Europe hit by record heat, glacier loss and marine extremes per climate report

Europe recorded its hottest year yet in 2025, with unprecedented heatwaves stretching from the Mediterranean to the Arctic, rapid glacier melt, record sea temperatures and expanding wildfires, according to a major climate report warning that the continent is warming twice as fast as the global average.

Issued on: 29/04/2026 - 
By: FRANCE 24

A droplet of water falls from an iceberg delivered by members of Arctic Basecamp is placed on show near the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland. © Alastair Grant, 

Europe endured a historic heatwave across Nordic countries, shrinking glaciers and record sea temperatures in 2025 as the fast-warming continent faces more frequent climate extremes, a new report showed Wednesday.

"The climate indicators ... are quite worrying," Mauro Facchini, a European Commission official, told journalists.

The European State of the Climate report underscores the urgent need for the region to adapt to global warming and accelerate its transition to clean energy, another EU official said.

Here are some key findings of the report published by the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO):

Record heatwaves

At least 95 percent of the region experienced above-average annual temperatures, with Britain, Norway and Iceland recording their warmest year on record, according to the report.

"Since 1980, Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average, making it the fastest warming continent on Earth," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a briefing on the report.

"Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe. And in 2025, we saw long duration heatwaves from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle," Saulo said.

Sub-Arctic Finland, Norway and Sweden – a region dubbed Fennoscandia – experienced a record three-week heatwave in July, with temperatures reaching 30C within the Arctic Circle.

Parts of Fennoscandia had almost two weeks of "strong heat stress" – when temperatures feel hotter than 32C. In an average year, the region will normally have up to two days of strong heat stress.

In Turkey, temperatures reached 50C for the first time in July while 85 percent of the Greek population was affected by extreme temperatures close to or above 40C.

Large parts of western and southern Europe were hit with two significant heatwaves in June, including most of Spain, Portugal, France and southern parts of Britain.

A third major heatwave struck Portugal, Spain and France in August.

Europe and the rest of the world could face another extremely hot summer as the El Nino weather phenomenon, which pushed global temperatures to record highs in 2024, is expected to return in the middle of the year.

Melting ice

Glaciers across Europe recorded a net mass loss in 2025, with Iceland experiencing its second-largest ever melt.

Europe's glaciers are found in mountainous areas such as the Alps, northern Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland's periphery.

"Glaciers across Europe and globally are projected to continue to lose mass throughout the 21st century, regardless of the emission scenario," the report said.


The Greenland Ice Sheet lost around 139 billion tonnes of ice – "equivalent to losing 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools every single hour", said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which operates Copernicus.

It raised the global mean sea level by 0.4mm.

Europe's snow cover, meanwhile, was the third lowest on record.

Renewables rise

For the third year running, renewable energy produced more of Europe's electricity than fossil fuels, accounting for 46.4 percent of the continent's power generation.

Solar power's contribution reached a record 12.5 percent.

"But that's not sufficient. We need to speed up," said Dusan Chrenek, principal advisor at the European Commission's climate office. "We need to work on transitioning away from fossil fuels."

DOWN TO EARTH © France 24
03:45

Other extremes

Europe's annual sea surface temperature was the highest on record for the fourth consecutive year.

A record 86 percent of the European ocean region had at least one day with "strong" marine heatwave conditions.

Such heatwaves have an impact on biodiversity, notably on seagrass meadows in the Mediterranean which act as natural sea barriers and are sensitive to high temperatures.

"They are biodiversity hotspots housing thousands of fish per acre and are critical nursery habitats," said Claire Scannell, one of the report's authors and principal meteorologist officer at Ireland's weather service.

The area burnt by wildfires, meanwhile, reached a record 1,034,550 hectares.

Storms and floods killed at least 21 people and affected 14,500 across Europe, though flooding and extreme rainfall were less widespread than in recent years.

FIFA introduces new World Cup red-card rules to combat racism

FIFA announced on Tuesday that players who cover their mouths during confrontations with opponents could be sent off at this year's World Cup under new anti-racism measures while walking off the pitch in protest at refereeing decisions may also result in red cards.

Issued on: 29/04/2026 
By: FRANCE 24

Italy's defender #21 Alessandro Bastoni (C, bottom) receives a red card from French referee Clement Turpin during the FIFA World Cup 2026 European qualification final football match between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Italy at the Bilino-Polje stadium in Zenica on March 31, 2026. © Elvis Barukcic, AFP

World Cup players who cover their mouths during confrontations with opponents will face a red card as part of a new initiative aimed at combating racism, world governing body FIFA said on Tuesday.

In a statement following a meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) in Vancouver, FIFA confirmed that the rule was one of two law changes that would be introduced at this year's World Cup.

"At the discretion of the competition organiser, any player covering their mouth in a confrontational situation with an opponent may be sanctioned with a red card," FIFA said in a statement.

The new rule follows controversy earlier this year when Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni was accused of racially abusing Real Madrid star Vinicius Junior during a Champions League game in February.


Prestianni was accused of calling Vinicius a "monkey" repeatedly while covering his mouth. Prestianni denied racially abusing Vinicius but was later banned for six matches – with three of those suspended – for "homophobic conduct".

