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Le Palestinien Hicham Harb, cerveau présumé de l'attentat contre un restaurant juif qui avait fait six morts rue des Rosiers, à Paris, en 1982, a été remis jeudi à la justice française. Son extradition par l'Autorité palestinienne a été saluée par Emmanuel Macron.

The country is betting on nuclear power to secure its energy future – but it is doing so in one of the most water-stressed regions in the world.

Russia’s law suggests that Moscow is not preparing the Northern Sea Route for international use. It may instead be profiting from a misplaced expectation.

Le remboursement des protections périodiques réutilisables pour les femmes de moins de 26 ans et les plus précaires sera mis en place à la rentrée universitaire, a annoncé le gouvernement jeudi. Il concernera les produits commercialisés dans les pharmacies, comme les culottes et les coupes menstruelles.

L'examen de la proposition de loi Yadan sur les "nouvelles formes de l'antisémitisme", qui devait être étudiée à partir de jeudi 16 avril à l'Assemblée nationale, a été retiré de l'ordre du jour. Que contenait ce texte, porté par la députée Caroline Yadan ?

Face à l'obstruction menée par les députés de La France insoumise, le groupe Ensemble pour la République a retiré de l'ordre du jour la controversée proposition de loi Yadan visant à lutter contre l'antisémitisme. À la place, un projet de loi sera présenté fin juin par le gouvernement.

Since the Taliban returned to power, women and girls have been progressively banned from education, public spaces, and most forms of employment. Credit: Learning Together.

By External Source
KABUL, Apr 16 2026 (IPS)

Ever since childhood, Khatera’s (not her real name) dream was to study medicine at university and become a doctor.

“Every time I saw doctors in their white coats, I would tell myself that I wished one day I could wear a similar coat and serve the people”, she recallls.

Over the years, she felt that each passing day brought her closer to her dream, at least until five years ago, when the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan and upended her lifelong dream.

Khatera tells her story: “When I finished school, I was supposed to take the university entrance exam and had prepared fully for it, leaving nothing to chance. But unfortunately, the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, and everything turned upside down. Their very first act was to ban girls and women from education.”

“At that moment, I felt as if all my childhood dreams had been reduced to dust. I was so exhausted and hopeless that it felt like my life had screeched to a halt. To be denied education is to be forced to live in absolute darkness”, she says.

Khatera, 26, lives in a remote village in Badakhshan province with her parents, two sisters, and two brothers. She fell into depression when she realized she could no longer continue her education.

“As the days passed, my emotional and mental state worsened. My depression, exhaustion, and distress deepened with each passing day. The Taliban kept ramping up the restrictions on women until we were no longer even allowed to move around freely. I gradually began to lose hope in life”.

Suddenly, however, a light appeared on the horizon. One day she received a telephone call from a former classmate. There was a possibility to pursue university courses online, tailored for women, her friend informed her.

Economist Abdul Farid Salangi founded the Online Zan University in 2022. He serves as the school’s director from abroad. The project aims to support girls who have been denied an education. For Salangi, providing that education is a duty, because Afghanistan cannot develop without educated women.

Khatera immediately applied for admission to study psychology at the Online University and was accepted.

However, internet connectivity in her village was poor, and she had to move in with her sister in city in order to pursue her studies.

Khatera is now in her fourth semester. The teachers are from Afghanistan and some from abroad, and she says the quality of instruction is professional.

For Khatera, the online university is more than a place to study. She describes it as a light in the darkness.

Studying online is not without its difficulties, though. Internet access is intermittent and expensive. Khatera’s mother sells milk in the village to cover her expenses.

“The Online Zan University helped me escape a deep sense of hopelessness and gave my life meaning again”, says Khatera. The lectures take place at night and she has to live with her sister in the city, separated from the rest family, but Khatera says it is all worth it.

Salangi explains the motivation behind the project: “My goal in creating the university was to support girls who had been denied education. When schools and universities closed, hope and motivation vanished for thousands of girls. I knew if this continued, an entire generation would be lost, and society would face deep crises.”

“For me, this was a human responsibility”, concludes Salangi, who trained as a financial economist at Moscow International University.

Online Zan University started modestly. It had no budget and no organizational backing. Salangi reached out to colleagues and professors, many of whom volunteered, and gradually the activities grew.

Today, the university has several faculties, hundreds of teachers in Afghanistan and abroad, and administrative staff. It provides education to tens of thousands of women, almost free of charge.

