EU countries have given their backing to the tightening of Europe’s migration rules, endorsing for the first time the creation of “return hubs” outside the bloc for people whose asylum claims have been rejected.

The move marks an acceleration in the EU’s migration overhaul, driven by political pressure across the continent and a surge in support for right-wing and far-right parties.

Meeting in Brussels on Monday, EU interior ministers voted for the first time on three migration proposals unveiled earlier this year by the European Commission.

Together, they aim to clamp down more firmly on irregular arrivals and speed up the removal of people who are not granted the right to stay.

At the heart of the package is a plan that would allow the creation of centres outside the EU’s borders.

Migrants whose asylum claims have been rejected could be sent to these “return hubs”, where their cases would be handled and their departure arranged.

The proposals would also usher in tougher penalties for those who refuse to leave EU territory, potentially extending the time migrants can be held in detention.

In addition, the Commission wants to make it easier to send people back not only to their countries of origin, but also to any state deemed “safe” by the EU.

Even though irregular arrivals have fallen by around 20 percent compared with last year, political pressure has not abated.

That drop has prompted calls from some governments to lock in tougher measures while the numbers are relatively manageable.

“We must move forward to give citizens the feeling that we are in control of the situation,” said European Commissioner Magnus Brunner, who has spearheaded the tightening of migration rules.

EU moves to loosen restrictions on sending asylum seekers to third countries

France and Spain ‘sceptical’

The package has sparked strong pushback from the left and from organisations working with migrants.

They argue that the new rules risk undermining human rights and leaving already vulnerable people in limbo.

“Instead of investing in safety, protection and inclusion, the EU is choosing policies that will plunge more people into danger and legal uncertainty,” warned Silvia Carta of PICUM, an organisation advocating for undocumented migrants.

Denmark, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency and pushing for more hardline migration policies, has been driving efforts to secure swift agreement. One European diplomat said the proposals were moving “very quickly” through discussions and claimed there was “broad political will” among member states to sign them off.

Yet not everyone is convinced. France has raised questions about both the legality and the real-world effectiveness of several measures, while Spain remains hesitant over the return-hub concept, pointing out that similar schemes have already been tested with little success. Even so, they found themselves outnumbered on Monday.

Support from the European Parliament’s right and far-right has consolidated the Commission’s hopes of rapid progress.

Only last week, MEPs from these groups joined forces to give the proposals an initial green light, and many lawmakers are pushing for final adoption early next year.

UK and France start migrant return scheme to curb illegal Channel crossings

‘Responsibility-sharing’

Meawnhile, EU states also settled the details of a new “solidarity” mechanism for distributing asylum seekers across the bloc – a particularly delicate issue at a time when many governments are under fierce domestic pressure to appear tough on migration.

Under the new system, at least 30,000 asylum seekers will be relocated each year. Countries that refuse to take part in relocations will instead be asked to contribute €20,000 per person to frontline states such as Greece and Italy, which continue to handle the bulk of new arrivals.

Negotiations have been running for weeks, but political tensions have made the process particularly volatile.

With migration high on national agendas, governments face domestic resistance to the idea of accepting people from elsewhere in the bloc.

Several countries – including Belgium, Sweden and Austria – have already stated openly that they will not take in asylum seekers relocated from other member states.

Still, by Monday a compromise was found, although member states have kept the precise details under wraps.

(with newswires)

France “condemns the attempted coup d’État” in Benin, the French Foreign Affairs Ministry said Sunday in a statement, calling “for respect for constitutional order and the normal functioning of institutions”.

France is “mobilised to ensure the security of the French community present in Benin, whom it urges to exercise the utmost caution”.

Attempted coup

Beninese authorities said on Sunday that they had foiled an attempted coup aimed at overthrowing Talon.

On Sunday morning after reports of gunfire near the presidential residence, a group of soldiers calling themselves the “Military Committee for Refoundation” appeared on national television to announce that they had ousted Talon because of the “deterioration of the security situation” and his undermining of “fundamental freedoms”.

That sparked a response from loyal army forces supported by air strikes and troop deployments from neighbouring Nigeria, which struck undisclosed targets.

Talon appeared on national television Sunday evening, confirming that the situation was “totally under control” and that “security and public order will be maintained throughout the national territory”.

“This outrage will not go unpunished,” he added.

Niger, sixth in West Africa’s long list of coups

Around a dozen soldiers have reportedly been arrested, including those behind the coup bid.

Nigeria in Benin

Tinubu’s office confirmed that Nigerian troops had entered Benin and that the air force had been deployed, and the president praised their involvement in restoring the government in Benin.

The Nigerian presidency said that Benin made two separate requests for air and ground forces.

“It took some hours before the government’s loyal forces, assisted by Nigeria, took control and flushed out the coup plotters from the National TV,” spokesperson Bayo Onanuga said in a statement.

The West African regional bloc Ecowas, meanwhile, said troops from Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria and Sierra Leone were being deployed to Benin to help support the government and the army to “preserve constitutional order”.

Talon, who was elected in 2016 and has been praised for bringing economic development to Benin, though is accused by critics of authoritarianism, is due to hand over power in April 2026, at the end of his second term, the maximum allowed by the constitution.

(with AFP)

Costa said that while it is normal that the US does not share the same vision on many issues, threats to interference in internal political life is unacceptable.

“The United States remains an important ally, the United States remains an important economic partner, but Europe must be sovereign.,” he told a conference in Brussels on Monday.

“What we cannot accept is the threat to interfere in European politics.”

US National security strategy

He was reacting to the new US National security strategy released last week that presents Europe as lacking in “self-confidence” and facing “civilizational erasure” due to immigration.

It said the administration of US President Donald Trump would be “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” and sees growing influence of “patriotic European parties” as cause for “great optimism”.

“The United States cannot replace European citizens in choosing which parties are good and which are bad,” said Costa, who as council president chairs summits of the bloc’s 27 national leaders.

He said that there were long-standing differences with the Trump administration, but the new strategy “goes beyond that”.

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

Freedom of speech 

Costa stressed the vision of freedom of speech is different in the EU and in the US.

“The United States cannot replace Europe in what’s its vision is of freedom of expression,” he said.

“There would be no freedom of speech if citizens’ freedom of information is sacrificed to defend the techno oligarchs in the United States.”

Costa said it was a worrying sign that Russia had welcomed Washington’s new outlook as “largely consistent” with its own vision.

He said that the approach to the war in Ukraine laid out in the strategy did not support seeking the “just and durable” peace as Europe has long advocated.

“This strategy continues to talk about Europe as an ally. That’s fine, but if we are allies, we must act as allies,” he said.

(with newswires)

On Sunday, the Louvre museum’s deputy administrator Francis Steinbock announced that “between 300 and 400 works” were affected by a leak discovered on 26 November, describing them as “Egyptology journals” and “scientific documentation” used by researchers.

The damaged items date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and are “extremely useful” but are “by no means unique”, Steinbock added.

“No heritage artefacts have been affected by this damage,” he said, adding that “at this stage, we have no irreparable and definitive losses in these collections”.

Ageing infrastructure

The Louvre said there would be an internal investigation into the November leak, which was caused by the accidental opening of a valve in the heating and ventilation system that led to water seeping through the ceiling of the Pavillon Mollien where the books were stored.

The “completely obsolete” system has been shut down for months and is due to be replaced from September 2026, the museum administrator added.