FOCUS © FRANCE 24
05:09

FIFA President Gianni Infantino had voiced support for the law change in an interview with British broadcaster Sky News last month.

"If a player covers his mouth and says something, and this has a racist consequence, then he has to be sent off, obviously," Infantino said.

"There must be a presumption that he has said something he shouldn't have said, otherwise he wouldn't have had to cover his mouth.

"If you do not have something to hide, you don't hide your mouth when you say something. That's it, as simple as that."
Protest sanction

In a separate law change announced on Tuesday to be enforced at the World Cup, FIFA said that red cards would also be introduced for players leaving the field of play in protest at a referee's decision.

Sports © Glody Murhabazi, AFP
05:09

"At the discretion of the competition organiser, the referee may sanction with a red card any player who leaves the field of play in protest at a referee's decision," FIFA said.

"This new rule will also apply to any team official who incites players to leave the field of play."

FIFA said a team causing a game to be abandoned will forfeit the match.

The move follows the uproar at this year's final of the Africa Cup of Nations, when Senegal's players, head coach Pape Thiaw and his staff walked off the pitch in Rabat after Morocco were awarded a penalty in added time, which forward Brahim Diaz ultimately missed.

Senegal went on to win the final 1-0 in extra time, but were sensationally stripped of the title by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in a bombshell decision issued last month.

The law changes came as FIFA delegates gathered in Vancouver ahead of Thursday's FIFA Congress, the final gathering of football's global governing body before the World Cup gets underway in Canada, Mexico and the United States in June.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Despite everything, 'the Palestinians have not given up', says historian Rashid Khalidi

11:46 min From the show

Issued on: 29/04/2026 -

One of the world's leading historians on the Palestinian people has told FRANCE 24 about how there is a future basis for peace in the region. Rashid Khalidi has spent years writing a series of books on the region and its conflicts, often through the eyes of his own family. He says that millions of people are not going to leave their land, so there's a basis for the two peoples to figure something out. Khalidi is in Paris for several appearances, including at the Arab World Institute. He spoke to us in Perspective.

BY: Stuart Norval

Palestinians in Gaza’s Deir al-Balah elect local leaders for the first time in two decades

Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gazan community of Deir al-Balah headed to the polls this weekend for the first election of local leaders in more than two decades. Palestinian authorities hailed the vote as a success and said it paves the way for more elections in the war-torn enclave in the near future.


Issued on:29/04/2026 
By: FRANCE 24

A Palestinian woman in Deir al-Balah places her ballot vote for local elections, the first in two decades in Gaza, on April 25, 2026. © Abdel Kareem Hana, AP

Palestinian authorities said Sunday that local elections in a single Gaza community and the Israeli-occupied West Bank were a success and called them a step towards a long-delayed presidential election in the territories and eventual statehood.

The Palestinian Authority, which administers semiautonomous areas of the West Bank but is left out of the US-drafted ceasefire plan for Gaza, has described Saturday’s local election in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah as a largely symbolic pilot while the authority seeks to politically link the territories.

READ MORELow turnout as Palestinians vote in first local elections since Gaza war

It was the first election in part of Hamas-run Gaza in more than two decades. Deir al-Balah, like much of the territory, is devastated by two years of war but was spared an Israeli ground invasion. Turnout there was 23 percent, but officials cited challenges including large-scale displacement and outdated civil registry records.


Hamas, which controls the half of Gaza that Israel withdrew from last year under the current ceasefire, did not field candidates and did not try to block the vote.

Turnout in the West Bank elections was 56 percent, or over a half-million people, not dramatically different from elections there in recent years.
Sidelining Hamas

Many races were not contested, and candidates were required to accept the programme of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which leads the Palestinian Authority. The programme calls for the recognition of Israel and renouncing armed struggle, effectively sidelining Hamas and other factions.

Election results, then, were dominated by independents and Fatah, the faction that leads the authority and claimed victory.

“Everyone is aware of the political, security and economic conditions, the fragmentation of Palestinian territory, the war on Gaza, and the regional conflict in Iran,” Rami Hamdallah, chair of the Ramallah-based Central Election Commission and a former prime minister, told journalists.

“Simply holding the elections in Deir al-Balah is a significant achievement, and we hope to hold elections in other bodies across the Gaza Strip in the near future,” he said.

The elections in both territories were for the makeup of local councils tasked with overseeing water, roads and electricity.

The elections were the first to take place since reforms were enacted in response to international pressure. Elections now allow voting for individuals rather than slates. With faith in political parties low, they were less important than families and clans in campaigning.

Hamdallah called the vote a reflection of national unity, adding that “we hope that presidential and legislative elections will follow".

The Palestinian Authority, however, has not held a presidential election in 21 years, and support for it and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has withered during years of corruption and frustration over the sometimes violent advances of Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority is the internationally recognised representative of the Palestinian people. It was ousted from Gaza after Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 and violently seized control. Abbas, 90, was elected to what was supposed to be a four-year term in 2005. The authority has not held presidential or legislative elections since 2006.

Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa called Saturday’s elections “another step on the path to full independence". Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, opposes a Palestinian state.

Many Palestinians want more than local votes as they seek a greater say in their future.

