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Malgré plusieurs semaines d'incertitude, l'élection présidentielle de Republika Srpska se tiendra le 23 novembre. La campagne offre un face à face tendu entre Siniša Karan, soutenu par Milorad Dodik et Branko Blanuša, pour l'opposition. Portrait des candidats.

- Articles / Une - Diaporama, Courrier des Balkans, Politique, Bosnie-Herzégovine, RS sécession

Les rumeurs faisant état du lancement d'un téléphone mobile conçu par Tesla et son dirigeant Elon Musk, n'ont aucun fondement officiel. Cette infirmation relayée ces derniers jours sur divers canaux digitaux relève du faux.

L'information relative à la commercialisation d'un téléphone, nommé le Pi Phone, fabriqué par Tesla et jouissant d'une connexion satellite via le réseau Starlink, pour la somme de 789 dollars américains relève du faux.

https://www.noovo.info/nouvelle/le-pere-delon-musk-a-ete-accuse-dagression-sexuelle-sur-des-enfants-rapporte-le-new-york-times.html
Le site de vérification des faits Snopes s'est penché sur ces allégations et a confirmé jeudi qu'elles étaient infondées. Malgré cela, des comptes Facebook ainsi que certaines chaînes YouTube ont diffusé une prétendue annonce officielle évoquant l'arrivée prochaine de l'appareil.
Les déclarations d'Elon Musk au fil des années ont contribué à entretenir les spéculations quant à un éventuel développement d'un téléphone par Tesla. Dans une publication sur X datant du 10 juin 2024, le dirigeant avait d'ailleurs affirmé qu'une collaboration avec Samsung pour la création d'un tel produit n'était « pas hors de question ».

Rising debt, geopolitical instability and declining aid flows are intensifying external pressure on African economies. In a briefing to the Africa Group of ambassadors at the United Nations headquarters last July, Claver Gatete, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), highlighted the economic pressures facing African countries and outlined ECA’s response, from budget stabilization and strengthened data systems to advancing regional priorities. Held at the Permanent Mission of the African Union to the UN, the session came amid growing uncertainty for African economies, with many facing debt distress, inflation and trade disruptions driven by global policy shifts.

By Danny Bradlow
PRETORIA, South Africa, Nov 20 2025 (IPS)

The end of South Africa’s G20 presidency does not mean the end of its ability or responsibility to promote the issues it prioritised during 2025. It can still advocate for action on some of these issues through its further participation in the G20 and in other international and regional forums.

In this article, I argue that going forward South Africa should prioritise the financial challenges confronting Africa that it championed in 2025.

South Africa established four overarching priorities for its G20 presidency. Two of them dealt with finance. One sought to “ensure debt sustainability for low-income countries”. The other was to mobilise finance for a just energy transition.

The importance of debt, development finance and climate to Africa’s future is clear. Over half of African countries are either in debt distress or at risk of being in distress. More than half of Africa’s population live in countries that are spending more on servicing their debt than on health and/or education.

In addition, 17 African countries experienced net debt outflows in 2023. This means that they were using more foreign exchange to pay their external creditors than they received in new debts that could be used to finance their development. The continent is also experiencing extreme weather events that are adversely affecting food security and human wellbeing.

In short, African countries are caught in a vicious cycle. The impacts of climate and their struggle to meet their debt obligations are interacting in ways that undermine their ability to meet their sustainable development goals.

South Africa’s priorities

South Africa’s priorities for its G20 presidency were ambitious. Success required meaningful action at three levels:

Awareness. South Africa would need to bring the international community to a better understanding of the nature of the debt and development finance challenges confronting African countries and of the consequences of failing to address them.

Process. South Africa would need to convince the G20 to correct the shortcomings in the Common Framework it had devised to deal with low-income countries seeking debt relief.

The examples of Zambia and Ghana showed that the Common Framework was cumbersome, slow and unduly favourable to creditors. For example, the framework requires the debtor to engage separately with each group of its creditors in a sequential process. This means that it should not negotiate with its commercial creditors until it has successfully negotiated with its official creditors.

Commercial creditors can’t give debt relief until the official creditors are satisfied with their deal and are confident that the commercial creditors will not receive more favourable treatment from the debtor than they have received.

Another complication is the IMF’s multiple roles in debt restructurings as an advisor to and a creditor of the debtor countries. In addition, it does the debt sustainability analysis that determines the amount of debt relief that all other creditors are expected to provide to the debtor country in order for it to regain debt sustainability.

