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Armenia's foreign minister signals new era: Peace, EU ambitions, trade, 'huge' infrastructure plans

29 April 2026 at 18:57
Ahead of the first-ever EU–Armenia summit, France 24’s François Picard sits down with Armenia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ararat Mirzoyan, at the country’s newly inaugurated embassy in Paris. He presents a country at a pivotal juncture: one defined by the simultaneous consolidation of peace and strategic repositioning. He asserts that “we now have peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” framing it not as a symbolic declaration but as an emerging reality, further underscored by the intention to “institutionalise this peace.”

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  • Pakistan in the middle: What benefits and risks from US-Iran mediator? François PICARD
    There are those who want the US and Iran to settle and those who want regime change. Among the latter, there’s Israel of course and then there’s the United Arab Emirates who’ve signaled OPEC’s cautious response as a reason for quitting the cartel. The end of OPEC? How will its biggest producer Saudi Arabia respond? The Emirates also seem to have it in for Saudi ally Pakistan, suddenly demanding the immediate reimbursement of a 3-and-a-half billion dollar loan from the cash-strapped facilitators
     

Pakistan in the middle: What benefits and risks from US-Iran mediator?

29 April 2026 at 18:11
There are those who want the US and Iran to settle and those who want regime change. Among the latter, there’s Israel of course and then there’s the United Arab Emirates who’ve signaled OPEC’s cautious response as a reason for quitting the cartel. The end of OPEC? How will its biggest producer Saudi Arabia respond? The Emirates also seem to have it in for Saudi ally Pakistan, suddenly demanding the immediate reimbursement of a 3-and-a-half billion dollar loan from the cash-strapped facilitators of US-Iran mediation efforts.

From the oceans into our bodies: Plastic pollution 'associated with obesity and dementia'

29 April 2026 at 07:10
François Picard is pleased to welcome Merijn Tinga, a biologist, artist and activist affectionately known as the Plastic Soup Surfer. He joins us, not only as a scientist or activist, but as someone who spends hours a day on the water, experiencing directly the forces we so often abstract away. From the surfboard, everything becomes clear: "You become one with the wind, with the waves… you have one focus." And yet back on land, "you're immersed by this throwaway culture".

'Over-dependence on military solutions: Mali struggling in its effort to regain peace and security'

29 April 2026 at 06:51
François Picard is pleased to welcome Dr. Folahanmi Aina, Political Scientist and Lecturer in the Political Economy of Violence, Conflict and Development at SOAS London. As a researcher of global security and political dynamics, his analysis of Mali's evolving crisis focuses on the interplay between militarised governance, external partnerships and the persistence of insurgent violence in the Sahel. According to Dr. Aina, the current trajectory under Colonel Assimi Goïta reflects a strategic overreliance on military solutions to what is fundamentally a multidimensional conflict.

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