“Municipal elections are an important step, but they are not enough ... We want general elections,” Bashar Masri, a prominent Palestinian-American business owner, said on social media.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)

French high-tech mission reveals secrets of 16th-century shipwreck

A remotely operated submarine has begun uncovering the secrets of a 16th-century shipwreck lying 2.5 kilometres beneath the Mediterranean off southern France, where researchers are delicately recovering brightly coloured ceramic treasures from the deepest wreck ever found in French territorial waters.


Issued on: 28/04/2026 - RFI

A ceramic jug recovered from the Camarat 4 shipwreck is examined at the DRASSM laboratory in Marseille on 16 April 2026. AFP - THIBAUD MORITZ

At a secret location off Ramatuelle on France’s southern coast, the Camarat 4 sank around 500 years ago and was discovered by chance in 2025 during a French military seabed survey.

Now, Operation Calliope 26.1 is carrying out the first stage of a joint research mission on the wreck, led by Cephismer, the French Navy’s deep-sea intervention unit, and DRASSM, the Culture Ministry’s underwater archaeology department.

Its exact coordinates are being kept secret because of the sensitivity of the objects found on the seabed.

Wreck discovered of French steamship that sank in Atlantic in 1856

Deep descent

Launched this year, the project aims to further investigate the wreck and its cargo using a remotely operated underwater vehicle capable of descending to 4,000 metres.

Tethered by cable to a tugboat platform, the robot is equipped with several cameras and articulated arms. Two containers onboard allow teams to control the machine and monitor its live feed.

After two hours of sailing from the Var coast, the high-seas tug Jason reaches the site, where the machine is lowered into the water.

After an hour-long descent, it reaches the wreck site.

The ROV C 4000, a remotely operated underwater vehicle used for deep-sea exploration, is brought aboard the Jason during an archaeological mission to investigate the Camarat 4 shipwreck off Ramatuelle in southern France on 7 April 2026. AFP - THIBAUD MORITZ

“It’s extremely precise work to avoid damaging the site, to avoid stirring up the sediment,” Sébastien, head of the Calliope 26.1 mission, said. “This delicate work is also of major importance for training our sailors.”

On control screens, researchers watch the wreck emerge – the ship’s structure, a cannon and hundreds of pitchers and plates decorated with floral motifs, crosses and blue, orange and green fish.

Drone discovers 16th-century shipwreck at record depth in French waters

Merchant clues

The onboard camera captures eight images per second for three hours, producing nearly 68,000 photos to build a 3D model of the wreck.

“The visibility is excellent,” said Franca Cibecchini, a maritime archaeologist at DRASSM.

“You can’t really tell how deep it is. Thanks to this quality, we can say that it’s likely a merchant ship carrying Ligurian faience [from northwestern Italy], so perhaps from the port of Genoa or Savona.”

Researchers say the site may offer rare evidence about 16th-century trade because its depth means it was likely untouched after it sank.

“What’s also important is that this is a site where there could have been no attempt at looting after the shipwreck,” said Marine Sadania, the researcher leading operations.

“For the 16th century, we have texts that aren’t very detailed about merchant ships, so this is a valuable source of information on maritime history and transport networks.”

Several pitchers and plates were recovered during the expedition for study on land.

Marine Sadania, the researcher leading operations on the Camarat 4 mission, examines a ceramic jug recovered from the wreck at the DRASSM laboratory in Marseille on 16 April 2026. AFP - THIBAUD MORITZ

Fragile recovery

At the DRASSM laboratory in Marseille, Sadania carefully examined one of the ceramic pieces underwater.

“This is one of the deepest objects ever recovered from a shipwreck in France,” Sadania said. “For us, it’s an opportunity to test protocols for extracting these artifacts while preserving their integrity.”

Around a third of ceramics recovered from deep-water excavations later break, for reasons scientists still cannot explain.

A temporary exhibition at the Toulon Maritime Museum in November will present the mission’s first findings, while the wreck itself will remain on the seabed under Unesco conservation guidelines.

(with AFP)

French researcher cracks 4,000-year-old Elamite script from Iran

The 4,000-year-old Linear Elamite script from what is now Iran has long eluded archaeologists hoping to unlock the secrets of a near-forgotten age. French archaeologist François Desset's work on deciphering the writing system now has some comparing him to Jean-François Champollion, the famed philologist who deciphered ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.


Issued on: 28/04/2026 - 
By: FRANCE 24

An Archaemenian clay tablet written in the Elamite scripts is shown at Iran's National Museum in Tehran, May 1, 2004. © Behrouz Mahri, AFP

While a modern-day war has focused the world's attention on Iran, for French archaeologist François Desset it was a millennia-old mystery that drew him to the country.

His quest: to decipher the 4,000-year-old writing system of Linear Elamite that had long been considered impossible to crack.

"Of all the writing systems used in Iran, the only one that is truly local – developed within the territory we now call Iran – is Linear Elamite," the 43-year-old told AFP, at his office at Belgium's University of Liege.

"All the others – cuneiform, the Arabic alphabet, or the Greek alphabet – were imported from the west."

Desset's fascination with the subject was sparked in 2006 when he participated in excavations in the south of Iran that unearthed tablets written in Linear Elamite.