The more optimistic its assessment, the smaller the contributions the various creditors, including the IMF, are expected to provide. These contributions can either be in the form of new funding or new debt terms.

Substance. The current debt restructuring process treats debt as a technical financial and legal problem rather than as the complex multifaceted problem that is experienced by debtor countries. The former perspective limits the scope of debtor-creditor negotiations to the terms of the financial contracts.

The negotiations focus on the adjustments that must be made to these terms because the debtor cannot comply with its originally accepted obligations. They treat as largely outside the scope of the discussions the adverse impact the debt situation has on the sovereign debtor’s other legal obligations and on the social, political, environmental and cultural situation in the debtor country.

This approach in effect leaves the debtor to deal with these other issues on its own. This artificial distinction between the debtors’ other legal obligations and those it owes to its creditors makes it very difficult for the debtor to escape the vicious debt, development and climate cycle in which it is trapped. It forces it to choose between its commitments to its creditors and its development obligations.

Over the course of 2025, South Africa has been very effective in raising awareness of the African debt crisis and its dire impact on African countries. South Africa persuaded the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors to issue a declaration on debt sustainability at the end of their October meeting.

The declaration is the G20’s eloquent acknowledgement of the problem and of the need for more discussion of how these debt issues are managed by both debtors and creditors. Unfortunately, it does not contain any firm G20 commitments on what it will do to remedy the situation.

There has not been substantial progress at the process and substance levels. This is unlikely to change in the remaining weeks of South Africa’s G20 presidency.

But there are three actions that South Africa can take beyond the end of its term to ensure that the African debt crisis continues receiving attention.

Three actions

First, it should ask a group like the African Expert Panel that it established to advise the president to prepare a technical report that identifies and analyses all the barriers to Africa accessing affordable, sustainable and predictable flows of external development finance.

This report should be submitted to the South African president in the first half of 2026. Next year, South Africa will still be a member of the G20 Troika, which consists of the current, immediate past and the incoming G20 presidents.

Consequently, next year, it will still be able to table the report at the G20. South Africa can also use the report to promote action in other appropriate regional and global forums.

Second, South Africa and the African Union should create an African Borrower’s Club that is independent of the G20. This club should be a forum in which African sovereign debtors can share information and lessons learned about negotiating sovereign debt transactions and about responsible debt management. When appropriate, the club can work with regional African financial institutions.

The club, working with regional organisations like the African Legal Support Facility, can also sponsor workshops in which interested African sovereign debtors can share information and more critically assess their financing options. They can also work to improve their bargaining capacity in sovereign debt transactions.

The African Borrower’s Club should also be mandated to establish an African Sovereign Debt Roundtable that is modelled on the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable. This entity should be an informal forum, based on the Chatham House Rule in which the various categories of stakeholders in African debt can meet to discuss the design of a sovereign debt restructuring process that is effective, efficient and fair and that adopts an holistic approach to a sovereign debt crisis.

Third, South Africa should capitalise on the fact that the impacts of climate, inequality, unemployment and poverty on Africa’s development prospects are now acknowledged to be macro-critical, and so within the IMF’s macro-economic and financial mandate. South Africa should call for a review of the IMF’s operating principles and practices and its governance arrangements.

This call should note that the multilateral development banks have been the object of G20 review for a number of years and that this has resulted in important enhancements in their capital frameworks and operating practices.

On the other hand, the IMF has not been subject to a similar review despite the fact that its operations have had to undergo possibility even more extensive revisions.

Daniel D. Bradlow is Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Huit mois après l'incendie meurtrier de la discothèque Puls à Kočani, la Macédoine du Nord a ouvert un procès hors norme. 34 accusés doivent répondre d'une décennie de négligences, tandis que les familles des victimes réclament justice dans un pays où la confiance envers les institutions est au plus bas.

- Le fil de l'Info / Une - Diaporama, Courrier des Balkans, Macédoine du Nord, Défense, police et justice

Huit mois après l'incendie meurtrier de la discothèque Puls à Kočani, la Macédoine du Nord a ouvert un procès hors norme. Trente-quatre accusés devront répondre d'une décennie de négligences présumées, tandis que les familles des victimes réclament justice dans un pays où la confiance envers les institutions est au plus bas.

