are gathered to put into execution the content of this decree and give the victims cheques corresponding to the amount fixed by the judicial decision,” said Justice Minister Yaya Kairaba Kaba.

For Asmaou Diallo, president of the Avipa victims association, the moment marked a rare glimpse of closure after years of waiting.

“Today, I can breathe a sigh of relief,” she told RFI, recalling the years of doubt over whether the state would ever pay up.

Since the ruling, more than 300 victims are to receive reparations, with funds drawn directly from the national budget after the convicted perpetrators were deemed unable to cover the damages themselves.

Outcry in Guinea as ex-military leader Camara pardoned by junta chief

Camara’s release condemned

Former junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara – who ruled the country between 2008 and 2009 – was sentenced in July 2024 to 20 years in prison for crimes against humanity.

Judges found him guilty on the basis of command responsibility and for his intention to repress the rally.

But in March this year, Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya – the current head of Guinea’s transitional military government – announced Camara’s release, citing “health reasons”.

The pardon stunned victims’ families and drew sharp criticism from international observers.

On Thursday, UN human rights chief Volker Türk explicitly warned that international law forbids pardons for crimes as grave as those committed on 28 September.

He also called on Conakry’s rulers to free political detainees, end arbitrary arrests and lift restrictions on opposition parties and the press. “The Guinean authorities must, above all, lift the unacceptable bans targeting political parties and the media,” Türk insisted.

Guinea votes on new constitution as junta leader eyes presidency

That appeal resonates strongly in the current climate. This week, Guinea’s opposition denounced as a “masquerade” the 21 September referendum that paved the way for Colonel Doumbouya’s potential candidacy in upcoming presidential elections.

While the transitional government has hailed the vote as a step towards restoring constitutional order, civil society groups warn that freedoms remain tightly curtailed, with journalists and activists facing harassment or even disappearance.

Recently graduated from the Caribbean Campus of Arts in Martinique, one of France’s 42 public art and design schools, Lechar is representing the school at a new exhibition just outside Paris entitled “Double Trouble”.

The exhibition is part of the Art Emergence event, which showcases young artists and provides them with mentoring. 

Lechar’s “Eye Sea the Invisible” project explores themes of memory and traces left behind, using both photographic techniques and ceramic sculpture.

“My work is all about light. It’s a tool to help me reveal what is invisible,” he told RFI at the opening of Art Emergence.

‘A memory within a memory’

His delicate black and white images appear to be abstract, but on closer inspection white shapes of coral and algae appear, silhouetted on the pitch-black background.

He documents an unknown underwater universe, paying homage to the sea – an integral part of his life since his childhood on the French Caribbean island of La Martinique.

Using a technique that produces what are known as “rayograms”, made famous by surrealist artist Man Ray, he places objects, such as coral, directly on to sheets of photosensitised paper and exposes them to light, without using a camera.

This allows him to play with contrasts, to highlight what he calls “absence and presence”.

“These are my memories, my treasures that I have collected and used,” he says of the coral he uses in the works. “My technique makes traces of them, it’s a memory within a memory.”

Coral bleaching

Lechar points to tiny pieces of plastic that appear in his work, saying sadly that plastic pollution has become omnipresent in the ocean, much of it invisible to the naked eye.

He has also noticed that the coral is changing colour, in some cases dying, due to an increase in ocean temperatures which “bleaches” the corals.

This phenomenon – linked to climate change – has been recorded across the globe in tropical waters, from the Caribbean to Asia and Australia.

Great Barrier Reef bleaching crisis ‘like a bushfire underwater’

In one of his images, he points to something resembling a flame. “This makes me think of fire, and as we know, heat is harmful to corals.”

He points to this as an element of paradox in this work, because the presence of these dangerous elements makes the images more intriguing and, in some ways, more beautiful.

“There is clearly a committed message about the environment, but it is also mixed with my experience and my personal history. How I have understood the marine world, how I feel about it and how I see it in the future,” Lechar says.

By bringing this visual exploration to a wider public, he hopes to share his admiration for the natural realm – and his fears over the death of coral reefs.

Maison Gaston, the virtual art gallery promoting Caribbean creativity

National platform

The first collective exhibition of its kind, Art Emergence aims to highlight the diversity of the future contemporary art scene at a national level.

