Thousands of police officers will be deployed across New Caledonia this Tuesday, which marks 171 years since French forces annexed the archipelago.

The date remains loaded in a territory divided between loyalists who want to stay part of France and indigenous Kanaks – and others – who argue for independence. 

Attempts to turn the anniversary into a celebration of unity haven’t neutralised its charge and this year, amid some of the worst rioting in decades, authorities fear recalling colonial violence will galvanise protesters further.

Colonial project

While European explorers, traders, missionaries and slavers had been interested in the islands they christened New Caledonia since the late 18th century, France was the first power to stake a claim.

Emperor Napoleon III saw the opportunity to establish a foothold in the Pacific, where Britain had already extended its empire, as well as answering French missionaries’ pleas for protection from hostile locals.

On his orders, Admiral Auguste Febvrier-Despointes landed at Balade, site of a Catholic mission on the northern tip of the main island, and had his men hoist the French flag.

The annexation order he issued on 24 September 1853 was signed by French officers and missionaries, but not a single local representative.

Painful legacy

A ruthless campaign followed to establish control over the rest of the territory, the start of decades of dispossession and displacement for local populations. 

A decade later, France turned New Caledonia into a penal colony – allowing it to exile inconvenient prisoners while settling the islands with tens of thousands of white Europeans.

French authorities turned over confiscated land to colonial officials and freed prisoners, while indigenous inhabitants were ultimately relegated to reservations.

Historian Isabelle Merle, who specialises in colonisation in the Pacific, calls it “a unique colonial history”. 

“The strategy of the state from 1853 was to deliberately introduce wave upon wave of French migrants to populate the territory,” she told RFI.

“They tried to transform it into a ‘little Austral France’ as they called it in the 19th century.”

From mourning to reconciliation

New Caledonia remained a French colony until 1946, when it instead became an overseas territory of France.

The change in status paved the way for full citizenship and voting rights for Kanak people, who by then had seen their numbers severely reduced.

As a drive for independence gathered pace in the 1970s, the movement declared 24 September a day of mourning.

But after years of violence throughout the 1980s, then political accords that laid down a roadmap for the territory to govern itself, the early 2000s saw a new appetite for reconciliation.

Key dates in New Caledonia’s history

In 2003, for the 150th anniversary of the annexation, New Caledonia’s pro-independence Culture Minister Déwé Gorodey led a push to reclaim 24 September as a “festival of citizenship”. 

New Caledonians of all backgrounds were invited to gather around the Mwa Kaa, a monumental totem pole erected in the capital, Nouméa, in a spirit of unity.

A plaque at its base bears an extract from the 1998 accord that set a timeline for autonomy: “The past was a time of colonisation. The present is a time of sharing, through the achievement of a new balance. The future must be the time of an identity in a common destiny.”

Tensions high

New Caledonia has officially marked 24 September as a celebration of unity since 2004, but the anniversary remains a powerful symbol of French oppression for pro-independence campaigners.

This year, an association of customary chiefs plans to hold a ceremony unilaterally declaring sovereignty over their traditional lands.

It comes amid unrest over a proposed constitutional reform on voting rights that Kanaks believe would weaken their bloc and make independence harder to achieve in any future referendum.

At least 13 people have died in clashes since May – most recently two men shot and killed by police in the pro-independence stronghold of Saint Louis last week.

Deadly unrest in New Caledonia tied to old colonial wounds

Authorities have cautioned against public gatherings on Tuesday’s anniversary, citing calls on social media for fresh demonstrations.

Some 6,000 police and gendarmes have been mobilised, while a curfew is in place from 6pm to 5am. 

“It’s a celebration that should bring people together around the ideas of shared destiny and citizenship, certainly not divide them,” Théophile de Lassus, chief of staff for the French high commissioner in New Caledonia, told the local branch of FranceInfo. 

“And if some people want to divide and attack New Caledonians, the State will respond very firmly.”

“This ministry will be fully mobilised whenever fundamental freedoms, human rights and minority rights are in danger,” the 41-year-old centrist said during the handover ceremony in Paris.

He promised to “defend international law.”

“The prosperity of France and Europe cannot be built in isolation from the rest of the world,” he said, before flying to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The new head of French diplomacy also promised support to Iranian and Afghan women.

“I say this to Iranian women, and I say this to girls in Afghanistan: I have heard your distress call. You are not alone, we will stand by your side.”

They are “not alone”, he said.

Afghan athlete under police protection in France after denouncing Taliban

Democracy under attack

Barrot listed four “challenges” he believes the world is facing: peace, climate, democracy and prosperity.

“We are living in a time of geopolitical crises of exceptional gravity. Never has the international order been subjected to such violent winds that want to tear it down, to replace it with an international order based on force,” he said.

He mentioned Ukraine, the Middle East, Haiti, the Great Lakes region, the South China Sea, where he said his ministry would “defend international law with all its might in the service of a just peace.” 

“Democracy is under attack from all sides. Our country is the target and the target of the enemies of democracy. France will defend itself against all foreign interference, against all hybrid threats,” he added.

Meet the key ministers shaping France’s new government 

Profoundly European

Previously junior minister in charge of Europe, Barrot’s nomination at the Foreign office is seen a sign of President Emmanuel Macron’s determination to keep a firm grip on his ‘reserved domain,’ according to analysts.

Vice-president of the centre-right MoDem party, he is the fourth French Foreign Minister since Emmanuel Macron was first elected president in 2017, and the third since the start of Macron’s second term in 2022. 

His career began at the Finance Ministry, as junior minister for digital affairs, from July 2022 to January of this year, which seems more fitted with his degree from HEC business school and his doctorate in management science, with his research interests including corporate finance.  

He then arrived at the Quai d’Orsay in February 2024, following a government reshuffle, to replace Laurence Boone.

Son of the former minister and European Commissioner Jacques Barrot, he inherited the legacy of being “a convinced European”.

Critics have however described him as living “on his father’s reputation”.

 (with newswires)

A day after President Emmanuel Macron appointed a new government, Prime Minister Michel Barnier told the France 2 broadcaster that the government’s financial situation was “very serious”.

The situation required measures to rein in spending and raise income, he added – and high earners would have to “do their bit” to help France’s finances recover.

But there would be no income-tax increases for “people with low incomes, or wage earners, or the middle-income class”, he said.

“I am not going to increase the tax burden for all French people further, they already pay the highest taxes among all EU partners,” he said.

Who is France’s new prime minister Michel Barnier?

Barnier, who heads up a government condemned by its critics as too far to the right, promised to move fast to tackle the country’s most pressing problems.

As he geared up for his first cabinet meeting on Monday afternoon, Barnier called for “the greatest possible cohesion” within the government, and for a willingness to find “compromise”.

His government’s most immediate and daunting task will be to put together a budget for 2025 to be submitted to lawmakers by 1 October.

France’s total debt stands at 110 percent of GDP, or close to €3.2 trillion.

Weaker-than-expected tax revenues and higher spending by local governments has left its public sector budget deficit spiralling towards 6.2 percent of economic output next year if nothing is done to rein it in.

It is in breach of European Union deficit rules and credit rating agencies are scrutinising French decision-making carefully.

“A large part of our debt has been placed on international and foreign markets. We have to maintain France’s credibility,” Barnier said.

Barnier, who was the EU’s lead negotiator during Britain’s Brexit negotiations, also said he was also open to changes to Macron’s pension reform but that any changes should not undermine the pension system’s precarious finances.

Tilt to right as French PM Barnier appoints government after months of deadlock

He said by way of example that he wanted to better take into account the hardships faced by working mothers over the course of long careers and that he was open to the input of employers and unions.

Macron’s political opponents on the left and far right have already threatened votes of no confidence against Barnier’s government. They say the government is not a reflection of how the French voted in the July poll.

“This is more Macron. It’s a government that has no future,” Jordan Bardella, chairman of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, earlier said.

Barnier’s government lacks a majority and will need to keep the far-right on side and deter it from voting to bring the government down if it is to survive. Perhaps with that in mind, Barnier said he would get tough on immigration.

“We need a European response. We need to take action at home too,” Barnier said. “We need to deal with the immigration issue much more rigorously.”

 (with newswires)

The special force arrived in Fort-de-France on Sunday.

It comes after the local representative of France’s central government in its overseas territory said in a statement that protests were forbidden in the municipalities of Fort-de-France, Le Lamentin, Ducos and Le Robert until Monday.

The government has also issued a curfew.

Martinique imposes night curfew as rising living costs trigger unrest

The restrictions came after violent protests broke out on the island last week over the high cost of living, with gunfire injuring at least six police officers and one civilian.

Police fired tear gas and government officials said several stores were also looted.

Officials said the bans were meant “to put an end to the violence and damage committed at gatherings, as well as to the numerous obstacles to daily life and freedom of movement that penalise the entire population, particularly at weekends.”

But the measure was met by defiance by many on the island, with large peaceful protests held on Saturday night.

Videos from local media show crowds of thousands peacefully walking along highways overnight banging on drums and waving flags.

Martinique’s leaders requested help from the elite police force amid the recent protests but this has been met with a sharp rejection by some in the territory.

Tragic history

Known as the Companies for Republican Security (CRS), it was banned in the French territory following bloody riots in December 1959.

The unit had been accused of using disproportionate force against protesters, ending in the deaths of a number of young demonstrators.

France’s top court denies appeal for reparations by descendants of slaves

The force is rarely deployed in French territories in the Caribbean, but was called on during riots and strikes in Guadeloupe in 2009.

Béatrice Bellay, a representative of the socialist party on the island, blasted the move, saying: “Martinique is not in a civil war, it is a social war.” She called for an “open and transparent dialogue” between protesters and the government.