As for the works, they will “be dried, sent to a bookbinder to be restored, and then returned to the shelves,” he added.

The incident follows an October heist in which a four-person gang raided the art museum in broad daylight, stealing jewellery worth an estimated 87 million euros, sparking debate over the museum’s ageing infrastructure.

Staff at the Louvre museum have called on Monday to a “renewable strike” starting on 15 December to protest against “deteriorating working conditions” and “insufficient resources”, the CFDT union told French news agency AFP.

Louvre Museum to hike ticket price by 45 percent for non-EU visitors

In late November, the Louvre said it would raise ticket prices for most non-EU visitors, meaning US, British and Chinese tourists among others will have to pay 32 euros to get in.

The museum said the 45-percent price hike aims to boost annual revenues by up to 19 million euros to fund structural improvements at the cultural institution.

The Louvre is the world’s most-visited museum, welcoming 8.7 million visitors in 2024, 69 percent of them from abroad.

(with AFP)

In the aftermath of the overthrow of Assad, demonstrators proclaimed the victorious unity of the Syrian people, from Idlib to Suwayda, Latakia to Raqqa.

A year later, following several outbreaks of violence, divisions between communities appear even more pronounced than at the end of the 50-year dictatorship.

Now, many in the country are calling for the creation of a federal system, while some regions are demanding independence.

In March, clashes between former soldiers loyal to Assad and forces of the new transitional authorities escalated into massacres of Alawites, the minority group to which Assad belongs.

Nearly 1,700 people were killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Since then, violence and harassment have continued. 

“Tensions persist and the Alawite population feels unsafe,” said Rateb Shabo, himself a native of the Syrian west coast, where the majority of Alawites live.

“To give you an idea of what daily life is like, I was talking recently with a friend from the Syrian coast. He told me that the olive harvest had been poor this year and that it would not be enough to feed his family for the whole year. Then he said to me, but who’s to say that one of the cars that drives past my house every day won’t stop at my door to steal all my bags of olives and take me with them anyway? I’m powerless. We’re considered remnants of the regime.”

After the Alawites, the Druze

In July, southern Syria saw clashes between Druze and Bedouins who live together in the same region. Regime forces came to the aid of the Sunni Bedouins, who themselves called in reinforcements from across the country.  

The Druze had had high hopes for the new government.

“They helped bring down Bashar al-Assad,” explains one Druze source who chose to speak under the pseudonym Rafaël.

“Only a minority of people were calling for the independence of the Druze region. Since the massacre, the majority message has changed radically from ‘we want a united Syria with everyone’ to ‘the Druze must be independent’,” he said.

“The problem is that the government took part in these clashes by siding with the Bedouins. They armed them while asking the Druze to surrender their weapons. The Druze refused. When the massacre happened, there were also racist celebrations against the Druze throughout Syria. So people even lost confidence in their fellow citizens.”

An investigation by Amnesty International revealed that government and affiliated forces have extrajudicially executed dozens of Druze.

France condemns reported atrocities against civilians in Syria’s Sweida

Justice or show trials?

Faced with these crises, the authorities have announced commissions of inquiry.

In connection with the violence last March, the Attorney General said he had brought charges against approximately 300 people linked to the transitional authorities and 265 people belonging to paramilitary groups loyal to Assad, accused of leading the armed rebellion that sparked the violence.

At the opening of the trial, only 14 detainees were present – half were former soldiers of the regime, the other half affiliated with the transitional authority forces. The majority pleaded not guilty, and the hearing was suspended and postponed.

What was seen by many human rights defenders as a first step towards ending impunity for crimes in the country was ultimately viewed as a farce by many Syrians. 

“It was a political show,” said Shabo. “The Sunni soldiers were released, while the Alawites are still in prison, even though in both cases the trial is not over.”

Many observers question the independence of the Syrian judiciary.

“The Ministry of Justice belongs to the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham [from which the new president Ahmed al-Charaa hails]. It is a sectarian organisation that is deeply hostile to Alawites.” said Shabo.

“This trial is also based on the ordinary Syrian penal code. It does not recognise the political nature of the crime. Yet it was a deliberate massacre committed by militias affiliated with the new regime, as Amnesty International says. We cannot leave the investigation and judgement to local institutions. There is obvious bias.”

Independent investigators appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council concluded that the waves of violence committed by government forces against the Alawite minority were “widespread and systematic” and could constitute war crimes.

Syria’s interim president vows justice for Druze after deadly clashes

Transitional justice

Shabo says he finds it difficult to imagine Syria’s future, and fears that any attempt to establish transitional justice will fail.

“‘Even if the authorities really wanted to implement it, it would be impossible because the armed forces that support them would also have to be tried for their crimes.”

Yet activists insist the fight is not over, and continue to work alongside the authorities.

“The problem is that they are very slow,” said lawyer Anwar al-Bunni, director of the Syrian Centre for Legal Studies and Research.

“We have been pushing for a long time for the establishment of a special court that would adopt the rules of the International Criminal Court. All criminals must be arrested, whether they are Sunni, Alawite, Kurdish… All these people must be given a fair trial. It seems that the authorities are now moving in that direction.”

He says the violence committed against the Alawites and Druze has backed them into a corner.

“The problem is how long it will take the authorities to set the process in motion. I am sure that in the future we will succeed in creating a country that respects human rights.”

For now, many Syrians must live with the fact that their tormentors walk free, while hundreds of Alawite families wait for imprisoned relatives to receive their basic legal rights, including visits and a fair trial.

Macron urges Syrian leader to protect minorities after deadly clashes

Civil society steps in

The slow march towards transitional justice, however, is not the sole preserve of the authorities.

On the ground, al-Bunni’s organisation, like many other Syrian NGOs, provides training in citizenship and justice. It also trains lawyers in evidence gathering and case building.

Dima Moussa, a lawyer and transitional justice specialist, is involved in this process.

“The training provided by the authorities of the Transitional Justice Commission and the Commission for Missing Persons six months ago was a first step worth highlighting. It gives us people to talk to. In particular, it has helped to formalise our work within Syria. We are carrying out consultations with different communities to gather recommendations.”

She acknowledges that the massacres against the Druze and Alawites have created new divisions. “But that pushes us to work harder. We have also seen initiatives emerge in different communities to take action against violence. We are also calling for crimes committed after the fall of Bashar al-Assad to be taken into account in this process. This will send a strong message.”

Seventy Syrian civil society organisations have recently presented recommendations to the Syrian government and the Transitional Justice Commission. Al-Bunni and Moussa both hope the authorities will make good use of them.

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

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.

Local broadcaster Channels Television reported the release of 100 children, without giving details on whether their release secured was through negotiation or military force.

A United Nations source told the AFP news agency that the children arrived in the capital, Abuja, on Sunday and are to be handed over to local government officials in Niger state on Monday.

The fate of the remaining 165 students and staff remains unclear.

In late November gunmen attacked St Mary’s boarding school in Papiri, kidnapping 315 students and staff. Some 50 students escaped shortly afterward, and until Sunday there had been no information on the whereabouts of the others, including staff and students as young as six years old.

It is unclear who was the kidnapping, though it came as part of what the UN has called a “surge in mass abductions” in the last few weeks.

Kidnappings for ransom by armed groups have plagued Nigeria since the 2014 abduction of 276 school girls in the town of Chibok by Boko Haram jihadists.