- Le fil de l'Info / Une - Diaporama, Courrier des Balkans, Macédoine du Nord, Défense, police et justice, Une - Diaporama - En premier

In today’s edition: Mercosur’s turbulent landing as EU leaders race to seal the trade deal before year-end, Brussels launches a whip-round for the Palestinian Authority amid its shrinking role in Gaza, and capitals jostle for control as the €234bn Competitiveness Fund turns into a political power play

In today's edition: Petrol car ban, capacity markets, deforestation

With medicines, we tend to lose our love for the internal market and withdraw into our national shells, even though proven benefits of the single market for medicines are clear: accessible and more affordable medicines for healthcare payers and patients.

Vehicles using only renewable fuels should be considered zero-emission just as electric ones, the lobbies argued

Robert Fico is accusing Brussels of breaking the energy guarantees he says he secured in return for lifting his veto on EU sanctions

EPP insists it remains the farmers’ party despite backlash over budget stance

The EU executive is pushing preferential tariffs and wants products to be labelled with Moroccan regional names rather than with ‘Western Sahara’

Europe can and should shape the ethical and human-centric character of AI – ensuring that technology serves people, not the other way around

"If it's about competitiveness, this is certainly not helping," said Mario Mariniello from a Brussels-based think tank

Retailers to use KidsWallet QR scans to verify age for alcohol and tobacco sales

Capacity markets: old idea, new threat

Serhii Kuznietsov denied being part of a cell accused of placing explosives on the underwater pipelines linking Russia with Europe in September 2022

Der linke Demokrat Mamdani kommt nach seiner Wahl zum Bürgermeister von New York zu Donald Trump ins Weisse Haus. Beide Politiker hatten bisher kein gutes Haar aneinander gelassen.

Die Doppelspitze der progressiven und proeuropäischen Operation Libero tritt zurück. Sanija Ameti und Stefan Manser-Egli wollen sich auf ihre Karriere konzentrieren.

Entrance to the Hangar Convention Center of the Amazonia in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belém. The climate summit, which began on November 10 and is due to conclude on Friday the 21st, is debating issues such as the phase-out of fossil fuels and adaptation goals. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 20 2025 (IPS)

The heat in the Hangar Convention Center of the Amazonia, in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belém, has reached the negotiation rooms of the climate summit. Over the past 72 hours, one of the most delicate and significant discussions of this climate meeting has been taking place: the path to progressively abandon the production and use of coal, gas, and oil.

In recent hours, a global coalition of rich and developing countries, led by Colombia, has doubled down on pushing for a fossil fuel phase-out roadmap, while major producer countries resist it.

“The plan must have differentiated commitments, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and the reform of the international financial system, because foreign debt payments are punishing us,” Colombian Environment Minister Irene Vélez explained to IPS.

For the official, the 30th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP30) on climate change must result in a roadmap. “People are mobilizing, demanding climate action; we have to start now,” she urged.

In Belém, the gateway to the planet’s largest rainforest, it is no longer just about reducing emissions but about transforming the foundation of the energy system, thus acquiring a moral, political, and scientific urgency. What was initially meant to be the “Amazon COP” has mutated into the “end-of-the-fossil-era-COP,” but the roadmap to achieve it is a toss-up.“The plan must have differentiated commitments, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and the reform of the international financial system, because external debt payments are punishing us” –Irene Vélez.

Two years after the world agreed at COP28, held in 2023 in Dubai, to move away from fossil fuels, Belém is the moment of truth, upon which the effort to keep global warming below the 1.5° Celsius limit largely depends—a goal considered vital to avoid devastating and inevitable effects on ecosystems and human life.

Thus, the discussion among the 197 parties to the United Nations climate convention has shifted from the “what” to the “how,” and especially to the “when,” questions that have turned potential coordinates into a geopolitical labyrinth.

In that vein, a coalition of over 80 countries emerged on Tuesday the 18th to push the roadmap, including Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, and Panama among the Latin American countries.

One challenge for the roadmap advocates is that the issue is not explicitly part of the main agenda, a resource that the Brazilian presidency of COP30 could use to shirk responsibility on the matter.

The issue appears on the thematic menu of COP30, which started on the 10th and is scheduled to conclude on the 21st, and whose official objectives include approving the Global Goal on Adaptation to climate change and securing sufficient funds for that adaptation.

Approximately 40,000 people are attending this climate summit, including government representatives, multilateral agencies, academia, and civil society organizations.

