Earth has warmed by about 0.46C since the deal was signed and the past decade has been the hottest on record. Scientists say governments have not moved fast enough to break dependence on coal, oil and gas, even though the accord has helped lower long-term temperature forecasts.

Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, warned that the gap between action and impacts has grown as temperatures continue to rise and extreme weather intensifies.

“I think it’s important that we’re honest with the world and we declare failure,” he said, adding that climate harms are arriving faster and more severely than expected.

Other voices point to progress the agreement has helped drive. Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said momentum has exceeded expectations.

“We’re actually in the direction that we established in Paris at a speed that none of us could have predicted,” Figueres said. The pace of worsening weather, she added, now outstrips efforts to cut emissions.

UN agencies have also warned that the world is not keeping up. UN Environment Programme head Inger Andersen said the world is “obviously falling behind”.

“We’re sort of sawing the branch on which we are sitting,” Andersen said.

Indigenous knowledge steers new protections for the high seas

Rising heat, rising losses

Each year since the Paris deal has been hotter than 2015.

Deadly heat waves have struck India, the Middle East, the Pacific Northwest and Siberia. Wildfires have burned across Hawaii, California, Europe and Australia. Severe floods have hit Pakistan, China and the American South.

Researchers say many of these disasters show signs of human-driven warming.

More than 7 trillion tonnes of ice have melted from glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets since 2015. Sea levels have risen by 40 millimetres over the decade.

Research in medical journal The Lancet warns global economic losses tied to extreme weather reached about $304 billion last year.

Global greenhouse gas emissions reached a record 53.2 gigatons last year. Two-thirds came from China, the United States, the European Union, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil and Japan. Only the EU and Japan cut their annual totals.

Record surge in CO2 puts world on track for more long-term warming

Green power

The past decade has seen progress in other respects, notably renewable energy.

Renewables now supply 40 percent of global electricity and overtook coal in the first half of the year, with wind and solar covering all new demand.

According to UN assessments cited in expert analyses, solar is now 41 percent cheaper than fossil fuels and onshore wind is 53 percent cheaper. Clean-energy investment surpassed $2 trillion in 2024, double fossil-fuel spending.

Electric vehicle sales have climbed from about 1 percent of global car sales in 2015 to nearly a quarter.

“There’s no stopping it,” said Todd Stern, a former US special climate envoy who helped negotiate the Paris deal. “You cannot hold back the tides.”

Yet fossil fuels still supply about 80 percent of global energy, the same share as in 2015.

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

A narrowing window

Without the Paris deal, scientists say the world may have headed for about 4C of warming by 2100.

Existing national plans point to roughly 2.3C to 2.5C if fully delivered. Current pledges would cut emissions by about 10 percent between 2019 and 2035.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s climate science body, says they need to fall by 60 percent by 2035 to keep the 1.5C limit in reach.

Developed countries pledged $300 billion a year by 2035 at Cop29 in Baku last year, far below what developing nations say they need.

“The Paris Agreement itself has underperformed,” said Joanna Depledge, a climate negotiations historian at the University of Cambridge.

“Unfortunately, it is one of those half-full, half-empty situations where you can’t say it’s failed. But then nor can you say it’s dramatically succeeded.”

(with newswires)

In the town of Agen, in the Lot-et-Garonne department, farmers arrived overnight from Thursday to Friday in around 60 tractors, dumping manure and tyres outside a series of public buildings.

The action was called by agriculture unions Coordination Rurale and Confédération Paysanne, which accuse the authorities of failing to listen to farmers’ concerns.

José Pérez, president of Coordination Rurale’s Lot-et-Garonne branch, warned of an industry on the brink. “We started protesting two years ago. Two years on, nothing has changed,” he said.

“Here, 10 percent of farmers are going to file for bankruptcy, representing 500 farms, and 75 percent are in a very difficult financial situation.”

French farmers announce nationwide protest over trade deals and food sovereignty

Disease outbreak

The union has branded Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard a “pyromaniac firefighter” over her handling of the crisis linked to lumpy skin disease (LSD), a viral disease that affects cattle but poses no risk to humans.

In the department of Ariège, near the Spanish border, orders to cull cattle provoked clashes on Thursday night.

Law enforcement officers used tear gas to retake control of a farm in the village of Bordes-sur-Arize, where farmers had gathered to block veterinary services from euthanising more than 200 cows following the detection of a case of LSD.

Gendarmes moved in shortly before 11pm, dispersing demonstrators amid fires lit from hay bales and pallets. “The situation is now under control,” the Ariège prefecture said shortly before midnight.

Farmers had been mobilised at the site since Wednesday morning, when the outbreak was announced, with at least several hundred people present.

French lawmakers reject Mercosur free trade deal as farmers continue protests

Preventative measures

Under current rules, slaughter is considered the only effective way to prevent the disease from spreading, and is followed by vaccination campaigns.

The regulations also impose “restricted areas” within a 50 km radius of an outbreak, limiting cattle movements.

In Ariège, of the department’s 33,000 cattle, 3,000 had already been vaccinated last month in areas near the Pyrénées-Orientales, where earlier outbreaks were detected.

Local unions and the Chamber of Agriculture had proposed an alternative approach, including slaughtering only infected animals alongside mass vaccination, but the plan was rejected by the Ministry of Agriculture.

In the neighbouring Hautes-Pyrénées, another herd of around 20 animals was due to be slaughtered on Friday, prompting further mobilisation.

“Attempts to block or gather near farms put all farmers at risk of further spreading the disease,” warned the department’s prefect, Jean Salomon.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, LSD – which appeared in France in June – is “under control”, and discussions have been opened on preventive vaccination.

While the FNSEA farmer’s union has warned of potential risks to exports and prices, its president Arnaud Rousseau has now asked for vaccination zones to be extended beyond the current regulated areas.

(with AFP)

Accepting the top award on an LA stage on Thursday, Sandfall Interactive founder Guillaume Broche appeared both delighted and stunned.

“What a weird timeline for us,” he quipped, before thanking his team and paying tribute to what he called the industry’s “unsung heroes”.

“And also I want to extend thanks to the unsung heroes of this industry – the people who make tutorials on YouTube on how to make a game – because we had no idea how to make a game before,” Broche said, drawing laughter and applause from the audience.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – the first game from the French studio – tells the story of a small group of characters fighting seemingly impossible odds in a post-apocalyptic world rendered in a distinctly French visual style.

The game was nominated in more categories than any other title this year and emerged victorious in many of them, despite stiff competition from major releases such as Death Stranding 2 by industry legend Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear Solid fame, and Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Bananza.

The project began life in 2020 as a personal idea from Broche, who was then working as a developer at French gaming giant Ubisoft.

That same year, he teamed up with former colleague Tom Guillermin to form Sandfall Interactive in the southern French city of Montpellier.

Digital purrfection: how French-developed video game ‘Stray’ has cats transfixed

‘Thank you to the players’

A turning point came in 2022, when the fledgling studio struck a publishing deal with UK-based Kepler Interactive, securing the funding needed to bring the ambitious project to life.

Since its release in April this year, around 5 million copies of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have been sold worldwide.

“This is a passion project into which we poured our heart and soul,” Broche said in a video, standing alongside members of his team. “To be rewarded like this is just wonderful.”

Broche also gave a “massive thank you” to players, whose enthusiasm has helped propel the game from indie debut to global success.

This grassroots popularity has been visible at conventions and game fairs, where fans have turned up dressed in a striped Breton shirt and red beret – one of the most stereotypically French outfits available for characters in the game.

‘Twitching’, live streaming and video games – the future of French entertainment?

From Belle Époque Paris to global success

Set in the city of Lumière – which bears a striking resemblance to Belle Époque Paris – the action-packed story follows a group of heroes determined to defeat a powerful entity threatening their home.

While unmistakably French in tone and aesthetics, the game also draws clear inspiration from Japanese titles such as the long-running Final Fantasy franchise.

Clair Obscur is a role-playing game built around turn-based combat, pitting players against monsters inhabiting its richly imagined world.

Its popularity has been driven by a blend of emotional storytelling, endearing characters and inventive gameplay, notably the introduction of reactive rhythm-based elements that allow players to parry enemy attacks in time with the action.

Sandfall’s achievement did not go unnoticed within the industry. “Sandfall managed to present something really polished and go toe to toe with major titles,” industry specialist Benoit Reinier told reporters at the time of the game’s release.

France’s international Vivatech fair shows off world pioneers of Web3 frontier

Their success has already attracted attention beyond the gaming world. French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the team in May, thanking them for “putting the spotlight on French-style boldness and creativity”.

There are plans in the works to adapt the Expedition 33 story for the big screen.

The awards ceremony itself reflected the growing global reach of the games industry. Streamed across 30 platforms – including Amazon Prime for the first time – the show was packed with trailers for upcoming titles such as Star Wars and Tomb Raider, alongside celebrity appearances including Jason Momoa, who is set to appear in a Street Fighter film due for release next year.

(with AFP)

It’s been almost a year since Dominique Pelicot and his 50 co-defendants were found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting Gisèle Pelicot in her family home after she’d been drugged.

The verdict came after a three-month trial, the disturbing details of which were followed by millions around the world. In France, tens of thousands followed the daily Instagram posts of freelance photojournalist Anna Margueritat. 

Armed with her phone, laptop and notebook, she left Paris for the southern city of Avignon after hearing Gisèle Pelicot say she wanted the trial to be public “pour que la honte change de camp” – “so that the shame changes sides”.

Her recently published book chronicling the trial takes this phrase as its title.

“I felt very moved by this sentence… We’ve been hearing it at feminist demonstrations for a long time,” Margueritat recalls. “As a victim of rape and sexual assault, as a woman, as a feminist journalist, I wanted to be at the trial to try to understand.”

‘Shame must change sides’: France’s mass rape plaintiff becomes feminist icon

The trial was extraordinary in its scale, both for the number of defendants and for the length of time – more than a decade – over which the abuse took place. And yet Margueritat says it highlighted an everyday reality in France, where “a woman is raped or is a victim of attempted rape every two and a half minutes“.

While the trial ended with convictions for all 51 men, with sentences ranging from three to 20 years, she says it’s not just about the verdicts.

“I understood, deeply, why we refer to ‘systemic’ violence when talking about sexual violence. I understood just how far the feeling of impunity of men who are accused of sexual violence can go.”

Listen to a conversation with Anna Margueritat on the Spotlight on France podcast:

‘I wanted to disappear’

What struck Margueritat first when entering the packed courtroom was the sheer number of defendants. 

“They were everywhere. Their behaviour really shocked me, very sexist for some of them. Many of them were not ashamed,” she says. 

She describes watching them occupy the space, “like men who have the freedom to be men and to dominate women”.

During one hearing, she noticed a defendant in his glass box “staring” right at her. 

“Then he gave me the middle finger. It was like he was telling me, I have the power, even if I’m here accused of one of the worst crimes, I can still have power over you with just two eyes.”

It was, she says, a reminder that she was “a woman before being a journalist”, adding: “That was the hardest part of the trial for me.”

She reported the incident to a court official. But the response – “don’t worry… stay focused on your work” – left her feeling even more exposed. “I wanted to disappear,” she remembers.

She put aside the cropped T-shirt she’d been wearing that day and went back to her usual head-to-toe black look, tying back her long, red hair. She also instinctively wore less makeup.

Deadly attacks on women rise in France amid growing partner violence

Female solidarity

There was, however, a sense of sorority among the largely female press corps, she recalls.

“We shared the experience of being a woman inside the courthouse and outside.” It gave her the strength, she says, “to talk about this and to feel understood”.

The limited contact she had with her male colleagues was quite different. Some made “very bad jokes, sexual jokes”.

She remembers conversations with one male reporter who admitted that walking back to his hotel at night, he found himself wondering whether the men he passed “could be rapists”.

“It made us laugh,” she says. “We were like, that’s what it’s like every day for us.”

Yet she also believes these conversations were important. That male journalist, she notes, “has a daughter, he has ways to be empathetic to women’s experiences”.

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

‘Fifty shades of rape’

As a feminist activist, Margueritat already had a strong Instagram following, but she said she was surprised to find some 50,000 people viewing her daily posts from the trial.

