International report

That question is not as strange as it might sound. Every summer since 2002, the banks of the Seine and the La Villette Canal Basin in Paris turn into a seaside resort known as Paris Plages.

To help young students cope with stress, government schools across the Indian capital, New Delhi have added a new subject to their schedules: happiness. The class carries no grade and has no textbooks, tests or homework.

In the second part of a short series on what we can learn from high-powered computer programmes, Dhanajay Khadilkar looks at the way human chess players are changing their strategies, because of the possibilities being opened up by the machines.

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Ever since IBM's chess programme Deep Blue beat world champion Gary Kasparov in 1996, it's no longer news when a chess computer beats a top human player.

Now the machines are playing one another, as in the recent clash between Alpha Zero and Stockfish.

As Dananjay Khadilkar explains in a two-part report, the results are surprising, and have implications far beyond the realm of boardgames.

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Violence persists against women and girls in Liberia, nearly two decades after the end of the country’s brutal civil war in 2004 and despite a law that makes rape a non-bailable offense, sexual abuse remains one of the crimes most frequently perpetrated against women and girls. 

Recent statistics from Liberia’s Gender Ministry show that a total of 803 sexual and gender-based violence cases were reported during the first quarter of this year alone, with 605 of those cases involving children less than 17 years old.

Despite the continued presence of these forms of abuse of women and girls, some members of the legislature are trying to amend the rape law to make the crime a bailable offense.

Darlington Porkpa has this report from the capital, Monrovia.

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Every summer, the botanical gardens of Paris come alive with a series of free open-air concerts. In this second part of our special series 'A Parisian Summer', Arnab Béranger goes to the Parc Floral - Paris' Botanical gardens. Click the 'play' button above to listen, or subscribe to our podcast by searching 'RFI international report'.

There are over two hundred breweries in Belgium, the highest concentration of beer makers in the world.

But one brew master stands out from the crowd...John Christian Kavakure fled Burundi 25 years ago.

Last year he set up Flobecq Brewery making him the only black brew master in Belgium.

RFI’s Rosie Collyer caught up with him and has this report.

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India’s highest court has extended by one month a deadline for the government to hunt down illegal immigrants in the state of Assam, bordering Bangladesh.

The order came as a reprieve for millions of people, mostly Muslims, who risk losing their citizenship.

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The Festival season has begun in the Scottish capital.

For the next four weeks, Edinburgh will be seized by a frenzy of culture, with a mission to entertain but also to educate and start conversations as Assa Samaké-Roman will explore in a three-part series on this year's Festival.

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Cote d’Ivoire is football mad.

Its men’s team may have gone a lot further in the African Cup of Nations than its women’s team in the World Cup, but football is still proving popular among girls.

An NGO has been using this love of football to work with young people to tackle some of the issues the country faces.

Cote d’Ivoire has the highest HIV infection rate in West Africa, with 400,000 people living with the virus, including 36,000 children.

Frank Hersey, went to find out how football is being used to teach children about safe sex.

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