“This measure only serves to aggravate tensions and distract attention from the legitimate demands of the people of Martinique,” she wrote in a statement Sunday.

 (AP)

Ruto visited Haiti to assess the progress of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, where Kenya is playing a leading role to curb rampant gang violence that has ushered years of political chaos and mass displacement.

“On the suggestion to transit this into a fully UN Peacekeeping mission, we have absolutely no problem with it, if that is the direction the UN security council wants to take,” Ruto said on Saturday in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

“There are many people who thought Haiti was mission impossible, but today they have changed their minds because of the progress you have made,” he added. 

Kenya has also pledged to send 600 more police officers to Haiti in the coming weeks, as expected.  

Ruto stopped in Haiti while en route to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. 

He met with the president of the Transitional Presidential Council, Edgard Leblanc Fils and visited the Kenyan base in Clercine, where he greeted the Kenyan police officers on duty, according to RFI’s correspondent in Haiti.

The 21 September visit marked 100 days of deployment of Kenyan police in Haiti, but concrete results are still to be seen.

African-led mission

The mandate of the MSS mission was first approved by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) last year, for 12 months, and will expire at the start of October.

Kenya-led mission to Haiti faces scrutiny as UN mandate deadline looms

On Friday, the United Nations’ expert on human rights in Haiti said that the situation has worsened, with now about 700,000 people internally displaced.

Kenya sent about 400 police officers to Port-au-Prince in June and July from an expected total of 1,000, after the Security Council approved the MSS mission.

A handful of other countries have together pledged at least 1,900 more troops, including Benin.

UN launches emergency appeal for Haiti as Benin mulls joining multinational security mission

Earlier this month, the UNSC began considering a draft resolution to extend the MSS mandate and ask the UN to plan for it to become a formal peacekeeping mission.

The 15-member council is due to vote on 30 September on the mandate renewal.

Mixed results

More than 578,000 Haitians have been internally displaced by the gang violence, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The efficacy of the MSS mission has been criticised however, amid delays in deployments of manpower and vital equipment needed to fight powerful gangs.

The idea of a UN peacekeeping force, first floated by the US, is also controversial in Haiti given the introduction of cholera by UN troops and several sexual abuse cases the the last time they were in Haiti.

Ruto’s positive perception of the mission was contradicted by a United Nations security expert, William O’Neill.

Just days earlier, he warned that Haiti’s National Police still lack the “logistical and technical capacity” to fight gangs.

The security mission is expected to reach a total of 2,500 personnel, with the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin and Chad also pledging to send police and soldiers, although there isn’t a clear calendar for now.

 (with newswires)

Amid a heavy police presence, protesters for a second week marched along Tunis’ main avenue, a focal point of 2011 “Arab Spring” revolution, chanting slogans including “The people want the fall of the regime” and “Out with dictator Saied”.

The protest came after lawmakers proposed a bill to strip the administrative court of its authority to adjudicate electoral disputes, a move that the opposition says would discredit the 6 October election, and pave the way for Saied to secure a second term.

“He committed a robbery and seized all the powers!” a Tunisian woman who works as a civil servant told RFI. “Kais Saied does not believe in any partner – whether it comes from the people, the parties, civil society or the opposition. He thinks he is a prophet on Earth!” 

Some protesters also recounted the difficulties they encountered in participating in the demonstration.

“It was not easy to get to the place of the gathering,” a 60 year old woman told RFI, asking for anonymity. “The police made us take detours: ‘Go this way, go that way, stop’…”

“Kais, oh dictator, your turn will come,” others chanted.

This new series of protests follows a first demonstration last weekend.

Tunisia’s presidential campaign continues amid protests over restricted freedoms

Unfair campaign

Two weeks before the election, NGOs and parties still active in the country are promising to take to the streets again to protest against what they call the return of dictatorship.

“We had a revolution to gain a little more democracy and to get out of arbitrariness but unfortunately we are in an even worse situation than before,” another woman told our correspondent in Tunis, referring to the Arab Spring started in December 2010.

Tunisian president removes minister following protests

“Saied’s steps show that he is no longer popular and he fears losing the election”, Nabil Hajji, the leader of the opposition Attayar party, told Reuters news agency.

“Tunisians now have only one choice, which is the streets to defend our democracy,” he said.

Political tensions in the North African country have risen since an electoral commission named by Saied disqualified three prominent presidential candidates, Mondher Znaidi, Abdellatif Mekki and Imed Daimi.

Lack of justice

The commission defied the administrative court, the highest judicial body in election-related disputes, and allowed only two candidates to run against Saied.

One of them, Ayachi Zammel, is in jail after being sentenced on Wednesday to 20 months in prison for falsifying signatures on election paperwork in what he calls a politically motivated case.

Amnesty International has demanded that Tunisian authorities end their clampdown on rights and freedoms, stop the harassment of opponents, journalists, HRDs and NGOs, and stop undermining the judiciary and the rule of law.

“The courts are now being used against the political opposition, against critics of the government in place and against journalists who defend human rights, activists and also the shrinking of space in relation to the activity of NGOs,” Amnesty’s Fida Hammami told RFI.

“For the first time, the body that is responsible for organising the elections does not allow two leading organisations in the fields of observation and transparency to observe the elections.”

Critics say Saied is using the electoral commission and judiciary to secure victory by stifling competition and intimidating candidates.

The president denies the accusations, saying he is fighting traitors, mercenaries and the corrupt.

Saied was democratically elected in 2019, and has since tightened his grip on power.

He began ruling by decree in 2021 in a move the opposition has described as a coup.

 (with Reuters)

For three years, photojournalist Jérôme Gence, who is also a freelance data analyst, focused on the use of screens by children in France and in Nepal and India.

He visited children and parents’ in their homes, met a psychologist treating addiction to screens, went to a helpine center in charge of cyberbullying and to a hospital in Toulouse using digital technologies to reduce pain for hospitalised children.

His photos series “The screen generation” was shown at Visa pour l’image festival in Perpignan.

RFI: What is your project ‘The screen generation’ about?

Jérôme Gence: I try to explain the success of the digital world today for kids, and I think the answer is, in the real world, what are the values we’re passing on to the next generation?

Another point is that we give so much power to only a few tech companies in the world, which belong to investors and those investors collect data.

And the main target, I will say is the kids and the next generation, because they’re going to be the adults of tomorrow.

I think we are facing a time bomb for billions of kids and for the next generation.

RFI: What was the reaction of the parents when you asked them about their children using the screens, smartphones etc.?

JG: During this photo story, I didn’t meet any parents who said ‘I want my kids to be connected as much as possible’.

I met parents who said ‘I feel powerless because if I give my kids those devices, I lose control. But if I don’t give them a device, they’re going to be excluded from society’.

The word ‘device’ is really important because it’s not only about smartphones or tablets. It’s about how the screen today surrounds the lives of children.

A psychologist specialised in addictions that I met for this project told me that ‘to understand the behavior of the kids, you have to understand the addiction of the parents.’

Also, a few days ago, I was in an ice cream store. To order an ice cream, you first order it on a screen and then talk to a human being to say ‘this is the flavour that I want’.

So we are putting a screen as an interface between two human beings.

To me, this is a kind of human trafficking to the next generation.

RFI: This topic is complex, what can be done?

JG: I think we have to talk about it first and we have to bring education. And education also comes with regulations.

I think education is the key but the problem is today even in education, we are giving so much power to the digital, to the screen, just by the fact that the screens in the short term are going to help the kids.

It was so complex to do this project because you have different issues according to the countries.

The issues aren’t the same in Nepal, in India, and for developing countries in general compared to rich countries. 

This represents “one meal a week per person”, or around €157 a year, Meleyne Rabot, the company’s new managing director, told French news agency AFP.

Too Good To Go  estimates that each French person is responsible for the unnecessary use of 1.3 square kilometres of farmland and 390 litres of water, “more than two bathtubs of water every week”.

In addition, more than a kilo of CO2 equivalent is emitted unnecessarily.

The company, which enables retailers to offer their unsold produce at reduced prices based its calculation on Eurostat data from the French ministry of ecological transition. According to them, 1.7 million tonnes of edible waste were thrown away by French households in 2021.

The latest data shows that 39 percent of food waste occurs at consumer level, compared with 22 percent at primary production level, i.e. on farms.

Prevention

14 percent occurs at the agro-industrial processing level, 12 percent at distribution level and 13 percent at consumption outside the home, in canteens or restaurants.

That means a total of 4.3 million tonnes is thrown away along the entire food chain, according to the SDES, the Ministry’s statistics department.

Edible waste accounts for just under half of the overall food waste in France which accounts for 8.8 million tonnes, including bones and peelings.

France introduces compulsory home compost but infrastructure lacking says NGO

With 129 kilogrammes per inhabitant of food waste globally each year, France is just below the European average of 131 kilogrammes per inhabitant, SDES said in April.

Too Good To Go, which was set up in 2016, claims to have “helped prevent the waste of more than 350 million meals”, and says it has “100 million users and 170,000 active partners across 19 countries”.

Its communication comes ahead of the UN international day to raise awareness of food loss and waste, on 29 September.

In a bid to reduce landfill, France brought in a compulsory compost rule as of 1 January, 2024. People are now obliged to separate food waste from ordinary waste using compulsory compost bins in their buildings or provided in public parks by their town halls.

(with AFP)

Conceived in the early 2010s, the development was to transform a strip of industrial wasteland between the River Orne and the canal linking Caen to the sea into 2,300 homes, as well as tens of thousands of square metres of office space.

