Author: France 24

Barring accident, Tadej Pogacar  is expected to cruise to his fourth victory in the Tour de France on Sunday. The final day of the race is normally a leisurely ride into Paris and a final sprint down the Champs-Elysées, but this year race organisers have added a tricky detour into the cobbled streets of the Montmartre neighbourhood.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to increase import duties on Japanese goods to 35 percent as trade talks with Tokyo approach a July 9 deadline. The two countries are fast approaching the end of a 90-day negotiation period before previously imposed 24 percent tariffs snap back into place, and talks have proved difficult. Also in this edition, FRANCE 24’s Luke Shrago looks at the opportunities and challenges of using carbon capture technology in the fight to reduce global warming.

Ziad Rahbani, a visionary Lebanese composer, playwright, pianist and political provocateur, died on Saturday, at the age of 69. Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said Rahbani was “not just an artist, but a complete intellectual and cultural phenomenon.” Analysis by Mohammed Shamsedeen, journalist at the Cradle in Beirut.

Legendary musician and composer Ziad Rahbani blended Arabic music and classical jazz into a new form that he called “Oriental jazz”. The son of iconic Lebanese singer Fayrouz, Rahbani was also a leftist playwright whose works explored the social complexities of the Lebanese civil war. He died on Saturday aged 69. 

Thymen Arensman of the Netherlands won the 19th stage of the Tour de France, the last mountain trek of the race on Friday. Slovenian defending champion Tadej Pogacar retained the overall leader’s yellow jersey and is widely expected to win a fourth title if he avoids a major incident.

A court near Paris has found a former Ubisoft executive guilty of attempted sexual assault and handed suspended jail terms to two other former executives for allowing a toxic environment of harassment to prosper at the French gaming giant.

More than 100 aid groups warned on Wednesday of “mass starvation” throughout Gaza, with their staff severely impacted by shortages. Israel faces growing global pressure over the enclave’s dire humanitarian crisis, where more than two million people have endured 21 months of war. France24 correspondent Noga Tarnopolsky reports from Jerusalem.

It’s a rock ‘n’ roll band with over 1 million monthly listeners, with three albums out in barely six weeks. But despite shooting to Spotify’s top ranks, The Velvet Sundown’s music is entirely AI-generated – and it had quite a saga being revealed as synthetic. Vedika Bahl gives us the deep dive into the band’s mysterious origins in this edition of Truth or Fake.

Ben O’Connor won Stage 18 of the Tour de France Thursday, conquering what is considered the queen stage of the race. He claimed a solo victory ahead of Tadej Pogacar, who pulled away from Jonas Vingegaard in the final meters of the Col de la Loze.

As European leaders attend an EU-China summit in Beijing, the issue of tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles entering the single market is one of the items on the agenda. Brussels has imposed tariffs on Chinese manufacturers such as Zeekr because of what it considers to be unfair trade practices. In this edition, we talk to Lothar Schupet, acting CEO of Zeekr Europe, about the effect of these trade restrictions on its business.