Organisers Artagan worked with public and private bodies to bring together an exhibition, a multi-arts festival and open days in artists’ workshops, and also provides a mentoring programme for the young artists involved to learn how to make a living from their craft.

One of the three curators of “Double Trouble” is Temitayo Olalekan, a multidisciplinary artist from Nigeria, now based in Marseille.

He says the Art Emergence event is unique because it gives graduate art students a major national platform – exposure not often granted to young artists at the beginning of their career.

Explaining their works to journalists and visitors is also part of the challenge.

“It’s extremely gratifying to see the artists evolving and speaking about their portfolios,” he told RFI.

Art Emergence runs until 2 November.

DZ Fest is the only festival focused on Algerian culture outside the country. It has been run every year since 2022 in the United Kingdom.

This year the festival took place in the latter half of September with events in both London and Nottingham.

Spotlight on Africa travelled to London to talk to the organisers and guests of DZ Fest, and to some Algerians living in the UK

Founder and creative director Rachida Lamri – an artist, musician and member of the London-based Arabo-Andalusian orchestra – curated a programme showcasing Algerian music, traditions, and cuisine.

We also met:

• The Algerian chef Djamel Ait Idir, who runs couscous workshop in his restaurant, Khamsa, in Brixton, South London
• Fayssal Bensalah, an Algerian-born novelist and a lecturer teaching creative writing in Cardiff, Wales
• Comedian Mehdi Walker, also born in Algeria, who lives in France but performs his comedy sketches in English
• Artist and filmmaker Leila Gamaz, who lives between Bristol and Morocco. 

Episode mixed by Melissa Chemam and Nicolas Doreau.

Spotlight on Africa is produced by Radio France Internationale’s English language service.

Ankara is celebrating a diplomatic win after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was hosted by US President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday.

In the Oval Office, Trump praised his guest in front of the world’s media.

“He’s a highly respected man,” Trump said. “He’s respected very much in his country and throughout Europe and throughout the world, where they know him.”

Erdogan smiled as he listened. The Turkish leader had been frozen out by President Joe Biden, who made clear his dislike for the Turkish leader.

Trump, by contrast, has long cultivated a friendship with him. But even that relationship has limits, with Israel’s war on Gaza still a source of strain.

Turkey walks a tightrope as Trump threatens sanctions over Russian trade

Restraint over Gaza

Erdogan is a strong supporter of Hamas, which he refuses to label a terrorist group, calling it instead a resistance movement. Yet he chose not to let the issue overshadow his visit.

Analysts say this restraint was deliberate.

“There’s been a concerted effort not to get into a spat about Gaza,” Asli Aydintasbas, of the Washington-based Brookings Institution, told RFI. “Uncharacteristically, he remains silent on the Gaza issue and that is by design.”

During his trip, Erdogan kept his criticism of Israel’s offensive in Gaza to remarks at the UN General Assembly, echoing broader international condemnation.

He also met French President Emmanuel Macron in New York and welcomed France’s recognition of a Palestinian state.

Erdogan is also seeking wider backing as concerns over Israel’s actions grow, an issue that also came up in his talks with Trump.

“Turkey’s concerns with Israel are not actually limited to Gaza,” said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara.

He said Ankara is also uneasy about Israel’s actions in neighbouring states, adding that the two countries’ policies towards Syria clash sharply.

“Turkey wants a stable Syria and one that’s centralised,” he said. “Whereas Israel wants a decentralised and less stable Syria.”

Turkey warns Kurdish-led fighters in Syria to join new regime or face attack

Energy and Russia

Turkey’s close ties with Russia risk becoming another flashpoint.

Sitting beside Erdogan at the Oval Office, Trump called for an end to Turkish purchases of Russian energy. He also criticised Erdogan’s long-standing policy of balancing relations between Washington and Moscow.

“Trump does not want a balancing Turkey, at least today,” said Aydintasbas. “That was more obvious than ever in his rhetoric and his dealings with Erdogan.”

She said Erdogan had assumed for the past decade that his balancing act between the West and Russia was acceptable. “It must come as a surprise,” she added.

Turkey is the third-largest importer of Russian oil and gas. But in a move seen as an attempt to placate Trump, Ankara this week signed a multibillion-dollar deal to buy US liquefied natural gas over 20 years.

The two leaders also signed a strategic agreement on civil nuclear cooperation, which could pave the way for Turkey to buy US-made nuclear reactors.