But the construction “will not happen”, said Thibaud Tiercelet, director general of the “Caen Peninsula” planning society in charge of the Nouveau Bassin (New Basin) project.

In 2023, just as all the authorisations to start work on the project had been obtained, Tiercelet was alerted by a group of experts tasked with determining the impact of climate change on the Normandy region.

That group’s findings were stark enough to convince then-Caen mayor Joel Bruneau to sink the development.

“In 2017, the estimated rise in sea level was 20 centimetres (eight inches) by 2100,” Tiercelet recalled of the data.

But “in 2020 it was 60 centimetres, and in 2023 it was one metre”.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects a “likely” sea level rise of 40 to 80 centimetres by 2100.

But it also notes this estimate does not take into account poorly understood drivers that could push sea levels significantly higher, such as the rapid disintegration of the polar ice sheets.

In any case, the IPCC advises that urban planners in coastal cities “may wish to consider global-mean sea level rise above the assessed likely range”.

France’s beekeepers count cost of devastating year as honey production plummets

‘It will flood every week’

At present, the 17-kilometre-long strip, dubbed Caen’s “peninsula”, is only 70 centimetres above the canal’s water level.

“If the sea rises by one metre, it will flood here every week,” urban planner Tiercelet said.

While climate scientists stress that there is uncertainty about the extent and pace of the rise in water levels, the fact is that they will happen.

As for the level of the canal, it is currently regulated by a lock “which only has 50 centimetres of leeway at high tide”, noted Tiercelet.

So in a few decades, it may no longer be able to fulfil its role.

Plans for the development have been shelved as a result, with improvements to the promenade on the “peninsula” scheduled instead – pending a study into the water dynamics of the entire Orne river estuary.

France’s first wind-propelled cargo ship successfully crosses Atlantic

‘Temporary uses’

Besides the project, the sea level rise projections also scuppered “the extension of the tramway and an access footbridge” to the strip, said Emmanuel Renard, vice-president for land use and development in the Caen-la-Mer urban community.

Renard said they were looking at “transitional urban planning for 40 years with temporary uses” for the area – which could include student housing or craft workshops on the land where disused warehouses are awaiting demolition.

As seawater rises more frequently through the estuary and groundwater, the strip’s freshwater ecosystem will gradually become saline and brackish.

The tree species that will soon be planted around the promenade, which is currently being cleaned up, have been chosen to suit this future ecosystem.

“It’s the end of a 170-year-old model, of the technological explosion that allowed the era of large-scale construction and mastery over our environment,” Tiercelet said.

And now we’re going to have to adapt.”

Antoine Armand, finance minister

A relative newcomer to politics, Armand, 33, was first elected to parliament in 2022 on the centrist ticket of Macron’s camp and was re-elected in July’s snap legislative election.

In the new parliament, he had been set to head the economic committee in the lower house until Barnier tapped him for the top job at the powerful Ministry of Economics and Finance.

Armand is no stranger to “Bercy” as the ministry is often called in France, having joined its elite corps of finance inspectors after graduating in 2018 from the prestigious Ecole Nationale d’Administration – a training college for future senior civil servants that Macron also attended.

He will be seconded by Laurent Saint-Martin on budget issues, a delicate portfolio that will report directly to the prime minister, as France struggles to contain a rising budget deficit and contemplates spending cuts and tax hikes.

Tilt to right as French PM Barnier appoints government after months of deadlock

Bruno Retailleau, interior minister

A conservative senator since 2004, Bruno Retailleau, 63, is known for his hard-right views and is the most senior figure from his Republicans (LR) party to enter Barnier’s government.

Retailleau was a driving force behind the party’s shift to the right in an increasingly polarised political landscape, in particular on hot-button issues such as immigration.

As leader of the conservative group of senators, Retailleau has criticised Macron’s latest attempts to toughen immigration rules, calling for a much tougher stance that would include constitutional changes allowing welfare benefit cuts.

He has also urged tougher policing on left-wing and environmental protesters and opposed Macron’s push to add the right for women to pursue an abortion to the constitution.

Jean-Noel Barrot, foreign minister

Barrot, 41, is promoted to foreign minister after serving as junior minister for European affairs since February 2024. Before that he was Macron’s minister for digital affairs.

Barrot comes from a family with a strong political background. His father, Jacques Barrot, was a prominent French politician who served in various ministerial positions and as a European commissioner.

He provides essential political balance for the government, hailing from the centrist party of Francois Bayrou, the political veteran whose independent MoDem party Macron needs to keep on his side.

Impeachment proceedings against France’s Macron pass first hurdle

Benjamin Haddad, Europe minister

Haddad, 38, a fluent English-speaker with excellent contacts in Washington, DC, where he spent years working at a think-tank, was first elected to parliament in 2022 under Macron’s party colours.

He has been vocal on diplomatic issues and especially the war in Ukraine, having convinced tens of European lawmakers to sign a plea to the US Congress to unlock aid for Ukraine at the end of 2023.

Sebastien Lecornu, defence minister

Lecornu, a Macron loyalist, remains in his post at the helm of the Defence Ministry.

A low-profile minister who started his career in conservative ranks, he was excluded from the Republicans after being named a junior minister in Macron’s government in 2017.

(Reuters)

The long wait for a functioning government after President Emmanuel Macron called a snap general election ended after 11 weeks late Saturday with his appointment of a cabinet marking a clear shift to the right.

Opposition politicians from the left have already said they will challenge Barnier’s government with a no-confidence motion, with far-right politicians also slamming its composition.

In the July election, a left-wing alliance called the New Popular Front (NFP) won the most parliamentary seats of any political bloc, but not enough for an overall majority.

Veteran far-right leader Marine Le Pen meanwhile saw her National Rally emerge as the single largest party in the Assembly.

Macron had argued that the left was unable to muster enough support to form a government that would not immediately be brought down in parliament, and rejected a National Rally candidate over the party’s extremist legacy.

He turned instead to Barnier to lead a government drawing mostly on parliamentary support from Macron’s allies, as well as from the conservative Republicans (LR) and centrists groups.

Prime Minister Barnier warns France faces severe budget crisis as government talks stall

‘No future’

Talks on the distribution of the 39 cabinet posts continued right up to Saturday’s official announcement, insiders said, with moments of sharp tension between the president and his prime minister.

Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has called the new lineup “a government of the general election losers”.

France, he said, should “get rid” of the government “as soon as possible”.

Even before the announcement, thousands of people took to the streets of Paris and other French cities Saturday in a left-wing protest to denounce what they called a denial of July’s election results.

Socialist Party chairman Oliver Faure dismissed Barnier’s cabinet as “a reactionary government that gives democracy the finger”.

Macron had been counting on a neutral stance from the far right, but National Rally leader Jordan Bardella was quick to condemn the composition of the new government, which he said had “no future whatsoever”.

While Macron’s party Renaissance had to relinquish some key positions, it still got most of the minister jobs – 12 out of 39.

“This is not a new government, it’s a reshuffle,” quipped Communist party leader Fabien Roussel.

Meet the key ministers shaping France’s new government

‘Same as before’

Former French president Francois Hollande, a Socialist, called the cabinet “the same as before, but with an even stronger presence of the right” and one that would inflict “painful measures on our fellow citizens”.

He said a no-confidence motion was “a good solution”.

To pass, a no-confidence motion needs an absolute majority in parliament, which would then force the government to step down immediately — currently an unlikely scenario as the far right and the leftist bloc, sworn enemies, would have to vote in unison.

The first major task for Barnier, best known internationally for leading the European Union‘s Brexit negotiations with Britain, will be to submit a 2025 budget plan addressing France’s financial situation, which he this week called “very serious”.

France has been placed on a formal procedure for violating European Union budgetary rules.

The difficult job of submitting a budget plan to parliament next month falls to 33-year-old Antoine Armand, the new finance minister.

Armand told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper that “exceptional and targeted” tax increases, as well as cuts in public spending, could not be ruled out.

Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu, a close Macron ally, has kept his job.

The only left-of-centre politician is Didier Migaud, a little-known former Socialist named justice minister.

Barnier, who is to address parliament with a key policy speech on October 1, was scheduled to make a TV appearance later Sunday.

Among the many firsts for which the 1924 Paris Olympics are remembered, one is often overlooked. 

Two weeks after the Summer Games ended, they were followed by another competition. Like the Olympics, it featured disciplines from athletics to swimming to shooting, and multiple countries took part.  

But it wasn’t the Paralympics. It was the International Silent Games, the first event of its kind and a defining moment for deaf sport. 

Listen to a conversation about this story on the Spotlight on France podcast:

Founding father 

Like the modern Olympics, reinvented by a Parisian aristocrat, the Silent Games were largely the brainchild of a Frenchman: Eugène Rubens Alcais. 

Born the son of a postman in the south of France in 1884, Rubens Alcais began life with his hearing but lost it around the age of nine due to ear infections. After attending a school for deaf-mute children, he moved to Paris and worked as a mechanic. 

While it’s not clear where it came from, according to historian Didier Séguillon, author of a biography of Rubens Alcais, his passion for sport ended up defining his life.

“He was a very good cyclist. He actually started out as a footballer for Nîmes, then he came to Paris and took up cycling and middle-distance running,” Séguillon says. “So he was a dedicated sportsman.” 

Séguillon is speaking beside a portrait of Rubens Alcais, displayed as part of an exhibition on the 1924 Silent Games at the National Institute for the Deaf (INJS) in Paris. Hung in what was once a swimming pool for deaf students, the photograph shows a wiry figure with a large moustache and an alert gaze fixed straight on the camera. 

“He wasn’t the type to shy away from a challenge, put it that way,” says Séguillon, the exhibition’s curator.  