Made up of 77 signs – diamonds, curves, and other geometric patterns – the writing system comes from the Bronze Age civilisation of Elam that long ago vanished from the region.

'Cultural heritage belongs to all of humanity': Iranian archaeologist Sepideh Maziar

PERSPECTIVE © FRANCE 24
09:49

Rediscovered in 1903 by a French mission exploring the archaeological site of Susa, it had stumped experts who only had a handful of sources to work with.

For years after his "first physical encounter", Desset struggled in vain to make a breakthrough.

"There were so many dead ends," he said.

That changed though when he gained access to vases covered in the writing that were held by the Mahboubian collection in London, named after a family of Iranians living in exile.

"I was able to access ten new texts, and the key was in them," he recounted.

"The key to deciphering a script, as is so often the case, lies in proper names: names of places, gods, kings."

'Shilhaha'

Desset's work has seen him likened to Jean-François Champollion, the famed French philologist who deciphered ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs at the start of the 19th century.

"What did it for Champollion, was the names of rulers, Ptolemy, Cleopatra ... He identified the symbols that recorded the names of their names," Desset explained.

"My Ptolemy was a ruler named Shilhaha, who reigned around 1950 BC."

WATCH MORE Hieroglyphs and Egyptology: An enduring fascination

In a sequence of four symbols, he noticed that the last two were identical, a repetition that corresponded to the ending of the name "Shilhaha".

Following that breakthrough, Desset now has been able to work on 45 inscriptions.

Now with the expertise he has gained he wants to go back even further and start to work on tablets written in proto-Elamite, "some of the oldest written sources in the world".

But while Desset's research takes him back thousands of years in time, the dramas of the present conflict are inescapable.

READ MORE🌟The Bright Side: Ancient tomb complex discovered as Syria clears war rubble

At a time when US President Donald Trump has threatened send Iran "back to the Stone Ages", Desset hopes that his work can help highlight the country's long and rich cultural history.

"I hope that this work will have a positive impact on Iranian culture and identity once things have returned to normal," he said.

French prison guards call for strike action as overcrowding crisis deepens

France’s prisons are edging closer to a breaking point, with one of the country’s main prison guard unions calling for strike action to force what it says are long-overdue reforms.


Issued on: 27/04/2026 -  RFI

A penitentiary officer closes a door at the "Maison d'arret" (prison) des Hauts-de-Seine, in Nanterre, suburbs of Paris, on 15 January 2026. AFP - STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN

The UFAP–UNSA union announced on Monday that staff across dozens of facilities could walk out in protest at chronic overcrowding and a deepening staffing crisis – two issues that have been steadily intensifying for months.

Officials working inside prisons, from frontline guards to senior directors, have repeatedly warned that conditions are deteriorating fast.

Those concerns were amplified in January when the Council of Europe issued a stark assessment, criticising French prisons as overcrowded and often unsanitary, and cautioning they risk becoming little more than “human warehouses”.

A detainee is pictured in his prison cell at the "Maison d'arret" (prison) des Hauts-de-Seine, in Nanterre, suburbs of Paris, on 15 January 2026. AFP - STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN

Overcrowding in French prisons puts justice system under scrutiny

Overcrowding reaches new highs

The numbers underline the scale of the challenge. As of 1 March, France’s prison occupancy rate stood at over 137 percent, with 87,126 inmates housed in facilities designed for fewer than 63,500. It places France among the worst-performing countries in Europe – behind only Slovenia and Cyprus, both of which operate on a far smaller scale.

What is particularly striking is the pace at which the situation is worsening. The prison population is currently rising by around 200 inmates each week. Without swift intervention, the symbolic threshold of 90,000 prisoners could be breached in the near future.

For staff and inmates alike, the consequences are becoming harder to ignore. Overcrowded cells, many of them poorly insulated, are fuelling concerns about rising tensions, particularly as temperatures climb during the summer months.

The continued use of mattresses on cell floors – nearly 7,000 cases recorded in early March – has become a symbol of the system’s strain.

French prison crisis deepens with cells holding four times capacity

Staffing gaps add to pressure

Alongside overcrowding, unions point to a persistent lack of personnel as a critical weakness. UFAP–UNSA estimates that around 5,000 prison officer positions remain unfilled nationwide, leaving existing staff overstretched and struggling to maintain safe conditions.

The planned strike could affect around 80 prisons out of just under 190 across the country. However, not all unions are on board. FO Justice, the largest organisation representing correctional officers, has opted not to join the action for now, arguing that it is “too early” to take such steps.

Details of the disruption are expected to vary from site to site. Measures under consideration include halting prisoner transfers, tightening screening procedures, and cancelling visits – steps that would significantly disrupt the day-to-day functioning of the prison network.

The government, for its part, is working on a draft law intended to tackle overcrowding. Among the proposals is a commitment to end the use of floor mattresses, though no clear timetable has been given for when the legislation might be introduced or adopted.

French rights watchdog condemns lack of basic rights for prisoners

Proposed 'regulation mechanism'

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has already ruled out one controversial option – a prison regulation mechanism used in countries such as Germany, where new admissions must be balanced by releases once capacity limits are reached.