Teaching often takes place in the evenings, since many of the teachers work elsewhere during the day. If in-person lectures cannot be arranged, lectures are recorded and the videos distributed.

Even though the lectures take place at night, Khatera says she studies hard and makes sure she does not miss them.

“I balance household chores and prepare for the webinars my professors assign. Honestly, I hardly notice how the days and nights pass by. Over time, all the fears and negative thoughts I once had have faded away. Now, I move forward with dreams and hope, imagining a bright future for myself,” Khatera says with delight.

 

Climate disinformation is strategically deployed to reinforce red-tagging narratives, portraying Indigenous resistance to mining, energy, and infrastructure projects as a threat to national security.

World Athletics rejects the applications of 11 elite athletes to switch their nationality to Turkey as the requests were "part of a coordinated recruitment strategy" by the country's government "to attract overseas athletes through lucrative contracts".

Jean Crampilh-Broucaret (1939-1972), trois mois après l'inhumation de sa mère sous l'escalier de la ferme familiale, grave, à l'aide d'une perceuse et de ciseaux à bois, soixante-huit lignes, en lettres capitales, sur le parquet de sa chambre. Ce « plancher de Jeannot » épigraphe de treize (…) / France, Art, Littérature

A crew member with The Greater Cape Town Water Fund looks out over the landscape where the team is working to remove invasive alien plants for improved water security. Credit: Roshni Lodhia/ The Nature Conservancy

By Louise Stafford
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Apr 16 2026 (IPS)

In 2018, Cape Town came perilously close to becoming the first major city in the world to run out of water. Known as “Day Zero”, it was more than just a crisis, it marked a pivotal moment. It made clear that water insecurity is not a distant threat, but an immediate reality.

It also revealed something equally important, water security depends not only on built infrastructure, such as dams, desalination plants and groundwater extraction, but on the health of the natural systems that sustain them. Ecological infrastructure – our catchments, rivers and wetlands – is as essential as the roads we travel and the grids that power our homes.

South Africa is in a period of structural water scarcity. According to the National Water and Sanitation Master Plan, the country could face a water deficit of up to 17% by 2030. Much of the focus has rightly been on failing built infrastructure, such as non-revenue water, ageing infrastructure, and wastewater discharge into rivers. But an equally critical, and often overlooked, part of the problem lies upstream.

Degraded catchments, driven by poor land management, erosion, invasive alien plants, river diversion, and the loss of wetlands and riparian areas, are undermining the very systems that produce and regulate water.

The Hidden Drain on South Africa’s Water

The impact of alien tree invasions on our water resources is not unknown in South Africa. Multiple scientific studies emphasized the scale of the problem. The invasion of catchment areas by alien tree species, such as pine and Australian acacias, has a significant effect on streamflow. They reduce South Africa’s water availability by an estimated 1.4 billion cubic metres every year, enough to irrigate between 140,000 and 280,000 hectares of farmland according to WWF-SA, drawing on research by the CSIR and partners.

That is water that could otherwise sustain crops, support rural economies, households and strengthen national food security. In the greater Cape Town region, these species consume around 55 million cubic metres annually, roughly equivalent to two months of the City of Cape Town’s water supply.

South Africa has taken important steps to address alien plant invasions through programmes like Working for Water and through the efforts of landowners. However, these initiatives face persistent challenges such as limited funding, uneven prioritisation, and interruptions in implementation that reduce long-term effectiveness.

Restoring catchments requires continuity and scale. Traditional public budgets cannot keep up. Short-term grants and project‑based funding cycles are mismatched with the long‑term reality of managing and restoring South Africa’s catchments. Catchments do not operate on three-year budget cycles. They require decades of commitment. To secure our water future, we must rethink how we value and finance the ecological infrastructure that underpins our economy.

Science Meets Implementation: A Proven Model

The Water Fund model has added a valuable new option to address catchment restoration. South Africa’s first, the Greater Cape Town Water Fund (GCTWF), provides compelling proof that investing in ecological infrastructure and prioritizing headwaters deliver measurable results. Over the past seven years, with support of the private sector and City of Cape Town, over 40,000 hectares have been cleared of invasive alien plants priority catchments. Importantly, the cleared areas have been followed up multiple times to prevent regrowth.

