The Debate

France is beginning to relive the atrocity that changed French life forever. The trial of 20 men over the terror atrocities of November 13, 2015 has begun in Paris. One of the accused was actively part of the attacks that night. Salah Abdeslam spoke in court to say he was a fighter of the Islamic State group. It is the most he has said since his 2016 arrest in Brussels.

Is Brazil's president really reaching for the Trump playbook? On Independence Day, Jair Bolsonaro is in the capital to lead a rally against Congress and the Supreme Court in what critics had warned could be his January 6 moment. Just like during the storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters, Bolsonaro claims the system is rigged, with corruption probes against the current administration gaining steam.

The optics play to old stereotypes about Africa: men in fatigues holding the deposed president who has outlasted his stay. In 2010, Alpha Condé became Guinea's first civilian president to win through the ballot box. We ask if the once courageous opposition leader lost his way when he saw fit to lift term limits to hang on to power.

The European Union has hit the milestone of 70 percent of adults inoculated against Covid-19. It is quite a feat for a pandemic that is less than two years old and a vaccine that has only been available since January. Fury over the EU's misfires at the start of the campaign may already be fading from memory. However, Covid is not done with us. The vaccination rates vary wildly inside the EU and in many parts of the developing world, the inoculation rate remains below 2 percent.

On Tuesday, the US president marked the departure of the final troops from Afghanistan with a speech in which he insisted that foreign military intervention can solely be in cases of vital national security threats. What does that mean for other theatres of operation, like South Korea, the Sahel in Africa and all points where the world's largest army is deployed? Does the end of forever wars also mean the end of the US acting as the world's policeman?

America's longest war is over. With just one minute to spare before President Joe Biden's midnight deadline for exiting the country, US Air Force planes carried the last contingent of troops from Kabul airport on Monday night. It was a frantic, harrowing and extremely dangerous final two weeks for those soldiers as they oversaw the airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans and others seeking to escape Afghanistan – a country that is once again ruled by the Taliban.

We turn our eye to the extreme weather conditions in Louisiana, where there are warnings of storm surges and flash floods for the New Orleans area. This comes in the wake of the now weakened Hurricane Ida. It slammed into the Louisiana coast on Sunday, knocking out power for more than a million people, including the whole of New Orleans. Ida comes 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated the same area.

It is what had been feared: At least two explosions near Kabul airport late Thursday afternoon. All day long, Western powers had been warning of an imminent terror threat. The apparent targeting of the airport comes just as evacuations are starting to wind down ahead of an August 31 deadline. Special edition.

Their fashion style is up to date, and they know how to navigate social media, but have the Taliban really changed? Some of the fighters making a victory lap around Kabul were not even born the last time their commanders ruled the Afghan capital. They have now swept to power with little resistance,  knowing that the hard part still lies ahead.

NATO allies can ask, but even after a humiliating defeat, it is still up to the United States to decide whether to prolong evacuations of expats and asylum seekers from Kabul Airport. The UK, France and Germany need US support for their own rescue missions. The Taliban call the August 31st deadline a red line. Wavering will not upend the Atlantic Alliance, not when one member holds the lion's share of the troops and hardware.