She believes she offered something different from mainstream courtroom reporting. “I can say that I’m a feminist journalist,” she noted. “And I don’t have a media company telling me, ‘no, you have to stay neutral’.”

While she claims no expertise in psychology or sociology, she says she could speak about what she knew: “What I see in my everyday life with other victims, with other feminist activists.”

Despite the courtroom viewing the footage of Gisèle Pelicot being raped and sexually assaulted, drugged to the point of being comatose, Margueritat says the defendants refused to see themselves as rapists or accept responsibility for their actions.

In her book, she catalogues what she calls “50 shades of rape”, chronicling the range of “ever more absurd justifications” the defendants came up with.

One man insisted that it was “my body, but not my brain”. Others claimed ignorance or fear of Dominique Pelicot, or even that Gisèle had somehow given consent “through her husband”.

Margueritat observed little remorse. “At the end of the trial only two defendants looked Gisèle Pelicot in the eyes and said: ‘I’m sorry because I’m a rapist’.”

Gisele Pelicot: French rape survivor and global icon

Signs of progress

One year on, Margueritat says the shame has “not yet” shifted to the perpetrator.

“It will take a long, long time because every time there’s a big case of sexual violence in France, it’s like we are discovering it all over again.”

And yet, she says, sexual violence is systemic: “It’s not just a succession of cases, but a very big problem in all institutions.”

However, she believes there are signs of progress. She points to the introduction of consent into the definition of rape, which MPs voted for in the wake of the Pelicot trial, and to the conviction of French film giant Gérard Depardieu for sexual assault, which shows that “no one is above the law”.

Depardieu was also ordered to pay damages to his victims for secondary victimisation – when the victim suffers further harm from how they are treated after the criminal act – caused by “outrageous and humiliating” remarks made by his lawyer, Jérémie Assous, during the trial. 

Assous called the two women “hysterical” and said they were working for the cause of “rabid feminism”.

“These remarks, by their very nature, amount to secondary victimisation,” the presiding judge said, ordering Depardieu to pay each woman €1,000 in compensation for this offence specifically.

Rallies across France in support of woman who was drugged, raped

The trial had an impact on Margueritat’s own life too. Three months ago, she finally filed a police complaint against a man she accuses of raping her.

According to the latest official figures, only 6 percent of victims of sexual violence lodge a complaint. In 2023, just 3.3 percent of rape complaints filed resulted in convictions.

Margueritat describes a weight being lifted, and says this will free her to work more on bringing other victims’ voices to the fore.

“Even if I don’t put too much hope in justice, it was important to do it.”

This article is based on a report on the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 135. Listen to other episodes here. Subscribe here. 

The complaint accusing the Bank of complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity was filed on 4 December with the senior investigating judge at the crimes against humanity division of the Paris judicial tribunal, Radio France and the Libération newspaper revealed on Thursday.

It aims to establish whether the French central bank failed in its obligations to respect a United Nations-imposed embargo on arms sales to Rwanda introduced on 17 May 1994, several weeks after the genocide began on 7 April.

During a 100-day period between April and July 1994, around 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu were massacred by Hutu extremists. 

Seven transfers 

According to the plaintiffs – the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR) and its founders Alain Gauthier and Dafroza Mukarumongi – not only did the Bank of France fail to freeze the account of the National Bank of Rwanda, it carried out seven transfers in its favour, for a total amount of 3.17 million francs (approximately €486,000).

The transfers took place between 5 May and 1 August, 1994.

French company Alcatel, one of the beneficiaries, is suspected of having supplied communications equipment to the Rwandan authorities. According to documents cited in the complaint, a payment amounting to 435,000 francs was made in favour of Alcatel on 5 May, 1994.

Several witness statements attest that the payment was intended for the purchase of satellite telephones, considered important equipment by the Rwandan interim government in order to maintain international communications.

Other transfers were sent to Rwandan diplomatic missions in Ethiopia, South Africa and Egypt and may have been used to purchase weapons, according to Libération.

“The Tutsi genocide was not only the work of those who killed with machetes. It was made possible by a multitude of white-collar criminals who, comfortably seated in their offices, authorised transfers and signed off on operations with administrative banality, far from the bloodshed but necessary to the genocidal machine,” said the CPCR’s lawyers Matilda Ferey and Joseph Breham, in a statement.

Rwanda marks 1994 genocide amid tensions over M23 rebellion in DRC

‘The whole world knew’

The complaint draws on documentation compiled in 1996 by two UN Development Programme (UNDP) experts, including former Belgian senator Pierre Galland, who recorded the transfers, amounts and dates.

When the Hutu-led interim government fled Rwanda in early July, Galland told Libération it “left behind many documents showing that donors had carried out transfers without sufficient oversight. The funds allowed the Rwandan army and the perpetrators of the genocide to operate. Our mission was to trace all those transfers”.

Some transfers may also have directly funded weapons purchases.

“At the time when the Bank of France facilitated these seven transactions on behalf of the génocidaires, it likely had procedures and tools in place that should have alerted it,” said Austin Kathi Lynn, founder of the Conflict Awareness Project, who investigated arms trafficking immediately after the genocide.

“Given the extensive media coverage of the Rwandan genocide, the control exercised by an unconstitutional interim government over the Rwandan state’s bank accounts, and the arms embargo imposed on Rwanda, certain transactions involving the génocidaires should have been flagged as potentially illegal.”

The plaintiffs argue that the Bank of France could not have been unaware of the context.

“Hutu militants were carrying out systematic extermination wherever they could – in churches, in schools,” Alain Gauthier told Radio France. “The whole world knew. How could the Bank of France and French authorities not have known?”

Court weighs survivors’ claim that French troops stood by during Rwanda genocide

‘No trace of transfers’

The Bank of France told Libération that it had only been able to carry out “summary searches” given the “particularly short” deadline since the complaint was filed.

“At this stage, we have found no trace of the transfers mentioned,” it said, adding that all account documents have to be destroyed after a period of 10 years, in line with banking regulations.

Gauthier, who has spent decades documenting the involvement of French banks in the genocide, justified the delay in filing the complaint.

“[It] may seem belated, because it took us a long time to realise that the Bank of France could also be prosecuted for having used funds from the Bank of Rwanda for the purchase of weapons.”

He also criticised the slow pace of justice, noting that a 2017 complaint against BNP Paribas for similar transfers remains unresolved.

how New research suggests deliberate fire-setting took place in what is now eastern England around 400,000 years ago, pushing back the earliest known date for controlled fire-making by roughly 350,000 years.

Until now, the oldest confirmed evidence had come from Neanderthal sites in northern France dating to about 50,000 years ago.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, centre on the Paleolithic site of Barnham in Suffolk, which has been excavated intermittently for decades.

This time, however, researchers believe they have finally cracked one of archaeology’s most enduring mysteries – when humans stopped depending on natural fires and learned to create flame whenever they needed it.

French cave findings suggest Europe’s first Homo sapiens arrived earlier than thought

A hearth, not a wildfire

A team led by the British Museum identified a distinctive patch of baked clay, flint hand axes fractured by extreme heat, and two fragments of iron pyrite – a mineral that produces sparks when struck against flint. Together, the clues point to deliberate, controlled fire-making rather than a chance blaze.

Researchers spent four years subjecting the site to detailed analysis, determined to rule out the possibility of natural wildfires. Geochemical tests showed temperatures had exceeded 700 degrees Celsius, with signs of repeated burning in the same location over time.

That pattern, the scientists say, is far more consistent with a constructed hearth than a lightning strike.

Rob Davis, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the British Museum, said the combination of evidence leaves little room for doubt. The high temperatures, controlled burning and pyrite fragments together show “how they were actually making the fire and the fact they were making it”.

Crucially, iron pyrite does not occur naturally at Barnham. Its presence suggests the people who lived there deliberately collected it, understanding its properties and how it could be used to ignite tinder – a clear sign of technological know-how.

Such evidence is exceptionally rare, as deliberate fire-making is seldom preserved in the archaeological record: ash disperses easily, charcoal decays and heat-altered sediments are often eroded over time.

At Barnham, however, the burned deposits were sealed within ancient pond sediments, effectively locking the moment in place and allowing scientists to reconstruct how early humans used the site.

Oldest known Neanderthal engravings found in French cave

Fire, food and the rise of social life

The implications for our understanding of human evolution are substantial.

Fire transformed daily life. It allowed early populations to survive colder climates, deter predators and cook food. Cooking breaks down toxins in roots and tubers and kills pathogens in meat, improving digestion and releasing more energy – energy that could help support larger, more demanding brains.

Chris Stringer, a human evolution specialist at the Natural History Museum, said fossils from Britain and Spain suggest the inhabitants of Barnham were early Neanderthals. Their cranial features and DNA, he noted, point to growing cognitive and technological sophistication at this stage in human evolution.

Fire also reshaped social life. Evening gatherings around a hearth would have created time and space for planning, storytelling and strengthening group bonds – behaviours often linked to the development of language and more organised societies.

Archaeologists say the Barnham site fits into a wider pattern seen across Britain and continental Europe between 500,000 and 400,000 years ago.

During this period, brain size in early humans began to approach modern levels, while evidence for increasingly complex behaviour becomes more visible in the archaeological record.

For those involved in the excavation, the discovery is nothing short of career-defining.

Nick Ashton, curator of Paleolithic collections at the British Museum, called it “the most exciting discovery of my long 40-year career”.

(With newswires)

On 5 December, videos livestreamed on social media show three men taking the ferry from England to France, to carry out what amounts to an anti-migrant patrol. 

They can be seen in various areas on the northern French coast. In Dunkirk, they confronted members of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), accusing them of assisting an “invasion”.

On the beach in Gravelines, one of many where small boats set out on the risky Channel crossing, the men shouted insults at people they believed to be aid workers. 

“We’re very worried,” Stella, a representative of Calais-based NGO L’Auberge des Migrants, told RFI.

Charities working in the region estimate that British activists have carried out 10 similar stunts since the summer of 2024.

“We keep reporting what is happening to all the authorities,” Stella said. “We don’t know how far they might go.”

Humanitarian groups challenge UK-France migration deal in French court

Far-right initiatives

The incidents appear to be part of a trend stoked by figures on the British far right. 

Le Monde newspaper identified one of the men involved in the visit last week as Ryan Bridge, co-founder of Raising the Colours, a nationalist group that organised a campaign to hang or paint flags across the UK earlier this year.

It named another as Danny Thomas, an associate of prominent far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

The pair last month posted online about what they dubbed “Operation Overlord” – a reference to the Allied invasion of occupied Europe during the Second World War that landed on the beaches of northern France – and called for donations to support trips to France.

Videos shared online appear to show other members of the group in northern France in November, some brandishing English flags and claiming to have destroyed dinghies used by migrants. 

While Raising the Colours remains a grassroots movement, British anti-immigration political party Ukip has also been backing the trips. In June, the party’s leader Nick Tenconi filmed himself in northern France and appealed to other people to join him.

The party has since launched what it calls a “Border Protection Team” with a mission to “defend our islands”. 

Anti-migrant unrest erupts despite UK’s tightening of migration policy

Attack on migrants

French organisations report that they have been forced to be vigilant after a series of alarming incidents. 

In early June, around six men – dressed in black and speaking English – tried to force their way into a centre in Calais where NGOs deliver food and other aid to migrants. 

On the night of 9-10 September, four men carrying the flags of England and the UK attacked migrants as they slept in Grand-Fort-Philippe near Dunkirk and took their belongings, according to NGO Utopia 56, which filed a police complaint.

Based on an account given by one of the victims, the group believes the perpetrators were the same individuals seen in a video later shared by Ukip, said Utopia 56’s coordinator, Viktor Meyer. 

The Dunkirk public prosecutor’s office has opened a preliminary investigation into “aggravated assault”.

The story was adapted from the original version in French by Marie Casadebaig.

Nearly a year after Cyclone Chido devastated Mayotte, large parts of the Indian Ocean archipelago remain visibly battered, with reconstruction advancing far more slowly than promised.

While emergency work on secondary schools allowed them to reopen to pupils in August, most public buildings and homes still bear deep scars.

In the capital Mamoudzou’s Hauts-Vallons neighbourhood – a residential district popular with civil servants – mounds of rubble lie untouched.

According to the Housing Foundation: “Sixty percent of the island’s buildings were damaged or destroyed and more than two-thirds of collective housing suffered damage.”