Having learned to speak aloud as a child, Rubens Alcais was bilingual in oral French and sign language as well as a talented writer, the historian explains. He used his skills to advocate for sorely lacking deaf rights, including access to education – a tiny minority of deaf children went to school at the time, and no teaching was signed – work and sport.  

For Rubens Alcais, the latter would provide not just a pastime but the chance to prove that deaf people, far from being invalids, were capable of physical excellence. He became involved in setting up clubs for deaf athletes, and in 1914 founded his own magazine, the Silent Sportsman, dedicated to deaf sports. 

A decade later came the opportunity he and his allies had been waiting for. The recently revived Olympic Games were coming to Paris, and the world would be watching as the capital wrote sporting history for the second time. 

“It is France that rekindled the true Olympic spirit and now, 30 years later, the Games are once again to be held in Paris,” Rubens Alcais wrote in a 1922 editorial. “It is France that opened the first school for deaf mutes [the INJS, in 1791] … 

“Thus, it is to France that the privilege of hosting the first Deaf Olympics should devolve.” 

Paris 1924, the Olympics that took the Games ‘faster, higher, stronger’

To prove a point 

The Olympic spirit that Pierre de Coubertin had rekindled three decades earlier didn’t include many athletes who weren’t men, European, able to fund their own training, and non-disabled. 

Like Alice Milliat, the pioneer organising alternative competitions for sportswomen around the same time, Rubens Alcais met resistance from the International Olympic Committee when it came to using their brand. 

Renamed the Silent Games, his event nonetheless evoked the formalities of the Olympics, with a parade of nations, flag waving and an Olympic oath – this time recited in International Sign Language. 

The organisers persuaded sports federations to loan them some of the same venues that had hosted the Olympics weeks earlier, and invited dignitaries from the worlds of politics and sport. 

The contests also resembled the Olympics to the letter. “The idea was to show people that they were capable,” says Séguillon.  

“Deaf people wanted to do the same activities, exactly the same activities in the same conditions and with the same rules as hearing people, to show just how normal they were.” 

Level playing field? 

Held over the week of 10-17 August 1924, the 30 or so events in seven disciplines – athletics, cycling, diving, football, shooting, swimming and tennis – thus took place without any adaptation for their 145 deaf participants. 

Races were kicked off with a starting pistol, leaving competitors with the least hearing watching for the twitch of the official’s thumb.

What wasn’t identical were the results. The javelin competition, for instance, saw throws some 30 to 40 metres shorter than the Olympic equivalent two weeks earlier.  

Séguillon puts that down to the lack of training opportunities for deaf sportspeople, as well as the expense of travelling to Paris, which delegates had to cover themselves. 

But he also believes that sports results aren’t where the Games’ true significance lies. 

“Putting in good performances was important to an extent, but the main thing was to get together and hold discussions,” he says.  

The event brought together deaf delegations from nine different countries across Europe. In between competitions, they held the founding meeting of the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (ICSD), which still exists today. 

Meanwhile the closing banquet, attended by some 400 people, provided the opportunity to raise the issue of deaf rights with politicians and other influential figures. The Games were “truly a political tool”, says Séguillon.

From community to contest

By the time they ended, they had generated mainstream press coverage and drawn crowds of up to 2,500 spectators. 

The success “will earn our little silent world rightful renown throughout the world”, Rubens Alcais declared in the Silent Sportsman. 

He would go on to witness eight more summer editions of the Games before his death in 1963, as well as the creation of a winter equivalent. 

The ICSD, which he chaired until 1953, continues to organise them every four years, though today they’re known as the Deaflympics. While “recognised” by the Olympic body, they remain separate from it.

A century on, the movement that began with the 1924 Games finds itself at a turning point, according to Séguillon.

Today’s athletes see themselves less as “deaf people who do sports” than “sportspeople who are deaf”, he says. Understandably, they want the training opportunities, prestige and financial rewards that come with competing on the world’s biggest sporting stage.

Many call for the Paralympics to add a category for deaf athletes. Others resist classing themselves as disabled and argue they should compete in the Olympics – as some deaf athletes already have, albeit with no guarantee of adjustments.

Séguillon points out the contrast with Ruben Alcais’s original vision for the Silent Games, which he hoped would create “a single deaf nation, a deaf sporting nation”, not set competitors or countries against each other trying to win the most medals.

He believes there is still value in a sports movement run by deaf people, for deaf people.

“Perhaps we could move away from performance and only performance, like we get at the Olympics or even the Paralympics. We could also value these games as encounters, as personal rather than national projects.”

The exhibition “The wild week of the first International Silent Games” runs at the INJS in Paris until 4 October 2024.

Before playing most sports, you need to get to a venue – a gym, or a field or a court. And if you are in Paris and disabled, especially wheelchair-bound, that’s a challenge in itself.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Jerome Rousseau, the founder and general manager of Novosports, showed up at a city-run sports complex on the northeastern edge of the city to lead a session of inclusive volleyball.

The disabled access lift was visible from the street, but bars at the courtyard entrance designed to keep bikes and motorbikes out also blocked Rousseau’s wheelchair.

Rousseau, who is quadriplegic, had to wait while a key was found to open a gate at the far end of the complex. From there, a long path wound around two football fields before finally leading to the gym.

“Everything takes more time when you are disabled,” Rousseau said, unfazed, while riding around one of the fields.

Listen to a version of this story in the Spotlight on France podcast: 

Accessibility hurdle

“Sometimes a facility is accessible for spectators, to watch a game, but not for playing,” Rousseau continued, explaining that accessible changing rooms, showers and toilets are also essential.

Finally inside the gym, he introduced a visiting delegation from the Centre Français of Berlin to inclusive volleyball – a game anyone can play, regardless of their disability.

Players roll a large yoga ball on the ground under a net and are limited by how many times they can touch the ball.

Rousseau, who loves sports, developed the game after his experience in university, where he found there was no way to play with his classmates.

“We had a gym, we had disabled and non-disabled students, and we had nothing for them,” he said. “So we had to create new sports.”

He founded Novosports in 2020. It offers inclusive volleyball as well as baskin – inclusive basketball, a more established sport that originated in Italy.

About 60 percent of the club’s 50 members are disabled. Men and women of all ages play together.

“We have lots of examples of children with disabilities who now can play with their parents who are not disabled or disabled parents who can play with their children,” Paul Quesada, Novosports’ project manager, explains.

“These kind of sports allow people to play together, and they can be competitive because there are rules.”

The rules of inclusive volleyball take into account people’s physical abilities. Non-disabled players must sit on the ground before hitting the ball to level the playing field.

Paralympics boost

Since the Paralympics in Paris, Novosports has received an increased number of calls from people interested in joining.

The Games gave the club media coverage, but also opened up the world of handi- and parasports to the general public.

But a lot of challenges remain for disabled athletes.

“The Paralympics were a success, but it’s only a first step,” said Romain Tran Van, who implements sport policy for the City of Paris.

Of Paris’ over 1,770 sports clubs, just under 200 are able to serve people with disabilities – for a city with 200,000 disabled residents.

Just getting around the city is already a massive challenge, as the metro is virtually inaccessible to wheelchairs.

Parasport activities therefore need to be ideally local, but there is already a shortage of sports facilities across the city.

Limited facilities

Paris has 400 sports facilities, the lowest ratio for its population of any French city. Securing time in a gym, tennis court or pool is a political process, determined by local councils.

Giving a prime slot to a parasport activity often means taking time away from other clubs, which typically have more members.

“When they do it, it sends a strong message,” Tran Van says, and that is what is needed.

The Paralympics helped spread the message and unlocked some funding to retrofit gyms and outdoor basketball courts.

Tran Van helped launch the Network of para-friendly sports clubs in 2020, after Paris had been chosen to host the Games.

The programme helps clubs welcome more disabled members, but it requires investment in equipment and training for coaches.

While sport might seem minor compared to other challenges facing disabled people in Paris – like basic mobility, getting kids services in schools or finding jobs – Tran Van insists it’s vital.

“It is a bit of a cliché, but it is true that sport brings people together,” he says. “Sport is a tool to accelerate change in how disability is seen.”

For people living with a disability, beyond the health benefits, sport helps combat isolation and provides a sense of inclusion that they may not experience elsewhere in life.

Sport gives purpose

“I believe sport brings people together even more than the world of work,” says Philippe Depres, a volunteer with Novosports whose son, Elliott, works for and plays with the club.

Autistic and with a genetic disorder that has left him almost blind, Elliott has always been dependent on his parents – even today at the age of 22.

He had trouble getting through school, and sport became his focus. He has played tennis since he was 12, though it took a while to find a club that would accept him.

When he was younger, Elliott didn’t talk much and had outbursts.

“Some regular clubs refused to accept him,” Depres said. “They said they couldn’t manage him, that it was too complicated. I understand that training is needed, but a willingness to try makes a difference.”

Today Elliott’s work with Novosports has given him a purpose, and he plays both inclusive volleyball and baskin.

He says he prefers baskin, as it doesn’t require him to sit, which is difficult for him due to breathing problems.

Inventing a sport

But the rules of inclusive volleyball are still evolving and can be adapted based on players’ abilities.

“Sometimes someone gets to touch the ball twice instead of once – it depends on their physical issues,” Rousseau says.

The sport was initially developed for people in wheelchairs at a high school outside of Paris.

“I said that’s fine, but if you don’t have a disability, you can’t play,” Rousseau adds. “So we created a sport where people who are not disabled don’t have to be in a wheelchair, but can instead play with their own abilities.

“Inclusive sports is, by definition, having different people in the same space, with mental or physical disabilities, and we can all play together.”

More on this story in the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 115. Listen here.

