Author: France 24

Benfica snatched a nailbiting 3-3 draw against Monaco on Tuesday to reach the Champions League last 16 with a 4-3 aggregate victory in the play-off round.

Europe’s gas demand dropped to an 11-year low in 2024, with imports in liquefied natural gas declining 19% from the previous year. However, import of Russian LNG into the EU increased by 18% with France, Spain and Belgium sourcing the most, according to a new industry report. Also on the show, Stellantis issued a “stop drive” order on around 250,000 Citroen cars over potentially deadly airbags produced by now-defunct Takata, extending an existing recall nationwide.

Since 2011, some 1.5 million Syrians have found refuge in Egypt, where they have succeeded in creating new lives for themselves. But two months after the fall of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, many are ready to return to their largely destroyed country. FRANCE 24’s Nuria Tesón and Edouard Dropsy report.

Victor Le Masne’s career has seen him go from touring indie pop clubs and festivals with his band Housse de Racket to conducting world-famous orchestras. 2024 brought him to dizzying new heights as he co-directed the opening and closing ceremonies of the Paris Olympics and Paralympics. Fresh from winning a Grammy and a Victoire de la musique award, he popped by FRANCE 24 to tell Marjorie Hache about his new album “Music from The Opening Ceremony of The Olympic Games Paris 2024”, which will be played live at the Grand Rex in Paris on June 13.

Paris Saint-Germain’s players have developed a newfound confidence and clinical efficiency following the loss of players like Neymar, Mbappé and Messi, a shift epitomised by Ousmane Dembélé’s transformation from wasteful finisher to ruthless goal scorer. Under Luis Enrique’s management, the team’s hyped-up, overpriced squads have racked up some of the most depressing fiascos in the history of club football.

As Germany enters the final week of election campaign, the economy is a top concern for voters.  Having long been Europe’s manufacturing powerhouse, the country has shown no meaningful growth since the pandemic and capped 2024 with a second consecutive annual GDP contraction.  We take a closer look at what’s been holding the German economy back. Plus, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, a Chinese tech icon turned Beijing’s crackdown target, was seen shaking hands with President Xi Jinping. 

President Trump’s plan for the US to takeover Gaza is likely a “negotiating ploy” for annexation in the West Bank, said Hussein Ibish, Senior Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. Pointing to a possible nuclear deal with Iran that is likely to anger Israel, Ibish said Trump is “teeing up annexation in the West Bank” to compensate Tel Aviv and that “all this talk about Gaza just sets an atmosphere about Palestinians, and their rights and their obligations and where they should be and where they should go, and their land which can be then transferred…

Papal thriller “Conclave” and three-and-a-half hour epic “The Brutalist” won four BAFTA awards apiece on Sunday, with 25-year-old Mikey Madison winning best actress for her portrayal of a New York sex worker in Sean Baker’s black comedy “Anora”.

Stephen Curry and Jayson Tatum led Shaquille O’Neal’s “Team Shaq” to a dominant 41-25 victory over “Team Chuck” in the revamped NBA All-Star Game on Sunday. The new four-team mini-tournament format, aimed at boosting competition, drew mixed reactions—while some players welcomed the change, others, like Draymond Green, slammed it as “ridiculous” and “not basketball.”

After the Paris AI Action Summit wrapped up earlier this week, we look at the future of AI governance and its impact on the global economy. In a bid to make up for lost time, Europe and France have pledged significant boosts in artificial intelligence investments and promised to keep regulations from stifling innovation. FRANCE 24’s Charles Pellegrin speaks to Sasha Rubel, European head of generative AI policy at Amazon Web Services, and Alexandre Zapolsky, the president and co-founder of Linagora, a French open-source software editor and creator of the Lucie chatbot, which has made quite a few headlines in…