Ahmed Ali Mondroha, managing director of Mayotte’s main social housing provider, said the scale of destruction has proven overwhelming.

“It took us a long time to start the work,” he said, estimating the total cost of the damage at €72 million. “Of the 1,600 homes affected, 500 have been restored to use and around 600 are currently undergoing repairs.”

But even with crews on site, he says progress has been hampered by a succession of obstacles

“Construction companies do not always have the necessary materials, prices have skyrocketed since the cyclone hit – sheet metal, for example, has increased by 40 percent – and delivery times have lengthened.”

Schools in Mayotte set to reopen as unions warn cyclone recovery still lags

Supply delays

Julian Champiat, president of the Mayotte Federation of Building and Public Works (FMBTP), also spoke of the pressure on logistics, saying it now takes four months to receive an order of materials, compared with two months previously.

These delays are largely attributed to clogged customs procedures at Longoni’s commercial port, where a surge in containers has created bottlenecks.

Adding to the strain, many companies are struggling financially, with cash flow weakened by a slow restart in activity and a wave of payment defaults, causing further delays across the construction sector.

“The economic fabric is greatly weakened,” said Fahardine Mohamed, president of the Medef employers union in Mayotte.

Public sector finances – which underpin around 70 percent of the local economy – are, he said, “at an all-time low”.

After the cyclone, local authorities “committed to spending to deal with the emergency, and they are at the end of their term of office,” he noted, leaving budgets severely depleted.

Macron unveils €3bn package to rebuild cyclone-hit Mayotte

Exposed to the elements

Authorities too have been hit hard. In central Mamoudzou, part of the town hall roof was torn off and several offices remain unusable.

Higher up the hillside, the headquarters of the Dembéni-Mamoudzou urban community – Cadema – is still covered with tarpaulin rather than tiles.

“We’ve been working from home since the cyclone hit,” said one local authority employee, who asked not to be named. “My office is unusable, there are water leaks everywhere and when it rains, the electricity cuts out. Nothing has been done. The local authorities have no money left.”

Insurance payouts, too, are lagging. “We’re waiting for around €20 million,” said Mondroha.

At the Camion Blanc restaurant on Mamoudzou’s seafront, Melie Razafindrasoa prepares a papaya juice and notes one small sign of normality returning.

“We’re seeing [people] again at the market,” she said cheerfully. But her smile fades when she talks about her own home, saying she has still not received any insurance money.

“We lost the windows and a door of the house during the cyclone. We repaired them ourselves, but every time it rains, the rooms are flooded,” she explained, adding that she remains “very afraid of another cyclone coming”.

The rainy season has just begun, bringing more frequent storms. “Last time, there was a lot of wind and rain. My children were very scared, they are still traumatised.”

(with AFP)

RFI: What led you to making your first documentary? 

Sammy Baloji: In my practice I do make short films, experimental films, and I also did a few collaborative documentaries. For this project, I was doing a lot of research around the town of Yangambi [northern DRC], starting from an article in The Guardian [about trees and climate change] given to me by one of the curators of the Lubumbashi Biennial, a contemporary art platform that I co-created with a few artists in [DRC].

I was quite interested in looking at the forest and producing a [piece] of work compiling the research. And I thought that a film could be a good way, as I had already discovered all the archives related to Congolese agriculturalist Paul Panda Farnana and beyond.

So it was really interesting to think of a format that could help [us] to understand the complexity of human activity in the area. And I thought that film was kind of a great format for that.

Congolese filmmaker Baloji mixes magic with biting social commentary

You’ve centred the story around real people – Congolese agriculturalist Paul Panda Farnana and the Belgian colonial official Abiron Beirnaert. And you also wrote powerful voices for the narration, including one for a tree, through a mix of sounds and images. How did you go about this?

By doing research, I had a lot of different examples for Farnana. There were letters written by him to his mother, colonial administrative reports on him, articles published by Belgian magazines and so on.

As for Abiron Beirnaert, he didn’t write himself, and he died while he was on a mission in [what was then the Belgian Congo]. But the story of his accident and his visit to the Congo were reported by his colleagues, who wrote about his final activities.

For the voice of the tree, the text that comes with the sound of the tree, comes from all the research done by Thomas Hendricks, who’s an anthropologist who was interested in understanding international activities within the Congolese forest.

I work a lot with installations, and I have this approach to combine different sources and different elements such as sound archives, photographs or excerpts from films. And then there’s the soundscape, which I did with two sound artists. The idea was to create this kind of immersive soundscape… an immersive experience bringing together images, sounds and voices.

Why the Congo plays a critical role in saving the world’s biodiversity

Would you say the film is a work of activism?

I’m from a country – but also a province – that has been under extractivism since the end of the 19th century, for its mineral resources. This is the first time I’ve been able to provide information about how the climate has been a subject of colonial control, even the forest.

The place that I’m from is the place that served as an extraction site for uranium that was used for the atomic bomb. And there’s lithium there, which is really important for green energy. 

But there’s a continuous injustice in the ignoring of the people impacted by the extraction of these different raw materials, that serve the international economy.

I don’t just address this with the film, it’s also why we created the Lubumbashi Biennial, to bring attention to what is happening within the country from Congolese perspectives and local voices.

I wanted to look at it from a very long perspective, starting from the colonial presence in DRC, and looking at the way that all these processes are connected. It’s not coming from a place of anger – I tried to go beyond this binary way of thinking, between north and south, looking at the environment, at nature and at the relationship we have with the Earth.

This is why the tree appears. For me, it’s really about local knowledge: the tree has been in that forest for more than three centuries.

The question I’m raising is how do we rethink our connection with the environment?

The film was shown at Film Africa in London and can be viewed on the Franco-German channel Arte. Do you have plans to show it in Africa? 

It’s already been shown in South Africa at a festival, and we are thinking of having it shown in Kinshasa. And of course, the next edition of the Lubumbashi Biennial will show it next year. I can’t wait to have this moment on the continent where I can present it.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

In a bid to improve literacy levels in the country, Mutharika has announced that tuition fees, examination fees, school development fees and fees for identity cards used during examinations have all been abolished.

“I also want to direct that no public school should be requesting learners to make contributions towards the School Development Fund and any other fees, except boarding fees,” Mutharika added.

Secondary school pupils in boarding schools will still need to pay boarding fees, which remain substantial.

The move is expected to increase enrolment and lower the drop-out rate.

Although the latter has improved significantly for primary education – from 11.7 percent in 2009 to 3.2 percent in 2018, according to the national education sector investment plan – retention remains a challenge. The country has a primary school completion rate of 52 percent and a repetition rate of 24.5 percent.

In 2024, 24,371 learners dropped out of primary schools and 24,371 of secondary school. Overall, only 33 percent of children complete primary school and 4 percent upper secondary school, according to figures quoted by Malawi’s Nation newspaper.

Malawians face food insecurity and soaring unemployment as they head to polls

‘The only way out of poverty’

The country is in economic crisis, and has seen the price of goods and services soar. According to the World Bank, it is the fourth poorest in the world, with the majority of people living on less than $2.15 a day, according to 2019 estimates.

“The [previous] government has not been able to mobilise enough revenue to implement its programmes. Overall growth projection remains weak, with GDP projected to grow at 2.8 percent in 2025 from 1.7 percent in 2024, mainly attributed to low agricultural productivity, supply chain constraints and limited industrial capacity,” said Mutharika.

He added that his administration has already started taking steps to address the gaps.

Meet the Kenyan man shaping a francophone future in East Africa

Dr Foster Lungu, an education expert at Mzuzu University, said that the school fees announcement “gives hope”, but questioned how it will be implemented financially.

“Come January [when the policy is set to take effect], you may find that the schools are not well resourced, and this line of income to the schools was helping to resource those schools. Then it will be a pinch – more or less back to square one.”

Commenting on the development, Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono said that abolishing school fees is an “excellent start” and “a progressive move, because national education remains the only real way out of poverty for the African child”.

Chin’ono also noted, however, that around 30 percent of Malawi’s national budget is lost through corruption, quoting organisations including Transparency International.

“If [Mutharika] successfully stops this 30 percent looting, he could fund free primary and secondary education using the recovered resources… Africa has enough money to fund public services such as education.”

They are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles. All have lost a loved one in the armed conflict in Colombia. All are still searching for the truth about their disappearances.

So when Spanish-Argentinian photographer Zahara Gomez Lucini asked them to take part in a project in memory of the disappeared, they all agreed. 

The artist and activist’s book Recetario para la Memoria (“Recipe Book for Remembrance”) is an act of resistance.

Families contribute the recipe for the favourite dish of the person they have lost. In this way, Lucini makes those who are absent visible again, and conveys the pain of the families while inviting dialogue.

“I wanted to bring the subject of disappearances back to the table by approaching it in a different way. Not in an academic or technical way,” she explains.

“The aim was to extend the debate beyond the circle of experts and journalists. Colombia has a lot to teach us on this subject, whether through its transitional justice for peace or its theatrical and musical works.”

The book is the third she has made of its kind, with the first two created with the families of disappeared people in Mexico.

Turkish artist draws attention to the disappeared

Forty-four Colombian families joined the project, which is now on display at La Casa de la Memoria museum in Medellin.

The museum has installed a typical Colombian kitchen in the centre of its exhibition space. There’s a refrigerator, kitchen utensils and a wood-burning stove, and a table of ingredients, plates and bowls.

On the walls, panels display recipes accompanied by two photos: one of the dish and the other of the person who cooked it, a relative of a victim of enforced disappearance.   

Patricia Zapata took part in the project for her nephew Jorge, who disappeared in 2017.

“He was a rap singer. He had gone out to shoot the video for his latest song. And since then, there has been no news. I prepared red beans from Antioquia. They are served with plantains, rice, an egg and chicharrons – fried pork rinds.”

Patricia is part of a collective which organises regular demonstrations in memory of those who have disappeared. “It’s hard. Very hard. And there are moments, like this exhibition, that break our hearts, but it’s necessary.”

Families desperate for news of Ukraine’s disappeared

‘Restoring humanity’

After the exhibition’s opening, the public were invited to share a meal with the victims’ families.

A cooking workshop was also organised for students at the Universidad National of Medellin.

Valery Giraldo, a history student who took part, said: “It was a very good initiative. It’s another way of telling these stories of disappearance that we tend to forget. Above all, I listened to their stories. I am really very moved.”

Among the cooks that day was Maria Eugenia Naranjo. She lost her son in 2019.

“We made three dishes: soup, pasta and beans. At first, the project seemed strange to me. But I quickly realised that it was important. It reminds society of our need to discover the truth about the disappearance of our loved ones. It’s hard to live with uncertainty about their fate.”

Alongside the Colombian families is Viviana Mendoza, a Mexican buscadora (a “searcher”) who was part of Gomez Lucini’s first recipe book. She is participating in the Colombian project to show that the fight for the truth crosses borders.   

“My brother Manuel disappeared in 2018. Armed men came to his home and took him away. I continue to search for him myself in the mass graves. Here, I have prepared a caldo de espinazo [a pork soup] to restore my brother’s humanity. Because we quickly forget that they are human beings, not just names or numbers. We have normalised violence and horror too much.”  

In Colombia, according to the latest report from the Search Unit for Missing Persons in 2025, 132,877 people have been reported missing due to the armed conflict.   

After the signing of the peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group in 2016, the International Committee of the Red Cross documented more than 2,000 additional cases.

This article was adapted from the original version in French by Najet Benrabaa, RFI’s correspondent in Bogota.

Nam, owner of Hanoi Corner in the bustling Marais neighbourhood, remembers the puzzled looks of his French customers as they discovered not just Vietnamese coffee, but the art of drinking it.

“It’s truly Vietnamese-style coffee, where we take our time,” he tells RFI. “And not everyone has 20 minutes to spare. The Vietnamese filter is the opposite of espresso.”

In Vietnam, coffee is traditionally made using a phin filter – a small metal device that slow-brews coffee drop by drop. 

At Hoa Cà Phê coffee shop in eastern Paris, Diane explains: “What we always tell customers who don’t know Vietnamese coffee at all is that they should try it in its most classic form: phin coffee, black or with condensed milk, hot or cold.”