This work increases water flows into dams of the Western Cape Water Supply System by 36 million cubic meters per year. The benefits extend far beyond water. The programme creates job opportunities, reduces wildfire risk, and supports the recovery of native fynbos and freshwater ecosystems — while building resilience to climate change.

The Greater Cape Town Water Fund demonstrates that ecological infrastructure can deliver reliable, measurable returns. Yet scaling this model has been constrained by one persistent challenge namely predictable funding to plan and reach the set target of clearing 54,300 hectares to replenish the water losses.

Rethinking How We Fund Water Security

What about a new funding approach? One that can crowd in private capital while ensuring accountability for results and bridging the gap between short term and sustainable funding. This is the foundation of the FRB Cape water performance-based bond, developed through a partnership between Rand Merchant Bank and The Nature Conservancy.

The Cape Water Performance-based Bond, a first of its kind financial instrument designed to unlock non‑traditional funding sources and secure a consistent five‑year funding stream to accelerate invasive plant control in priority catchments of the Greater Cape Town region. This marks an important milestone not only for Cape Town but for South Africa as a whole, a shift toward mobilizing capital markets to invest in nature at scale.

Accountability is built in. Rigorous monitoring and data collection tracks delivery and ensures a positive return on investment. “Clearly demonstrating what an investment has achieved is the backbone of impact finance. Investment returns in the FRB Cape water performance-based bond rely on performance and so we require systems to independently verify results. This independence and transparency are critical to ensure trust in these results, and to scale nature-based impact finance products.” Chris Barichievy, Director of Science, Conservation Alpha

Taking Impact To Scale

Water security underpins economic stability. From farms to factories, every sector depends on a reliable flow of water. When systems fail, the costs are staggering. When they succeed, they quietly power equity and prosperity.

The Cape Water Performance-based Bond matters because it can be replicated. Cities across Africa face similar challenges, degraded landscapes, limited public funds, rising demand. This model offers a science-based, practical path forward that can be adapted to different contexts.

From Vision to Delivery

This is where vision meets action. Governments and other roleplayers need to recognize that healthy catchments are as essential as pipes, treatment plants and pumps. Healthy catchments enable water to reach our dams, which is the first step in securing our water supply.

The capital markets are the world’s largest funding pools. Yet the opportunity for capital markets to play a role in the water supply system has been limited – until now. Martin Potgieter from RMB said: “This Cape Water Performance-based Bond gives financial institutions and investors the opportunity to participate in the security of the water supply system. It gives investors a low-risk entry to the funding of a water catchment, while at the same time enabling a project that delivers lasting, systemic impact.”

Large and critical interventions need long-term planning and commitment, with the Cape Water Performance-based Bond providing five years of predictable funding.

Without this change, the risks to our water security will only grow. In 2018, Cape Town has shown the world what it means to be pushed to the edge. Now, it is showing the world what it means to lead. By building financing systems that match the scale of the challenge, we can secure a future where both nature and people thrive.

Louise Stafford is the South Africa Country Director at The Nature Conservancy

 

The evolution of Sino-Japanese relations has rarely followed a linear path – but it has always remained within clear guardrails, even during times of tension.

Accueilli par des foules enthousiastes à Yaoundé, le pape Léon XIV a lancé un appel vibrant à la paix et à la réconciliation. Fidèles et responsables religieux espèrent que sa visite apaisera les tensions dans les régions en crise.

After protesting Chinese state policies in Xinjiang, and after apparent pressure from Beijing, the group of Kazakhs were charged with “inciting national hatred.”

It ignores the elephant in the room: an unreliable and unruly United States.

AMENDMENTS 1 - 241 - Draft report 2025 Commission report on Moldova
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Sven Mikser

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 241 - Draft report 2025 Commission report on Moldova
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Sven Mikser

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

En octobre 1943, des agents du Commissariat général aux questions juives (CGQJ) adressent à leur ancien chef Xavier Vallat une pétition concernant le « fonctionnement de la “Popote'' ». Ils déplorent la « médiocrité des repas servis », regrettent de « ne plus avoir de potage au repas de midi » (…) / France, Histoire, Seconde guerre mondiale 1939-1945, Nazisme

Beijing is not seeking a breakthrough on Taiwan at the Trump-Xi summit, but rather incremental gains that could gradually weaken Taiwan-U.S. ties.

People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok’s Washington trip reveals more about his internal survival strategy than any genuine foreign policy agenda.