Kenya's president visits China amid tariff pressure
14:26
In tonight's edition: Kenyan President William Ruto arrives in Beijing for a five-day state visit at the invitation of China's Xi Jinping. Also, in a bold move, Uganda's army chief meets DR Congo's CODECO militia near Kampala, urging peace after deadly clashes. Plus opposition leader Tidjane Thiam vows to stay in the Ivorian presidential race after a court moves to bar him over his former French nationality.
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LeMonde
20 minutes ago
- LeMonde
EU unveils long-delayed 2040 climate target with contested flexibilities
The European Union on Wednesday, July 2 unveiled its long-delayed target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, but with contested new flexibilities built in to win over the most skeptical member states. After months of tough negotiations with EU member states, Brussels announced it would stick to the objective announced last year of cutting emissions by 90% by 2040, compared to 1990 levels. The proposal comes as much of Europe roasts in an early summer heatwave, which scientists say are becoming more intense, frequent and widespread due to human-induced climate change. The 2040 target – which needs the sign off from the EU's member states and parliament – is a key milestone toward the bloc's goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Brussels says the EU has cut climate-warming emissions by 37% relative to 1990, but its green agenda faces mounting pushback with a rightward shift and rising climate skepticism in many European countries. EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra acknowledged the "sensitive" debate, saying Brussels was keeping an "ambitious" goal while being "pragmatic and flexible on how to achieve it." To sway resistant capitals, the European Commission proposes that from 2036, the bloc's 27 countries can count carbon credits purchased to finance projects outside Europe, for up to 3% of their emission cuts. Climate groups are fiercely opposed to such a measure. Backed by scientific studies and the commission's own science advisers, they say factoring in international credits – for things like tree-planting or renewable-energy projects – risks undermining the EU's own efforts to shift away from fossil fuels. 'Don't strain ourselves' EU environment ministers will discuss the objective at a meeting in mid-July, ahead of an expected vote to approve the measures on September 18. It will only become law after EU lawmakers also sign off on the target. The commission's hope is that the 2040 objective will be approved before the UN climate conference (COP30) in November in the northern Brazilian city of Belem. But that gives little time for negotiations with skeptical nations, with whom Hoekstra has already spent months trying to build a compromise. For some countries, including the Czech Republic, the 90% target is unrealistic. Meanwhile, others including Italy and Hungary worry about the burden of decarbonizing heavy industry at a time when Europe is working to strengthen its industry in the face of fierce competition from the United States and China. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has suggested a target of 80 or 85%, while France has expressed doubts over how the EU will reach its objective. French President Emmanuel Macron wants guarantees for the decarbonization of industry and support for nuclear energy, the largest source of power in France. But the commission can count on the support of other countries including Spain and Denmark, which took over the rotating EU presidency this week. And the three-percent "flexibility" – which mirrors demands made in the new German government's coalition agreement – should help keep the economic powerhouse on board. When it comes to Europe's international commitments, Macron has also stressed that the bloc is only bound to present a midway target for 2035 at COP30 in Belem, and not the 2040 objective. "Let's not strain ourselves," Macron told reporters last week. "If we have [a 2040 target] for Belem, great, but if it takes longer, let's take the time," he said.