But French customers are often most intrigued by cà phê trứng – coffee mixed with whisked egg yolks, a Hanoi delicacy.

“We have a high demand for egg coffee,” she says.

A taste of history

French colonisers first brought coffee plants to Vietnam in the 19th century, but it was only after independence that the country truly transformed coffee into an art of its own. 

A century later, it’s the Vietnamese taste that is coming to France.

“For us, coffee is linked to the history between Vietnam and France,” Nam explains. “As I am French of Vietnamese origin, I try to convey a culture that is somewhere between the two countries.

“We are happy because it allows us to showcase another side of Vietnamese culture that is a little less well known.”

The movement is growing fast. “Eight years ago, we were the only Vietnamese café in Paris. Today, I think there are about 15,” Nam says.

And new cafes are opening in the capital and beyond.

Waiters race for glory as Paris revives century-old tradition

‘Vietnamese spirit’

Vietnam’s well-known Cộng Cà Phê chain opened its first French branch in Paris in August this year.

The brand’s distinctive retro decor, evoking Vietnam of the 1970s and 80s, sets it apart from other cafes, according to customer Duyên.

“And its coconut cream coffee is truly original,” she adds.

“When coming to Paris, Cộng didn’t just want to open several coffee shops, but also to convey a Vietnamese spirit, a history of Vietnamese coffee,” says Uyên Trần, the chain’s partnership manager.

The target was firstly the Vietnamese diaspora, she says, then the international public.

‘Invisible’ origins

Vietnam is the world’s second-largest coffee exporter, right behind Brazil. It sent more than 380,000 tonnes to the European Union in 2024, making Europe its largest market.

France is the third-largest importer of Vietnamese coffee in Europe, after Germany and Italy.

Most Vietnamese coffee that reaches Europe is raw robusta, however, which is most often processed or blended into instant coffee or capsules – leaving drinkers unaware of its Vietnamese origin or signature aroma.

“For all Westerners, not just French people, Asia does not exist in terms of coffee,” says Frédéric Fortunel, a food researcher at the University of Le Mans.

“Our perception has been shaped by brands. They have constructed our image of it. And that is the paradox.

“The consequence is that Asian coffee, in general, cannot be promoted as a coffee of origin.”

How Brazil’s booming coffee industry is driving deforestation

Coffee street-style

Vietnamese coffee is distinguished as much by the way it is enjoyed as by its flavour.

For Mai Phuong, co-owner of Vỉahè Càphê near the Place de la Bastille, nothing reflects the essence of Vietnam’s coffee culture quite like small sidewalk cafes.

“For me, the best Vietnamese coffee is the kind you find in small cafes on the pavement, like in the old days,” she says.

Her co-owner and partner, Van Phu, agrees: “That was the idea, to really recreate the experience of how coffee is drunk on the streets of Vietnam.”

It wasn’t an easy concept to sell to Parisians. “It was quite daring,” Mai recalls. “No one understood why they had to sit on these low plastic chairs, like children.

“But little by little, curiosity got the better of them.”

More than 50 people died in the floods, thousands more were displaced – and an agricultural landscape a generation in the making was washed away in a single night.

Eighteen months later, the pain and uncertainty have not receded.

Forty minutes away in Naivasha, Grace, a small-scale farmer, mother of three and lifelong resident, stands on what remains of her farmland.

Where vegetables once grew, stagnant brown pools shimmer as the returning rains pour down. The foundations of her house lie broken, like a shattered clay pot. She wraps a torn shawl around her shoulders and looks to the sky as if for an answer.

“The flood took our goats, our seeds, even our soil,” she said, exhausted. “We are starting from nothing again.”

She is not alone in this. Across the Naivasha basin, families returned to plots that are no longer viable. Their wells are contaminated. Their cattle have died. Their savings were spent trying to survive. And now, as the rains return, the nightmare threatens to repeat itself.

‘Seasons are breaking down’

It is here that Dr Kamau, a climate scientist based in Naivasha, spends his days tracking shifting weather patterns.

His office is cluttered with satellite printouts and rainfall charts, and his boots still caked in mud. When he explains the changes he’s seeing, he barely looks at the papers – he knows the numbers by heart.

“We are witnessing climate whiplash,” he says. “Drought one year, floods the next. The seasons that once defined East African life are breaking down. Communities can’t adapt fast enough.”

For farmers like Grace, adaptation requires more than patience – it takes money, government support and time, and none are in ready supply.

Africa Climate Summit puts financing and resilience under the spotlight

Climate refugees

Whilst Kenya is drowning, across the border Somalia is cracking under the pressure of drought.

In Dadaab, dusty winds whip across a refugee settlement that has grown into a city in its own right. Thousands of Somali families have arrived here, fleeing not conflict but the effects of the drought.

Among them is 53-year-old Fadumo, a mother of eight from central Somalia who once owned 20 goats and a small sorghum plot.

Rich nations pledge $250bn for climate aid, but Africa demands more

But year after year, the rains didn’t come. Crops failed. Wells dried up. When her children were surviving on a single cup of tea a day, Grace did the only thing she could – she left.

“I walked for days to find water,” she says, sitting outside the temporary shelter that is now her home. “We hoped the rain would come back. But it never did.”

Her story is echoed across the Horn of Africa. Somalia has experienced its longest and most intense drought in 40 years. Humanitarian agencies also report that millions go hungry, and hundreds of thousands are displaced.

‘Paying the price’

In Kenya, Dr Kamau shakes his head when asked whether these crises can be considered natural disasters.

“Floods and droughts have always existed,” he says. “But the scale, frequency and erratic swings we’re seeing now are climate-driven. And the people paying the price are the ones who did almost nothing to cause this problem.”

East Africa accounts for less than 3 percent of global emissions, but its communities are losing livelihoods, homes and sometimes their lives.

As world leaders prepare to gather in Nairobi from 8-12 December for the seventh United Nations Environment Assembly, many in the region are asking the same question: what does climate justice look like when those who so the least to cause it suffer the most?

“Palestinian armed groups committed violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and crimes against humanity during their attacks in southern Israel that started on 7 October, 2023,” the human rights watchdog said in a 173-page report.

It said that the mass killing of civilians that day amounted to “the crime against humanity of extermination”.

Amnesty also cited the seizure and mistreatment of hostages by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, noting that this was done “as part of an explicitly stated plan explained by the leadership of Hamas and of other Palestinian armed groups”.

Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, and 251 people were taken hostage that day, 44 of whom were dead.

Of the 207 hostages taken alive, 41 died or were killed in captivity. At the time of writing, all hostages have been returned as part of a ceasefire in Gaza except for the body of one Israeli officer.

Israel awaits return of last hostage remains from Gaza

Hamas ‘chiefly responsible’

Among the acts listed as crimes against humanity by Amnesty were murder, extermination, imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, rape and “other forms of sexual violence”.

For the latter crimes, it said that it was not able to interview survivors except for one case, and therefore could not offer a conclusion on the scope or scale of sexual violence. 

Hamas, including its armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, was deemed “chiefly responsible” for the crimes. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and “unaffiliated Palestinian civilians” bore lesser responsibility.

Amnesty has previously accused Hamas and other groups of committing war crimes, which are serious violations of international law against civilians and combatants during armed conflict..

France points to Netanyahu immunity from ICC war crimes warrant

In May 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for then-Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, armed wing head Mohammed Deif, and Yahya Sinwar, who was widely seen as the mastermind of the 7 October attacks.

The ICC withdrew the warrants after the trio were killed by Israel later that year. A separate warrant remains active for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘live-streamed genocide’ in Gaza

In December 2024, Amnesty accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza during its war with Hamas – an allegation Israel has rejected as “entirely false” and “fabricated”.

Amnesty then warned last month that Israel was “still committing genocide”, despite a ceasefire which came into effect on 10 October.

Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 70,369 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, figures considered reliable by the United Nations.

(with newswires)

Talks between between EU countries and the European Parliament collapsed on Wednesday without an agreement, meaning negotiations will continue in January to decide whether familiar names for plant-based foods can stay on shelves or be forced to change.

Many livestock farmers say plant-based names mislead shoppers and threaten a sector already under strain. French industry group Interbev said the use of meat terms “confuses consumers and undermines recognition” in meat products.

Environmentalists and consumer advocates have criticised the plan, with the French news agency AFP reporting that they argue shoppers choose plant-based products intentionally and do not confuse them with meat.

EU consumption of plant-based alternatives has grown five-fold since 2011, according to consumer group BEUC.

In October, European lawmakers backed a proposal put forward by a French MEP to reserve labels like “burger” and “sausage” for foods that contain meat. 

Member states discussed the idea with representatives from the parliament on Wednesday as part of a wider package aimed at supporting farmers. But after several hours of talks, no agreement was reached.

‘A steak is a steak’: EU Parliament votes to ban meat terms for vegetarian food

German retail backlash

Germany, Europe’s biggest market for plant-based products, has become a major opponent of a ban.

AFP reports that discount chains Lidl and Aldi fear sales could fall if the names change and say current labels are already familiar to consumers. The two retailers have spoken out publicly against the measure.

Paul McCartney, a longtime vegetarian, has joined the opposition, co-signing a letter asking Brussels not to proceed. “We urge you not to adopt these restrictions, as we are deeply concerned about the significant global impact they could have,” the letter said.

“The evidence is clear: existing legislation already protects consumers; consumers themselves overwhelmingly understand and support current naming conventions.”

Farmers and their supporters say the issue is not about removing plant-based options but about clarity and tradition. French MEP Céline Imart – the architect of the ban and herself a farmer – said the goal was to avoid “a mix-up” with meat products and protect the value of established terms.

She said it was “in no way about banning plant-based alternatives but I am attached to preserving these terms and their true meaning”.

EU rules France can’t stop veggie products being called ‘steak’

Farm pressure and politics

Interbev argues that plant-based products “blur the lines and weaken recognition” of a raw and natural product by using meat names for marketing.

France passed its own label ban in 2024 during farmer protests, but the decree was struck down in January after the EU’s top court backed a challenge.

A similar EU proposal was rejected by lawmakers in 2020. The balance of power has shifted since then, with right-wing parties gaining ground in the 2024 EU elections and highlighting their ties to the farm sector.

Even so, there is no full agreement. Manfred Weber, leader of the centre-right bloc in the European Parliament, dismissed the plan as “not a priority at all”, saying “consumers are not stupid”, French TV BFM reported.

Negotiations are expected to continue after Thursday before any final deal emerges.

(with newswires)

Eyewitness footage whose filming location was verified by AFP showed M23 tanks rolling through the streets of Uvira, while local and military sources said the militia had control of the provincial governor’s headquarters, city hall and border with neighbouring Burundi.

Streets had emptied, shops shuttered and soldiers fled after the militia’s entry late on Tuesday plunged the city of several hundred thousand residents into uncertainty over who was in charge.

It comes less than a year after the anti-government group seized Goma and Bukavu, two provincial capitals in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been plagued by conflict for around three decades.

“I went to the border that separates our two countries; I saw that it’s M23 fighters who are manning the checkpoint on the Congolese side,” a Burundian army officer told AFP.

A civil society representative and a local official confirmed the presence of the group’s fighters at the provincial governor’s headquarters and city hall.

The latest offensive – launched on December 1 against the Congolese army backed by Burundian forces and allied armed groups – has further shaken hopes that an agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump will succeed in halting the conflict.

Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame signed the deal in Washington last Thursday.

“Signing an agreement and not implementing it is a humiliation for everyone, and first and foremost for President Trump,” Burundian Foreign Minister Edouard Bizimana told AFP.

“It’s truly a slap in the face to the United States, a middle finger,” he said, calling for sanctions against Rwanda.

Rwanda accused the DRC and Burundi of deliberately violating the peace agreement, in a statement Wednesday. A day earlier, the United States and European powers urged the M23 to “immediately halt” its offensive and for Rwanda to pull its troops out of eastern DRC.

Thousands flee DR Congo fighting as M23 enters key city

Border closed

Burundi, which neighbours both the DRC and Rwanda, views the prospect of Uvira falling to Rwanda-backed forces as an existential threat.

Uvira sits across Lake Tanganyika from the Burundian economic capital Bujumbura, with only around 20 kilometres (12 miles) between the two cities.

Burundi’s main border posts with the DRC were closed on Tuesday afternoon and are now considered “military zones”, military and police sources told AFP.