Instead, the Ministry of Justice is focusing on expanding capacity, with plans to create 3,000 additional places in modular prison units, half of them by 2027. Yet progress has been slow: fewer than a third of the 15,000 new prison spaces promised under a national plan launched in 2018 have so far been delivered.

There have been some incremental developments. Darmanin recently welcomed an increase in the deportation of foreign prisoners through conditional releases and bilateral agreements. But unions and prison officials stress that such measures affect only a small fraction of inmates and are unlikely to make a meaningful dent in the broader crisis.

(With newswires)

Nuclear non-proliferation treaty is 'eroding', UN chief warns at start of summit

Signatories of the landmark nuclear non-proliferation treaty began a meeting at the United Nations headquarters on Monday as fears of a renewed arms race escalate, with atomic powers once again at loggerheads over safeguards.


Issued on: 27/04/2026 - RFI

Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during the 2022 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations in New York City on 1 August, 2022. AFP - ED JONES

In 2022, during the last review of the treaty considered the cornerstone of non-proliferation, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned humanity was "one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation."

On Monday he warned "the drivers" of nuclear weapons proliferation were accelerating.

"For too long, the Treaty has been eroding. Commitments remain unfulfilled. Trust and credibility are wearing thin. The drivers of proliferation are accelerating. We need to breathe life into the Treaty once more," Guterres said in opening remarks.

With global geopolitical friction only heightened since the last meeting, it was unclear what the two-week gathering at UN headquarters in New York could achieve.

"We should not expect this conference to resolve the underlying strategic tensions of our time... but a balanced outcome that reaffirms core commitments and set out practical steps forward would strengthen the integrity of the NPT," said Do Hung Viet, Vietnam's UN ambassador and president of the conference.

"The success or failure of this conference will have implications way beyond these halls and way beyond these next five years, the prospects of a new nuclear arms race are looming over us," he said.

Civilian nuclear projects

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), signed by almost all the countries on the planet – with notable exceptions including Israel, India, and Pakistan – aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, to promote complete disarmament, and to encourage cooperation on civilian nuclear projects.

The nine nuclear-armed states – Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea – possessed 12,241 nuclear warheads in January 2025, according to the latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The United States and Russia hold nearly 90 percent of nuclear weapons globally and have carried out major programs to modernize them in recent years, according to SIPRI.

China has also rapidly increased its nuclear stockpile, SIPRI said, with the G7 raising the alarm Friday over Moscow and Beijing boosting their nuclear capabilities.

What comes after the New Start nuclear treaty?

US President Donald Trump has indicated his intention to conduct new nuclear tests, accusing others of doing so clandestinely.

In March, France's President Emmanuel Macron announced a dramatic shift in nuclear deterrence, notably an increase in the atomic arsenal, currently numbering 290 warheads.

"It is obvious that trust is eroding, both inside and outside the NPT," Seth Shelden of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told French news agency AFP.

He questioned the likely outcome of the four-week summit.

Decisions on the NPT have to be agreed by consensus, with the previous two conferences failing to adopt final political declarations.
Stumbling blocks

In 2015, the deadlock was largely due to opposition by Israel's arch-ally Washington to the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.

In 2022, the impasse was due mainly to Russian opposition to references to Ukraine's nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia, occupied by Moscow.

This year's summit could fall on any number of stumbling blocks.

France draws nuclear red lines as Macron explores wider European deterrence role

The ongoing war in Ukraine, Iran's nuclear program and the war there, non-nuclear states' fears over proliferation and North Korea's developing arsenal could all be deal-breakers.

The United States along with its allies Britain, the UAE and Australia spoke out at Iran's appointment as a conference vice president.

Washington's envoy to the meeting said conferring a leadership role on Tehran was an "affront" to countries that take the NPT "seriously."

Artificial intelligence could be a prominent issue as some countries call for all sides to keep human control over nuclear weapons.

(with AFP)

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY
France urges its citizens to quit Mali as junta faces major rebel threat

France urged its citizens on Wednesday to leave Mali “as soon as possible”, after military leader General Assimi Goïta said the country’s worsening security crisis was “under control” following major attacks by jihadists and Tuareg separatists.

Issued on: 29/04/2026 - RFI

Malian general Assimi Goïta in a televised speech to the nation, 28 April, 2026. © ORTM / AFP


France’s foreign ministry said the security situation remained “extremely volatile” after the weekend assaults on government targets in several cities, including Bamako. It told French nationals to plan a temporary departure using commercial flights still available.

Those still in Mali were urged to stay at home and remain in regular contact with family, while France repeated that travel to the country remained formally discouraged for any reason.

The warning followed coordinated attacks over the weekend that killed Defence Minister Sadio Camara and saw rebel forces take control of the northern city of Kidal.

Malian official accuses Russian forces of 'betrayal' after Kidal falls to rebels


French warning

Around 4,200 French citizens are registered with consular services in Mali, with officials estimating about 3,000 more are not registered. About two-thirds are dual nationals living in Bamako.

Goïta’s televised address on Tuesday was his first public appearance in three days, after his absence raised questions about his hold on power during one of Mali’s most serious security crises in years.

