The Debate

French President Emmanuel Macron has got his pension reform out of the way early in his second term, but at what cost? His prime minister has triggered a vote of no-confidence rather than holding a straight up-and-down vote on the bill itself. How will the railroading through parliament of a plan that's sparked France's biggest strikes and demonstrations in years test the legitimacy of a term-limited president and his minority government in future dealings with the unions and lawmakers?

Xi Jinping boasted about a "great wall of steel" in the speech marking the kickoff of his precedent-breaking third term as China's president. He has consolidated his grip on power and is flexing his might just as leaders of the US, Australia and the UK converged on San Diego, where they vowed to stand up to Beijing's expansionist designs in the Pacific and elsewhere. How adversarial is Xi, what with so much trade between AUKUS allies and China?

Are banks going bad again? Markets are scrambling to contain the shockwaves from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a California lending institution favoured by tech startups. Its seemingly safe bet on government bonds proved a bust, triggering an old-fashioned run on the bank. Is it contagious? The bank's failure marks the first major default since rising interest rates signalled the end of decades of cheap money. The 2008 financial crisis triggered a return of regulation, forcing big banks to keep more reserves in the vault. But was it enough?

Street protests have forced Georgia’s parliament to back down on a bill aimed at making groups with overseas funding register as foreign agents. Critics say it's a mimic of the law that’s on the books in Russia. We ask about a Georgian government that's on paper pro-European, but whose main backer first made his fortune in Russia. Why did lawmakers give in? What next for Georgia?

France is growing older. However, Europe's record-breaking life expectancy has a downside: in order to pay for its increasingly healthy legion of retirees, the French right wing says there's no other option but to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The left retorts that if corporations paid their fair share in taxes, that would more than sustain the country's cherished pay-as-you-go pension system. Ahead of what unions are billing as their biggest strikes yet against the government's pension reform, what exactly does the future hold for workers?

This week has seen yet another brutal cycle of violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank. It is a story you may well feel you have heard before: a Palestinian attack on Israeli civilians, and a response described as disproportionate or even collective punishment.

Will Nigeria's two-party system tremble? Africa's most populous nation has known its share of bruising campaigns, but never since the 1999 return to democracy has there been a run-off in the presidential election. Now, in a nation where the average age is 18, could voters turn away from big tent parties and candidates who are both in their seventies?

Duelling speeches for duelling world visions. Ahead of the first anniversary of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin delivered a state of the nation address in Moscow, in which he accused a West bent on destroying Russia of holding Ukraine hostage. In Warsaw, Joe Biden was back in the same setting where the US president last year quipped of his Russian counterpart "for God's sakes, this man cannot remain in power". At the time, the White House rolled back those remarks. But was that and is that in fact the plan?

Russia’s foreign minister is coming off a barnstorming tour of the African continent, which included Mali, where coup leaders have kicked out the French and replaced them with Wagner mercenaries. The same scenario has already unfolded in the Central African Republic, and Mali’s neighbor Burkina Faso could be next to welcome the Russians.

Imagine your world collapsing around you in the middle of the night. That is literally what happened to so many in Turkey and Syria. Eight days on from the earthquake of the Century, the odd miracle like the one witnessed by our team in Antakya still occurring but that is fleeting solace for relatives and survivors. It is easy in hindsight to lay blame for the 37,000 confirmed dead while the residents give it their all.