Euronews
42 minutes ago
- Euronews
Why Israel and Iran's uneasy truce may not last
After the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, significant doubts remain about the durability of the truce and the prospects for a future Iranian nuclear deal. It's been just over a week since the US pressed the two regional rivals into a ceasefire, ending an air war that started on 13 June when Israeli airstrikes wiped out the upper ranks of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard and targeted its arsenal of ballistic missiles. The strikes also hit Iran's nuclear sites, which Israel claimed put Tehran within reach of a nuclear weapon. Iran hit back with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. A fragile peace was brokered by Washington on 24 June, a day after it bombed three of Iran's key nuclear sites. Yet the possibility of renewed US-Iran talks is up in the air. Washington and Tehran were holding discussions on Iran's nuclear programme when Israel started the war. Speaking on Tuesday, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi dismissed the prospect of swiftly resuming talks with the US, after President Donald Trump had suggested that negotiations with Tehran could resume as early as this week. "The end of US military threats is a precondition for the resumption of talks between Tehran and Washington," Araghchi said in an interview with CBS. Iran sidelines UN nuclear watchdog Trump said last week that he would consider carrying out fresh strikes on Iran if the country was found to be enriching uranium to concerning levels. Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, said on Sunday that the US strikes on the three nuclear sites in Iran — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — had hugely hampered its capacity to enrich uranium. However, he warned that Tehran could be producing enriched uranium "in a matter of months". Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday ordered the country to halt its cooperation with the IAEA, according to state media. The country's trust in the agency is now broken, Pezeshkian told French President Emmanuel Macron in a call on Sunday. Satellite images dated 29 June that were released by US aerospace firm Maxar Technologies show activity at the Fordow site, one of Iran's main uranium enrichment centres, which was hit by the US B-2 bombers. The images show diggers and people at work around the large vents of the underground site's ventilation systems. Before the Iran-Israel conflict, IAEA was allowed regular access to Iran's enrichment sites to monitor them. But under the law passed on Wednesday, any future inspection of Iran's nuclear sites by the IAEA needs approval by the Supreme National Security Council. "How do you think we can guarantee their (IAEA inspectors') safety when our peaceful facilities were targeted until a few days ago?" an Iranian diplomatic source told Euronews. Agreement unlikely While the conflict may have been considered brief by Israel and the US, for Tehran's leadership, the war remains essentially unresolved, despite the ceasefire. Unsurprising, perhaps, given that Tehran has put the death toll of the war on its citizens at 935 — including 38 children and 132 women. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has said there are 'ample regional opportunities' for stabilisation after the twelve-day conflict, but this remains to be seen. According to Raffaele Marchetti, director of the Centre for International and Strategic Studies at Luiss University in Rome, Tehran's leadership is opposed to the ultimate strategic goal of Israel and the US, which is not only that of a denuclearised Iran. While Netanyahu's has framed destroying Iran's nuclear programme as a matter of Israeli national security, Tehran's strategic objective would be a regional balance of power based on mutual nuclear deterrence, according to Marchetti. "It is not at all surprising that Iran has embarked on a process of nuclear development, but here we have to be a bit careful about that because at least formally, Iran, unlike Israel, has always adhered to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty," Marchetti said. It is therefore difficult for an agreement to be reached between the parties without one of them giving in, he told Euronews. Regime change could resolve the issue in the long run, Israeli and the US have calculated. Iran fears Israel's regional hegemony Israel, which has not officially recognised that it possesses nuclear weapons, does not adhere to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, unlike Iran, which did sign the agreement in 1970, during the rule of the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahalavi. At the time, Tehran stood as one of three key pillars — alongside Israel and Turkey — in the pro-Western, anti-Soviet balance of power in what is now referred to as the "extended Middle East", which also includes the Caucasus and Central Asia. In those years, before the Shia clerical revolution of 1979, Ankara, Tehran and Tel Aviv shared warm political and military relations, based on converging strategic interests. However, today, Iran speaks of its desire to destroy Israel. Neither Israel nor Iran have official military nuclear doctrines, because the former does not recognise that it has a nuclear arsenal, while the latter insists on pursuing a nuclear programme that is exclusively for peaceful, civilian purposes. Israel neither admits nor denies having atomic weapons; it is the so-called doctrine of deliberate strategic ambiguity: a state that keeps potential adversaries in uncertainty about its reaction in the event of any conflict. According to estimates by others countries, international organisations and members of the scientific community, Israel possesses a stockpile ranging between 90 and 400 nuclear warheads. Although there is no official doctrine regarding the use of atomic force, in reality for Israel the nuclear weapon 'is the ultimate weapon", said David Rigoulet-Roze, a Middle East scholar at Iris, the Paris-based Institute of International and Strategic Relations. "We are in total deterrence, it was not used even in 1973 (when Israel risked military collapse in the face of the Syrian and Egyptian offensive) in the Yom Kippur War", he said. Pursuit of strategic ambiguity This is why, despite the deliberate strategic ambiguity, one thing is certain, Rigoulet-Roze told Euronews. "The Jewish state does not tolerate, up to the use of force, the existence of other nuclear powers in the region," he said. In fact, in 1981, Israel attacked and destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, which was officially intended for civil use and had been developed with the help of France under its then President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Prime Minister Jaques Chirac. Israeli security services justified the attack by saying that the reactor could potentially have been converted to plutonium production. In 2007, Israeli jets also struck around Der ez-Zor in Syria, where, according to Mossad, the al-Assad regime was building a nuclear reactor with the assistance of North Korea. Today, the balance of power and political-diplomatic relations have shifted in Israel's favour: Egypt and Jordan have recognised the Jewish state, Syria is no longer in a position to do any harm after the fall of al-Assad, and Lebanon certainly poses no existential threat. What's more, Saddam Hussein's Iraq is now but a vague memory. However, the presence of an Iranian strategic nuclear force would break the balance of non-proliferation in a notoriously unstable region, analysts warn. "Saudi Prince Bin Salman has said that in the case of an Iranian nuclear force, Saudi Arabia would also pursue the military atom, and then there would be a potential domino effect with Turkey and Egypt feeling compelled to equip themselves with atomic weapons," Rigoulet-Roze said. "This is what was intended to be avoided with the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015 by the EU, the UK, Germany, France, the US, China and Russia, and denounced by President Trump in 2018," he added.