The M23 has closed the border on the Congolese side, according to local and military sources, though it is not yet clear whether the armed group has taken control of Uvira.

Several Congolese army soldiers and members of pro-DRC militia were still seen in the area of Uvira, military sources and witnesses said.

A few stray shots were reported.

Residents speaking to AFP by telephone reported an “every-man-for-himself” mentality and growing panic.

“The residents are locked inside their homes,” one told AFP.

“We don’t understand anything, we can only wait for new authorities to take over. We can’t remain without an army or police,” said another.

Congolese soldiers, some of whom had abandoned their weapons and uniforms, fled, looting shops and a pharmacy as they went, according to witnesses and military sources.

M23, DR Congo ink fresh framework agreement for a peace deal in Doha

Threatened

More than 40,000 Congolese have fled the fighting and arrived in Burundi in the space of a week, the Burundian foreign minister told AFP.

According to an initial estimate by United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA, more than 200,000 people have been displaced within South Kivu province since December 2.

Meanwhile, thousands of others have crossed the border into neighbouring countries, especially Burundi but also Rwanda.

The latest advance on Uvira marks a new blow for the Congolese government.

According to several European diplomatic sources, the DRC fears the M23 pushing on towards the copper- and cobalt-rich Katanga province in the southeast, the vast country’s mining hub — which the state relies on to fill its coffers thanks to mining companies’ taxes.

The peace agreement — which Trump called a “miracle” deal — includes an economic portion intended to secure US supplies of critical minerals present in the region, as the United States seeks to challenge China’s dominance in the sector.

The M23 is supported by up to 7,000 Rwandan troops in the Congolese east, according to UN experts, who accuse Rwanda of seeking to extract the DRC’s mineral wealth.

Burundi, which has thorny relations with Rwanda and fears a wider conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes region, has deployed around 18,000 men to eastern DRC.

Over €1.5 billion pledged for Africa’s Great Lakes region at Paris conference

While denying giving the M23 military support, Rwanda argues it faces an existential threat from the presence across the Congolese border of ethnic Hutu militants with links to the 1994 Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis.

The arrests, which reportedly took place on Wednesday, were carried out as part of investigations into the sale of illegal products on online marketplaces including Asian giants Shein and AliExpress.

A source close to the investigation told French news agency AFP the arrests took place “across the whole of the country” as part of several separate inquiries.

According to French daily Libération, which first reported the arrests, the suspects are men, five of whom are known to the authorities for child abuse offences.

One of the arrests took place near Nice, the city’s public prosecutor Damien Martinelli confirmed to AFP.

According to Libération, officers searching the suspect’s home found a sex doll ordered earlier this year from the AliExpress website, as well as two other dolls with a childlike appearance.

Police are conducting interviews in Toulouse, Verdun and Rouen, Franceinfo public media reported.

French police dismantle widespread paedophilia network hidden on Telegram

Online marketplaces in firing line

In early November, the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) asked prosecutors to look into the sale of childlike sex dolls by the e-commerce giant Shein.

The Paris prosecutor’s office later announced that it instructed the Office for Minors to pursue four investigations, covering the sale of illegal products on platforms Shein, AliExpress, Temu and Wish.

The investigations concern the “distribution of violent, pornographic or dignity-violating content accessible to a minor” across the four sites, the prosecutor’s office said.

In the case of Shein and AliExpress, which were offering dolls with a childlike appearance, the investigations also relate to the “distribution of the image or representation of a minor of a pornographic nature”.

Temu said the DGCCRF’s referral “did not in any way relate to the sale of sex dolls with a childlike appearance”, while Shein and AliExpress said they had removed all the listings identified.

Survivors decry failures exposed in France’s biggest paedophilia trial

Call for controls

In the town of Melun, south of Paris, an investigation has been opened against the company ObeyMe Dolls for selling dolls with a childlike appearance.

At the end of November, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced it was taking online marketplaces AliExpress and Joom to court for selling childlike sex dolls.

It also announced an inquiry targeting the US platform eBay. Trade Minister Serge Papin said that sales of “category A weapons, such as knuckledusters and machetes” had been detected on eBay, as well as on Wish, Temu and AliExpress.

French judges will rule on 19 December on the government’s request to suspend Shein for three months over the sale of illegal products.

Last week France called for Shein to put controls in place on its website, including age verification and filtering.

(with AFP)

At a Council of Europe meeting in Strasbourg on Wednesday, justice ministers from the organisation’s 46 member states defended the need to revamp the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) for the modern age.

It came six months after nine countries – including Italy, Denmark, Poland and Belgium – published a letter criticising the ECHR for setting “too many limits” on their power to expel people from their territories.

The 46 nations will now work towards adopting a “political declaration” on the issue of migration at a summit next May.

Alain Berset, secretary-general of the Council of Europe, which oversees the convention, said signatory countries were not calling for the treaty itself to be rewritten.

“It was the start of a process, on a consensus basis, because it is the only way to make some progress,” he told reporters after Wednesday’s meeting.

Migration issues ‘high on agenda’

The talks took place as Europe continues to tighten migration policy.

In early December, European Union member states agreed to make deportations easier and to expand the processing of asylum seekers outside Europe.

In recent years, the link between the European Convention on Human Rights and national measures to control migration has become the subject of intense political debate in many Council of Europe states.

“Migration issues are high on the agenda of countries and people across Europe,” said Berset ahead of the meeting.

“The European Convention on Human Rights provides the framework we need to address these issues effectively and responsibly. Our task is not to weaken the convention, but to keep it strong and relevant – to ensure that liberty and security, justice and responsibility, are held in balance.”

According to various sources cited by legal analysts, between 15 and 20 states now back the initiative launched by Denmark and Italy to narrow how parts of the convention are applied in migration cases.

Some governments have gone further. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has threatened to denounce the convention if a ruling expected in early 2026 on Polish pushbacks of migrants goes against his government.

EU pushes ahead with overhaul of migration rules as ‘return hubs’ approved

Push for reform

The debate centres on two key articles of the convention often used by those challenging deportation orders. Article 3 bans torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. Article 8 protects the right to respect for private and family life.

Belgian jurist Marc Bossuyt, a former president of Belgium’s constitutional court and a critic of the ECHR’s approach to migration, told French daily Le Monde that governments are “fed up with the interpretation of the Strasbourg court”.

He said he believes in these instruments and the rule of law, but argued that “international treaties established long ago must be applied in current circumstances”.

Bossuyt said the ECHR’s reading of Article 3 goes too far by not only banning torture but also requiring states to provide a “decent asylum procedure” and “decent reception” for asylum seekers, which he argues falls outside the article.

He also called for a more restrictive reading of Article 8, warning that as long as the court in Strasbourg interprets it broadly, “it is normal that national judges follow it”.

In the UK, the debate has seen calls by the right-wing Conservative Party and anti-immigration Reform UK to quit the convention.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, of the left-wing Labour Party, has instead pushed for reform from within.

In a joint article with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, he argued that the convention should be updated to deal with “mass mobility” and said that “listening to legitimate concerns and acting on them is what our politics is about”.

British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has already announced plans to curb the use of Article 8 in deportation appeals and to reassess how Article 3 is applied. She said the definition of these rights “has reached the heights of absurdity”.

“Today we try to deport criminals, but we find it is impossible because the prisons in their home countries have cells deemed too small, or even mental health services less effective than ours,” she said.

Under pressure? EU states on edge over migrant redistribution plan

Warnings from legal experts

Many legal scholars reject the claim that the court is blocking migration control. Strasbourg law professor Peggy Ducoulombier told Le Monde that in 10 years, immigration cases made up less than 2 percent of the court’s 420,000 applications and that more than 90 percent were rejected as inadmissible or because there was no violation.

“One can disagree with a ruling, but this system protects all of us,” she said. “We have a lot to lose by weakening it.”

Céline Romainville, a law professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, said many attacks on the court “blow up one ruling without putting it in context” and do not take into account the full body of case law.

Officials at the Council of Europe and legal commentators say states are now working towards an interpretative declaration on migration and the convention, to be agreed by 2026, which would give political guidance to the court on how to apply the treaty.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has warned that journalists are facing increasing dangers worldwide, with Israel emerging as the most lethal country for media workers for the third year running.

In its annual report, the Paris-based watchdog says 67 journalists were killed over the past 12 months – and almost half of them died in Gaza at the hands of Israeli forces.

Twenty-nine Palestinian journalists were killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the reporting period, alongside what RSF calls “a whole strategy” by Israeli authorities that has severely restricted reporting on the conflict.

The NGO’s director Thibaud Bruttin told RFI that the pattern of deaths in Gaza cannot be dismissed as the tragic fallout of war.

“There has been a whole strategy that has been put in place since October 2023,” he explained.

“First, there has been the decision to block the entry of Gaza to international journalists. Second, there has been a unit set up within the Israel Defence Forces to smear Palestinian journalists… and then we’ve seen massive strikes against journalists, which have been actually claimed as targeted strikes by the IDF.”

RSF says nearly 220 journalists have been killed since the Gaza war began in late 2023. Of those, the organisation believes 56 have been deliberately targeted.

Bruttin stressed that RSF is not including people loosely associated with Hamas in that count, as some Israeli officials have claimed.

“We’re talking about journalists – reporters who have been working, some of them for years, with respected international outlets – and these independent reporters have been deliberately targeted by the IDF.”

The report also highlights one of the deadliest attacks on media workers this year – a so-called ‘double-tap’ strike on a hospital in south Gaza on 25 August, which killed five journalists, including contributors to news agencies Reuters and the Associated Press.

French unions take Israel to court for restricting media access to Gaza

Information blackout

A key concern for RSF is the ongoing block on independent media access to Gaza. Foreign reporters can only enter on tightly controlled military tours, despite sustained calls from media groups and press freedom organisations.

The Foreign Press Association in Israel has taken the matter to court, challenging the IDF’s decision to deny access.

Bruttin said the case has reached a critical point. “There has been an intermediary decision by the Supreme Court… and we’re expecting any time in the coming weeks a decision which should, we hope, enable the press to enter.”

He added that a combination of the restrictions and IDF smear campaigns has cooled global solidarity with Palestinian journalists.

“The smear campaign … has had an impact on the solidarity among the profession,” he said. “It has been very hard to attract the attention of news media globally, and these news media outlets have been very timid in voicing concern over the fate of Palestinian journalists.”

But the scale of the recent strikes appears to have shifted sentiment. According to Bruttin, the deadly attacks of 10 and 25 August prompted “an uptick in the interest of media around this”, allowing RSF to launch a major drive on 1 September that “blew away the smear campaign of the IDF”.

With a fragile ceasefire now in place, he hopes momentum will grow around reopening access to Gaza and restoring independent reporting.

‘Nowhere in Gaza is safe’ says RFI correspondent amid call for global media access

Beyond the Middle East

While Gaza dominates the headlines, RSF’s report shows that the risks for journalists are a global concern.

Mexico remains one of the world’s most perilous environments for reporters, despite government pledges of greater protection. Nine journalists were killed there in 2025 – the deadliest year in at least three years.

Bruttin warns that the danger is spreading across Latin America. “The phenomenon has extended beyond the borders of Mexico,” he said. “We’ve seen journalists killed in Honduras, in Guatemala, in Peru, in Ecuador, in Colombia.”

Around a quarter of all journalists killed this year were in Latin America, with many targeted by cartels, narco-traffickers and armed groups. This trend, he said, is “very concerning” and presents a serious challenge for governments attempting to safeguard reporters.

Sudan and Ukraine also continue to be among the most dangerous places from which to report, with conflict making journalists prime targets on all sides.

Global press freedom at ‘tipping point’, media watchdog RSF warns

Journalists detained

Alongside killings, RSF’s report documents a surge in the number of journalists imprisoned for their work.

As of early December, 503 journalists were behind bars in 47 countries. China tops the list with 121 detained, followed by Russia with 48 and Myanmar with 47.

Bruttin believes the international community can do far more to secure the release of detained reporters.

“We need to effectively, deliberately campaign for the release of journalists,” he said. He pointed to the case of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, who was released as part of a prisoner swap with Russia. “If governments prioritise the release of journalists, they can meet success.”