As Trump rails at UN and shifts Ukraine stance, Macron urges US to end Gaza war

Limited gains

Despite these gestures, analysts said Erdogan achieved little in return. He had hoped Trump would lift a US embargo on the sale of F-35 stealth fighter jets. Instead, Trump only gave a vague promise to address the issue.

For Erdogan, however, the White House meeting itself may have been the main prize.

US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack said before the meeting that Trump wanted to give Erdogan “legitimacy”.

“For Erdogan, this is a big win,” said Sinan Ciddi, of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies. The Turkish leader, he said, has long sought a White House photo-op to showcase at home.

“He gets to show that he has met the US president, has gravitas on the world stage and is signing deals with Washington,” Ciddi added.

“At a time when he is jailing leaders and dismantling democratic governance inside Turkey, he is being legitimised by the leader of the so-called free world.”

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 winner’s 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.

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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 counseled on the best-suited activities for your level according to your score.

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 breaking 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 excellent staff of journalists. You never know what we’ll surprise you with!

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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 all 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 19 July, I asked you a question about RFI English journalist Dhananjay Khadilkar’s video and article about the study of exoplanets, or extrasolar planets, which are planets outside of our solar system.

As you read in Dhananjay’s article “Swiss exoplanet pioneer reflects on Earth’s place in the cosmos”, Didier Queloz, along with Michel Mayor, discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star in 1995, which ushered in, as Dhananjay wrote, a new era in astronomy and planetary science. The two scientists won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work.

Dhananjay met with Didier Queloz, who told him, and I quote: “Looking for exoplanets is essentially looking for us.”

What did Professor Queloz mean by that? You were to send in the answer to this question: According to Queloz, what is the essential reason for studying other planets?

The answer is, to quote Dhananjay Khadilkar’s article: “In essence, by studying other planetary systems, scientists are holding up a mirror to our own. Are the conditions that led to Earth’s habitability common or exceedingly rare? Is our solar system an outlier, or just one example among countless others?”

In addition to the quiz question, there was the bonus question: “Is it up to the State, the government, to decide what is fair, or what is just?”

Do you have a bonus question idea? Send it to us!

The winners are: RFI Listeners Club member Dipita Chakrabarty from New Delhi, India. Dipita is also the winner of this week’s bonus quiz. Congratulations, Dipita, on your double win.

Also on the list of lucky winners is RFI Listeners Club member Pradip Basak from Kerala, India, and RFI English listeners Debashis Gope from West Bengal, India; Liton Rahaman Khan from Naogaon, Bangladesh, and Rashidul Bin Somor, the General Secretary of the Source of Knowledge Club, also in Naogaon.

Congratulations winners!

Here’s the music you heard on this week’s program: The allegro di molto from the Symphony No 38 in C Major (the “Echo” symphony) by Franz Joseph Haydn, performed by the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra conducted by Adam Fischer; “Space Ambient” produced by Space Relax; “The Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; “The Cakewalk” from Children’s Corner by Claude Debussy, performed by the composer, and “Young at Heart” by Johnny Richards and Carolyn Leigh, sung by Connie Francis.

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 Paul Myers’ article “Dembélé and Bonmati win Ballon d’Or as PSG take team and coach prizes”, which will help you with the answer.

You have until 20 October to enter this week’s quiz; the winners will be announced on the 25 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 find out how you can 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. 

Evacuations from Gaza to France were suspended on 1 August after a Gazan student in Paris was found to have published antisemitic social media posts before her arrival. The suspension has left applicants for the largely state-funded Pause programme, which welcomes scientists and artists facing persecution, in limbo. French and international writers and Palestine solidarity groups have denounced it as “collective punishment”. Gazan rap musician Abou Joury, who arrived in France in January, talks about finding safety and financial stability. Meanwhile French fruit farmer Mathieu Yon – whose friend and “sister”, the poet Alaa al-Qatrawi, is currently stuck in Gaza – has taken up position in front of the Foreign Ministry, pushing for evacuations to resume. (Listen @3’50”)

A record 19 percent of France’s GDP is now in savings accounts – the highest level outside of the exceptionally high rate recorded during the Covid pandemic. While the French have always had a tendency to squirrel money away, sociologist Jeanne Lazarus says the current increase is a sign people are feeling anxious about the economy and the long-term viability of France’s famously supportive social welfare system. (Listen @22’20”)

The story of how French revolutionairies overturned not only the monarchy but time itself, by instituting the Republican calendar from 22 September 1792. (Listen @16’25”)

Episode mixed by Cécile Pompeani

Spotlight on France is a podcast from Radio France International. Find us on rfienglish.com, Apple podcasts (link here), Spotify (link here) or your favourite podcast app (pod.link/1573769878).

