The Debate

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 powerhouse may boast of an electricity grid that's 90 percent powered by renewables, but last month it also approved drilling for offshore oil across from the mouth of the Amazon River.

Lula is defiant, arguing it's all with an eye to financing green investment and funding social programmes for the poor. Is his a balanced approach or a sellout?

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 moreProgressive Democrat Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayoral race

We also ask about wins for more moderate Democrats elsewhere in the US and whether Republicans should worry ahead of next year's Congressional midterms.

Donald Trump attributes the setback in part to the fact that he wasn't on the ballot. The US president may have a point: since returning to office, he has monopolised the airwaves. How do the TikTok skills of Zohran Mamdani measure up to the politics of outrage coming from the far right?

Will Trump double down on retribution? Will he send federal troops to more cities run by Democrats, including his native New York? More broadly, will democracy in America now grow more polarised, or will the centre eventually hold?

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-pornography. 

Shein's flooding of the market with ultra-fast fashion, often peddled by social media influencers, is just the latest iteration of an issue with globalisation's conveniences.

Supporters say companies like Shein make style affordable to all, but critics see them an existential threat to humanity's craftsmanship, not to mention the environment.

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.

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 rising, is it too soon to take the foot off the gas of green investment?

In an age of echo chambers and slashed public spending, critics have seized on Gates's remarks as proof, they say, that climate change is a hoax – or, as is the case in Europe, to renew calls to roll back environmental norms in the name of competitiveness.

So, as insurance companies count the cost of rising sea levels, fiercer storms and deadlier fires, how to best invest in humanity's common future?

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.

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 Korea, followed by Trump's decision to skip the regional APEC summit that followed. The US president will instead return to the White House for a Halloween trick-or-treat ceremony.

More broadly, will the United States remain committed to Asian allies, what with its troops permanently stationed in Japan and South Korea and its historic support for Taiwan and the Philippines? And is that compatible with hard-to-read great power bargaining?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

The whole world is watching 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani, whose army of Gen Z supporters have propelled the Democratic Socialist to heavy favorite to win next Tuesday's race for mayor of New York City. We ask about his promises of rent freezes and free buses and whether that's too radical for the world's financial capital.

We also ask whether the best way to break through polarised echo chambers is through moderation, as personified by Mamdani's closest rival, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

Plus we explore policy differences and age gaps, and whether, when it comes to Gen Z, New York City might be an outlier. As supporters of assassinated far-right activist Charlie Kirk will tell you, there's a whole demographic out there that's up for grabs, and not only in the United States.

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri and Guillaume Gougeon.

First it was a revolution confiscated, then a dispute between coup leaders that became a civil war. Three years on, Sudan is wondering if the fall of a key city in the western Darfur region is the cue for a second partition of the country. The massacre of civilians in Darfur is drawing comparisons with the genocide there two decades ago. That’s hardly surprising as the paramilitary leader who led the 18-month siege of El-Fasher is the same Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – aka General Hemedti – who was an instrumental leader of the notorious Janjaweed militias that operated in Darfur under deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir.

We ask if Hemedti, himself a Darfuri, wants a South Sudan-style break with Khartoum or to take the whole of the country with help from his Emirati backers. 

Human rights monitors accuse both sides of war crimes. The forces of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan also have their foreign backers. Who, then, can stop what's currently the world's bloodiest conflict, where the overwhelming majority of casualties are civilians?

Read moreWarnings of executions and ethnic cleansing mount in Sudan's El-Fasher

Produced by François Picard, Charles Wente, Rebecca Gnignati, Riham Mahir & Jean-Vincent Russo

"Speak softly and carry a big stick." That was US President Theodore Roosevelt's adage to stake out Washington's turf in the Americas. More than a century on, it's being evoked by some after an upset win in Argentina's midterm elections by a close ally of the current occupant of the White House. Only Donald Trump didn't speak softly. He bluntly warned that rejection of the party of far-right libertarian Javier Milei would imperil Washington's $20 billion lifeline for a peso that's teetering.

We ask about Javier Milei's victory, his bid to dismantle the state spending system of his predecessors, whether this result is enough to save a currency that's somehow never very far from its next crisis, and whether Washington owns what happens next in Argentina, Latin America's third-largest economy.

On that score, what lessons can be drawn for regional rivals Brazil and Colombia, where a left-wing leader finds himself cut off from US aid and with US navy ships blowing up alleged drug trafficking vessels off his shores?

Produced by François Picard, Charles Wente, Rebecca Gnignati, Guillaume Gougeon & Jean-Vincent Russo

It has been a long seven days — even by Russia-Ukraine standards.

Last week at this time, the talk was of Tomahawk cruise missiles. But instead of delivering missiles, Donald Trump gave a closed-door earful at the White House to Volodymyr Zelensky. Then came talk of a mano à mano U.S.–Russia summit in Budapest.

 

Now the tide has turned again. No summit—just U.S. sanctions on Russia’s top two oil companies, an announcement coinciding with China and India reviewing their orders of Russian imports and the price of crude is soaring.

Why the sudden about-face?

And is Vladimir Putin actually feeling the pinch? Ordinary Russians are grappling with inflation and shortages, a well-documented reality. But do the elites of Moscow and Saint Petersburg even realize they are under economic pressure? We’ll ask about the current mindset there.

Finally, on the frontlines, Europe’s bloodiest war in living memory continues to grind on, accompanied by a steady stream of populist rhetoric and nuclear threats.

 

 

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Ilayda Habip and Daniel Whittington

The Louvre is reopening for the first time since Sunday’s heist of the century. We will follow leads in a daylight robbery now estimated at 88 million euros and check security at the world’s most visited museum.

For now, the shuttering on the getaway window looks as tenuous as the standing of under-pressure authorities, the president of the Louvre answering earlier to a French senate panel said.

Beyond security lapses, is the 800-year-old fortress-turned-palace-turned museum simply too big to deal with the age of overtourism and shrinking public funding?

And after the 2019 fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, it is another cherished landmark making world news for all the wrong reasons. How much can a jewelry caper fuel the general feeling of citizens that they are being ripped off by elected leaders who do not deliver?

 

 

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Ilayda Habip and Daniel Whittington