“As I am speaking to you, security arrangements have been reinforced. The situation is under control and clearing operations, search efforts, intelligence gathering and security measures are continuing,” he said.

Calling the unrest one “of extreme gravity”, he urged Malians to reject division and said the country needed “clarity, not panic”.
Major offensive

The attacks were the largest in nearly 15 years and brought together two former enemies – the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg separatist group, and the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), an Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist alliance.

They launched coordinated strikes on military positions across Mali, including around Bamako, in a major challenge to the ruling junta and its Russian military allies.

At least 23 people were killed in two days of fighting, a hospital source told the French news agency AFP. Camara, a central figure in Mali’s shift towards Russia, was among the dead.

Earlier on Tuesday, Goïta’s office released photographs of him visiting wounded soldiers and civilians, and meeting Russian ambassador Igor Gromyko, in his first public appearance since the attacks began.

Wagner replaced in Mali by Africa Corps, another Russian military group
Russian setback

Russia’s defence ministry said rebels who captured Kidal were regrouping. It also confirmed that Africa Corps, the Kremlin-controlled force sent to support Mali’s junta, had withdrawn from the city.

The loss of Kidal and reported army withdrawals from several positions in the Gao region have raised new doubts about the junta’s security strategy since Goïta seized power in 2020 promising to defeat Islamist insurgents.

Gao is one of Mali’s most important military strongholds after Kati, near Bamako, where several senior junta officials are based and which was also targeted during the weekend violence.

A spokesman for JNIM said in a video on Tuesday that militants were blockading roads into Bamako and Kati. “Anyone breaching this blockade... will face the consequences,” spokesman Bina Diarra said.

AFP said it could not independently verify whether the blockade was active by Tuesday evening.

(with AFP)

Mali's Tuareg rebels vow regime 'will fall', urge Russian forces to withdraw


A spokesperson for Mali's Tuareg rebel group Azawad Liberation Front pledged on Wednesday that the country's ruling junta "will fall" and said the group wanted to see Russian forces withdraw "from all of Mali" after weekend attacks by Islamist insurgents and Tuareg separatists targeting major cities.


Issued on: 29/04/2026 
By: FRANCE 24

A general view of Bamako, Mali, taken on April 25, 2026. © Aboubakar Traore, Reuters

Mali's ruling junta "will fall", a spokesman for the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) said Wednesday, after Islamist insurgents and Tuareg separatists launched large-scale attacks destabilising the west African country at the weekend.

"The regime will fall, sooner or later," the Tuareg separatist coalition's Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane told AFP during a visit to Paris, adding that the rebels intend to take control of Gao, Timbuktu and Menaka following the capture of the key northern town of Kidal.

Ramadane said the rebel group's "objective is for Russia to withdraw permanently from Azawad and beyond, from all of Mali".

"We have no particular problem with Russia, nor with any other country. Our problem is with the regime that governs Bamako."

The leader of Mali's military government, Assimi Goita, on Tuesday made his first public appearance since the weekend attacks, vowing in a televised address to "neutralise" those responsible.


France on Wednesday urged its citizens to leave the West African country "as soon as possible" due to the "extremely volatile" situation on the ground.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

The First Covid Indictment, Finally – OpEd

RIGHT WING ANTI FAUCI CONSPIRACY THEORY

April 29, 2026 
By Brownstone Institute


Dr. David Morens was Anthony Fauci’s long-trusted assistant at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of many subdivisions of the National Institutes of Health. He worked there for nearly a quarter of a century, a job he snagged out of his training as a virologist and his tenure at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was loyal to his boss, clearly to a fault.
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Now he is the first lamb sacrificed in what is likely to be a long series of prosecutions.

Morens, now 78 years old, has been indicted by the Department of Justice “with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting.”

All of this is clearly documented in emails obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and Senate investigations, in which Morens is promised wine for his “behind-the-scenes shenanigans,” and arranged for its delivery to his home. He was also promised – very likely by Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, the recipient of Fauci’s largesse – “additional things of value, including meals at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, New York, and Washington, D.C.”

Clearly something had gone very wrong in the normal affairs of state. What was the point of all this cloak-and-dagger? To cover up what everyone suspected, that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, that benefited from funding from the US government channeled through a favored contractor, the EcoHealth Alliance. Daszak himself was involved in the coverup in those early months, even authoring a very early (Feb 28, 2020) op-ed in the pages of the New York Times.


“As the world struggles to respond to Covid-19,” Daszak wrote, “we risk missing the really big picture: Pandemics are on the rise, and we need to contain the process that drives them, not just the individual diseases.” In other words: this is just Disease Xl; blame nature, not scientists in government.

In an April 21, 2021 email to Daszak, Morens wrote: “PS, I forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his [Fauci’s] house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

In preparation for his grilling by the Senate on May 22, 2024, Morens wrote Daszak: “I should be prepared to be hit with criminal charges and firing and possible jail time for using my Gmail for supposed government business.…Please come visit me in prison and help me find a job when I get out. At least if that happens I will finally have the ability to speak out and write about what has been going on. I won’t mince words.”