Local France
an hour ago
- Local France
French politicians embroiled in fiery debate over air conditioning
Recent days have seen rare red level heatwave alerts issued for northern and central France - including Paris. The red warning level means that there is a potential danger to life from the high temperatures and on Wednesday the country's environment minister confirmed that at least two people have died from the effects of heat, while more than 300 have been treated by emergency services. But in the political world the battle generating heat is over the use of air conditioning - with Marine Le Pen's far-right Rassemblement National party calling for a "grand plan for air conditioning", which the left and the Macronists see only as a back-up solution, advocating the development of other measures such as vegetation or thermal insulation. Air conditioning remains uncommon in France, especially in private homes - but while some argue that ever-increasing temperatures make it a practical necessity, others point to the environmental damage. READ ALSO : The rules for installing air conditioning in your French home✎ Le Pen on Monday called for a " grand plan pour la climatisation " (major air-conditioning equipment plan), echoed by her right-wing ally Eric Ciotti, who wants to prioritise "schools, hospitals and retirement homes". Advertisement The far-right leader deplored the fact that "public services (are) unable to function for lack of air conditioning, unlike dozens of countries around the world". 'I'm also thinking of all the workers who are suffocating in buildings without air conditioning, because some leaders have decided that the French should suffer from the heat, while they themselves obviously enjoy air-conditioned vehicles and offices,' Le Pen fumed on X. On Wednesday, right-wing parliamentary group UDR (Union des Droites pour la République) tabled a bill to introduce "compulsory air-conditioning for priority public spaces". "We urgently need to launch a major national equipment plan for the most vulnerable, through the massive development of cooling and air-conditioning networks. It is our duty (...) to generalise these solutions", asserts Eric Ciotti's group in its text. But their text did not gain the support of those on the left, or within Macron's centrist party. "Those who are talking to you about a major air-conditioning plan are acting like they have just discovered the Moon," Environment Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher told BFMTV. "They are incompetents, who have just discovered that in Ehpads [retirement homes], we need air-conditioned rooms. Thank you, that's been compulsory since 2004," she snapped. "The issue we're dealing with with air conditioning is one of global warming," she added, alongside Prime Minister François Bayrou, on Tuesday. Advertisement "We need to offer air conditioning to vulnerable people or those in high-risk groups, in order to give them a break. On the other hand, we mustn't do it everywhere, otherwise we run the risk of warming up the country and so it's a bad solution." "The objective must remain to have better insulated buildings", said Gabriel Attal, head of Macron's Renaissance group, told Franco Info. "There's a tension between health issues on the one hand, making sure the French don't get too hot, and ecological issues on the other, because that air conditioners consume and emit greenhouse gases.' Despite the side effects of air conditioning - energy consumption, heat produced in the street from air conditioning units - the left also recognises that it is essential for vulnerable or high-risk people. Advertisement In a statement to AFP, Boris Vallaud, the leader of the Parti Socialist MPs, said he was 'in favour of air-conditioning for establishments catering for young people'. The hard-left La France Insoumise, for its part, unveiled a 'heatwave response' plan on Tuesday, with the aim of 'installing air conditioning in all public hospitals, nursing homes and schools'. Ecologist leader Marine Tondelier quipped on X about 'Marine Le Pen's ecological programme', which she said was limited to 'buying air conditioners'. But she also acknowledged that 'hospitals, schools and nursing homes' need to be 'air-conditioned, for both staff and the public', after being tackled by RN MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy, who invited her to 'work in a 35-degree hospital'. The Green leader argues that "unlike RN, we've done a bit of work on the subject of global warming", and points out that "air conditioning won't be enough". "It's imperative to make progress on greening cities and thermal insulation of housing," she said. For Green MP Sandrine Rousseau, air conditioning in certain buildings "seems inevitable. But before that, there's thermal renovation", she added, referring to the need for "a shutter plan" and "a fan plan": "there are a huge number of buildings, public buildings that don't have shutters", which she believes can "insulate against the heat". What do you think of this debate? Do you agree with the standardisation of air conditioning or would you prefer to see other solutions? Share your views in the comments section below