He expressed particular concern for the 26 Ukrainian journalists detained by Russia, many “outside of any legal framework”.

He told RFI that Ukraine has the ability to prioritise their release through prisoner exchanges, citing a recent precedent in which RSF helped confirm proof of life for a detained Ukrainian reporter, forcing Russia to acknowledge holding him. “He was part of one of the latest prisoner swaps,” Bruttin noted.

Although the overall number of journalist deaths remains below the highs of the early 2010s, RSF says the deliberate targeting of reporters and the erosion of access to information are becoming worryingly entrenched.

The bill scraped through by 247 votes to 234, with 93 abstentions, after weeks of bargaining and a tense day that ended with ministers hugging when the result was read out.

On the platform X, Lecornu praised what he called a “majority of responsibility” and said the result showed that “compromise is not a slogan, it allows us to move forward in the general interest”.

MPs from President Macron’s centrist Renaissance party, its ally MoDem, the centre-left Socialist Party and the cross-party LIOT group largely backed the text, while the far-right National Rally, its Ciotti allies, France Unbowed and some Communists voted against.

The minister for relations with Parliament, Laurent Panifous, told centrist daily Le Monde that the outcome would shape how lawmakers approach the government’s next big budget, the upcoming finance bill.

The lack of a clear majority has added to the pressure. Socialist leader Olivier Faure said “this victory is first of all that of parliament itself”.

French unions call for day of strike action as draft budget enters crucial stage

Pensions, parental leave

The deal that allowed the budget to pass includes suspending part of the pension reform, a key Socialist demand accepted by centrists.

More than 400,000 workers will retire earlier than expected. The retirement age for people born in 1964 will be capped at 62 years and nine months, with the same for those born in the first quarter of 1965.

New parents will receive a two-month birth leave, paid at 70 percent of salary for the first month and 60 percent for the second. 

Debates stretched across 106 hours as the government tried to satisfy both left and right. Pierre Cazeneuve, a Renaissance MP, said “a good compromise is when, at the end, nobody is really happy”.

To fund the plan, household financial assets such as stock market shares will be taxed more, and private health insurers will face a €1 billion levy. The government also plans to limit sick leave prescriptions to a maximum of one month.

Several planned measures were dropped. Medical co-payments will not rise and social benefits will not be frozen. Retirement pensions will increase as scheduled next year.

France in turmoil: ‘No one is willing to say the country needs to make sacrifices’

Political fault lines

Abstentions proved decisive. Republicans leader Laurent Wauquiez urged his MPs not to be “a blocking factor” given the advances obtained. Horizons MPs mostly abstained despite leader Paul Christophe criticising “a text without balance, without vision, without responsibility”.

The Greens also split, with 26 abstaining, three voting for and nine voting against. Parliamentary leader Cyrielle Chatelain said: “If I listened to my heart and my gut, I would vote against this text,” but argued the group had “avoided disaster”.

The Health Ministry says the social security deficit will reach €19.6 billion in 2026, €2 billion more than the government’s target. National Rally MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy told TF1 that France is heading for “a deficit never reached in a time without economic crisis”.

The bill now goes to the Senate on Friday, where many senators expect to reject it before sending it back to the assembly for a final vote next week.

The ban, which runs from 12 December to 31 March, prohibits consuming the gas in public areas, carrying or transporting it by minors and abandoning cartridges or canisters in public spaces across the department.

Nitrous oxide is used legitimately in medicine and cooking but has become popular among young people for its euphoric effects. One dangerous side effect is loss of control.

“We must not wait for a tragedy to strike Jura before taking action,” the prefect said – adding the aim is to limit misuse, especially among young people.

Public radio France Bleu said a similar order was adopted months earlier in the department of Doubs.

France considers restrictions on laughing gas sales to combat recreational use

Fatal crash

The move follows a deadly crash on last Wednesday in Alès in southern France, where three young people were killed after their car missed a bend, hit the wall of a house with a swimming pool, overturned and landed in the water.

A 19-year-old driver and two teenagers aged 14 and 15 drowned.

“Those in the front were positive for nitrous oxide, with a relatively high level for the 19-year-old and a lower level for the 14-year-old,” Alès prosecutor Abdelkrim Grini told the French news agency AFP after receiving final toxicology results.

“This confirms our first impressions, since canisters of nitrous oxide had been found in the car,” he said.

Grini said the 19-year-old was also positive for cannabis and a blood alhocol reading of 0.7. He said the crash followed the start of a short chase. Police had briefly tried to stop the three about an hour earlier as they took part in what he called “rodeos”.

French news agency AFP reported that in early November in Lille a 19-year-old man was killed by a driver fleeing police who had consumed nitrous oxide.

No laughing matter: France moves to tackle recreational use of nitrous oxide

Health concerns

Health authorities warn the practice exposes users to immediate risks including suffocation, loss of consciousness, disorientation and dizziness. Regular use or high doses can damage the spinal cord or lead to anaemia or mental health problems.

In Jura, the prefecture said a nine-year-old child was hit and seriously injured in February 2023 by a driver who admitted he had been under the influence of nitrous oxide. The child was incapacitated for 45 days.

France’s anti-drug office, OFAST, said cartridges cost €20 to €30 euros for 80 balloons of gas and that marketing has become more attractive, with colourful packaging, fruity flavours and rapid delivery through social media.

The Jura prefecture warned that an organised trade has developed, structured around import and distribution networks, adding that young people from secondary school to university are the main targets.

(with newswires)

Nearly a year after Cyclone Chido devastated Mayotte, large parts of the Indian Ocean archipelago remain visibly battered, with reconstruction advancing far more slowly than promised.

While emergency work on secondary schools allowed them to reopen to pupils in August, most public buildings and homes still bear deep scars.

In the capital Mamoudzou’s Hauts-Vallons neighbourhood – a residential district popular with civil servants – mounds of rubble lie untouched.

According to the Housing Foundation: “Sixty percent of the island’s buildings were damaged or destroyed and more than two-thirds of collective housing suffered damage.”

Ahmed Ali Mondroha, managing director of Mayotte’s main social housing provider, said the scale of destruction has proven overwhelming.

“It took us a long time to start the work,” he said, estimating the total cost of the damage at €72 million. “Of the 1,600 homes affected, 500 have been restored to use and around 600 are currently undergoing repairs.”

But even with crews on site, he says progress has been hampered by a succession of obstacles

“Construction companies do not always have the necessary materials, prices have skyrocketed since the cyclone hit – sheet metal, for example, has increased by 40 percent – and delivery times have lengthened.”

Schools in Mayotte set to reopen as unions warn cyclone recovery still lags

Supply delays

Julian Champiat, president of the Mayotte Federation of Building and Public Works (FMBTP), also spoke of the pressure on logistics, saying it now takes four months to receive an order of materials, compared with two months previously.

These delays are largely attributed to clogged customs procedures at Longoni’s commercial port, where a surge in containers has created bottlenecks.

Adding to the strain, many companies are struggling financially, with cash flow weakened by a slow restart in activity and a wave of payment defaults, causing further delays across the construction sector.

“The economic fabric is greatly weakened,” said Fahardine Mohamed, president of the Medef employers union in Mayotte.

Public sector finances – which underpin around 70 percent of the local economy – are, he said, “at an all-time low”.

After the cyclone, local authorities “committed to spending to deal with the emergency, and they are at the end of their term of office,” he noted, leaving budgets severely depleted.

Macron unveils €3bn package to rebuild cyclone-hit Mayotte

Exposed to the elements

Authorities too have been hit hard. In central Mamoudzou, part of the town hall roof was torn off and several offices remain unusable.

Higher up the hillside, the headquarters of the Dembéni-Mamoudzou urban community – Cadema – is still covered with tarpaulin rather than tiles.

“We’ve been working from home since the cyclone hit,” said one local authority employee, who asked not to be named. “My office is unusable, there are water leaks everywhere and when it rains, the electricity cuts out. Nothing has been done. The local authorities have no money left.”

Insurance payouts, too, are lagging. “We’re waiting for around €20 million,” said Mondroha.

At the Camion Blanc restaurant on Mamoudzou’s seafront, Melie Razafindrasoa prepares a papaya juice and notes one small sign of normality returning.

“We’re seeing [people] again at the market,” she said cheerfully. But her smile fades when she talks about her own home, saying she has still not received any insurance money.

“We lost the windows and a door of the house during the cyclone. We repaired them ourselves, but every time it rains, the rooms are flooded,” she explained, adding that she remains “very afraid of another cyclone coming”.

The rainy season has just begun, bringing more frequent storms. “Last time, there was a lot of wind and rain. My children were very scared, they are still traumatised.”

(with AFP)

For this final episode of 2025, we look back at the full sweep of the African continent’s history.

Sixty years after launching its ambitious project to recover, document and narrate Africa’s past from prehistory to the present day, Unesco has announced the completion of the last three volumes of the General History of Africa.

Relaunched in 2018, the project seeks to translate this body of knowledge into educational resources for teaching the continent’s history. Three new volumes – IX, X and XI – have now been published, introducing fresh material and innovative approaches.

Our special guest reflects on the project and on African history more broadly: UNESCO’s assistant director-general for social and human sciences, Lidia Brito, who discusses these three new volumes.

In the second part of this episode, we also welcome the Congolese artist and filmmaker Sammy Baloji, who discusses his new film The Tree of Authenticity, recently screened at Film Africa in London and now available on the website of the Franco-German television channel ARTE.

Rapper and sorcerer-poet, Baloji, works his magic on new album

The documentary begins in Yangambi, in the Congo, in search of the remnants of a former research centre for tropical agriculture, bearing witness to the country’s colonial past at the heart of the continent.

In doing so, it highlights the links between colonisation and the climate crisis, adopting an unusual perspective: that of the “tree of authenticity”, which plays a decisive role in regulating the climate.

Congolese filmmaker Baloji mixes magic with biting social commentary

Episode edited and mixed by Melissa Chemam and Erwan Rome.

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

US President Donald Trump is pressuring Kyiv to accept a deal formulated by Washington, the initial version of which was criticised by Ukraine’s allies as overly favourable to Russia.

“We are working today (Tuesday) and will continue tomorrow (Wednesday). I think we will hand it over tomorrow,” Zelensky told reporters after shuttling between European capitals to hammer out a response with allies.

Trump, who earlier accused Zelensky of not reading the latest US proposals, said Russia had the “upper hand” in the conflict, in an interview with Politico published on Tuesday.

He also accused Kyiv of “using war” to avoid elections, which have been postponed under the imposition of martial law since Russia invaded its neighbour.

“You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore,” Trump said.

Ukrainian law prohibits holding elections under martial law, without which a presidential ballot was to have taken place in March 2024.

France’s Macron to meet Ukraine, UK and German leaders to discuss US peace plan

But on Tuesday, following Trump’s comments, Zelensky said he was ready to organise a new ballot.

“I am ready for the elections,” Zelensky told journalists, adding that he was asking Ukrainian lawmakers to prepare “proposals regarding the possibility of amending the legislative foundations and the law on elections during martial law”.

He said that, for the vote to take place, security had to be assured in the country whose cities come under Russian drone and missile attacks on a daily basis.

“I am now asking, I declare this openly, for the United States of America to help me, possibly together with European colleagues, to ensure security for holding elections,” he said.

‘No legal right’

Zelensky spent the past few days shuttling between European capitals to hammer out a response to the US plan. On Monday he held talks with European leaders in London and Brussels. On Tuesday, he went to Italy to meet Pope Leo XIV and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Washington‘s proposals involved Ukraine surrendering land that Russia has not captured — the entire industrial Donbas region — in return for security promises that fall short of Kyiv’s aspirations to join NATO.

Zelensky on Monday said Washington’s 28-point plan had been revised to 20 points after US-Ukraine talks at the weekend.

He said the land issue and international security guarantees were two of the main sticking points.

“Do we envision ceding territories? We have no legal right to do so, under Ukrainian law, our constitution and international law. And we don’t have any moral right either,” Zelensky said.

“The key is to know what our partners will be ready to do in the event of new aggression by Russia. At the moment, we have not received any answer to this question,” he said.

During a televised event on Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin called Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region Russia’s “historical territory”.

“This territory is important; it is our historical territory, absolutely,” he said.