Nigerian president Bola Tinubu has declared a national state of emergency in the country plagued by insecurity, divided between a majority Muslim north and a majority Christian south.

He said he ordered the army and police to recruit 20,000 additional personnel.

The kidnappings come as US President Donald Trump has called the killing of Christians in Nigeria a “genocide” and threatened military intervention.

On Sunday France offered increased support for Nigeria, that French President Emmanuel Macron said was facing “various security challenges, particularly the terrorist threat in the North”.

At Tinubu’s request, France will “strengthen our partnership with the authorities and our support for the affected populations,” Macron wrote on X.

“We call on all our partners to step up their engagement. No one can remain a spectator”.

(with AFP)

South Africa used its G20 presidency this year to push youth involvement more than any previous summit. The Y20 process – created in 2010 to bring young people into G20 debates – took on new urgency, given that Africa has the world’s largest population under the age of 30.

Y20 South Africa 2025 ran under the theme Youth for Global Progress. Its aim was to open space for young leaders to help shape the global agenda.

Levi Singh, its 31-year-old chief negotiations coordinator, said encouraging youth participation in global events and politics should be an absolute priority. This G20, he added, was the most successful so far in getting that message across.

“As this was the last time that the global south was leading the G20 for the foreseeable future, we thought it was a unique opportunity to mobilise around youth participation,” Singh told RFI.

Madagascar’s Gen Z uprising, as told by three young protesters

Generation gap

The idea of making youth leadership a formal part of political systems drew far more support in the Global South than in the seven richest nations in North America and Europe, Singh said.

“In Africa in particular, you see the median age today is 19 years old, yet the median age of an African leader, a parliamentarian, a minister or a president, is between 67 and 69,” he explained.

“So there’s a profound intergenerational divide between the majority of the population and those who are in power and in leadership positions.

“At the Y20, we weren’t calling for people over 65 to be chucked out of office, but for a greater sense of intergenerational collaboration, learning, sharing and power sharing, ultimately.”

The Ichikowitz Family Foundation, which runs an annual survey on youth attitudes across Africa, included these themes in its latest research. The African Youth Survey gathers views from tens of thousands of young people in 25 countries. This year, it focused on the G20.

Its report found fast-eroding trust in democratic institutions and government accountability.

While young Africans once expected leaders to create jobs, solve the climate crisis and drive innovation, many now feel “the system is failing them”, the foundation’s chairman Ivor Ichikowitz told RFI.

The survey, he added, shows a polarised view of current leadership.

“On the extremely negative side, there are many respondents who are saying that they are frustrated with their governments and this plays out in what we’ve seen in Madagascar, what we’ve seen in Kenya, what we’ve seen in other countries in Africa,” Ichikowitz said. “This is not unexpected.”

Can Kenyan youth protests spark real police reform one year on?

Young people push back

Events across the African continent over the past year form part of that picture – from the coup in Gabon to Gen Z protests in Madagascar and Morocco.

The unrest shows rising frustration among young people who now believe they must take control of their own futures, Ichikowitz said, adding: “They can’t rely only on governments.”

Climate change has also become a key issue, with deeper awareness of environmental concerns among respondents. There is strong frustration around this too.

“There’s a realisation among the population that we surveyed that this is a reality that’s been created by the world’s most industrialised nations – and Africa is bearing the brunt of the consequences,” Ichikowitz said.

Young people believe Africa has the means to solve the problem, but they also know that protecting the environment will mean major sacrifices that could limit development and economic opportunities.

“Africa is not being compensated for this reality,” Ichikowitz added.

One message, Singh said, came through repeatedly in the Y20 working groups.

“Young people, in particular those from the Global South, are fatigued by the constant framing by policymakers and world leaders of them as a problem and something that needs to be fixed – as opposed to an asset that requires investment and planning.”

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?

On the night of 13 November 2015, then president Francois Hollande declared a nationwide state of emergency, granting French police and intelligence services extraordinary authority to carry out searches and detain people suspected of being involved in terrorism.

These measures, extended a week later, let police bypass the ordinary judicial process and decide whom to target, with judges reviewing the legality only afterwards if officers’ choices were challenged in court.

The public largely accepted these restrictions on civil liberties because the terrorist threat remained high.

“After a traumatic event, after a crisis, it is easier to justify a reduction in rights and heightened security measures. People are expecting the government to do something, whatever it is,” explains Sophie Duroy, a professor at the University of Essex School of Law’s Human Rights Centre.

“In a way, the population may be willing to sacrifice some of their liberties because they fear the next terrorist attack.”

Listen to an interview with Sophie Duroy in the Spotlight on France podcast:

When a deadly truck attack in Nice followed in July 2016, France’s parliament incorporated these emergency powers into ordinary law, through bills passed in 2017 and in 2021.

According to Jean-Christophe Couville, national secretary of the Unité police union, France previously lacked the tools to address terrorist threats.

In the days following the November 2015 attacks, emergency powers enabled police to search over 400 people and seize dozens of arms as well as drugs, he told RFI, in what he calls “collateral effects” that he argues “maybe saved lives”.

Abuse of power

Rights defenders say it is an abuse of power to use extraordinary measures intended to fight terrorism in order to deal with ordinary crime.

Duroy points to the disproportionate impact of these powers on France’s Muslim community in the aftermath of the 2015 attacks.

“Individuals and associations were subjected to house arrest, or their places of worship were closed, for instance. Their freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of assembly – their basic liberty – was affected,” she says.

And there was “mission creep”, as police used their expanded powers more broadly.

How French Muslims have wrestled with Charlie Hebdo’s impact, 10 years on

Policing dissent

During the Cop21 summit in Paris in December 2015, police detained and placed climate activists under house arrest on the grounds that they might disturb public order.

“Because there is very little judicial oversight, it is very hard to control who you target with these measures,” says Duroy.

“And we have seen this kind of mission creep more and more in the past few years to police dissent, rather than to police terrorism.”

Other terrorist attacks – realised and foiled – continued to keep France on high alert.  

Later, during the Covid pandemic, France declared a health state of emergency, restricting peoples’ movements. Meanwhile laws introduced for the 2024 Paris Olympics temporarily authorised algorithmic video surveillance, which the government is considering renewing through 2027 in preparation for the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps.

“France is the main advocate for digital surveillance technologies and for authorising them and using them on a large-scale basis,” says Duroy.

Expanded surveillance

For police unionist Couville, digital surveillance is just another means to anticipate crimes, or find culprits after the fact.

“We need these new tools,” he said. “They help us to work proactively, to identify someone who is wanted, for example. It helps us to reconstruct a crime scene and helps with arrests.”

Duroy warns, however, that more tools and repressive measures could backfire, putting the public on the defensive.

She argues that respecting human rights and international law is the best way to protect national security, because it avoids escalation and maintains public trust.

“If the population believes you are respecting their rights they would be willing to cooperate with security services and the police,” she says.

“If people think that their rights are not going to be respected or their family’s rights are not going to be respected, they will not give a tip to the police about the fact that maybe their brother is becoming radicalised or their son is becoming radicalised.”

France accused of restricting protests and eroding democracy

Siding with caution

Because counterterrorism is global, France both shares and relies on information from other countries’ intelligence services, which may be more likely to cooperate if they trust that international standards are being respected.

Yet arguing against tougher security powers is an uphill battle. 

