The Debate

For now, it's still Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel. In 2023, in the immediate aftermath of the country's worst day of bloodshed in its history, pundits predicted the quick demise of the right-wing prime minister. But on the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks, Israel's still not reckoned with the security failures on the day, the root causes of the Hamas-led terror attack, the brutal war of vengeance that followed and above all, Netanyahu is still prime minister with a fair shot at re-election. Even if the Likud leader is voted out on October 27, his most serious election rivals don't exactly advocate for a radical break when it comes to the Palestinians.

Three years on, there are trigger words, such as genocide, that make many supporters of Israel either see red or squirm.

Watch more'We were naive' about Hamas, Israeli ex-hostage Shoshan Haran says

Central to the direction Israel takes is another word: Zionism. The UK's Green Party has now gone so far as to equate it with racism. What did Zionism mean in 1948 when Israel was founded? What does it mean today? And can the concept be compatible with a lasting solution that brings peace to the Middle East?

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

It’s a protest movement that a broke, lame-duck French government did not see coming. Civil servants this Tuesday joined high schoolers who are now in their third week of picketing over long-deteriorating classroom conditions. The usual recipe for wearing down movements in France has recently been to match any violence with a heavy hand, with the escalation turning the silent majority against the protesters, as was the case with the pre-Covid Yellow Vests movement. 

There has certainly been plenty of violence. But those involved are teenagers, not adults, with many pressing legitimate gripes about growing inequality in education. Some organising on Snapchat and other socials are clearly cynical about their own future prospects and ready to have it out. With France in full pre-election posturing mode ahead of polls next spring, some see pigs where others see hoodlums, with the government borrowing the far right's language and the far left focusing on police brutality.

What President Emmanuel Macron's team doesn't have this time around is what's being called magic money; the funds that French governments usually pull out of a hat to make a crisis go away. With France's highest public debt rate in a quarter of a century spooking the eurozone and beyond, no magic money will this time appear to hire more teachers or build more classrooms. So what's the answer?

Watch moreEuro falls to 17-month low against dollar on French debt concerns

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

Do voters care about attempted coups? Brazil's Flavio Bolsonaro is on the cusp of unseating Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the country's October 25 presidential runoff. Bolsonaro's father was jailed over the Brazilian version of the January 6 storming of the US Capitol. Up and down the ballot, other Bolsonaros have been elected in the first round as the far right surges. Is it about incumbent fatigue? Do Brazilians subscribe to Bolsonaro's "God, Homeland, Family" mantra?

And what will it take for the 80-year-old Lula to convince enough of the 21 percent of voters who stayed home last Sunday to come out for the second round? We ask how Brazil is doing on the economy, crime and the rule of law. 

Watch moreBrazil presidential election: 'Bolsonaro being ahead is a surprise,' researcher says

A democracy that was built in the wake of a military dictatorship included safeguards intended to force compromise and prevent a return to strongman rule. Is that still what Brazilians want? What does it say when the region's powerhouse seems poised to become the seventh nation in the Americas to veer to the right since the return to power last year of US President Donald Trump?

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

France still very much takes its literary prize-giving season seriously. So when a Haitian-born Canadian writer was accused of infusing his best-selling breakout novel with artificial intelligence, it got ugly in a hurry. We wade into the Thélyson Orélien affair with its subsequent accusations of racism, previous plagiarism by the author and doubts over the accuracy of AI verification tool Pangram. 

Interesting, some still love Orélien's book. Is that a problem? The scandal is all the more heartbreaking for publishers because "It Was Either That or Die" has sold 40,000 copies since its release, this as book sales have collapsed dramatically since the commercial launch of ChatGPT four short years ago.

Read morePrix Goncourt drops Canadian-Haitian writer from top French literary prize list over AI claims

All this begs an even broader question: most of humanity only started reading and writing in the past century. Is that period over already? Future generations will certainly know how to read street signs and subtitles on a video. But if we're no longer stopping what we do to engage meaningfully with the written word, how will that change us all?

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

After contagion in the Arabian Peninsula, should the entire Horn of Africa fear a domino effect? Just as US President Donald Trump’s decision to invade Iran drew the Saudis back to Yemen, did threats over the Bab al-Mandab Strait light the fuse in Ethiopia, where last week, unresolved issues between the government and its Tigray region erupted? Could a potential return to civil war draw in regional rivals?

Ethiopia didn't need pressure over the Red Sea to ignite. The breakdown of dialogue after the 2022 Pretoria agreement was always going to be a ticking time bomb for Africa's second-most populous nation.

And in four years, alliances have shifted, with neighbouring Eritrea no longer on Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's side and Addis Ababa accusing Egypt and Sudan of supporting the TPLF rebels. Sudan has its own vicious civil war, where Abiy is accused of siding with the same UAE whose arming of RSF militias is well documented.

How and who can stop a return to all-out civil war in Ethiopia? Who can prevent a regional war?