As the world body’s high-level General Assembly meeting prepares Sunday to debate Sudan’s 17-month war – which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and caused the world’s largest displacement crisis – world leaders have warned against cataclysmic violence in the city of two million.

US President Joe Biden has called on Sudan‘s rival generals to “pull back their forces, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and re-engage in negotiations to end this war”.

But on the ground, shells have once again torn through civilian homes, in the latest flare-up of the war between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the regular army which has raged since April 2023.

“Most of our homes in the city’s south have been completely destroyed,” local resident Al-Tijani Othman told AFP by phone from his bombed-out neighbourhood.

“There’s barely anyone left here,” he said, after months of bombardment and starvation.

On Saturday alone, health authorities managed to confirm 14 civilian deaths and 40 injuries, a medical source told AFP.

“But that’s nowhere near the real number of victims,” the source warned, requesting anonymity for his protection.

“People often have to bury their loved ones right then and there rather than brave the fighting on the road to the hospital,” he continued.

Fleeing en masse

UN chief Antonio Guterres‘ spokesperson said Saturday the Secretary-General was “gravely alarmed by reports of a full-scale assault” by the RSF and called on its commander, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, “to act responsibly and immediately order a halt to the RSF attack”.

Since May, the RSF has laid siege to the North Darfur state capital of El-Fasher – the only major city in Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur not under their control.

Even before their long-threatened multi-directional attack on the city, the violence had killed hundreds, according to medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

It had also displaced hundreds of thousands and forced the nearby Zamzam displacement camp into all-out famine, the UN said.

El-Fasher has long been surrounded by multiple displacement camps – including Zamzam and Abu Shouk – which have swelled by hundreds of thousands since the war began.

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which tracks the violence in Sudan using satellite imagery, reported on Friday civilians had been fleeing “en masse by foot on the road from El-Fasher to Zamzam,” where famine was declared last month.

‘Maelstrom of violence’

On Sunday, those unwilling or unable to leave the city – such as resident Mohamed Safieldin – were compelled to take advantage of what they feared would be a brief respite in the fighting, venturing out to feed their families.

“But the food situation is difficult. We have to rely on community kitchens,” he told AFP while waiting for a meal from one of hundreds of volunteer initiatives that have popped up across Sudan – considered in places like El-Fasher the last defence against mass starvation.

The UN’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, said the “RSF’s multi-pronged assault, launched from at least four directions”, had “unleashed a maelstrom of violence that threatens to consume everything in its path”.

Eyewitnesses have reported bombardment by both the RSF and the army, both of whom have consistently been accused of war crimes including targeting civilians and the indiscriminate bombing of residential areas.

The RSF has specifically been accused of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Their assault on the West Darfur town of El-Geneina last year left up to 15,000 dead, mostly from the non-Arab Massalit community, UN experts determined.

Darfur, a region the size of France home to around a quarter of Sudan’s population, is deeply scarred by years of ethnic violence committed by the Janjaweed — the militia from which the RSF emerged.

World leaders have repeatedly warned of a repeat of Darfur’s past.

“We will not bear witness to another genocide,” the European Union‘s top diplomat Josep Borrell said Sunday, urging a return to negotiations — which experts warn have only ever been used by both sides to gain ground on the battlefield.

The World Health Organisation said this month at least 20,000 people have been killed since the war began, but some estimates show up to 150,000 dead, according to US envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello.

The war has also displaced more than 10 million people – a fifth of Sudan’s population – both within the country and across borders.

In early September UN experts, after a fact-finding mission, called for deployment of an impartial force to protect Sudanese civilians – either a UN-mandated mission or an African Union-backed regional force.

Bringing people together regardless of distance, language or culture is at the heart of Rankin’s latest project Universal Language (Une Langue Universelle).

Presented in the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in May, this odd, bittersweet drama won the People’s Choice Award in its category and the Best Canadian Discovery Award at the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF) on 15 September.

Rankin was working on the script of the film when the Covid pandemic hit. Although he remained in contact with his team, he was mostly alone with his thoughts. He experienced what he calls a “reckoning with solitude”, which provided an extra dimension to the story.

“I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, there was great idealistic longing for what the world would be like at the end of this, but I feel we’ve emerged with all these new Berlin Walls that shot up all around,” he told RFI in Cannes.

“The world feels very much more binary than it did before.”

He says the freedom of “cinematic language” helped him tell this story – borrowing from different cultural codes to suspend time and space and break down barriers.

Erotic dancer comedy-drama wins top prize at Cannes Film Festival

Uncanny Canada

Universal Language is set in a flat, snowy landscape dotted with bland beige-coloured buildings that look vaguely Soviet. An endless stream of cars races by on motorway interchanges.

Like in a surreal dream, there are recognisable elements of modern-day Canada, but they seem to disappear into another realm. The logo for the ubiquitous Tim Horton’s coffee chain, for example, is written in Farsi – and inside, they serve only tea to people who sit around knitting socks.

Matthew plays a “version” of himself in the film – a down-and-out public servant in Montreal who goes back to his hometown of Winnipeg in central Canada to check on his ailing mother.

But when he arrives, nothing is quite as it seems. So begins an unusual, introspective journey that overlaps with other characters in the story.

In the same city, two Iranian children are excited because they’ve found money frozen in pack ice. They race around asking neighbours and shop owners for help to dig out the dollar bills.

Meanwhile, there are hilarious scenes with a tour guide, Massoud, who – in a deadpan voice – recounts the various wonders of Winnipeg. These include a briefcase frozen on a bench, left behind by a businessman some years ago and now considered a “Unesco” heritage treasure.

Iranian culture, Afghan Elvis

Rankin says his love of Iranian culture and language played a vital role in making the film, as did friendships made during his travels to Iran as a younger man.

He cites the “meta-realist” Iranian cinema of Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf as influences, as well as childhood role model Groucho Marx.

Rankin also says he took inspiration from pop singer Ahmad Zahir – affectionately known as the “Afghan Elvis”. He says the musician had an uncanny ability to bridge cultural divides, something the filmmaker wanted to emulate.

Rankin even speaks Farsi in his role, a language he says he’s been learning in “slow motion” for more than 10 years. He also speaks Canadian French, with the distinctive accent of Quebec.

He is careful to point out that film is not intended to make a political statement, but rather a social one.

“We are working from a premise of no borders and universal solidarity,” he says, in contrast to the polarising nature of politics.

‘Dahomey’ film invites colonial past to speak through Benin’s stolen treasures

Fragments of daily life

After focusing on telling others’ stories in his previous films, it was Rankin’s first foray into autobiography.

“All the events in the story come from my life or the life of my family, or dreams that I had or diary entries I wrote down,” he says. “It’s all kinds of fragments.”

One of the highlights of making the film, Rankin says, was surrounding himself with a big, international team, speaking three languages at a time and sharing ideas on set in real time.

He co-wrote the script with Pirouz Nemati and Ila Firouzabad (who play Massoud and the bus driver respectively) and says the film came to life thanks to their close collaboration.

“The movie is very much a hybrid one. It merges cinematic languages of Winnipeg, Teheran and Montreal and it’s not really about any one of those places. It’s about this strange melding of all three.”

For Rankin, the adventure of cinema is all about “opening up new ways of seeing and imagining our complicated, sad, beautiful, luminous world”.

Postcard from Cannes: the rising potential of immersive cinema

Universal Language is Rankin’s second feature after surrealist dark comedy The Twentieth Century, which won the Berlinale Fipresci Award in 2020 and Best Canadian Debut Award in the Toronto Film Festival’s Midnight Madness category in 2019. He has also made over 40 short films.

Universal Language is part of the line-up at the Fifigrot comedy festival in Toulouse (16-22 September) and has been selected to represent Canada in the Best International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards in 2025.

Staggered voting to elect 90 members of the regional parliament got underway on 18 September and is set to conclude on 1 October. 

Officials said more than 61 percent of 2.6 million registered voters – tens of thousands of people – cast their ballots in the first 24 constituencies to vote on Wednesday.

The remaining 66 constituencies will go to the polls on 25 September and 1 October with results expected on week later, according to India’s electoral commission.

Thirteen political parties are in the race for a majority in the Indian-controlled territory, which is divided into the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley and the Jammu district, dominated by Hindus and a stronghold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The wider Kashmir region is claimed in full by Pakistan and has been the battleground for two of the three wars between India and Pakistan since 1947.

Indian Kashmir headed for polls after a decade of turmoil and direct rule

Quest for autonomy

The legislative election is the first since 2014, and since the government in Delhi stripped Kashmir of its autonomy in 2019. 

The brisk turnout took analysts by surprise, as attacks and boycotts by separatists have impacted previous elections in the territory.

Observers say demands to restore full statehood eclipsed previous calls for independence.

“People are going to speak of the misrule and indignities the BJP heaped on the people of Kashmir – the only state to be dismembered and demoted as union territories,” said Salman Soz, a spokesperson for the main opposition Indian National Congress party.

A mixed bag three years after scrapping of Kashmir’s special status

Buoyed by its better-than-expected performance in national elections earlier this year, the Congress is looking to drum up support for Kashmir’s former, autonomous status.

“Restoration of Kashmir’s statehood is our first step. We will build pressure on the BJP to act on our demand,” said its leader Rahul Gandhi, a scion of the charismatic Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that once held sway over Kashmir.

Delhi’s promises

Prime Minister Modi maintains his government will address Kashmiri aspirations.

“The BJP government will also be the one to restore full statehood status to Jammu and Kashmir,” Modi said during a visit to the territory on 14 September.

“I guarantee to safeguard your rights,” he added, promising to transform Kashmir into a “terror-free and tourist-friendly” region.

