All posts tagged: FRANCE 24 guest

Saxony-Anhalt poll: ‘A huge blow for the CDU, but also a huge win for the AfD’

Saxony-Anhalt poll: ‘A huge blow for the CDU, but also a huge win for the AfD’

Published by Sam Flores

Carys Garland is pleased to welcome Markus Ziener, Visiting Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He interprets the AfD’s breakthrough in Saxony-Anhalt as a potentially historic turning point in post-war German politics. For Ziener, the significance lies not only in the scale of the far right’s electoral success, but also in the constituency behind it: many AfD voters, he argues, were previously politically disengaged rather than simply defecting from established parties. This complicates conventional explanations of the result as a straightforward transfer of support from the CDU to the AfD and raises a deeper question about the political expectations of a newly mobilised electorate. Keywords for this article Source link

Strength of Meloni less linked to policy, more about her party’s dominance within govt coalition

Strength of Meloni less linked to policy, more about her party’s dominance within govt coalition

Published by Sam Flores

William Hilderbrandt is pleased to welcome Dr. Giulia Sandri, Associate researcher at the Free University of Brussels. Meloni has benefited from something historically scarce in Italian politics: longevity. Four years of governmental stability have allowed her to accumulate diplomatic relationships, strengthening Italy’s position within Europe and giving Rome greater visibility internationally. Yet Sandri argues that this political success sits alongside a much less decisive domestic record. Improvements in employment and fiscal credibility coexist with weak growth, stagnant wages, declining purchasing power and persistent structural problems in healthcare, education, demographics and public administration.  Keywords for this article Source link

‘Glacier melt and sea level rise will continue: We cannot leave this to the next generation’

‘Glacier melt and sea level rise will continue: We cannot leave this to the next generation’

Published by Sam Flores

Oliver Farry is pleased to welcome Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. Her central argument is that decades of what she calls “carbon procrastination” have made exceeding 1.5°C unavoidable: the question is therefore no longer simply whether the world crosses 1.5°C, but by how much, for how long, and with what consequences for vulnerable societies and ecosystems. While mitigation remains essential, adaptation becomes equally important as sea-level rise and glacier loss, will continue even as emissions fall.  Keywords for this article Source link

Nepal floods ‘unprecedented’, requires new ‘engineering approaches, risk-sensitive urban planning’

Nepal floods ‘unprecedented’, requires new ‘engineering approaches, risk-sensitive urban planning’

Published by Sam Flores

Genie Godula is pleased to welcome Dr. Basanta Raj Adhikari, Director of the Center for Disaster Studies at Tribhuvan University’s Institute of Engineering. He describes the disaster as an illustration of the limits of conventional prevention in the Himalayas. With flood velocities estimated at 170 to 180 kilometres per hour and hazards ranging from ice and snow avalanches to glacial lake outburst floods, he argues that comprehensive monitoring of Nepal’s exceptionally steep and complex mountain terrain is effectively impossible. Yet Adhikari’s analysis is not fatalistic. Instead, he shifts the emphasis from attempting to predict every extreme event toward risk-informed adaptation. Nepal, he argues, should identify high-risk hotspots through satellite observation, supplement these with ground-based monitoring and early-warning systems, and incorporate that knowledge into risk-sensitive land-use planning. Keywords for this article Source link

Nepal: 'Region has hundreds of high-altitude lakes prone to unleashing enormous volumes of water'

Nepal: 'Region has hundreds of high-altitude lakes prone to unleashing enormous volumes of water'

Published by Sam Flores

William Hilderbrandt is pleased to welcome David Fisher, Head of Delegation, Nepal International Federation of Red Cross. The scale of Nepal’s disaster cannot yet be fully measured. Entire communities remain difficult to reach, tens of thousands of people have been affected, and official assessments are only beginning. But the central challenge is already clear: this cannot be treated solely as an immediate humanitarian emergency. What happens to these communities in the years ahead depends heavily on what we do now. Emergency relief must be accompanied from the outset by planning, funding and action for long-term recovery, including rebuilding homes and livelihoods. If that work is postponed until international attention has moved elsewhere, many people may never fully recover. And signs suggest that the speed and destructive force of this extreme natural event could become more frequent. Source link