Those trying to slow the expansion of surveillance regularly challenge these measures in court – something Duroy says is not always effective, as judges often side with governments.

“Courts have been very happy to defer to national governments in matters of national security because they trust their risk assessments and because of the very high stakes of terrorism,” she says. “No one wants to be blamed if a terrorist attack happens.”

Listen to an interview with Sophie Duroy on the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 135.

“I would like to thank the Tunisians who have supported the migrant population in Tunisia and all those who have had the courage to speak out on issues of freedom,” Sehiri said upon receiving her Golden Star (Étoile d’or) award on Saturday.

The 22nd Marrakech International Film Festival was presided over by South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho.

Alongside him were Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz, Moroccan director Hakim Belabbes, French director Julia Ducournau, Iranian actor and director Payman Maadi, US actor Jenna Ortega, Canadian-Korean director Celine Song and British-Argentinian actor Anya Taylor-Joy.

“I would like to dedicate this award to Saadia Mosbah, a prominent human rights and anti-racism activist, who has been in prison for a year and a half,” Sehiri added.

Postcard from Cannes #2: A tender tale of women surviving migration in Tunis

Regression of rights

Jailed since May 2024, Mosbah is suspected of facilitating the illegal entry of migrants.

Tunisia is a key transit point for thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking to reach Europe by sea, but conditions for them have become increasingly more difficult.

Tunisian and foreign NGOs say they have witnessed a regression of rights and freedoms in Tunisia since President Kais Saied granted himself full powers after a coup at the end of July 2021.

In February 2023, Saied declared that “hordes of sub-Saharan migrants” threatened to “change the demographic composition” of the country.

In the following weeks, thousands of migrants, deprived of work and housing, were either urgently repatriated or clandestinely took to the sea to flee Tunisia.

Driven from camp to camp, Tunisia’s migrants still dream of Europe

It is precisely in this context that Sehiri situates her story in Promised Sky, which opened the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Marie, an Ivorian pastor and former journalist, has lived in Tunisia for 10 years.

She takes in Naney, a young mother who has left her daughter behind in Côte d’Ivoire, saving up to pay her passage on a boat to Europe.

Then there’s Jolie, a strong-willed student who carries the hopes of her family.

But the arrival of a little girl Kenza, whose parents died when their migrant boat capsized, challenges the women’s sense of solidarity, pushing them to make difficult decisions.

The jury awarded Best Actress to Debora Lobe Naney for her role as Naney, a non-professional actor, who was recruited during a public audition. 

Exploring humanity

The Grand jury prize was shared between Jihan K’s My Father and Qaddafi and Vladlena Sandu’s Memory.

The Best Directing Prize was awarded to Oscar Hudson for Straight Circle. The jury also awarded a special mention to the film’s actors Elliot Tittensor and Luke Tittensor.

Best Performance by an Actor went to Sope Dirisu for his work in Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father’s Shadow, a film set in Nigeria.

‘Telling stories differently’: Tunisian cinema shines at Franco-Arab Film Festival

American actress Jodie Foster received an Étoile d’or for her lifetime achievement and gave a moving speech about her relationship with cinema.

“I am still guided by the same love: telling stories, bringing characters to life, asking questions about our connections and our vulnerabilities, and exploring our humanity,” she told the audience.

Foster also paid tribute to Morocco: “All this enthusiasm and warmth! This is what Morocco is about: a country that charms all the senses. How lucky I am to discover it while being with you.”

The cathedral was reopened on 7 December, 2024, after more than five years of renovation work, in the presence of heads of state, including French President Emmanuel Macron and US president-elect Donald Trump.

Notre-Dame has welcomed “approximately 11 million visitors “since reopening, about 30 percent more than before the fire, said Sybille Bellamy-Brown, head of visitor management at the cathedral.

In comparison, the Louvre museum in Paris welcomed 8.7 million visitors last year and seven million tourists pay to see the Eiffel Tower each year.

Notre-Dame reborn: the epic quest that saved France’s sacred heart

Colombian tourist Maria Vega could not imagine visiting Paris without seeing the iconic cathedral.

“It’s particularly important for me since I’ve recently reconnected with the church,” the 22-year-old said, marvelling at the restoration.

“The beauty and simplicity are striking.”

Records broken

The cathedral has surpassed its annual attendance levels of an estimated eight to nine million people before the fire on April 15, 2019, which tore through the roof and framework of the masterpiece of 12th-century Gothic art.

Since reopening after a colossal renovation project funded by €843 million in donations, the site draws lines of people stretching across the cathedral forecourt.

Preserving the sound of history: how scientists safeguarded Notre-Dame’s acoustics

Individuals can still enter for free without reservations, but faced with the influx, Notre-Dame has sought to “regulate” entries, particularly during services.

More than 1,600 services are to be held this year and the cathedral has seen a boom in pilgrimages, with over 650, a third of them from abroad.

While €140 million remain from donations, more is needed to complete the restoration of the building – already in poor condition before the fire, according to the Rebuilding Notre-Dame de Paris public body.

(with AFP)

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.”

Around a dozen soldiers have been arrested in Benin following an attempted coup, including the ringleaders of the foiled operation, military and security sources told French news agency AFP.

One source said 13 arrests had been made, with another adding that all the detainees were soldiers in active service except one who was ex-military.

Earlier, Benin’s Interior Minister Alassane Seidou released a statement confirming that “a small group of soldiers launched a mutiny with the aim of destabilising the country and its institutions.”

“Faced with this situation, the Beninese Armed Forces and their leadership maintained control of the situation and foiled the attempt,” he added.

Condemnation from AU, Ecowas

The African Union (AU), the African continent’s main political and diplomatic body, on Sunday “strongly and unequivocally” condemned the attempted coup in Benin, a statement from AU Commission Chairman Mahmoud Ali Yousouf said.

The West African bloc Ecowas also “strongly condemned the coup” and said it would support efforts by the government to restore order.

Witnesses reported hearing the sound of gunfire in Benin’s economic capital Cotonou on Sunday morning, after a military group announced that they had ousted President Patrice Talon.

Soldiers calling themselves the “Military Committee for Refoundation” (CMR), said on state television that they had met and decided that “Mr Patrice Talon is removed from office as president of the republic”.The signal was cut later in the morning.

 They justified the attempted power grab by citing the “continuous deterioration of the security situation in northern Benin”.

They said the “neglect of soldiers killed in action and their families left to fend for themselves” as well as “unjust promotions at the expense of the most deserving” were also motivations.

Clean-up in progress

Shortly after their announcement, Talon‘s entourage told AFP the president was safe, while the regular army said it had regained control, according to a military source. 

“This is a small group of people who only control the television. The regular army is regaining control. The city (Cotonou) and the country are completely secure,” the presidential team said.

“It’s just a matter of time before everything returns to normal. The clean-up is progressing well.”

Talon, a 67-year-old former businessman dubbed the “cotton king of Cotonou”, is due to hand over power in April next year after 10 years in office marked by solid economic growth but also a surge in jihadist violence. 

The main opposition party has been excluded from the race to succeed him, and instead the ruling party will vie for power against a so-called “moderate” opposition.

Talon has been praised for bringing economic development to Benin but is regularly accused by his critics of authoritarianism.

Europe failed to bolster democracy in Sahel, EU’s top diplomat says

History marked by coups

A military source confirmed that the situation was “under control” and the coup plotters had not taken either Talon’s residence or the presidential offices.