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

A minor bump on the French far right's road to power, or a car crash that wipes out years of rebranding? Bombshell allegations of past anti-Semitic tropes by the man Marine Le Pen has touted as her future prime minister could test her years-long effort to convince French voters that the National Rally is a party of government, rather than the fringe far-right National Front of old.

We examine the evidence and hear the denial from 31-year-old Jordan Bardella. We also chart his rise to being groomed as an eventual stand-in for the presidential frontrunner after an appeals court allowed Le Pen to run despite her corruption conviction.

We ask how the accusations land for a party that, since the October 7 attacks against Israel, has sought to portray itself as a rampart defending Frances Jewish community against anti-Semitism.

Le Pen's gut reaction was to blast the report by investigative news website Mediapart as a plot, a conspiracy. We happen to live in an age when conspiracy theories flow freely: including, of course, the conspiracy theory that Jews secretly run the world.

So what could these allegations mean for Marine Le Pen's prospects in 2027?

Produced by François Picard, Charles Wente, Rebecca Gnignati, Guillaume Gougeon and Ilayda Habip

There's a new pope in town and he's got very different ideas on what France's far right calls the defense of Christian civilisation. Leo XIV is concluding his trip to France in the eastern city of Metz, which is closely associated with a founding father of present-day European federalism, Robert Schuman. There, the head of the world's largest organised religion proudly stated that Europe's roots are Christian, dating back to the Romans, all the while hailing an EU model that transcends "us versus them" ideology and brushes aside "might is right" in favour of human rights and international law. 

We ask about the schism with the likes of French presidential frontrunner Marine Le Pen and the leader of her National Rally party, Jordan Bardella. How much does Leo's brand of Catholicism clash with the values of a Eurosceptic far right that continues to make inroads in France and just over the border in neighbouring Germany? 

More broadly, how much of a moral authority can this pope and this Church be in 2026? During his four-day tour of France, Leo acknowledged the damage done by systemic child sex abuse within the Church when he met with victims. Beyond that private meeting, he drew huge crowds. How will this moment be remembered?

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

It's their AI world and we're just living in it. If that's the feeling of those who suffer from AI anxiety, it may worsen watching the Chinese president's first state visit to Washington in nine years. If there's one issue that the planet's biggest superpowers agree on, it's that now is not the time for global regulation of artificial intelligence. As they sit down to a White House state dinner just hours after news that OpenAI had hacked the Australian government, we ask who will call to task the US tech titans at the table.

Read moreOpenAI AI agent breached Australian government website, PM says

While they push for more money, energy and easy access to our personal content, is the rest of the world reduced to the role of spectator?

On that score, we ask why the US president's red lines have moved over the years: rolling back tariffs on China, easing chip restrictions and blocking a ban on TikTok. National interest? Personal gain? And what about a China keen to control what citizens can or cannot access when they reach for their chatbots?

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

It's all about his high holiness here in France. For weeks already, the nation's been abuzz over the upcoming visit of Leo XIV, from Friday evening mass at Notre-Dame Cathedral and another mass before 600,000 faithful outside Paris to the pilgrimage city of Lourdes and a trip to Metz, hometown of father of European unity Robert Schuman. 

A papal visit to France usually draws much attention to the symbiotic love-hate relationship between the Church and a secular state of mostly lapsed Catholics. And yes, there have been grumblings about the visit's cost to taxpayers. But the pushback is relatively muted. This new American pope seems genuinely popular here in France; we ask why.

Read morePope Leo XIV to trace back French ancestry, spiritual roots on visit to France

Perhaps part of the answer lies with Leo's first stop – UNESCO – where he'll speak about artificial intelligence in what's billed as the follow-up to his spring encyclical on the issue.

As panellists in this studio repeated just last week, machines per se are not taking over. But the happy few who control the most powerful AI tools have already amassed outsized power. Are the existential threats posed by technology a matter of faith, sanctity of life, or morals? And what does the world's largest organised religion bring to the table?

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

A year ago, Donald Trump went to the rostrum of the United Nations General Assembly and after taking an axe to US aid and development funding, he read the world the riot act. One Iran war later, the US president is sticking to script, with a speech that borrowed much of the language from last year. With citizens on five continents now feeling the pain at the pump, we ask what it will take to tame a global energy crisis whose potential spiral mirrors the contagion of hostilities from the Strait of Hormuz to the mouth of the Red Sea.

On that score, Trump is blaming a global diesel shortage on Ukraine's drone strikes on Russian critical infrastructure. But Russia only accounts for 6 percent of global diesel exports.

We debrief the bilateral meeting between the US president and his Ukranian counterpart. With no end in sight to conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, one notable absence at UN headquarters is the leader of China. Xi Jinping has passed over New York for Washington, where he'll discuss the future of AI with his hosts – a White House state dinner that reminds those present in New York of the old adage that if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.

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