The picturesque valley drew more than 2.7 million visitors in 2023 and early figures suggest it could be on track to beat that record this year. 

But for Ifra Jan, a spokesperson for the regional opposition party National Conference, the BJP is “choking” tourism in Kashmir.

The party is allied with the Congress against Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, and remains sceptical of promises to restore autonomy.  

“Delhi has never trusted whoever is in power here … They have always tried to dominate,” Conference leader Farooq Abdullah told NDTV ahead of the polls.

“That factor has been responsible for tragedies of the state.”

Issues such as unemployment and development have also dominated political campaigning. The territory has a youth unemployment rate of 18.3 percent, more than double the national average, according to government figures from July 2023.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres first proposed the meeting in 2021, billing it as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to reshape human history by rekindling international cooperation.

As an opening act for the annual high-level week of the UN General Assembly, which begins Tuesday, dozens of heads of state and government are expected to adopt a “Pact for the Future” on Sunday.

But after intense last-minute negotiations, Guterres expressed some frustration, urging nations to show “vision” and “courage,” and calling for “maximum ambition” to strengthen international institutions that struggle to respond effectively to today’s threats.

In the latest version of the text that will be submitted for adoption, leaders pledge to bolster the multilateral system to “keep pace with a changing world” and to “protect the needs and interests of current and future generations” facing “persistent crisis”.

“We believe there is a path to a brighter future for all of humanity,” the document says.

Spanning nearly 30 pages, the pact outlines 56 “actions,” including commitments to multilateralism, upholding the UN Charter and peacekeeping.

It also calls for reforms to international financial institutions and the UN Security Council, along with renewed efforts to combat climate change, promote disarmament, and guide the development of artificial intelligence.

Words to action

Even though there are some “good ideas,” the text “is not the sort of revolutionary document reforming the whole of multilateralism that Antonio Guterres had originally called for,” Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group told AFP.

The sentiment is widely shared among diplomats, many of whom express frustration when discussing the ambition and impact of the text, describing it as “lukewarm,” “the lowest common denominator,” and “disappointing.”

“Ideally, you would hope for new ideas, fresh ideas. You know, 2.0 and then some. But when you have 200 countries that all have to agree, you end up with a Christmas tree of everything,” said one diplomat.

After intense negotiations in recent days, Russia still has objections to the final version of the text published on Saturday, a diplomatic source told AFP. While the pact is expected to be adopted, its approval isn’t guaranteed.

US backs two permanent seats for Africa on UN Security Council

The fight against global warming was one of the sticking points in the negotiations, with references to the “transition” away from fossil fuels having disappeared from the draft text weeks ago, before being re-inserted.

Despite the criticism, it is still “an opportunity to affirm our collective commitment to multilateralism, even in the difficult current geopolitical context,” one Western diplomat said, emphasizing the need to rebuild trust between the Global North and South.

Developing countries have been particularly vocal in demanding concrete commitments on the reform of international financial institutions, aiming to secure easier access to preferential financing, especially in light of the impacts of climate change.

The text does indeed include “important commitments on economic justice and reforming the international financial architecture,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) commented, while also praising “the centrality of human rights.”

However, world leaders “still need to demonstrate that they are willing to act to uphold human rights,” said Louis Charbonneau, HRW’s UN director.

Regardless of its content, the pact and its annexes – a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations – are non-binding, raising concerns about implementation, especially as some principles – such as the protection of civilians in conflict – are violated daily.

“Our next task is to breathe life into them, to turn words into action,” Guterres urged on Saturday.

While floods are devastating West Africa, about 68 million people in southern Africa are suffering the effects of an El Nino-induced drought which has wiped out crops across the region. 

Nearly 68 million suffering from drought in southern Africa

Zimbabwe, Malawi, Lesotho, Namibia, and Zambia are facing severe drought conditions, leading to widespread devastation. The impact is stalling economic growth and raising serious concerns about food security in the region. 

Zimbabwe to cull elephants to tackle drought, food shortages

In Zambia, the drought that has gripped southern Africa since early this year has led to rolling power cuts in a country that relies heavily on hydropower.

Some inhabitants, however, have already turned to solar power as an alternative.

To discuss how it can help, we speak this week with John Keane, CEO of the UK-based charity SolarAid, from the Zambian capital Lusaka. 

He explains how sales of solar products have increased by more than 540 percent since the beginning of 2024, and what the social enterprises are doing to spread awareness among Zambians and avoid the use of charcoal or candles.     

Episode mixed by Nicolas Doreau  

Spotlight on Africa is a podcast from Radio France Internationale

In the gulf between Brittany and Normandy, the spider crab population has exploded fourfold over the past decade. They’re fished year-round these days, no longer just from early autumn to early spring. 

This season, farmers in the bays of Saint-Brieuc and Fresnaye, on Brittany’s picturesque northern coast, were alarmed to discover the spider crabs had eaten most of their crop. 

It’s a problem that has persisted for years but which the regional mussel farmers union says is now untenable. Local businesses are reporting losses of millions of euros and calling on the authorities for urgent help. 

Sought-after molluscs 

The shallow bays, fed by nutrient-rich waters from the Atlantic, have for generations supported France’s treasured bouchot mussel industry: mussels grown on vertical wooden stakes that are submerged during high tide and exposed at low tide. 

Their unique cultivation method provides a distinct tender texture and sweet taste that distinguishes bouchots, introduced to Brittany in the 1960s, from other varieties of mussels.  

As well as losing this year’s harvest, producers were dismayed to discover that future yields had also been destroyed when juvenile spider crabs devoured the baby mussels, known as seed, in June.

“When the tides rose, we realised that 80 percent of our baby mussels had been eaten in just four days,” farmer Cédric Serrandour told RFI – adding this episode alone had cost him 50,000 euros. 

Serrandour’s family business, Les Merveilles du Cap, has been growing bouchot mussels and hollow oysters in the Bay of Fresnaye for four generations. 

“If we don’t have baby mussels for the 2025 season, it will be catastrophic. We’re talking about a ‘blank season’,” he said. 

Serrandour estimates that over the past five years he’s lost about 500 tonnes of mussels. With the ongoing surge in spider crab numbers, he expects that at least 200 tonnes of next year’s harvest will be destroyed. 

Frustration is growing over what farmers say is a slow and inadequate response from the government. 

To draw attention to the crisis, industry workers in July turned out to protest, blocking Brittany’s famous Rance Dam station – a key landmark known for its pioneering role in tidal energy. 

Mussel farmers say a lack of immediate financial support has left many of them on the brink of collapse. “We are asking for direct assistance,” Serrandour said, warning that many farmers won’t survive if they don’t get help soon.

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Crabs a resource too

Although a menace to mussel farmers, Atlantic spider crabs now provide a steady income for local fishermen who are able to catch them outside of their traditional fishing season.  

Known for their sweet if somewhat chewy meat, the crustaceans – protected under the Bern Convention – are an increasingly profitable resource for seafood markets across Europe. 

They’re sold either whole or packaged up as pulp for use in recipes such as pies, spring rolls and salads. 

The French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) has been tasked with studying the behaviour, biology and evolution of spider crabs, with the aim of developing strategies to mitigate their impact. 

So far crab traps and nets have done little to stem the problem. 

Figuring out why the crabs have managed to become so abundant so quickly is a challenge, Ifremer biologist Martial Laurans told RFI. One obvious factor, though, is warmer waters.

“Spider crabs need temperatures of around 15 or 16 degrees to begin reproducing,” Laurans said, adding that the period when temperatures are favourable has become longer.

“We’re also working to understand their movements … how the spider crabs have been able to arrive at the mussel concessions.”

Spider crabs are sensitive to noise, so last year Ifremer tested a method using sound to deter them along the Channel coast. Chains attached to trawlers were used to generate vibrations in the hope of scaring them away from mussel farms.

While this approach drove down the number of crabs, it hasn’t eliminated the problem. 

Protected species

Because the spider crabs, which are native to Breton waters, are protected by law, mussel farmers are not allowed to destroy them. They do, however, have permission to catch the crustaceans and release them offshore. 

What’s needed, Laurans says, is a long-term solution that balances the needs of both the fishermen and the mussel farmers. 

“Spider crabs are a resource for fishermen. Mussel farmers don’t have a licence to fish them, so they have to work with fisherman to try to reduce the numbers close to their concessions,” he said. 

However, producers are pushing for spider crabs near farming zones to be classified as pests – a move that would permit more aggressive control measures.

Almost half of fish sold in France is ‘not from sustainable sources’

With Bordeaux wines selling less in recent years, winegrowers have been forced to uproot vines to maintain sales costs and avoid overproduction. 

The habit of drinking wine with the daily meal has fallen by 70 percent in the last 60 years, according to the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT).

French people on average drink 40 litres per inhabitant, per year, compared to 120 litres of wine in the 1960s.

This trend has accelerated in the last three years, particularly for red wine. France Agrimer – a public body dedicated to agricultural development – says they have noted 15 percent fewer sales in supermarket chains in this period.

To deal with the crisis, the French government has submitted a plan to the European Commission to destroy around 30,000 of the 800,000 hectares of French vineyards, at an estimated cost of €120 million.

Volunteers winegrowers would receive €4,000 per hectare of permanently removed vines, just enough to cover the cost – and they must promise not to replant anything.

Struggling French winemakers may have to destroy their vintage cellars to survive

Drastic solution

All wine regions in France are eligible, but the crisis has particularly affected the Bordeaux wines.

The European Commission has one month to respond to France’s request.

Even if the money is French, it would be taken from the so-called “Ukraine” emergency fund because the CAP (common agricultural policy) does not provide credit for removing the vines.