The French Embassy had said on social media platform X that “gunfire was reported at Camp Guezo” near the president’s official residence in the economic capital.

It urged French citizens to remain indoors for security.

An AFP journalist in Cotonou said soldiers were blocking access to the presidency and state television.

Guinea-Bissau electoral commission says poll results ‘destroyed’ in coup

Access to several other areas, including the five-star Sofitel in Cotonou and districts housing international institutions, were also blocked.

But there was no military presence reported at the airport and the rest of the city, and residents were going about their business.

Benin’s political history has been marked by several coups and attempted coups since its independence from France in 1960.

Other countries in West Africa have experienced coups in recent years, including in Benin’s northern neighbours Niger and Burkina Faso, as well as Mali, Guinea and, most recently, Guinea-Bissau.

(with AFP)

Macron made the announcement on Saturday, on social media platform X, as Ukrainian and US officials were holding a third straight day of talks in Miami to discuss a plan to end the war.

“I will travel to London on Monday to meet with the Ukrainian President, the British Prime Minister, and the German Chancellor, in order to take stock of the situation and the ongoing negotiations within the framework of the US mediation,” Macron wrote, slamming what he called Russia’s “escalatory path”.

“We will continue these efforts with the Americans to provide Ukraine with security guarantees, without which no robust and lasting peace will be possible,” he added.

Exert pressure

Macron also condemned a wave of Russian strikes after Moscow launched over 700 drones and missiles overnight into Saturday at Ukraine, targeting its energy and railway facilities and triggering heating and water cuts affecting thousands of households and businesses.

“We must continue to exert pressure on Russia to compel it to choose peace,” Macron said.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Tuesday to discuss the latest peace proposal, though Moscow rejected parts of it.

Zelensky joined his negotiators by telephone on Saturday for what he described as a “very substantive and constructive” call, as part of the third day of meetings in Florida.

Europe demands more work on US peace plan to end Russia-Ukraine war

“Ukraine is committed to continuing to work honestly with the American side to bring about real peace,” Zelensky said on Telegram, adding that the parties agreed “on the next steps and the format of the talks with America.”

A readout of the Miami talks posted Friday by Witkoff on X said that “Both parties agreed that real progress toward any agreement depends on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace, including steps toward de-escalation and cessation of killings.”

Security guarantees 

Washington’s initial plan to bring an end to the conflict involved Ukraine surrendering land that Russia has not been able to win on the battlefield in return for security promises that fall short of Kyiv’s aspirations to join NATO.

But the nature of the security guarantees that Ukraine could get have so far been shrouded in uncertainty, beyond an initial plan saying that jets to defend Kyiv could be based in Poland.

The US plan has been through several drafts since it first emerged last month, amid criticism it was too soft on Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia accuses France of ‘fuelling war’ following Ukraine fighter jet deal

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

But he has also grown frustrated that his efforts to persuade Putin to end the war, including a summit in Alaska, have failed to produce results and he recently slapped sanctions on Russian oil firms.

Putin, who was in India this week meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the talks were “complex” but that he wanted to engage with Trump’s plan “rather than obstruct it.”

OSCE to monitor ceasefire?

In a separate developement, Switzerland’s foreign minister said that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) could play a major role in monitoring a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Switzerland will chair the OSCE in 2026 and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said Bern wants to focus on confidence-building measures, and preparing for a possible truce between Moscow and Kyiv.

“There are already concrete considerations on this: the organisation is capable of deploying several dozen people at short notice. The OSCE could observe the ceasefire, monitor the ceasefire line, monitor elections, and so on,” Cassis told SonntagsBlick newspaper on Sunday.

Macron says 26 countries pledge troops as a ‘reassurance force’ for Ukraine

“But the front line currently stretches for 1,300 kilometres – the OSCE alone is too small to monitor its entire length. This would require a significant commitment from the participating states.”

He said that as a first step, a fact-finding mission would need to deploy to Ukraine and return with a diagnosis of the situation, from which the OSCE could quickly initiate the next steps.

Founded in 1975 to ease tensions between the East and the West during the Cold War, the OSCE counts 57 members from Europe, central Asia and North America, including the United States, Ukraine and Russia.

(with AFP)

“I would like to thank the Tunisians who have supported the migrant population in Tunisia and all those who have had the courage to speak out on issues of freedom,” Sehiri said upon receiving her Golden Star (Étoile d’or) award on Saturday.

The 22nd Marrakech International Film Festival was presided over by South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho.

Alongside him were Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz, Moroccan director Hakim Belabbes, French director Julia Ducournau, Iranian actor and director Payman Maadi, US actor Jenna Ortega, Canadian-Korean director Celine Song and British-Argentinian actor Anya Taylor-Joy.

“I would like to dedicate this award to Saadia Mosbah, a prominent human rights and anti-racism activist, who has been in prison for a year and a half,” Sehiri added.

Postcard from Cannes #2: A tender tale of women surviving migration in Tunis

Regression of rights

Jailed since May 2024, Mosbah is suspected of facilitating the illegal entry of migrants.

Tunisia is a key transit point for thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking to reach Europe by sea, but conditions for them have become increasingly more difficult.

Tunisian and foreign NGOs say they have witnessed a regression of rights and freedoms in Tunisia since President Kais Saied granted himself full powers after a coup at the end of July 2021.

In February 2023, Saied declared that “hordes of sub-Saharan migrants” threatened to “change the demographic composition” of the country.

In the following weeks, thousands of migrants, deprived of work and housing, were either urgently repatriated or clandestinely took to the sea to flee Tunisia.

Driven from camp to camp, Tunisia’s migrants still dream of Europe

It is precisely in this context that Sehiri situates her story in Promised Sky, which opened the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Marie, an Ivorian pastor and former journalist, has lived in Tunisia for 10 years.

She takes in Naney, a young mother who has left her daughter behind in Côte d’Ivoire, saving up to pay her passage on a boat to Europe.

Then there’s Jolie, a strong-willed student who carries the hopes of her family.

But the arrival of a little girl Kenza, whose parents died when their migrant boat capsized, challenges the women’s sense of solidarity, pushing them to make difficult decisions.

The jury awarded Best Actress to Debora Lobe Naney for her role as Naney, a non-professional actor, who was recruited during a public audition. 

Exploring humanity

The Grand jury prize was shared between Jihan K’s My Father and Qaddafi and Vladlena Sandu’s Memory.

The Best Directing Prize was awarded to Oscar Hudson for Straight Circle. The jury also awarded a special mention to the film’s actors Elliot Tittensor and Luke Tittensor.

Best Performance by an Actor went to Sope Dirisu for his work in Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father’s Shadow, a film set in Nigeria.

‘Telling stories differently’: Tunisian cinema shines at Franco-Arab Film Festival

American actress Jodie Foster received an Étoile d’or for her lifetime achievement and gave a moving speech about her relationship with cinema.

“I am still guided by the same love: telling stories, bringing characters to life, asking questions about our connections and our vulnerabilities, and exploring our humanity,” she told the audience.

Foster also paid tribute to Morocco: “All this enthusiasm and warmth! This is what Morocco is about: a country that charms all the senses. How lucky I am to discover it while being with you.”

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.

Famous for his kitschy colour-saturated images, Parr had a sharp eye for mundane oddities, typified in his humorous snapshots of bronzed beachgoers and selfie-snapping holidaymakers.

