Author: France 24

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…

In an interview with FRANCE 24, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, saying that “ethnic cleansing is not acceptable in our world”. 

Juliette Binoche, one of France’s most celebrated actors, was named on Tuesday as jury president at the 78th Cannes Film Festival in May. She succeeds director Greta Gerwig in what is only the second time in the festival’s history that two women have presided over the jury in a row. 

World number one tennis player Jannik Sinner agreed to a three-month ban from tennis on Saturday, bringing an end to a doping scandal that has dogged the Italian tennis player for months. Sinner has twice tested positive for traces of the banned substance clostebol.

A French human rights NGO has filed a lawsuit in Paris against Apple, alleging massive collection and processing of voice recordings via the tech giant’s Siri assistant, without user consent. It comes as a California court is set to rule on a similar case, where Apple has agreed to pay $95 million in settlements, without admitting wrongdoing. FRANCE 24’s Tech Editor Peter O’Brien tells us more.

More than 25 people have been arrested in Lebanon after a convoy carrying United Nations peacekeepers came under attack on Friday. The force’s outgoing deputy commander and a Nepalese soldier were both wounded after the vehicle they were travelling in was set on fire.