Author: France 24

Jalen Brunson scored 45 points as the New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 on Saturday to clinch their first NBA championship in 53 years. The Knicks sealed the best-of-seven NBA Finals 4-1, taking down French star Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs on their home court to capture their first title since 1973.

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off in Mexico this Thursday, we take a look at the tournament’s expected economic impact – both globally and on host countries. But the real winner, it seems, is FIFA, with record revenues forecast at $11 billion. Also in this edition, markets react to a fresh flare-up in violence in the Strait of Hormuz, and SpaceX faces a lawsuit from an environmental group ahead of its blockbuster market debut this Friday.

British artist David Hockney, who died at the age of 88 on Thursday, fell in love with the French countryside in the last few years of his life. He settled in Normandy in 2019, where he lived during the Covid-19 lockdown and was able to rededicate himself to nature over a year of solitude.

Israeli and Palestinian civil society groups appealed to the international community in France on Friday to keep pursuing a two-state solution, warning that the window for peace is narrowing. The call came as world powers gathered amid mounting concern over settlement expansion and violence in the occupied West Bank.

Team USA made a commanding statement in their World Cup campaign, defeating Paraguay 4-1 in their Group D opener at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. Despite a late Paraguayan rally, the co-hosts’ attacking prowess proved too much for La Albirroja, with Folarin Balogun scoring twice to set the tone.

Genie Godula is pleased to welcome Dr. Hypolite Muhindo Mavoko, M.D., Professor in the Department of Tropical Medicine at the University of Kinshasa. Dr. Mavoko offers a sobering analysis of the latest Ebola outbreak linked to the rare Bundibugyo strain in the eastern DR Congo. He places the crisis within a longer epidemiological history, reminding viewers that it was first identified in Uganda in 2007 before appearing in the DRC in 2012. He warns that “the body can still continue transmitting the disease” even after death, underscoring how burial practices may unintentionally accelerate contagion. Yet beyond the virology, he offers…

A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry has said that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties, according to a report in New Scientist. Speaking on FRANCE 24, Mariarosaria Taddeo, Professor of Digital Ethics and Defence Technologies at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, explains that these systems “are fully indiscriminate; whether the system sees a combatant, a child, an old person, it won’t be able or won’t be designed to discriminate, so civilians are going to be put in harm’s way”.

This week, Paris des Arts heads to the Czech Republic to visit Prague, a cultural capital and UNESCO World Heritage city. We meet one of the most provocative Czech artists of the international scene, David Cerny, who takes us inside his exhibition space – a former industrial site he’s named the “Musoleum”, a mashup of “museum” and “mausoleum”.

A video claiming to show the Iranian army downing a US Apache attack helicopter has garnered millions of views on social media. But the video was AI-generated.

South Korea won their first World Cup match on Thursday beating the Czech Republic 2-1, thanks to a decisive late goal from substitute Oh Hyeon-gyu.