The Latest Breaking News from Radio France Internationale

In a groundbreaking move that marks both a personal triumph and a cultural shift in space exploration, John McFall—a medal-winning Paralympian, trauma and orthopaedic surgeon, and member of the European Space Agency (ESA) Astronaut Reserve—has become the first person with a physical disability medically cleared for a long-duration space mission.

At the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, Unesco and the Plastic Odyssey expedition have announced a partnership aimed at restoring the world’s most endangered marine World Heritage sites, increasingly under threat from plastic pollution.

The French Senate has overwhelmingly approved legislation aimed at regulating the ultra fast-fashion industry. The bill specifically targets Chinese e-commerce giants like Shein and Temu while imposing stricter environmental standards on the rapidly growing sector.

In northern Ghana, the unchecked felling of shea trees is placing the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of women at serious risk. Shea nut collection, a centuries-old tradition and a vital economic activity, is under threat as illegal logging intensifies across the region.

On a remote raised coral atoll in the South Pacific, the tiny island nation of Niue is quietly protecting one of the world’s most ambitious marine reserves. While global leaders at the UN oceans gathering in Nice debate how to scale up efforts to safeguard the seas, Niue – population…

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has said that Hamas "must hand over its weapons" and called for the deployment of international forces to protect the Palestinian people, France has announced. The move comes ahead of a conference next week at which Paris could become the most prominent Western power to back…

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday condemned a 'senseless wave of violence' after a teaching assistant stabbed by a 15-year-old pupil outside a school in the east of the country died of her wounds.

At the edge of Cologne, Germany, a large industrial building contains something extraordinary: the most advanced simulated lunar environment on Earth. Developed jointly by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the European Space Agency (ESA), this facility — known as LUNA — is designed to prepare astronauts, robots, and technologies…

World leaders gathered for the UN Ocean Conference in Nice on Monday called for strict rules to govern deep-sea mining and warned against racing to exploit the ocean floor. This comes amid growing anxiety over US President Donald Trump's unilateral push to fast-track the practice in international waters.

American funk legend Sly Stone, founder of the trailblazing group Sly and the Family Stone, whose songs drove a civil rights-inflected soul explosion in the 1960s, has died at the age of 82.

In East Africa, politicians and civil society members are increasingly alarmed by political arrests, as opposition figure Tundu Lissu remains imprisoned in Tanzania, facing the death penalty in a trial that continues to be repeatedly postponed. In this week's Spotlight on Africa podcast, we hear from Robert Amsterdam, legal counsel…