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One month after the stunning assassination of the brother of an anti-gangland activist, French president Emmanuel Macron returning to the Mediterranean port for an update on the government’s xx-euro plan to win back the streets and offer hope to fed-up citizens of France’s second largest city. The whole reason Ahmed Kessaci became an activist was the earlier murder of his older brother… who got mixed up with the wrong crowd. The unsolved murder of 20-year old Mehdi Kessaci - who was training to ...
It was the worst of humanity, and the best of humanity. What kind of a father-son duo decides to go shooting at a gathering that's come together to celebrate the Jewish festival of light? We ask about the motives and circumstances of the Bondi Beach terror attack, and the heroism of a Syrian-born street vendor who took bullets to the shoulder while disarming one of the gunmen. Read more 'Genuine hero': Bystander tackles alleged gunman during Bondi Beach mass shooting The amateur video of the inc...
The discussion delves into the renewed border conflict between Cambodia and Thailand, displacing over half a million people, despite a Trump-brokered peace deal. Experts analyze how the conflict is fueled by structural flaws in the peace agreement, landmine disputes, and crucially, Thai domestic political instability and a prime minister leveraging military nationalism. The episode also uncovers the role of lucrative scam centers in the border region and the tragic destruction of cultural heritage sites, raising concerns about diplomatic failures and calls for regime change.
Will history remember this as the day the planet started to rein in big tech? Australia is firing the first shot by banning under-16s from platforms and social media that include giants such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. We of course ask if rebellious teens will make light work of the ban. More broadly, is this the day regulators start treating merchants of scrolling the way they do tobacco and drinks giants: like businesses with a penchant for encouraging addiction? In tech, profits can be ...
Europe is weighing its words after Washington's publication of an official policy paper that warns the Old Continent is under threat of "civilisational erasure", with fading powers overrun by migrants. It’s the logical follow-up to Vice President JD Vance's admonishments back in February at the Munich Security Conference, one that goes far beyond the unexplained absence of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at last week's NATO foreign ministers' meeting. Read more 'They're decaying': Trump recycl...
It was exactly one year ago that a lightning offensive reached its ultimate conclusion. Syria saw the fall of Bashar al-Assad, ending over five decades of his family's dictatorial regime in a blitz that stunned the world. In Damascus, celebrations erupted in Umayyad Square, as Syrians emerged from 13 years of brutal civil war, marking a moment of both relief and disbelief. In the chaos that followed, Assad fled to Moscow and former jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa , now the interim president, took the r...
When should a soldier disobey an order? The US president and his Pentagon chief are doubling down on operations to sink alleged drug boats without summation in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The pair pushed back on a Washington Post report asserting that back in September, Pete Hegseth's orders led to a follow-up strike on a vessel, killing all remaining survivors. Among the issues are whether the interested parties could face war crimes charges. US War Department footage can make this look like...
A peace plan allegedly made in Moscow, a week of furious scrambling to dial it back by Ukraine and its European allies and now it's back to the Kremlin for Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff, flanked only by the US president's son-in-law Jared Kushner and an interpreter. Have negotiations in Florida moved the needle back in Kyiv's favor? How hard – or soft – can the bargaining be? Is Witkoff really Putin 's puppet, as suggested last week by French newspaper Libération? Beyond last week's leaks t...
Why is Nigeria in the throes of a kidnapping epidemic? Sometimes depicted as terrorists, other times as bandits, attackers have targeted three schools inside of a week, leading some to compare the abductions with the 2014 Chibok attacks by the jihadists of Boko Haram. We do our comparison and revisit the same question as a decade ago – why would any human being abduct children; in some cases nursery school children? It's an ordeal for the victims and their families, and bad timing for Africa 's ...
French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that France is to reintroduce a national military service. Young people will be taken into the military, trained for a period of around a year and paid €800 a month. The programme will be open to all, and voluntary. Macron made this historic announcement at an army barracks in the Isère region, surrounded by young people already in uniform. The reason for this reintroduction of military service, according to the French president, is clear: the growi...
The peace plan that read like it had been written by the Kremlin and that called for Ukraine to surrender land, cut back its military and give up any notion of NATO membership was already raising worried eyebrows. Now, in light of a recorded phone call between US envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian presidential advisor Yuri Ushakov, the concern about the closeness of the Trump administration to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin has hit a new point of alarm. Is this the art of the deal, or a sellout? Pr...
Every 10 minutes last year, a woman somewhere in the world was killed by a person close to her, while some 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024. These figures have been released by the UN as we mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls. But how do we get the message across that violence against women and girls is a men's issue; particularly as the rise of AI has intensified digital abuse directed at women? Prod...
This Monday, the US and Ukraine pressed on with talks in Switzerland to come up with a mutually acceptable peace plan. This after agreeing to modify a US proposal that Kyiv and its European allies saw as a Kremlin wish list. The 28-point draft plan includes several long-standing Russian demands, crossing Kyiv’s established red lines and overlooking key European security concerns. Is this plan the basis for a genuine peace deal or destined for failure? Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Lila Paulou, I...