A similar plan is already in place in the southwestern Gironde area, financed by the state government, regional authorities and the Bordeaux wine inter-professional association.

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

Although it is a drastic solution, winemakers have been forced to admit that profit loss is unsustainable and that the situation is unlikely to improve in the long term.

According to a study for the Vinexpo trade show, young people are turning away from wine, with less than a third of wine enthusiasts under 40.

They now prefer apéritifs – or cocktails – to long dinners, hence the increase in beer consumption. When they turn to wine, it’s usually white, rosé or light red wine.

Exports down

Exports were down by 10 percent last year compared to 2022 and the market has not recovered since Covid, particularly with regards to China.

China is now producing its own wine and imports it generally from Spain or Italy, rather than France.

The wine-making industry has also suffered from other setbacks, linked to international trade – for example, the taxes imposed by Donald Trump in 2019 following the conflict between Airbus and Boeing.

Elsewhere, winemakers are also facing the consequences of climate change, many losing entire vineyards due to fierce storms, frost or cases of mildew in recent years.

(with AFP)

The court this week began examining an appeal from civil parties against a 2018 decision to dismiss the case.

Initially scheduled for the end of May, the hearing was postponed to 19 September. The following day, the court announced that a final ruling would be delivered on 11 December.

At Thursday’s hearing, the public prosecutor’s office had requested that the case be dismissed outright.

In 2005, six survivors of the Bisesero massacre joined with NGOs to file a complaint against French soldiers for allegedly abandoning hundreds of Tutsis who had fled to the Bisesero hills in late June 1994 – only returning three days later, by which time most had been slaughtered by Hutu militia.

French forces were deployed in Rwanda at the time as part of Operation Turquoise, a UN-mandated military intervention launched in the final weeks of the genocide to establish “safe zones” for Rwandans fleeing the killing.

Rwanda marks 30 years since France’s contested mission to stem 1994 genocide

Decades of accusations

Lawyer Pierre-Olivier Lambert, representing retired general Jean-Claude Lafourcade – who headed the operation – said soldiers were keen to put an end to 20 years of legal proceedings. 

“The page of history has been turned,” he told news agency AFP, referring to the landmark 2021 inquiry commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron that concluded the records did not show France willingly joined a genocide.

“It is time the judicial page was turned too,” Lambert said.

The 2021 report, led by historians and involving two years of research, nonetheless pointed to a “profound failure” on France’s part during the slaughter in Bisesero.

Eric Plouvier, the lawyer representing Survie, one of the NGOs that brought the complaint, argued that even without genocidal intent, the soldiers’ failure to intervene gives them a share of the blame for the killings.

The civil parties believe they have evidence that demonstrates French troops were aware of the crimes taking place, he told AFP.

A controversial mission

The Bisesero case remains emblematic of the long controversy over the objectives of Operation Turquoise.

While the UN estimates that the mission helped save hundreds of lives, it came too late for the majority of victims, who had already perished in the early weeks of the genocide.

By the time French troops arrived, the Tutsi fighters of the Rwandan Patriotic Front – led by the current president, Paul Kagame – were beginning to overcome the Hutu government forces.

The deployment of soldiers from France, a long-standing ally of the Hutu regime, was seen as an attempt to help the Hutus out.

Kagame’s government has long maintained that France not only failed to stop the slaughter but facilitated the safe passage of tens of thousands of Hutus into neighbouring Zaire – now the Democratic Republic of Congo – leading to many perpetrators of genocide escaping justice.

Thirty years after genocide, Rwanda’s relations with France are slowly mending

In Istanbul’s conservative Uskudar district overlooking the Bosphorus waterway, activists from the group 1,000 Youth for Palestine recently gathered to protest the killing by Israeli security forces of the Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi.

But along with chants condemning Israel, the demonstrators also attacked Erdogan and his government for Turkey’s continuing trade with Israel.

“I am here to force the Turkish government to stop the oil trade with Israel and to stop genocide,” declared Gulsum, a university academic who only wanted to be identified by her first name for security reasons.

“This is not just a public demand. It’s also a legal obligation for Turkey to stop genocide.”

Since the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the student-based group has directed its protests at the export of Azerbaijani oil to Israel by way of a Turkish port.

It also targets Turkish companies – many of which have close ties to Erdogan – that it accuses of circumventing the trade embargo by using third parties.

Turkey talks tough on Israel but resists calls to cut off oil

Unifying cause

The group uses social networks to broadcast its message, getting around government-controlled media.

The activists say they have received broad support that crosses Turkey’s traditional divides of religious and secular.

“When it comes to Palestine, it is a story that we all unite about,” said Gizem, a university student and 1,000 Youth for Palestine member.

“There are those who define themselves as socialists and those who define themselves as Islamists. There are also apolitical youth who say ‘I don’t like politics’, but still join us.”

While Erdogan presents himself as a stalwart defender of the Palestinian cause, police are cracking down on the protests.

One of the group’s Palestinian members was arrested after activists disrupted a panel discussion on Israel hosted by the state broadcaster. She now faces deportation in a case that has provoked further protests.

Images of police arresting headscarf-wearing members of the group further embarrassed Erdogan and his religious base.

Protests escalate in Turkey over Azerbaijani oil shipments to Israel amid embargo

‘Divide and rule’

Sezin Oney, a commentator for Turkey’s Politikyol news portal, says the group’s diversity poses a problem for Erdogan, given he has often sought to exploit the deep divisions between religious and secular voters when facing attack.

She argues that 1,000 Youth for Palestine’s ability to bridge those gaps is indicative of a wider change in Turkish society.

“It’s actually portraying the current youth of Turkey – you don’t have monolithic circles in the grassroots,” explains Oney.

“You have a mixture: hybrid groups of conservatives, conservative-looking, but very progressive,” she says. “Such hybrid groups are coming together because of a cause, but ideologically or background-wise or social class-wise, they may be very diverse.

“And that’s something threatening for the government. Because the government is embarking on divide and rule.”

Persistent political headache

Erdogan lost heavily in local elections earlier this year, a defeat widely blamed both on economic problems and anger over Turkey’s ties to Israel.

The 1,000 Youth for Palestine activists say they hope to continue to build on those results. 

“The reason for our success is that we put our finger on the right spot. We expose the hypocrisy of both the capitalists, the corporations and the government,” claims Murat, a university student who belongs to the group.

“People also saw this hypocrisy and thought that someone should speak out, and they supported us a lot because of that,” he added. “We will unite as the people of Turkey and continue to stand in the right place in history to stop the massacre in Palestine.”

The diversity of 1,000 Youth for Palestine is seen as its main strength, which is why it will likely continue to pose a political headache for Erdogan. Yet it may also offer hope that the deep divides in Turkish society can be bridged.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be sure you check out our wonderful podcasts!

In addition to the 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 Paris Perspective, Spotlight on France, Spotlight on Africa, and of course, The Sound Kitchen. We have an award-winning bilingual series – an old-time radio show, with actors (!) to help you learn French, called Les voisins du 12 bis. And there is the excellent International Report, too.

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

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

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

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

Another idea for your students: Br. Gerald Muller, my beloved music teacher from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, has been writing books for young adults in his retirement – and they are free! There is a volume of biographies of painters and musicians called Gentle Giants, and an excellent biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., too. They are also a good way to help you improve your English – that’s how I worked on my French, reading books that were meant for young readers – and I guarantee you, it’s a good method for improving your language skills. To get Br. Gerald’s free books, click here.

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

This week’s quiz: On 24 August, I told you a story about a sign I saw on a French highway this summer. On most highways across France, there are illuminated signboards that tell you if there’s an accident ahead, encourage you to take a break from driving, or remind you of the speed limit. The messages change according to what information is deemed necessary for drivers.

During the Olympic games, the signs said: “Remember: 130 kilometres per hour … speed is for Léon”. You were to write in and tell me who Léon is, and why the French said speed was OK for him.

The answer is: Léon is that French human fish, Léon Marchand. He won four Gold Medals in swimming this year … the 200-meter medley, 200-metre breaststroke, the 200-metre butterfly, and the 400-metre medley. He became the sixth Olympic swimmer to win four gold medals at a single Games.

Léon Marchand is the world record holder in the long course 400-metres individual medley; the Olympic record holder in the 200-metres butterfly, the 200-metres breaststroke, and the 200-metres individual medley; and the French record holder in the long course 200-metre individual medley, 200-metre butterfly and 200-metre breaststroke.

The young man is fast – watching him swim was incredible. See why the French government would tell us to be careful with our speed, but Léon could go as fast as he wished?

In addition to the quiz question, there was the bonus question, suggested by Hans Verner Lollike from Hedehusene, Denmark: “The Paris 24 Olympic Games are over, but if you had a chance to win a Gold Medal, in which sport would it have been?”

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

The winners are: RFI Listeners Club member Alan Holder from the Isle of Wight, England. Alan is also this week’s bonus question winner. Congratulations, Alan!

Saleem Akhtar is a winner this week. Saleem is the president of the RFI Seven Stars Radio Listeners Club in District Chiniot, Pakistan.

Pakistan! Congratulations on your amazing javelineer, Arshad Nadeem. Nadeem made history for Pakistan by becoming the first Pakistani to win an individual Olympic gold medal. Not only that, but he set an Olympic record with his throw of 92.97 meters… the sixth-longest throw in history. Mubarak, Arshad! Mubarak, Pakistan!

Also on the list of lucky winners this week are RFI Listeners Club members Rodrigo Hunrichse from Ciudad de Concepción, Chile; Helmut Matt from Herbolzheim in Germany, and Father Steven Wara, who lives in the Cistercian Abbey in Bamenda, in Cameroon’s North West Region.