Ukraine seeks $43bn in climate compensation from Russia over war

Trump criticises Europe

Trump has blown hot and cold on Ukraine since returning to office in January, initially chastising Zelensky for not being grateful for US support.

But he was also frustrated that efforts to persuade Putin to end the war had failed to produce results, and he recently slapped new sanctions on Russian oil firms.

European allies have expressed solidarity with Ukraine.

Pope Leo XIV said after meeting Zelensky that “The remarks that are made about Europe also in interviews recently, I think, are trying to break apart what I think needs to be a very important alliance today and in the future.”

The US pope also warned that “seeking a peace agreement without including Europe in the discussions, let’s say, is unrealistic.”

“The war is in Europe, and I think that Europe must be part of the guarantees we are seeking for security today and in the future. Unfortunately, not everyone understands this,” he said.

The Elysée Palace confirmed on Tuesday that President Emmanuel Macron took a hands-on role, leading a coordination drive and ensuring rapid information exchanges with regional partners in a bid to offset last weekend’s coup attempt in Benin.

Macron reportedly spoke on Sunday with Benin’s President Patrice Talon – whom mutinous soldiers had sought to topple – as well as leaders in Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone currently holds the presidency of Ecowas, the West African regional bloc that mobilised military support to help stave off the takeover.

Benin was thrown into crisis on Sunday when renegade soldiers appeared on national television declaring Talon had been overthrown.

Armed clashes followed the putsch, leaving dozens dead before Benin’s military – aided by Ecowas forces – managed to restore order.

The latest attempt at a military take-over in West Africa touched a nerve across a region, where a string of coups in recent years have tested democratic resilience and left governments on edge.

The situation “caused great concern to the President of the Republic,” the Elysée said, stressing Macron’s unequivocal condemnation of what it described as a destabilisation attempt that fortunately failed.

It also underlined France’s political support for the Economic Community of West African States, which it said had “made a very significant effort this weekend” to reinforce Benin’s loyalist troops and help reassert state control.

France condemns attempted coup in Benin, president says situation is ‘under control’

Opposition reaction

In Benin, the political response was swift. Former president Thomas Boni Yayi, now a leading opposition figure, released a video on Facebook condemning the coup attempt “in the strongest possible terms,” calling it a “bloody and despicable attack on our country.”

Yayi, who governed from 2006 to 2016, reminded viewers that a peaceful transfer of power must rest on one core democratic principle: the ballot box, expressed through free and transparent elections.

Yet those very elections are proving contentious. His party, Les Démocrates, has been barred from fielding a candidate in the April 2026 presidential contest after the Electoral Commission rejected the nomination of Renaud Agbodjo for lacking the sufficient amount of sponsors.

The ruling raises the stakes in a vote already shaped by the impending departure of Talon, who must step down after completing the two terms permitted by the constitution.

The presidential race is expected to pit the governing camp’s candidate – Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni – against former minister and teacher Paul Hounkpè, described as a moderate alternative.

Benin authorities say coup attempt foiled, President Talon safe

Widening risks and shifting alliances

Meanwhile, Ecowas officials are sounding the alarm over deeper structural issues driving unrest in the region.

Speaking after a regular session of the organisation on Tuesday, Ecowas Commission chairman Omar Alieu Touray warned that elections themselves have increasingly become “a major trigger for instability” in West Africa.

He pointed to what he termed a “growing erosion of electoral inclusiveness” in several countries, suggesting narrowing political space could be feeding frustration and, ultimately, upheaval.

Touray also urged engagement with the neighbouring Alliance of Sahel States (AES) – the confederation formed by Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso after their withdrawal from Ecowas following military takeovers.

All three remain gripped by jihadist violence that continues to spill southward into coastal states such as Benin and Togo.

Negotiating new terms of security cooperation with the AES, he said, would be essential as the region confronts the ongoing threat posed by armed groups along shared borders.

“Our community is in a state of emergency,” Touray concluded, while the region is wrestling with a particularly volatile mix of political upheaval, security pressures and institutional fragility.

(with newswires)

Coming into effect on 9 December 1905, the law separating church and state is one of the founding texts of the principle of secularism, or laïcité.

It stipulates that “the Republic ensures freedom of conscience” and “guarantees the free exercise of religion” while respecting public order.

It neither recognises, nor pays the salaries of, nor subsidises any religion.

The law, drafted notably by politicians Jean Jaurès and Aristide Briand is a cornerstone of French Republican values.

“The Republic guarantees us freedom of thought, freedom to express what we want, freedom to believe as well as freedom not to believe, freedom to pray, to philosophise, to dogmatise, freedom of the mind, freedom to laugh, freedom to caricature,” Macron stated in an address broadcast on social media platform X, on Tuesday.

Divisive debates

“This law also states that faith is not above the law, that no one can impose their way of believing in their religion on another simply because they believe their faith is superior to the law,” he insisted.

Surveys have shown that the French public has only a partial understanding of laïcité – though a large majority believe it is under threat.

This sketchy understanding of what is meant to be a cornerstone of French law and the idea of vivre ensemble (national cohesion) has left plenty of room for rival interpretations over the years, leading to heated and divisive debates across the political spectrum.

Paty murder puts focus on role of teachers in passing on French values

For Macron, the secularism law goes hand in hand with the role of free public education in French society.

“We must defend secularism, the 1905 law, and the nation’s schools to remain free, to make our own choices in society and in our personal lives,” Macron explained.

The Jules Ferry laws of the late 19th century made school secular, free and compulsory for children aged 3 to 16.

Macron emphasised the public school system as “the surest way to be free and learn”.

“It offers every child the transmission of knowledge, positive knowledge, free from any religious, cultural, or identity-based bias,” Macron insisted.

Tribute to slain teachers

Macron also paid tribute to teachers Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard, “victims of the obscurantism of Islamist terrorism, which has been trying in vain to force us to submit for several years.”

47-year-old Paty was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old Islamist radical of Chechen origin after showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a class on ethics and civic values.

Paty’s killing took place just weeks after the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo republished the cartoons, which originally appeared in 2015.

Bernard was stabbed to death in Arras, in northern France, in October 2023 by a former student of Chechen origin, who was on France’s terror watch list.

Macron referred to the men as “shining examples, guiding our path and our conduct in and through secularism”.

He paid tribute to generations of teachers “faithful to the secular spirit of Jules Ferry, Aristide Briand, Jean Jaurès, and Ferdinand Buisson, who have guided the consciences of successive generations of young people on the path to emancipation.”

(with AFP)

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has warned that journalists are facing increasing dangers worldwide, with Israel emerging as the most lethal country for media workers for the third year running.

In its annual report, the Paris-based watchdog says 67 journalists were killed over the past 12 months – and almost half of them died in Gaza at the hands of Israeli forces.

Twenty-nine Palestinian journalists were killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the reporting period, alongside what RSF calls “a whole strategy” by Israeli authorities that has severely restricted reporting on the conflict.

The NGO’s director Thibaud Bruttin told RFI that the pattern of deaths in Gaza cannot be dismissed as the tragic fallout of war.

“There has been a whole strategy that has been put in place since October 2023,” he explained.

“First, there has been the decision to block the entry of Gaza to international journalists. Second, there has been a unit set up within the Israel Defence Forces to smear Palestinian journalists… and then we’ve seen massive strikes against journalists, which have been actually claimed as targeted strikes by the IDF.”

RSF says nearly 220 journalists have been killed since the Gaza war began in late 2023. Of those, the organisation believes 56 have been deliberately targeted.

Bruttin stressed that RSF is not including people loosely associated with Hamas in that count, as some Israeli officials have claimed.

“We’re talking about journalists – reporters who have been working, some of them for years, with respected international outlets – and these independent reporters have been deliberately targeted by the IDF.”

The report also highlights one of the deadliest attacks on media workers this year – a so-called ‘double-tap’ strike on a hospital in south Gaza on 25 August, which killed five journalists, including contributors to news agencies Reuters and the Associated Press.

French unions take Israel to court for restricting media access to Gaza

Information blackout

A key concern for RSF is the ongoing block on independent media access to Gaza. Foreign reporters can only enter on tightly controlled military tours, despite sustained calls from media groups and press freedom organisations.

The Foreign Press Association in Israel has taken the matter to court, challenging the IDF’s decision to deny access.

Bruttin said the case has reached a critical point. “There has been an intermediary decision by the Supreme Court… and we’re expecting any time in the coming weeks a decision which should, we hope, enable the press to enter.”

He added that a combination of the restrictions and IDF smear campaigns has cooled global solidarity with Palestinian journalists.

“The smear campaign … has had an impact on the solidarity among the profession,” he said. “It has been very hard to attract the attention of news media globally, and these news media outlets have been very timid in voicing concern over the fate of Palestinian journalists.”

But the scale of the recent strikes appears to have shifted sentiment. According to Bruttin, the deadly attacks of 10 and 25 August prompted “an uptick in the interest of media around this”, allowing RSF to launch a major drive on 1 September that “blew away the smear campaign of the IDF”.

With a fragile ceasefire now in place, he hopes momentum will grow around reopening access to Gaza and restoring independent reporting.

‘Nowhere in Gaza is safe’ says RFI correspondent amid call for global media access

Beyond the Middle East

While Gaza dominates the headlines, RSF’s report shows that the risks for journalists are a global concern.

Mexico remains one of the world’s most perilous environments for reporters, despite government pledges of greater protection. Nine journalists were killed there in 2025 – the deadliest year in at least three years.

Bruttin warns that the danger is spreading across Latin America. “The phenomenon has extended beyond the borders of Mexico,” he said. “We’ve seen journalists killed in Honduras, in Guatemala, in Peru, in Ecuador, in Colombia.”

Around a quarter of all journalists killed this year were in Latin America, with many targeted by cartels, narco-traffickers and armed groups. This trend, he said, is “very concerning” and presents a serious challenge for governments attempting to safeguard reporters.

Sudan and Ukraine also continue to be among the most dangerous places from which to report, with conflict making journalists prime targets on all sides.

Global press freedom at ‘tipping point’, media watchdog RSF warns

Journalists detained

Alongside killings, RSF’s report documents a surge in the number of journalists imprisoned for their work.

As of early December, 503 journalists were behind bars in 47 countries. China tops the list with 121 detained, followed by Russia with 48 and Myanmar with 47.

Bruttin believes the international community can do far more to secure the release of detained reporters.

“We need to effectively, deliberately campaign for the release of journalists,” he said. He pointed to the case of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, who was released as part of a prisoner swap with Russia. “If governments prioritise the release of journalists, they can meet success.”

He expressed particular concern for the 26 Ukrainian journalists detained by Russia, many “outside of any legal framework”.

He told RFI that Ukraine has the ability to prioritise their release through prisoner exchanges, citing a recent precedent in which RSF helped confirm proof of life for a detained Ukrainian reporter, forcing Russia to acknowledge holding him. “He was part of one of the latest prisoner swaps,” Bruttin noted.

Although the overall number of journalist deaths remains below the highs of the early 2010s, RSF says the deliberate targeting of reporters and the erosion of access to information are becoming worryingly entrenched.

For this final episode of 2025, we look back at the full sweep of the African continent’s history.

Sixty years after launching its ambitious project to recover, document and narrate Africa’s past from prehistory to the present day, Unesco has announced the completion of the last three volumes of the General History of Africa.

Relaunched in 2018, the project seeks to translate this body of knowledge into educational resources for teaching the continent’s history. Three new volumes – IX, X and XI – have now been published, introducing fresh material and innovative approaches.

Our special guest reflects on the project and on African history more broadly: UNESCO’s assistant director-general for social and human sciences, Lidia Brito, who discusses these three new volumes.

In the second part of this episode, we also welcome the Congolese artist and filmmaker Sammy Baloji, who discusses his new film The Tree of Authenticity, recently screened at Film Africa in London and now available on the website of the Franco-German television channel ARTE.

Rapper and sorcerer-poet, Baloji, works his magic on new album

The documentary begins in Yangambi, in the Congo, in search of the remnants of a former research centre for tropical agriculture, bearing witness to the country’s colonial past at the heart of the continent.

In doing so, it highlights the links between colonisation and the climate crisis, adopting an unusual perspective: that of the “tree of authenticity”, which plays a decisive role in regulating the climate.

Congolese filmmaker Baloji mixes magic with biting social commentary

Episode edited and mixed by Melissa Chemam and Erwan Rome.