The best we can hope for, then, is precisely what Morens promises: that once in prison, he will sing like a bird. He certainly knows vastly more than he has thus far said, as he admits. Or perhaps he avoids prison by turning on his past associates and ratting them out not only for the lab funding and leak but for what followed: the complete destruction of the country (and much of the world) with a lockdown awaiting an inoculation with a terrible efficacy and safety profile.


This is the real nub of the issue. For six years, people have wondered why it was so crucial for Fauci and his cohorts – among whom there were many, including actors in national security agencies – to work so hard to cover up the possibility of a lab leak, even to the point of commissioning a scientific paper to make the implausible case for a zoonotic origin. The best possible explanation is that they wanted to avoid culpability.

Another conspirator on the other side of the pond, Dr. Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome in the UK, jumped the gun with his 2021 book Spiked. He was a bit too forthcoming.

“In the last week of January 2020,” he writes, “I saw email chatter from scientists in the US suggesting the virus looked almost engineered to infect human cells. These were credible scientists proposing an incredible, and terrifying, possibility of either an accidental leak from a laboratory or a deliberate release. That got my mind racing….It seemed a huge coincidence for a coronavirus to crop up in Wuhan, a city with a superlab. Could the novel corona-virus be anything to do with ‘gain of function’ (GOF) studies?”

One wonders why he even raised the possibility. He continues:


In those weeks, I became exhausted and scared. I felt as if I was living a different person’s life. During that period, I would do things I had never done before: acquire a burner phone, hold clandestine meetings, keep difficult secrets. I would have surreal conversations with my wife, Christiane, who persuaded me we should let the people closest to us know what was going on. I phoned my brother and best friend to give them my temporary number. In hushed conversations, I sketched out the possibility of a looming global health crisis that had the potential to be read as bioterrorism. ‘If anything happens to me in the next few weeks,’ I told them nervously, ‘this is what you need to know.’


What a picture of crazy times. But there seemed to be a solution on the horizon. A technology called modified mRNA had been in the works, funded by Fauci, for decades. It promised a quick turnaround from a genetic sequence. They could get this done now with a proper level of panic and thus bypass the FDA’s normal approval route plus get an easy liability shield for the product. They needed only to convince Trump that he will have his inoculation in plenty of time for the November election.

One stipulation: government needs to minimize the extent to which people get exposed and gain immunity without the shot. After all, we don’t want the inoculation to be superfluous. For this experiment to work, as many people as possible needed to retain immunological naivete to the pathogen in question. Hence: the lockdowns need to keep people isolated and separate for as long as possible. Hence: the removal of alternative therapeutics from distribution.

After Trump granted approval for society-wide lockdowns for two weeks – they said he would otherwise be responsible for the deaths of millions – they would only need to extend them. The entire apparatus of the bureaucracy will have taken hold by that time and there would be nothing Trump could do to stop them. This could continue all the way to November, which Trump would lose thanks to mail-in ballots urged by the CDC. In which case, the distribution of the vaccine could wait and the lockdowns stretched for many months.

In the meantime, Morens and Fauci cooperated on a social-distancing manifesto that appeared in Cell in August 2020. “Living in greater harmony with nature,” they opined, “will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues. In such a transformation we will need to prioritize changes in those human behaviors that constitute risks for the emergence of infectious diseases.”

There we have it: lockdowns are just part of a long-term plan to completely reconstitute the social order. Enjoy your new safety. And remember never to shake hands again.

Imagine: all of this to cover up the culpability of a few for the funding of gain-of-function research in cooperation with the CCP.

If you think this kind of plot seems far-fetched, that surely no one in the government could be that sadistic concerning the treatment of the civilian population, think again. From the point of view of people at the top, you can obtain several wins out of this. You get a coverup of the lab leak. You get a trial run of a new vaccination technology that is potentially worth trillions in the long run. You get Trump – and Boris Johnson – out of office, Plus media and tech will love it: more eyeballs on screens and more customers for online learning platforms.

The whole scheme seemed like a winner too. But there was a serious problem. The shot failed to work and caused more harm than any shot called a vaccine in modern history. The sheer social carnage of the lockdowns was astronomical once you consider inflation, broken supply chains, bankrupted businesses, learning loss, and civic disruptions and displacements. Indeed, the population has been in a slow-burn revolt against everything and everyone since those days.

David Morens has previously said that he would welcome time in prison provided he would be free “to speak out and write about what has been going on.” Prosecutors need to hold him to his pledge: “I won’t mince words.” Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci has already been granted a full pardon by President Biden. There is surely a reason for that. 

This article was published by the Brownstone Institute

CORONA VIRUS GENETIC CODE FROM CHINA JANUARY 2020

The Problem With Eternal Vigilance – OpEd

AMERIKAN LIBERTARIANISM

April 29, 2026 
MISES
By George Ford Smith


“Politics in all its variants, particularly the politics of political parties, is the archenemy of freedom, prosperity, and peace. Yet wherever one looks, more government is invoked as the solution.”—Antony P. Mueller, “Is Anarcho-Capitalism Viable”

People are supposed to exercise eternal vigilance to keep themselves free. How does one exercise vigilance when the entity in question can pretty much do what it wants and can back its actions with superior force? How does one exercise vigilance when nature requires him to spend his time supporting his life and the lives of those he chooses to support? How does one exercise vigilance in defending freedom when most people today would rather be the subject of a state than be free?