Congratulations winners!

Here’s the music you heard on this week’s programme: “Imagine” by John Lennon; the waltz op. 64 No. 1 in D flat, the “Minute Waltz” by Frédéric Chopin, performed by Arthur Rubinstein; “The Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov; “The Cakewalk” from Children’s Corner by Claude Debussy, performed by the composer, and “Pocket Piano” by DJ Mehdi.

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’s foreign ministry unveils two-year gender equality strategy”, which will help you with the answer.

You have until 14 October to enter this week’s quiz; the winners will be announced on the 19 October podcast. When you enter be sure to send your postal address with your answer, and if you have one, your RFI Listeners Club membership number.

Send your answers to:

english.service@rfi.fr

or

Susan Owensby

RFI – The Sound Kitchen

80, rue Camille Desmoulins

92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux

France

or

By text … You can also send your quiz answers to The Sound Kitchen mobile phone. Dial your country’s international access code, or “ + ”, then  33 6 31 12 96 82. Don’t forget to include your mailing address in your text – and if you have one, your RFI Listeners Club membership number.

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

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

While floods are devastating West Africa, about 68 million people in southern Africa are suffering the effects of an El Nino-induced drought which has wiped out crops across the region. 

Nearly 68 million suffering from drought in southern Africa

Zimbabwe, Malawi, Lesotho, Namibia, and Zambia are facing severe drought conditions, leading to widespread devastation. The impact is stalling economic growth and raising serious concerns about food security in the region. 

Zimbabwe to cull elephants to tackle drought, food shortages

In Zambia, the drought that has gripped southern Africa since early this year has led to rolling power cuts in a country that relies heavily on hydropower.

Some inhabitants, however, have already turned to solar power as an alternative.

To discuss how it can help, we speak this week with John Keane, CEO of the UK-based charity SolarAid, from the Zambian capital Lusaka. 

He explains how sales of solar products have increased by more than 540 percent since the beginning of 2024, and what the social enterprises are doing to spread awareness among Zambians and avoid the use of charcoal or candles.     

Episode mixed by Nicolas Doreau  

Spotlight on Africa is a podcast from Radio France Internationale

“We must have a strong and effective navy to live in peace on our lands,” said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after commissioning the latest of six planned submarines.

Along with a new helicopter carrier, frigates and over a dozen warships under construction, this is part of Erdogan’s push to bolster the Turkish navy.

“It fits Erdogan’s political agenda of exerting influence overseas, from Qatar to Somalia to Libya,” said Serhat Guvenc, a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.

“For the navy, it means a greater role in the defence of the country – no longer just territorial, but forward defence from overseas.”

New course

The change has transformed the navy’s mission.

“Turkish sailors used to sail off to sea, but they would come back on the same day to their home bases and spend the night in their homes. That’s no longer the case,” Guvenc says.

“The Turkish navy is evolving into a major regional power.”

Turkey’s military presence abroad includes bases in Qatar, Libya and Somalia, with naval agreements in place. Ankara claims its expansion addresses growing threats around the region.

“When you look at the conflicts in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea, they are all around Turkey,” said Mesut Casin, a Turkish presidential adviser and professor at Yeditepe University.

He also pointed to Turkey’s NATO role: “The naval modernisation benefits NATO and the security of Western allies, especially in terms of oil and navigation security.”

Ankara has been quick to flex its new naval muscles. Four years ago, Turkish warships allegedly targeted a French NATO vessel enforcing an arms embargo on Libya.

Turkey and Egypt bury the hatchet with a dozen new bilateral deals

Regional concerns

Greece, with longstanding territorial disputes with Turkey in the Aegean and Mediterranean, has voiced particular concern. Israel, too, has raised alarms over Turkey’s naval growth, including military drones deployed in Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus.

“Some of Turkey’s naval moves, like the UAV base in Northern Cyprus, could be aimed at Israel,” said Gallia Lindenstrauss, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

“This doesn’t mean again there will be a direct confrontation, but it does mean that it is something that the Israeli army has to calculate for.”

Greece is also modernising its navy in response to what it sees as the Turkish threat. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis recently reaffirmed the need for a “deterrent power” against Turkey.

Growing military buildup in Azerbaijan and Armenia a concern for peace talks

Meanwhile, Israel’s growing naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, including the deployment of advanced naval assets and joint military exercises with regional partners, is adding to Turkish concerns.

“The Turkish military has begun to feel concerned about the deployment of its [Israel’s] nuclear missile capable submarines in the Mediterranean,” said naval expert Guvenc.

“As long as they were in the Red Sea or Indian Ocean, it wasn’t a problem. But once they shifted to the Mediterranean, it became a potential threat.”

Guvenc is warning that escalating regional suspicions risks spiraling out of control.

“It’s a vicious circle. Turkey builds a new navy to address threats, and now its neighbours feel threatened by Turkey’s naval growth. This is how arms races start, and they don’t tend to end well.”

Turkish shipyards are working at full capacity to meet the country’s growing naval demands. Analysts say this will likely only deepen fears and tensions with its neighbours.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be sure you check out our wonderful podcasts!

In addition to the 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 Paris Perspective, Spotlight on France, Spotlight on Africa, and of course, The Sound Kitchen. We have an award-winning bilingual series – an old-time radio show, with actors (!) to help you learn French, called Les voisins du 12 bis. And there is the excellent International Report, too.

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

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

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

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

Another idea for your students: Br. Gerald Muller, my beloved music teacher from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, has been writing books for young adults in his retirement – and they are free! There is a volume of biographies of painters and musicians called Gentle Giants, and an excellent biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., too. They are also a good way to help you improve your English – that’s how I worked on my French, reading books that were meant for young readers – and I guarantee you, it’s a good method for improving your language skills. To get Br. Gerald’s free books, click here.

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

This week’s quiz: On 15 July, Rwandans were voting for their next president, as well as the members of the country’s 80-seat lower house of parliament.

There was little doubt that the current president, Paul Kagame, would win his fourth term. And he did, with 99.18 percent of the vote. 

There actually were two opposition candidates, which you read about in our article “Rwanda heads to the polls to likely re-elect Kagame for fourth term”.

You were to send in the answer to this question: What are the names of the two opposition candidates who ran against the incumbent president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, in the 15 July polls?

The answer is: Democratic Green party leader Frank Habineza and the independent Philippe Mpayimana.

In addition to the quiz question, there was the bonus question, suggested by Rodrigo Hunrichse from Ciudad de Concepción, Chile: “What do you think young people should do? Should they work, save, ensure their future, and put off traveling until they are more established? Or should they ‘seize the day’ and go while they’re young?”

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

The winners are: RFI Listeners Club member Radhakrishna Pillai from Kerala State, India. Radhakrishna is also this week’s bonus question winner. Congratulations on your double win, Radhakrishna.

Also on the list of lucky winners this week are two RFI Listeners Club members from Bangladesh: Sharifa Akter Panna from Kishoreganj, and Faruq Ahmed from Dhaka. There’s also Club member Zenon Teles from Goa, India – Zenon is also the president of the Christian – Marxist – Leninist – Maoist Association of Listening DX-ers.

Last but not least, there’s RFI English listener Zannatul Zuthi from Narayanganj, Bangladesh.

Congratulations winners!

Here’s the music you heard on this week’s programme: “Allegro vivo” from the Symphony in C major by Georges Bizet, performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic; “La Campanella” by Nicolo Paganini, performed by Igor Oistrakh; “The Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov; “The Cakewalk” from Children’s Corner by Claude Debussy, performed by the composer, and “Day Tripper” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, performed by Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66.  

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 Melissa Chemam’s article “High expectations as Algeria’s President Tebboune begins new mandate”, which will help you with the answer.

You have until 7 October to enter this week’s quiz; the winners will be announced on the 12 October podcast. When you enter be sure to send your postal address with your answer, and if you have one, your RFI Listeners Club membership number.

Send your answers to:

english.service@rfi.fr

or

Susan Owensby

RFI – The Sound Kitchen

80, rue Camille Desmoulins

92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux

France

or

By text … You can also send your quiz answers to The Sound Kitchen mobile phone. Dial your country’s international access code, or “ + ”, then  33 6 31 12 96 82. Don’t forget to include your mailing address in your text – and if you have one, your RFI Listeners Club membership number.

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

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

The Paralympics in Paris shone a light on disability and the challenges disabled people in France face in getting access to sport. Novosports, one of only 40 sports clubs in the capital open to players with disabilities, is entirely focused on inclusive sports, where people with and without disabilities can train together. Club founder Jerome Rousseau talks about developing inclusive volleyball, and club members talk about the importance of opening sport up to everyone. (Listen @1’55”)

Decades before the Paralympic Games were born, the world’s first multi-discipline competition for athletes with a disability took place in Paris in the summer of 1924. Reserved for deaf competitors, the International Silent Games were a landmark in the history of inclusive sport and laid the foundations for today’s contests. Historian Didier Séguillon, curator of an exhibition on the Games at the National Institute for Deaf Young People, discusses their origins and legacy. (Listen @10’15”)

Since recent parliamentary elections in France failed to give any political party a ruling majority, the three main blocs – the left-wing NFP alliance, the centre-right Ensemble coalition and the far-right National Rally – have been at loggerheads. The new prime minister has to form a unity government, but this involves compromise on all sides – a notion that’s often equated in France with “giving in”. Laure Gillot-Assayag, a researcher in political science and philosophy, argues that in such a politically divided landscape, France needs a culture of compromise more than ever. (Listen @17’10”)

Episode mixed by Cecile Pompéani. 

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).

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.