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

The Turkish government on Thursday summoned both Russian and Ukrainian envoys, warning them to desist from escalating the conflict in the Black Sea.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the past week’s attacks on three Russian tankers as “unjustifiable”. Kyiv said its drones targeted two of the vessels, and Moscow has warned it may consider striking the ships of countries supporting Ukraine if such attacks continue.

“This escalation is very dangerous; no one can estimate what will happen,” warns international relations expert and former Turkish presidential advisor Mesut Casin.

“Putin says he will use reciprocity rights. This means some of the [Russian] submarines could attack not only Ukraine but also some of the Western NATO allies’ tanker ships,” he explains, a possibility that raises the threat of “a very big environmental disaster”.

Shadow fleet

Kyiv has claimed responsibility for the drone attacks on two empty Russian-flagged tankers but denied involvement in the strike on a ship carrying sunflower oil to Georgia.

The Russian tankers belong to Moscow’s so-called “shadow fleet“, which is used to circumvent international sanctions by carrying oil and other exports aboard ships not officially registered to the government. 

Given Turkey’s long Black Sea coast, fears of an environmental catastrophe are foremost for Ankara.

“These shadow fleet tankers are not modern and are not in good condition,” observes former Turkish diplomat Selim Kuneralp.

“The Russians provide their own domestic insurance for these ships,” he says. “But how useful and how valid these insurances will be […] remains a question mark.”

How one man’s ship-spotting hobby is helping thwart Russian sanction-busting

Trade implications

With Ukrainian forces destroying much of Russia’s navy in the Black Sea, Moscow has limited capacities to protect its tankers.

Ukraine has so far targeted only empty Russian tankers, but alarm bells are ringing on the potential implications for global trade.

“Both Ukraine and Russia are leading exporters of basic food and agricultural commodities,” notes analyst Atilla Yesilada of GlobalSource Partners.

“Despite massive bombing, Ukraine’s grain export capacity is largely intact and is taking the coastal route. So any impairment of that is bad for the world at a time when we are not certain of crop yields because of the ongoing drought elsewhere.”

Insurance premiums for cargo ships using the Black Sea have already spiked amidst the escalating conflict.

Ankara wary of escalation

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with his NATO counterparts this week, broaching the topic of ensuring safe navigation of the vital sea trade route.

Turkey is already cooperating with its partners in the alliance that share the Black Sea coast, Romania and Bulgaria, to clear sea mines. Fidan said that cooperation could be expanded to enhance shipping security. 

However, any increased NATO involvement in the Black Sea would be borne mainly by the Turkish navy, given that the Romanian and Bulgarian navies are largely coastal forces.

Ships belonging to navies outside the Black Sea have been shut out by Ankara since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, along with Russian warships. Turkey, under the 1936 Montreux Convention, regulates access to the sea and is only allowing warships to enter to return to their home ports.

Turkey’s mediator role in the Ukraine war faces growing US pressure

Former diplomat Kuneralp claims Ankara will be cautious of getting drawn into any conflict in the Black Sea.

“It would put all the burden on Turkey alone. What would it do? Would it try to intervene in a dispute between Russia and Ukraine? That’s unlikely. I would not want that to happen because it would be too risky,” he says.

“And that’s perhaps why there have not been any concrete actions since the start of the war other than talk.”

For now, Turkey – one of the few countries with good relations with both Kyiv and Moscow – is relying on diplomacy, and hoping that Washington’s ongoing peace efforts will succeed.

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.

2026 is right around the corner, and I know you want to be a part of our annual New Year celebration, where, with special guests, we read your New Year’s resolutions. You must get your resolutions to me by 15 December to be included in the show. You don’t want to miss out! Send your New Year’s resolutions to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr

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

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

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

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

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

Go to our website and get started! At the top of the page, click on “Test level”, and you’ll be counselled 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!

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

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

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

Independent RFI English Clubs: Be sure to always include Audrey Iattoni (audrey.iattoni@rfi.fr) from our Listener Relations department in 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 1 November, I asked you to listen to RFI English journalist Melissa Chemam’s podcast Spotlight on Africa: “Inside Côte d’Ivoire’s pivotal election: voices of hope and uncertainty”. Melissa had traveled to Côte d’Ivoire to cover their presidential election and talked to a wide variety of people about their hopes, their fears, and their desires for their country. Near the beginning of the show, Melissa talks about women who, she says, were very involved in the campaigns – as event organizers, supporters, and mothers. Melissa enumerates the main concerns of the Ivorian women – and that was your question. What are the four main concerns the women of Côte d’Ivoire voiced during the presidential campaign?

The answers are, as Melissa noted in her podcast, work, school for kids, childcare, and healthcare.

In addition to the quiz question, there was the bonus question: How do you make friends as an adult?

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

The winners are: RFI Listeners Club member Father Stephen Wara. Father Stephen is also the winner of this week’s bonus question. Congratulations on your double win, Father Steve!

Also on the list of lucky winners this week are RFI Listeners Club members Zenon Teles, the president of the Christian – Marxist – Leninist – Maoist Association of Listening DX-ers in Goa, India; Radhakrishna Pillai from Kerala State in India; Helmut Matt from Herzbolheim, Germany, and last but not least, Dipita Chakrabarty from New Delhi, India.

Congratulations winners!

Here’s the music you heard on this week’s programme: “Tapez fort” produced by DJ Tevecinq; “The Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov; “The Cakewalk” from Children’s Corner by Claude Debussy, performed by the composer; “Happy” by Pharrell Williams;  “Little Toot” by Allie Wrubel, sung by the Andrews Sisters, and “Little Rootie Tootie” by Thelonious Monk, performed by Monk and the Thelonius Monk Trio. 

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 Jan van der Made’s article “On NATO’s eastern flank, Romania finds itself at the crux of European security”, which will help you with the answer.

You have until 19 January to enter this week’s quiz; the winners will be announced on the 24 January 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

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Click here to find out how you can win a special Sound Kitchen prize.

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The recent murder in Marseille of 20-year-old Mehdi Kessaci, the younger brother of a well-known anti-drugs campaigner, has highlighted the growing problem of drug-related organised crime in France. The government has promised tougher repressive measures, but what if civil society also had a role to play? Inspired by the example of Italy, the Crim’HALT association campaigns for the official recognition of victims of organised crime. Its co-founder, Fabrice Rizzoli, talks about taking ordinary citizens to see firsthand how Italian anti-mafia initiatives work. Jean-Toussaint Plasenzotti, who founded the anti-mafia collective Massimu Susini following the murder of his nephew in 2019 in Corsica, and Hassna Arabi, whose relative Socayna was killed by a stray bullet in 2023, explain how travelling to Italy with Crim-HALT has helped their work back home. (Listen @0′)

As Europe looks to increase its defence capacity in the face of war in Ukraine and threats from Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a special military service aimed at recruiting a new generation of soldiers. Unlike the mandatory military service that was suspended in 1997, the new format would be voluntary – and paid. Historian and army reservist Guillaume Lasconjarias says that in providing a way for young people to be of service, the scheme responds to something they want. (Listen @17’30”)

Forty years after Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped Paris’s Pont Neuf in September 1985, opening the door to monumental public art displays, the city has approved a new project on the bridge by artist JR. (Listen @11’45”)

Episode mixed by Cecile 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).

France is once again mired in political turmoil after the National Assembly last week overwhelmingly rejected the revenue side of the 2026 budget.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is trying a new method: rather than attempting to push a full budget through a fractured parliament, he aims to break spending into “absolute priorities” – security, energy, agriculture and state reform – and put each item to MPs separately.

The move is intended to avoid another budget showdown, after two years of governmental instability that have steadily chipped away at President Emmanuel Macron’s authority.

Critics, however, argue that the plan is merely a repackaged version of political improvisation – a delay tactic that risks further weakening France’s credibility at home and on the world stage.

Jean-François Husson, the Senate’s general rapporteur for the budget, delivered one of the sharpest criticisms of Lecornu’s move, describing it as a chaotic and ill-timed intervention.

“If you want to give the French a dizzying ride, you could hardly do it better than this,” he remarked, arguing that the government’s approach was generating more confusion than clarity.

For author and political strategist Gerald Olivier, there is a deeper problem.

“France is sick, and France has been sick for a while,” he says. “We’re basically looking at a country with no government, no parliamentary majority and a total impossibility for any prime minister to put forward a credible programme.”

French lawmakers roundly reject income part of budget bill, send it to Senate

France technically needs to pass its budget by 31 December, but Olivier is quick to point out that this deadline has been missed before. “Last year, the budget wasn’t passed until February,” he notes.

If the same thing happens this time, the government can fall back on a temporary financial law that keeps spending aligned with the previous year’s budget for up to 70 days. A more drastic option – to rule by decree – exists as a constitutional backstop.

“This crisis exists because there is no majority in parliament,” Olivier says. “And it’s also because no party has had the courage to face the kind of medicine that France needs. That’s the larger issue.”

International credibility

As a major European power, France’s domestic politics do not stay domestic for long. International investors and European Union partners are watching closely, especially after recent warnings from credit-rating agencies about France’s deficit trajectory.

According to Olivier, the damage is already evident. “France is already in a recession, and there are investments simply passing the country by,” he argues. “No one knows what its tax status will be in the coming years.”

That uncertainty could have a ripple effect across the continent. France, he warns, risks becoming “economically weak and therefore politically weak within Europe”, potentially deepening divisions between EU member states.

France’s economy minister warns latest credit downgrade a ‘wake-up call’

“The one reassuring piece of news is that France is not the only one in this situation. Germany is in dire shape, Italy is shaky, Sweden is having problems. It seems today that everyone in Europe is the sick man of Europe,” he added.

Periods of political instability often attract external opportunists – whether governments, speculators or hostile influence campaigns. But Olivier remains cautious when asked whether foreign actors are already exploiting France’s woes.

“I don’t necessarily see it,” he says, “but if you want to consider fictional scenarios, you could find many.”

France’s EU membership, he argues, offers a buffer. “Having the EU behind you is reassuring. The idea of ‘Frexit’ would be disastrous. The euro provides protection.”

Still, the consequences of weakened governance can extend beyond the economy. A fragile budget could force France to scale back overseas military deployments – a shift that could alter power dynamics in parts of Africa and the Middle East. “This kind of instability is not healthy for anyone,” Olivier says.

A president without momentum

Macron’s political capital has been in decline since the 2022 legislative elections, when he lost his absolute majority. The surprise dissolution of the Assembly after the 2024 European elections only worsened matters, splitting the parliament into three mutually hostile blocs.

“It’s done tremendous damage to Macron,” Olivier says. “He was re-elected in 2022 because people didn’t want Marine Le Pen. He didn’t have the support he had in 2017, and disappointment set in.”

He argues that Macron himself triggered the crisis. “He dissolved the Assembly for no reason. The European elections had no influence on French politics, but he reacted as if they did – and he made things worse.”

Could the president break the deadlock? In theory, yes. “Macron could solve it instantly by resigning,” Olivier notes. “That would trigger a new presidential election, followed by fresh parliamentary elections. That’s how institutions are supposed to function.” But he sees no sign that Macron intends to take that step.

For now, he predicts “another 18 months of instability” with the possibility of yet another government reshuffle. “We’ve had four governments in 12 months. We could have a fifth one next year. There is no telling.”

France’s Le Pen asks Bardella to prepare for 2027 presidential bid

Eyes on 2027

With Macron unable to stand again, attention is already turning to the 2027 presidential race.

The National Rally – headed by Marine Le Pen and her rising protégé Jordan Bardella – enters the campaign in a strong position. Republican Bruno Retailleau could emerge from the right, France Unbowed’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Socialist Olivier Faure from the left. Names from the centre such as MEP Raphaël Glucksmann and the former prime minister from Macron’s Renaissance party, Manuel Valls, have been floated too.

Olivier’s concern is not who the candidates are but how honest they will be about the situation.

“No one is willing to say the country needs to make sacrifices,” he warns. “France is in debt up to 115 percent of GDP. Public spending is too high. But nobody wants to tell voters that the social state cannot remain as generous as it is.”

He singles out one controversial, far-right figure: “The only person honest about the economic reality is Éric Zemmour – and there is zero chance he will be the next president.”

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.