“We are fighting for the future of Turkey‘s democracy,” said party leader Ozgur Ozel to tens of thousands of supporters at a rally in Ankara on Saturday.

Ozel has been travelling the country since March, when Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was arrested on graft charges. The case marked the start of a legal assault on the CHP. Ozel now speaks at rallies twice a week, despite his often hoarse voice.

The party is also defending itself in court over alleged voting irregularities at a congress two years ago that elected Ozel as leader. If the court rules against them, Ozel and the rest of the party leadership could be removed and replaced by state-appointed trustees.

“It’s unprecedented,” said political analyst Sezin Oney of the Politics news portal. “There has not been such a purge, such a massive crackdown on the opposition, and there is no end in sight, that’s the issue.”

Macron and Erdogan find fragile common ground amid battle for influence

Arrests and polls

On Wednesday, another CHP mayor in Istanbul was jailed, bringing the total to 16 detained mayors and more than 300 other officials. Most face corruption charges.

The arrests come as the CHP’s new leadership is stepping up its challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Recent opinion polls give Imamoglu and other CHP figures double-digit leads over the president.

Oney said the prosecutions are part of Erdogan’s wider strategy.

“He’s trying to complete the transformation, the metamorphosis as I call it, of Turkey to become a full authoritarian country,” she said.

“There is an opposition but the opposition is a grotesque opposition, that can never have the power actually to be in government. But they give the perception as if the country is democratic because there are elections.”

Armenia and Azerbaijan peace deal raises hopes of Turkish border reopening

‘Multi-front attack’

Ilhan Uzgel, the CHP’s foreign affairs coordinator, said the party is under siege.

“We are under a multi-front attack from all directions at almost every level, running from one court case to another,” he said.

He argued that Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is using fear to force defections. “Sixteen of our mayors are in jail right now, and they threaten our mayors. You either join our party or you face a jail term,” Uzgel said.

Erdogan rejects any suggestion of coercion and insists the judiciary is independent. Since he came to power more than 20 years ago, however, not a single AKP mayor has been convicted on graft charges – though on Friday at least two local mayors from the ruling party were detained as part of a corruption investigation.

Turkey warns Kurdish-led fighters in Syria to join new regime or face attack

Political risks

Despite appearing dominant, Erdogan may face a backlash. Atilla Yesilada, a political analyst with Global Source Partners, said the crackdown is fuelling public anger.

“You look at recent polls, the first complaint remains economic conditions, but justice rose to number two. These things don’t escape people’s notice; that’s what I mean when I say Erdogan took a huge political risk with his career,” he said.

Erdogan currently trails behind several potential challengers, but elections are still more than two years away.

Yesilada said much depends on the stance of Erdogan’s ally Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party.

“It’s quite possible at some point, Bahceli will say enough is enough, you are destroying the country, and may also end the coalition,” he said.

Bahceli formed an informal alliance with Erdogan in 2018, when Turkey switched to a presidential system. Erdogan relies on Bahceli’s parliamentary deputies to pass constitutional reforms needed to secure another term.

Bahceli has voiced concern about the pressure on the CHP, which has been trying to win his support. But with the court expected to rule next month on the party’s leadership, the CHP says it will keep fighting.

“The only thing that we can do is rely on our people, our electorate, and the democratic forces in the country. We are not going to give up,” said Uzgel.

Hello everyone! Welcome to The Sound Kitchen weekly podcast, published every Saturday. This week, you’ll hear musical requests from Erwan, Paul, and me.

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: “Picadillo de Soya” by José Luis Cortés, performed by José Luis Cortés and NG La Banda; “Electricity” by Paul Humphreys and Andrew McCluskey, performed by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and “One Life to Live” from Lady in the Dark by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin, performed by Teresa Stratas with the Y Chamber Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwarz.

The quiz will be back next Saturday, the 27th of September. Be sure and tune in! 

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.