Ukraine is facing yet another major challenge in its fight to preserve its borders, its land and its people. The military battle continues as it has since 2014, intensifying sharply in 2022. The latest challenge is the emergence of a new US-Russia framework to end the war – a proposal that has left observers perplexed and many Ukrainians stunned. The plan appears to pressure Ukraine into giving up territory, surrendering arms and downsize its armed forces to placate Vladimir Putin's Russia. It w...
Ever since he first ran for president in 2015, Donald Trump has claimed that to “drain the swamp”, America needs a leader who knows where “the bodies are buried” in the corrupt circles of Wall Street and Washington. So why has the MAGA base turned against him over the Epstein files? Why is it so difficult for Trump – who has already survived allegations of inciting an insurrection, undermining the Constitution and facing multiple criminal charges – to make this story go away? Produced by Rebecca...
As the Middle East undergoes a once-in-a-generation shift in political fault lines, great power diplomacy could make the difference for millions between peace and stability or turbulence and endless conflict. So what's driving that diplomacy? Between the US and Saudi Arabia, it's a confusing mix of bilateral security ties, regional reach-outs to the likes of Syria and Israel and personal enrichment. We ask about the Trump family's longstanding ties to the kingdom, as well as reports that the US ...
It's much-needed backing from a key ally of Ukraine, along with welcome photo op for a president who's under pressure at home. After a gas deal with Greece, Volodymyr Zelensky is signing a 10-year military pact with France, far from Kyiv where a corruption scandal has brought down two ministers and has the main backer of his 2019 campaign on the run. It's a welcome respite from the political storm back home and a timely morale boost for Ukraine , a nation that needs all the support it can get at...
A string of coups and the pushing out of former colonial power France in favour of Russian support haven't stopped insurgents from going from strength throughout the so-called coup belt from Burkina Faso to Niger. We ask about the blockade on Bamako that's made it perilous for fuel delivery trucks to reach the capital of landlocked Mali, and what it would take to repel the JNIM. Mali has seen this movie before. The French intervened back in 2013, when insurgents tried to take the capital a first...
Could the artificial intelligence boom already be running out of road? We examine the warning signs. To think that three short years ago, the commercial launch of ChatGPT took the world by storm. AI has since sparked a global race for cash, energy resources and data – all to feed the seemingly insatiable appetite of large language model computing systems. With a few US companies dominating the AI race – and a US president who's all-in with billionaires – market watchers worry about investors tem...
From radical insurgent with a $10 million bounty on his head to a red carpet welcome at the White House, the rebranding of Syria's Ahmed al-Sharaa is now complete. The former jihadist has become the first-ever Syrian president invited inside the Oval Office. We ask about the terms and conditions of a visit that surely seals a regional realignment on a scale unseen since the 1979 fall of the Shah of Iran . How much did backers Turkey and Saudi Arabia press for this moment? Where does it leave Isr...
When it came to the Amazon, his predecessor was all for "chop, baby, chop". An easy act to follow if you're hosting the world for a climate summit. Since the return of Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, deforestation has continued but drastically slowed in what's by far the world's largest rainforest. But by bringing the United Nations COP30 summit to the Amazonian city of Belem, Lula is also drawing attention to Brazil's broader track record on the environment. The South American pow...
One year after a presidential election where Donald Trump swept swing states and secured majorities in both houses of the US Congress, a first test has produced a radically different result. 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani has blown past establishment candidates for mayor of New York, unveiling his transition team this Wednesday. We ask about Mamdani's win and the highest turnout in the city's municipal elections in more than half a century. Read more Progressive Democrat Zohran ...
Protesters are fuming at Chinese e-commerce giant Shein electing the French capital as its debut point for a physical in-shop presence. We ask about behemoths that churn out clothes faster than we can scroll, Shein's choice of the iconic Right Bank department store BHV for its launch and how a new controversy fuels the feeling that this global orgy of consumerism is out of control: Shein is removing from its platform child-like sex dolls that fly in the face of French and EU laws against paedo-p...
Is too much effort devoted to the planet's warming and not enough to helping humans adapt to the new normal? The Microsoft co-founder-cum-billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is turning the heat up on activists traveling to the COP30, the annual UN climate summit this year in the Brazilian Amazon city of Belem. We review the argument that the transition to cleaner energies is already bearing fruit, making the Paris Agreement projections of 2015 obsolete. Or, with coal and oil production still r...
After launching a trade war with China, Donald Trump is now declaring a deal is at hand for a one-year truce. With nothing yet signed, we ask about the South Korean sit-down between the US president and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, promises of reduced tariffs and computer chip exports by the US, the easing of restrictions on rare earth minerals and a return to soybean imports by Beijing. We also ask about the choreography of a shorter-than-expected one hour-and-40-minute meeting in South ...
Oct 30, 2025•43 min
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