“It is with great sadness that we announce that Martin Parr (1952-2025) died yesterday at home in Bristol,” a statement on The Martin Parr Foundation‘s website said.

“Martin will be greatly missed,” it added, noting he is survived by his wife Susie, his daughter Ellen, his sister Vivien and his grandson George.

“The family asks for privacy at this time,” the statement said.

It added the foundation and Magnum Photos, the prestigious agency he had been a member of since 1994, “will work together to preserve and share Martin’s legacy”.

No further details around the circumstances of his death were provided.

The Guardian newspaper said, however, that Parr had been diagnosed with cancer in May 2021.

Although Parr travelled the globe during his decades-spanning career – snapping images everywhere from North Korea and Albania to Japan and Russia – he spoke of relishing more everyday settings like supermarkets.

He kept working into his 70s, recently releasing his latest book, an autobiographical collection of photographs together with wry commentary called Utterly Lazy and Inattentive.

The title stemmed from a French teacher’s damning school report on him when he was 14.

Keep calm and say cheese! French photo festival goes ‘so British’ this summer

The autobiography charts his journey from son of a birdwatching father to internationally acclaimed professional photographer.

In an interview with French news agency AFP published last month, he argued the world has never been more in need of the kind of satire captured in his images because many people are too wealthy and their lifestyles are unsustainable.

“The state we’re all in is appalling,” he said in Paris. “We’re all too rich. We’re consuming all these things in the world. And we can’t. It’s unsustainable.”

(with AFP)

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.”

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.”

The cathedral was reopened on 7 December, 2024, after more than five years of renovation work, in the presence of heads of state, including French President Emmanuel Macron and US president-elect Donald Trump.

Notre-Dame has welcomed “approximately 11 million visitors “since reopening, about 30 percent more than before the fire, said Sybille Bellamy-Brown, head of visitor management at the cathedral.

In comparison, the Louvre museum in Paris welcomed 8.7 million visitors last year and seven million tourists pay to see the Eiffel Tower each year.

Notre-Dame reborn: the epic quest that saved France’s sacred heart

Colombian tourist Maria Vega could not imagine visiting Paris without seeing the iconic cathedral.

“It’s particularly important for me since I’ve recently reconnected with the church,” the 22-year-old said, marvelling at the restoration.

“The beauty and simplicity are striking.”

Records broken

The cathedral has surpassed its annual attendance levels of an estimated eight to nine million people before the fire on April 15, 2019, which tore through the roof and framework of the masterpiece of 12th-century Gothic art.

Since reopening after a colossal renovation project funded by €843 million in donations, the site draws lines of people stretching across the cathedral forecourt.

Preserving the sound of history: how scientists safeguarded Notre-Dame’s acoustics

Individuals can still enter for free without reservations, but faced with the influx, Notre-Dame has sought to “regulate” entries, particularly during services.

More than 1,600 services are to be held this year and the cathedral has seen a boom in pilgrimages, with over 650, a third of them from abroad.

While €140 million remain from donations, more is needed to complete the restoration of the building – already in poor condition before the fire, according to the Rebuilding Notre-Dame de Paris public body.

(with AFP)

The measures were spelt out in the US- and UN-backed peace plan that has largely halted the fighting in the Palestinian territory, though the warring parties have yet to agree on how to move forward from the deal’s first phase.

Its initial steps saw Israeli troops pull back behind a so-called “yellow line” within Gaza’s borders, while Palestinian militant group Hamas released the living hostages it still held and handed over the remains of all but one of the deceased.

“Now we are at the critical moment… A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of the Israeli forces, (and) there is stability back in Gaza,” Qatari premier Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told the Doha Forum, an annual diplomatic conference on Saturday.

Qatar, alongside Egypt and the United States, helped secure the long-elusive truce in Gaza, which came into effect on 10 October and has mostly halted two years of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Ceasefire violations

Under a second phase of the deal, which has yet to begin, Israel is to withdraw from its positions in the territory, an interim authority is to take over governance, and an international stabilisation force is to be deployed.

Key sticking points have emerged over the implementation of the second phase, notably the question of Hamas’s disarmament.

Hamas is supposed to disarm under the 20-point plan first outlined by US President Donald Trump, with members who decommission their weapons allowed to leave Gaza. The militant group has repeatedly rejected the proposition.

Under the plan endorsed by the UN in November, Gaza is to be administered by a transitional governing body known as the “Board of Peace”.

It would be chaired by Trump, while the identities of the other members have yet to be announced.

Arab and Muslim nations, however, have been hesitant to participate in the new force, which could end up fighting Palestinian militants.

Europeans, Arabs flesh out Gaza transition ideas following ceasefire

Turkey‘s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told the forum that talks on the force were ongoing, with critical questions remaining as to its command structure and which countries would contribute.

But its first goal, Fidan said, “should be to separate Palestinians from the Israelis”.

“This should be our main objective. Then we can address the other remaining issues,” he added.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, also speaking at the Doha Forum, said the international force needed to be deployed “as soon as possible on the ground because one party, which is Israel, is every day violating the ceasefire.”

He called for the force to be deployed along “the yellow line in order to verify and to monitor” the truce.

There have been multiple deadly incidents of Israeli forces firing on Palestinians in the vicinity of the yellow line since the ceasefire went into effect.

Justice for both sides

Turkey, which is also a guarantor of the truce, has indicated it wants to take part in the stabilisation force, but its efforts are viewed unfavourably in Israel, which considers Ankara too close to Hamas.

Fidan later said at the Doha Forum that the disarmament of Hamas should not be the main priority in Gaza.

“That cannot be the first thing to do in the process, the disarming. We need to put things in (their) proper order, we have to be realistic,” he said.

He also urged the US to intervene with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu to ensure the plan succeeds.

Turkey ready to help rebuild Gaza, but tensions with Israel could be a barrier

“If they don’t intervene, I’m afraid there is a risk the plan can fail,” Fidan said.

“The amount of daily violations of the ceasefire by the Israelis is indescribable at the moment and all indicators are showing that there is a huge risk of stopping the process,” he added.

Sheikh Mohammed said Qatar and the other truce guarantors were “getting together in order to force the way forward for the next phase” of the deal.

“And this next phase is just also temporary from our perspective,” he said, calling for a “lasting solution that provides justice for both people”.

Aid deliveries

The ceasefire plan calls for Gaza’s vital Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt to be reopened to allow in aid – a goal shared by humanitarian actors.

Israel this week said it would open the checkpoint, but “exclusively for the exit of residents from the Gaza Strip to Egypt”.

‘Post-apocalyptic wasteland’: aid worker describes enduring horror in Gaza

Egypt swiftly denied that it had agreed to such a move, insisting the crossing be opened in both directions.

Israel’s announcement drew expressions of concern from several Muslim-majority nations, who said they opposed “any attempts to expel the Palestinian people from their land”.

Abdelatty insisted on Saturday that Rafah “is not going to be a gateway for displacement. It’s only for flooding Gaza with humanitarian and medical care”.

(with AFP)

The French charity Sidaction, which works on HIV prevention and support, said the rise in what it calls harmful messages of male domination, sexism and sexual violence carries dangerous consequences for prevention and sexual health.

In a statement this week, Sidaction said the issue is not only the content itself but also the way platforms amplify it through algorithms that favour sensationalist formats and boost posts built on provocation and shock.

