The Debate

What's it really like inside the new Afghanistan? Four months after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, FRANCE 24 went to the capital and beyond to speak to citizens from all walks of life. What they heard was a mix: relief that the guns have gone quiet but worry over the prospect of a bleak winter, with more than half the population facing acute food shortages.

Nine years after Timbuktu welcomed them as liberators, French troops are withdrawing from their final outpost in Mali's north. There are no cries of mission accomplished: the jihadist radicals who scattered when French-led forces intervened in 2013 have long since morphed into a low-intensity insurgency with raids as far away as the far north of Benin. With the summer's chaos in Afghanistan still fresh in memories, when is the right time to end a military intervention?

With Tehran feared to be weeks away from a point of no return on nuclear weapons, are we looking down the barrel of an arms race in the Middle East? With little optimism in the air for the current round of talks in Vienna, where might this leave the Biden administration? Does the US have the stomach for a fight? And is a fight really what's unfolding? Traditional lines in the sand seem to be out the window as the same Gulf states that are cementing new ties with Israel are also keeping channels open with Tehran.

Functioning democracy completes peaceful transition of power. These days, that is no longer always a given. Germany's story is one of continuity but also change, even if the new chancellor is a familiar face who has been dubbed the Scholzomat for his monotone ability to stay on-message. Olaf Scholz may sound boring, but the platform of the country's first three-party coalition since the 1950s reads like a manifesto for wholesale reform.

Would Russia really invade Ukraine? Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin are speaking by video link after more than a month of escalation in eastern Ukraine and across the Russian border, where a troop build-up has got NATO allies warning of red lines and harsh sanctions if those troops cross over. We debrief the virtual summit and Washington's threat to send more troops to Eastern Europe in case of attack.

Will the sentencing of Aung San Suu Kyi discourage dissent or further galvanise the 10-month-old resistance to Myanmar's coup? Two years under house arrest is the first of several sentences to come against a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who, at 76, may or may not ever walk free again. Before the putsch, critics called her too accommodating to the generals. Now silenced, is Suu Kyi reinstated in her status as the face of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement?

A video distributed by the International Olympic Committee is not enough to reassure the tennis world. The Women's Tennis Association is suspending all tournaments in China until it is sure that doubles star Peng Shuai is safe and sound, following the 35-year-old Peng's quickly deleted post on Chinese social media last month denouncing sexual assault by a former vice premier. How far will the ripple effects go?

French far-right pundit Eric Zemmour has officially launched his bid for president with a 10-minute video clip on YouTube that looks like a crash course on replacement theory – immigrants supposedly taking over, violently – all to the dramatic sound of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. We ask our panel about the unorthodox campaign launch.

We bring you a special edition of The Debate on Josephine Baker's induction into the Panthéon in Paris. The Missouri-born dancer, who was also a spy for the French during the Second World War and a civil rights activist, is being honoured in the final resting place of France's most celebrated citizens.

A new chapter of the Covid-19 pandemic opens with a new variant emerging from southern Africa. It has been named Omicron by the World Health Organization. The WHO's director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the issue of vaccine equity will be key to getting through this new wave. Our guests discuss the threat and what to do about it.