Revisited

During the 1979-1992 civil war in El Salvador, thousands of children were the victims of organised trafficking run by the army. It's estimated that around 30,000 infants were sent abroad for adoption – often without their parents' consent. This murky past was buried for the sake of amnesty; included in a peace agreement. To this day, hundreds of families are still searching for the truth about their origins. FRANCE 24's Laurence Cuvillier and Matthieu Comin report.

On October 30, 2015, a deadly fire at a nightclub in Bucharest shook Romania to its core. Revellers in the basement of the Colectiv club found themselves trapped in a stampede for the sole exit. The tragedy triggered public anger, with thousands taking to the streets to denounce the corruption plaguing the country, leading to the fall of the government within a week. Five years on, what lessons have been learned? Our reporters followed the survivors' battle for justice.

When France deployed troops to Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014, most of them served in the Kapisa province. The region had a reputation of being the worst place to be sent: of the 89 French soldiers who died in Afghanistan, two-thirds of them died in Kapisa, fighting the Taliban alongside the Afghan army. France also funded a number of development projects in the region.

Ten years ago, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, was signed into law by Barack Obama himself. The Democratic president's signature policy heralded a revolution in the US by expanding affordable healthcare coverage to an unprecedented number of Americans. Since then, its popularity has grown, with support for it on the rise as the Covid-19 pandemic rages on. But over the past decade, Republicans have repeatedly tried to repeal the law, taking their battle all the way to the Supreme Court. Our US correspondents bring us this special report.

After fighting alongside the French in the Indochina war and the Americans during the Vietnam War, the Hmong people were forced to flee Laos when the Communists took power. On their arrival in the village of Cacao in French Guiana in 1977, they had to build everything from scratch: roads, schools, houses and farms. Today, the Hmong people seem to have successfully integrated into multi-ethnic French Guianese society. But what future do their children have? Our reporter takes us to the Amazon rainforest to meet this ethnic minority forced into exile on the other side of the world.

Appointed by the late dictator, Francisco Franco, as next in line to the Spanish throne, Juan Carlos I was long respected as the king of Spain’s democratic transition. But today, he may turn out to be the cause of the monarchy’s downfall. Money laundering, tax evasion, suspicious gifts ... the scandals never seem to stop.

A decade ago, China finished construction of the largest, most expensive, most powerful and most controversial dam in the world: the Three Gorges Dam. The figures are staggering: 185 metres high, more than 2 kilometres long and a total of 27 million cubic metres of concrete poured into a structure that ended up costing the record sum of 23 billion euros. But this oversized project has caused a series of environmental and human disasters. FRANCE 24's correspondent Antoine Védeilhé reports from China's Yangtze valley.

In 1909, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, fueled by Zionist and socialist ideas, founded the first kibbutz on the shores of Lake Tiberias in Palestine.  Few would have imagined that 40 years later more than 70,000 people would have joined their community-based movement of mutual aid and unity. Today, the kibbutz forms a central part of the Jewish settlements and the State of Israel but its nature has changed over the years. With some kibbutzes privatised, converted into holiday centres or start-up incubators, FRANCE 24 looks at what remains of the original ideal.

Seven decades after the end of the Korean War, Seoul embarked on a painstaking task to search for and identify the bodies of fallen soldiers still missing since the war. Our reporters witnessed this unprecedented programme in action that developed along the border between the two Koreas, thanks to an agreement forged with Pyongyang two years ago.

In the southern US state of Louisiana, Cajuns make up nearly 10 percent of the population. Although French is spoken less with each passing generation, some are fighting to preserve the language and keep their traditions alive. Our reporter Fanny Allard visited to find out more.