To push back, the NGO has taken a creative tack. It has seeded TikTok with a series of viral-style videos that imitate the swaggering codes of so-called “alpha” influencers, aiming to reintroduce messages of prevention, respect and reliable information directly into young men’s feeds.

The campaign – entitled “Alpha Safe: when toxic masculinity goes viral, setting the record straight becomes vital” – was launched alongside a new OpinionWay poll that underscores just how widely masculinist ideas are circulating.

Stamping out misinformation in France’s fight against HIV-Aids

Dangers of ‘stealthing’

According to the survey, more than one in three young men aged 16 to 34 – 37 percent – consume masculinist content on social media.

Among those aged 25 to 34 who are familiar with the influencers pushing these ideas, one in two believe their content “finally tells the truth”.

More than half of respondents feel that men are too often accused of exaggerated or false sexual violence, while just over 50 percent say it remains important to be “manly”.

Florence Thune, Sidaction’s director, has warned that such beliefs “increase risk taking” and “deeply destabilise the culture of consent, which is central to the fight against HIV”.

One of the clearest signs of that shift comes from attitudes towards “stealthing” – the non-consensual removal of a condom during sex.

France changes criminal code to define rape as sex without consent

Nearly one in five men aged 25 to 34 say they “understand” the practice – a figure which rises to one in three among those who subscribe to masculinist theories.

Stealthing became a political flashpoint in France during a vote at the end of October on a law incorporating non-consent into the criminal definition of rape. A proposed amendment seeking to create a specific offence for stealthing was rejected by the National Assembly.

Sidaction argues that tackling toxic online content is part of a broader, urgent need to strengthen education on emotional, relational and sexual life – known in France as EVARS – particularly in light of a 10-year surge in HIV diagnoses among 15 to 24-year-olds.

Together with Planning Familial and SOS Homophobie, the organisation has taken the Paris Administrative Court to task for failing to enforce the 2001 law requiring three annual sex education sessions from primary through secondary school. A ruling is expected on Tuesday.

Growing ‘masculinist’ culture in France slows down fight against sexism

Funding in decline

This comes as France’s National Council on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (CNS) calls for an “urgent remobilisation of public authorities”, warning that declining public funding at home and abroad is putting four decades of progress at risk.

With major donors – including the United States and France – scaling back contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the CNS says HIV programmes worldwide are under threat.

The lack of a French pledge at the recent Global Fund summit in November, as well as President Emmanuel Macron’s absence from the Johannesburg event, has drawn criticism from organisations including Sidaction and Aides.

The CNS notes that this comes at a time when medical innovations such as long-acting injectable PrEP could help accelerate prevention and support the goal of ending the pandemic by 2030.

(with newswires)

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.

Japan has seen the starkest rise in attacks. Seven people were killed in October and authorities counted 88 incidents that month. With 13 deaths so far this year, the country has reported its highest number of bear-related fatalities on record.

In the country’s northern Akita province, officials have called in the army in an attempt to manage the situation.

“It is surprising. Attacks happen from time to time in Japan, but it is getting worse lately. What also surprises us is that we do not know all the factors behind this rise in attacks,” David Garshelis, vice president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Bear Specialist Group, told RFI.

Melting Arctic ice sees 56 hungry polar bears gather near a Russian village

Spike in Central Europe

Across Europe, scientists who track large predators say bears are appearing more often in places where they were once rarely seen.

“It’s happening in Slovakia, in Romania, in Slovenia too… and in Greece as well, where there are practically no attacks on humans but bears still come into villages,” said Djuro Huber, an emeritus professor at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Zagreb, Croatia.

After several attacks in 2024, the Slovakian government declared a state of emergency across two thirds of the country. The environment minister said encounters between people and bears jumped from 650 in 2020 to 1,900 in 2024.

This rise has reshaped long-held assumptions about how often people and bears meet. Bear attacks remain rare but have increased from “less than two a year from 1999-2003” to “nearly 11 a year since 2021”, explained Robin Rigg, president of the Slovak Wildlife Society.

Human behaviour

The pattern reflects a simple link: the more encounters, the higher the risk. And encounters increase when outdoor activities expand into places where bears live.

“We see, for example, more human presence in bear zones. And with activities that carry high risks, like going jogging in a bear zone or taking selfies with bears,” said Guillaume Chapron, a French carnivore expert at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Unfortunately, this kind of situation can end badly.”

Stronger bear populations are not the main reason behind the trend – and are actually a conservation success, Chapron added. “We can say it is a success for nature conservation. We see the same with wolves and lynx in Europe.”

Experts stress that most bears try to avoid people and usually react only when startled or threatened.

“When a bear attacks a person, the most common reason is fear. But it does not attack to kill you, even less to eat you,” Huber said. “A common example is when a mother wants to protect her cubs.”

Sea Shepherd offers €30,000 ‘bounty’ to identify killer of bear in French Pyrenees

Bears near homes

What worries many experts is how close bears are now getting to people’s homes.

In Japan, they have been spotted in village streets and even inside a supermarket. Some link the change to rural areas losing residents, leaving space that wildlife quickly fills.

“Humans leave what is considered suitable habitat by bears, so bears settle there and the small remaining rural population finds itself facing a high number of bears,” said Garshelis.

Waste left in the open is also drawing bears into towns.

“It is because of people who do not dispose of their waste properly. All the countries that have bears in the Americas understood this a long time ago, but we are still discovering it,” Huber said.

Even small changes to farming can alter bear behaviour. In northern India, in the Himalayas, farmers switching from growing potatoes to lettuce “was enough to attract bears”, Garshelis added.

Bear trouble spreads in the French Pyrénées: Pt.1

Climate change impact

Scientists say warming temperatures are likely to be playing a role too.

“We can expect shorter hibernation periods, which could also lead to more human-bear interactions… even loss of natural habitat for bears that could have a negative impact on their behaviour,” said Rigg.

Researchers have yet to determine exactly how warming temperatures are reshaping bear habits, but early signs point to real shifts.

“We still do not understand very well how this affects bears,” Garshelis said, noting that changes are already visible in some regions. In the Himalayas, for example, Asian black bears are now appearing in areas that previously offered unsuitable altitude and climate.

In Uttarakhand in northern India, five people have been killed this year by Asian black bears, The Indian Express reported. State officials linked the rise in attacks to changes in bear behaviour tied to warmer temperatures, food shortages, poor waste management and damage to habitat.

An unnamed wildlife official in the town of Badrinath told the newspaper that the animals are also delaying hibernation. “Usually, the bears leave in early November, but this year they have raided crops, attacked humans and eaten their livestock,” he said.

Japan shows similar signs of change. Successive storms have damaged vegetation and reduced food supplies, with beech nuts hit especially hard. Japanese experts had warned in 2023 that food shortages were pushing bears towards towns ahead of hibernation.

Rising bear numbers in French Pyrenees mask long-term fears for species’ survival

However, despite the global rise in attacks, experts emphasise that the overall danger to people remains low. “In general, you are more likely to be struck by lightning,” Chapron said.

The IUCN Red List classifies six of the eight bear species as vulnerable, with only the brown bear and the American black bear considered of lesser concern.

This article was adapted from the original version in French by Léo Roussel.

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?

France’s national football team coach Didier Deschamps was enthusiastic as he responded to the press after the draw announcement in Washington, where France and Norway came out alongside Senegal in a tough-looking Group I.

“It will be a great duel,” Deschamps told reporters, keenly anticipating a showdown between star players Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland.