Israel's 'retrospective incrimination: First we shoot, we kill & then find a reason why it happened'

Israel's 'retrospective incrimination: First we shoot, we kill & then find a reason why it happened'

Published by Sam Flores

Liza Kaminov is pleased to welcome Nadav Weiman, Executive Director of Breaking the Silence. He says there is a troubling gap between how Israeli military operations in Gaza are publicly explained and what soldiers experience on the ground. Testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence suggest that this gap is not simply about individual incidents, but about the policies, assumptions and rules of engagement. The testimony surrounding the Nasser Hospital strike points to “retrospective incrimination”: rather than identifying a legitimate military target before an attack, evidence connecting those killed to Hamas may be sought afterward in order to justify the strike. Source link

US economic D-Day sanctions: ‘Repeated bombing attacks across Iran failed to change the calculus’

US economic D-Day sanctions: ‘Repeated bombing attacks across Iran failed to change the calculus’

Published by Sam Flores

Genie Godula is pleased to welcome Imran Bayoumi, Deputy Director & Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He sees the Trump administration’s new sanctions strategy toward Iran as an attempt to seek economic leverage where military force has so far failed to produce any results. But its effectiveness rests on several unresolved assumptions. Chief among them is whether Washington can compel China, Iran’s largest oil customer, to comply despite Beijing’s growing economic resilience. Iran, meanwhile, has decades of experience curtailing sanctions and is again threatening regional escalation. Keywords for this article Source link

Cybercriminals perfect 'social engineering': 'Each hack feeds the chances of the next one succeeding

Cybercriminals perfect 'social engineering': 'Each hack feeds the chances of the next one succeeding

Published by Sam Flores

Peter O’Brien is pleased to welcome Simon McGarr, Lawyer with McGarr Solicitors in Dublin, and Managing Director of Data Compliance Europe. Cybersecurity is no longer simply a question of whether governments possess adequate technical defences, explains McGarr. AI is altering those risks at extraordinary speed, placing capabilities once associated with states or sophisticated criminal organizations within reach of much smaller actors. If threats evolve month by month, governments must focus on prevention: identifying vulnerabilities, adapting defenses and developing long-term institutional capacity before emerging threats become crises. Source link

PA financial crisis: No budget for ‘essential services’ including infrastructure, education & health

PA financial crisis: No budget for ‘essential services’ including infrastructure, education & health

Published by Sam Flores

Annette Young is pleased to welcome Joost Hiltermann, Special Adviser for MENA and training for the International Crisis Group. He sees the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis not as an approaching emergency, but as an ongoing process of institutional and economic erosion. The PA has already lost much of its capacity to provide essential services, pay public-sector salaries in full, maintain infrastructure, and sustain education and health care. All the while, settlement expansion, settler violence and Israeli restrictions are occurring alongside financial measures that are threatening Palestinian institutions and economic life. Keywords for this article Source link

Ebola in DRC: Deadliest outbreak on record ‘outpacing the response’

Ebola in DRC: Deadliest outbreak on record ‘outpacing the response’

Published by Sam Flores

Eve Irvine is pleased to welcome WHO Spokesperson Tarik Jašarević. His central concern is that we do not yet know where all the places the Ebola virus is circulating: infected people remain outside treatment centres, transmission chains go undetected, and patients who seek care too late face much poorer chances of survival. Conflict, population mobility and other humanitarian pressures make surveillance more difficult, but community engagement is equally crucial. Without trust and cooperation, testing, contact tracing, safe burials and early treatment cannot work effectively.  Keywords for this article Source link