An unprecedented indigenous presence is also in attendance, with about 900 delegates from native peoples, drawn by the ancestral call of the Amazon, a symbol of the menu of solutions to the climate catastrophe and simultaneously a victim of its causes.

Also present and very active in Belém are about 1,600 lobbyists from the hydrocarbon industry, 12% more than at the 2024 COP, according to the international coalition Kick Big Polluters Out.

The clamor from civil society demands an institutional structure with governance, clear criteria, measurable objectives, and justice mechanisms.

“The roadmap has become a difficult issue to ignore; it is already at the center of these negotiations, and no country can ignore it. The breadth of support is surprising, with rich and poor countries, producers and non-producers, indicating that an agreement is about to fall,” Antonio Hill, Just Transitions advisor for the non-governmental and international Natural Resource Governance Institute, told IPS.

Activists protest on Wednesday the 19th against fossil fuel exploitation at the entrance to the venue of the Belém climate summit, in the Amazonian northeast of Brazil. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Poisoned

The push for the roadmap comes from the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, promoted by civil society organizations, strongly adopted by Colombia, and which so far has the support of 18 nations, but no hydrocarbon-producing Latin American country, such as Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, or Venezuela.

Colombia, despite also being a producer and exporter of fossil fuels, has presented its Roadmap for a Just Energy Transition, with which it seeks to replace income from coal and oil with investments in tourism and renewable energy.

Colombia’s 2022-2052 National Energy Plan projects long-term reductions in fossil fuel production. The country announced US$14.5 billion for the energy transition to less polluting forms of energy production.

But for the rest of the region, the duality between maintaining fossil fuels and promoting renewable energies persists.

A prime example of this duality is the COP30 host country itself, Brazil. While the host President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, have insisted on the need to abandon fossil fuels, the government is promoting expansive oil and gas extraction plans.

In fact, just weeks before the opening of COP30, the state-owned oil group Petrobras received a permit for oil exploration in the Atlantic, just kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon River.

But Lula and his team committed that this summit in the heart of the Amazon would be “the COP of truth” and “the COP of implementation,” and the issue of fossil fuels has become central to the negotiations, which Lula joined on Wednesday the 19th to give a push to the talks and the outcomes.

In their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—the set of mitigation and adaptation policies countries must present to comply with the Paris Agreement on climate change signed in 2015 at COP21—Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, or Chile avoid mentioning a managed phase-out of fossil fuels.

Simply put, they argue they cannot let go of the old vine before grasping the new one. This stance also involves a delicate aspect, as nations like Ecuador depend on revenues from hydrocarbon exploitation.

Therefore, the Global South has insisted on its demand for funding from rich nations, due to their contribution to the climate disaster through fossil fuel exploitation since the 17th century.

The result of the presented policies is alarming: although many countries have increased their emission reduction targets on paper, they lack details on phasing out production. The only existing roadmap is the growing extractive one.

In fact, the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement process, originating from COP28, demanded that countries take measures to move towards a fossil-free era.

The argument is unequivocal: various estimates indicate that fossil fuels contribute 86% of greenhouse gas emissions, the cause of global warming.

But a key point is where to start. For Uitoto indigenous leader Fanny Kuiru Castro, the new general coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin –which  brings together the more than 350 native peoples of the eight countries sharing the biome–, the starting point must precisely be at-risk regions like the Amazon.

“It is a priority. If there isn’t a clear signal that we must proceed gradually, it means the summit has failed and does not want to adopt that commitment. We will have another 30 years of speeches,” she told IPS, alluding to that number of summits without substantial results.

In the Amazon, oil blocks threaten 31 million hectares or 12% of the total area, mining threatens 9.8 million, and timber concessions threaten 2.4 million.

And in that direction, a major obstacle arises: how to finance the phase-out. The roadmap has a direct link to the financial goals aimed at the Global South, with a demand for US$1.2 trillion in funding for climate action starting in 2035.

“Can the COP deliver the financial backing that countries need to reinvent their economies in time to guarantee just and inclusive development?” Hill questioned.

The atmosphere in Belém is of a different urgency compared to Dubai or Baku, where COP29 was held a year ago. The roadmap to a world free of fossil fuel smoke remains a blurry map, drawn freehand on ground that is heating up far too quickly.

In Belém, humanity is deciding whether to brake gradually or to accelerate, with the air conditioning on and a full tank.