It is a formidable task that has little in the way of a promising future.

Imagine how life is for people in Ukraine or Gaza or Iran—or anywhere else where bombs are falling or missiles striking. Borrowing from Hobbes, you might describe their lives as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” but you’d be immediately faced with another problem. Hobbes was describing what life would be like in the absence of a state. People suffering the consequences of war are suffering at the hands of states.

Is life one vast contradiction that can only be resolved at one’s death? Is that one of the appeals of religion, that it replaces suffering with peace and good will in the afterlife? Or is it possible people still on earth can find a way to live peacefully with one another without a state?

If it is possible then anyone looking to persuade others of this position will find resistance everywhere he turns. And not just from warmongers.

More moderate positions on the state’s necessity come from thinkers who self-identify as libertarians, who promote peace, prosperity, and freedom but also claim none of it is possible without a sovereign authority to establish and enforce laws. They argue for limited government—keep the state but limit its functions to those needed to protect the Declaration’s inalienable rights.

It’s intellectually easy to criticize the state as it exists today, rather than the idea of the state itself, here understood in Oppenheimer’s sense as a predator of the producing class. Taxation is theft, inflation is deceptive theft, conscription is kidnapping—each established libertarian positions, and all attributable to the state’s aim of increasing its power. Do away with these and others, such as a standing army, and we will arrive at a version of the state that satisfies libertarians because it’s the best we can hope for. Their axiom: We will always have states. Libertarians want them as small as possible.

But even this version is alien. States grow. It’s in their nature. Their purpose is to provide security. There are always more and better ways to secure. For the state, security comes at a cost of imposing restrictions on freedom. People can turn to private security firms but they operate under state permission. If the security sought is that provided by sound money, the whole industrialized world opposes it. Fiat money, best understood as legal counterfeiting, grows the state, not sound money.

How does a state get away with growing? Usually, in response to a crisis. What is government for if not to fix or alleviate it, as FDR allegedly accomplished with his New Deal? Isn’t that how security is understood? It will require government expansion but most people are led to believe it’s worth it. Besides, under a fiat monetary regime, such as most states have, the hit on its subjects’ net worth will be mostly hidden until much later, a result of the Cantillon effect, at which time there will be market actors to blame, not the government.

Instead of demanding a flat sum immediately such as a sales tax imposes, the state has an ingenious theft installment plan of which most people are unaware. The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee has as policy an innocent-sounding target of a 2 percent inflation rate, translated as a 2 percent hit on the purchasing power of the dollar that is achieved by creating money ex nihilo—out of nothing, like a child playing make believe, only these children are considered the best and the brightest so are obliged to do it in a very circuitous way by adjusting something called the federal funds rate. Fed monetary inflation is sometimes augmented with higher taxes on the rich that slides down to the middle and lower classeswho are mostly puzzled at this outcome. As for the benefit of state expansion, the combination of welfare and warfare has worked every time. At home it helps the “needy” often on the basis of their support for the current regime, abroad it devastates lives and destroys critical infrastructure to impose political ideals on people who don’t want them, always with the threat of blowback.

All this is how the state provides protection to ensure the freedom and well-being of its subjects. For this difficult task it claims a legal monopoly on the use of force. Monopoly defined:

A situation, by legal privilege or other agreement, in which solely one party (company, cartel etc.) exclusively provides a particular product or service, dominating that market and generally exerting powerful control over it.

The “particular product or service” a state allegedly provides is protection of your status as a human being. Did you vote to be under rule by a state? No. Did you vote for the particular constitutional state now in effect? No, your ancestors did. The Constitutional US replaced the Articles US by means of a quiet coup d’etat. Pro-Constitution delegates in 1787 argued that their purpose was “to render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government and the preservation of the Union [i.e., the State]” which they claimed justified ditching the Articles. In their view, an adequate government required a monopoly central state with the power to tax.

Americans have always inveighed against monopolies, usually without making a distinction between coercive and non-coercive monopolies. Problems emerge when coercive monopolies have the force of law behind them.

In the late 19th century, for example, voluntary cartel agreements couldn’t establish the market control big business wanted so they turned to the state, the mother of all coercive monopolies, to get the legal advantages they wanted.

Always, the legal establishment of monopolies that began with the creation of the federal government was done under the moral umbrella of the public interest. The Constitution’s preamble gives it away, that it was created by “We the People . . . to promote the general Welfare . . .” A person genuinely concerned with the general welfare of the country would not agree to assign that task to the state, the historical record of which is anything but a promoter of its subjects’ welfare.

The idea of eternal vigilance suggests the task of keeping the state in line, of keeping it from overstepping its boundaries. But ask yourself: what boundaries does a nuclear superpower have today? We would be far more effective in elaborating the raw essence of any state and its threat not just to our freedom but to our lives.

About the author: 

George Ford Smith is a former mainframe and PC programmer and technology instructor, the author of eight books including a novel about a renegade Fed chairman (Flight of the Barbarous Relic) and a nonfiction book on how money became an instrument of theft (The Jolly Roger Dollar). He welcomes speaking engagements and can be reached at gfs543@icloud.com.

Source: This article was published by the Mises Institute