France will be looking to win a third World Cup to make up for losing the 2022 final on penalties to Argentina in Qatar.

“Both teams have lots of other big names, but of course Kylian and Haaland are two players recognised around the world and they will be two of the contenders to be the top scorer,” Deschamps said.

Mbappé has scored 30 goals in 24 games for Real Madrid and France since the beginning of this season, while Haaland has netted 33 in 24 appearances for Manchester City and Norway.

Haaland’s goals helped Norway top their qualifying group ahead of Italy as they secured a first appearance at the World Cup finals since 1998.

Group I will be completed by the winner of one of the intercontinental play-offs to take place in March, from either Iraq, Bolivia or Suriname.

First steps most difficult

A meeting with Senegal brings back memories of 2002, when France went to the tournament in Japan and South Korea as holders but lost to the west African nation in their opening match and ended up being eliminated in the group stage.

“Every World Cup has its own story and we need to make sure this one is as beautiful as possible,” added Deschamps, who will step down after the tournament to bring an end to a 14-year reign at the helm of Les Bleus.

If France top their section, they will play one of the best third-placed teams from the group stage in the round of 32. But then it is likely that Germany would stand in their way in the last 16.

“Of course, as France we have a status and there is a lot of expectation around us, but we need to show respect and humility from the beginning,” added Deschamps.

France reach World Cup on day of tributes to victims of Paris terrorist attacks

“Before thinking about what is at the top of the mountain, we will need to work our way up gradually and the first steps are difficult.”

The World Cup tournament will be held across the USA, Mexico and Canada from 11 June to 19 July, with 16 more teams added to the global showpiece, up from the 32 nations involved in 2022.

While the US will host most matches, including the final at the MetLife Stadium outside New York, three of the 16 venues will be in Mexico and two in Canada.

The opening game sees Mexico play South Africa at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, in Group A, which also features South Korea and a qualifier.

Highest-ranked nations kept apart

For the first time, the draw was done in such a way as to ensure the four highest-ranked nations were kept apart – Spain, Argentina, France and England cannot meet before the semi-finals, if all top their groups.

Reigning European champions Spain will kick off their campaign against first-time qualifiers Cape Verde before also taking on Uruguay and Saudi Arabia in Group H.

Lionel Messi’s Argentina begin their defense of the trophy they won in Qatar in 2022 by facing Algeria, and will also play Austria and debutants Jordan in Group J.

Thomas Tuchel’s England, seeking to win a first World Cup since 1966, will be expected to top Group L ahead of 2018 finalists Croatia, Ghana and Panama.

2026 World Cup: Africa’s also-rans clash in play-offs for last chance gala

Carlo Ancelotti’s Brazil and surprise 2022 semi-finalists Morocco will meet in Group C, which also features Scotland and Haiti – Scotland and Brazil will meet for the fifth time at a World Cup.

Germany’s opponents in Group E will be Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador and Caribbean minnows Curacao, while Portugal face Uzbekistan, Colombia and a play-off winner in Group K.

The United States got a manageable draw, with Paraguay, Australia and a European play-off winner in Group D.

Group B: Canada, Qatar, Switzerland and a qualifier.

Group F: Netherlands, Japan, a qualifier, Tunisia

Group G: Belgium, Egypt, Iran, New Zealand

(with AFP)

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

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

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

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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

80, rue Camille Desmoulins

92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux

France

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

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

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.”

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 25 October, just days after the famous theft of the French crown jewels from the Louvre, I asked you a question about another famous theft from the Louvre. You were to re-read our article “Paris police hunt Louvre thieves after priceless jewels vanish in daring heist”, and send in the answers to these three questions: Which artwork was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, and by whom? How did he do it?

The answers are, to quote our article: “In 1911, the Mona Lisa famously vanished from its frame, spirited away by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former museum employee who hid overnight in a broom cupboard and simply walked out with the painting under his coat.”

Interesting fun fact, also in our article: The Mona Lisa at that time was not a famous painting at all. Because the theft made global headlines, when it was recovered two years later in Florence, it had become the most famous painting in the world.

In addition to the quiz question, there was the bonus question: What “Instant Karma” incident have you been involved in?  

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

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

Also on the list of lucky winners this week are Naved Rayan, the president of the RFI Fan Club in Murshidibad, India. There are RFI Listeners Club members Sahadot Hossain from Kishoreganj, Bangladesh and Karobi Hazarika from Assam, India, and last but not least, RFI English listener Khizar Hayat Shah, the president of the Sadat Listeners Club in Punjab, Pakistan.

Congratulations winners!

Here’s the music you heard on this week’s programme: The “Hunting Song” from Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words Op.19 No.3, performed by Daniel Barenboim; the theme from To Catch a Thief by Armando Trovajoli; “The Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov; “The Cakewalk” from Children’s Corner by Claude Debussy, performed by the composer, and “The Harder They Come” by Jimmy Cliff, performed by Jimmy Cliff and his ensemble.  

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

This week’s question … you must listen to the show to participate. After you’ve listened to the show, re-read our article “France says goodbye to star pandas going back to China”, which will help you with the answer.

You have until 12 January to enter this week’s quiz; the winners will be announced on the 17 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

80, rue Camille Desmoulins

92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux

France

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

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

In Sudan, the UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said last week that atrocities in Darfur – where the rebellious RSF are fiercely battling the regular army and targeting civilians – have been met with indifference and “complete impunity”.

He made the remarks following a visit to the devastated Sudanese region.

Chad has consequently become a refuge for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the conflict in Sudan – and as violence against civilians intensifies in Darfur, even more are crossing the border. The influx is placing severe pressure on already scarce resources in one of Africa’s poorest countries.

Meanwhile, Charlotte Slente, Secretary General of the Danish Refugee Council, travelled to eastern Chad recently and spoke to us while on the ground visiting refugee camps. She said that the escalating humanitarian crisis urgently requires the world’s attention and that she expects more people to flee Sudan in search of safety and basic survival.

As thousands flee, Sudan’s war spills over into humanitarian crisis in Chad

Last weekend in South Africa, the final event of the country’s G20 South African presidency – the heads of state summit  – took place in Johannesburg, aiming to secure commitments on debt relief for developing countries and to address global inequalities.

World leaders signed a declaration reflecting a “renewed commitment to multilateral cooperation”, according to South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa.

We have two guests reflecting on this significant year for Africa:

• Désiré Assogbavi, Adviser for Africa at the Open Society Foundations, a lawyer and international development expert in African institutions, policy, and politics, who took part in many of this year’s meetings in South Africa, including the Heads of State Summit in Johannesburg this weekend;

• Ivor Ichikowitz, founder and director of the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, which has produced the comprehensive African Youth Survey G20 Briefing to better understand what young Africans expect from this moment of leadership.

South Africa closes G20 year framed as ‘presidency for all of Africa’

Finally, we’ll hear from my colleague Ollia Horton, who recently met in Paris with the Ghanaian artist Emmanuel Aggrey Tieku, a civil engineer by profession and an artist at heart.

A stitch in time: the Ghanaian artist sewing trash into treasure

He has found an innovative way to raise awareness of the problem of textile waste in his native Ghana.

His  installations are stitched together from hundreds of pieces of used clothing, collected from cities around the world as part of a project that has spanned decades.

Episode mixed by Melissa Chemam and Erwan Rome.

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

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.