Europe's in meltdown... and it's not even June yet. A not-so merry month of May as record highs explode under a heat dome that’s drifted north from the Sahara. After the frying pan of an energy crisis, the fire of a heatwave forcing a reset by the same politicians who pandered to those who complained about the cost and red tape of recent energy transition policy.

It takes convincing these days to get China’s leader to go abroad. Xi Jinping’s just wrapped up what was only his first foreign visit of 2026. Why Pyongyang? Hard to deduce from official readouts of that two-day state visit to neighboring North Korea. Politeness after a pair of visits by Kim Jong Un to Beijing? Celebrations of the 65th anniversary of their mutual defense pact?

What exactly is the issue with Arsenal? Here in France, we just assume that everyone in England's enamoured with the storied team of Arsène Wenger, Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira…and all the other greats all the way to the present and French international defender William Saliba. Ahead of Arsenal versus Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final, our panel delves into the not-always-rational, always impassionate world of football fandom. So regarding the side that’s just won its first Premier League title in 22 years, is it about the way they play? Their attitude? An anti-London sentiment? An anti-north London sentiment? Contrast that with the love the Gunners get here in France and in much of Africa. 

FRANCE 24's François Picard welcomes Reggie Washington, American jazz bassist and founding member of the Black Lives collective. Sonny Rollins, one of jazz's greats, has passed away aged 95. Often called the "Saxophone Colossus" after his groundbreaking 1965 album, Rollins left a lasting mark on jazz.

François Picard is pleased to welcome Gabriel Oddone, economist, professor and Uruguay's Minister of Economy and Finance. He offers a striking defence of the social democratic model at a moment when much of Latin America appears to be embracing hard-right socio-political and economic policies.

François Picard is pleased to welcome Solène Podevin-Favre, President of the "Face à l'inceste" advocacy and support group and a former co-director of the Ciivise, an independent commission set up in 2021 to come up with proposals to fight sexual abuse of children. According to Podevin-Favre, the murder of 11-year-old Lyhanna is not an isolated tragedy. It is a "systemic failure" that has been repeatedly identified, documented and reported for years.

We're joined by Renée Bertini, a journalist with ENTR's English-language team, who takes us to Martinique, one of France's overseas departments in the Caribbean. She explains the main issues faced by young people in Martinique (a lack of academic and job opportunities, as well as a complex colonial legacy) and how this situation is pushing so many of them to leave for mainland France.

Iran and the US took part in tit for tat clashes this Thursday. Tehran said it fired on a US army base in the region, while the US reports striking the Bandar Abbas port in Iran. Later on Thursday, Axios reported that the U.S. ​and Iran had reached agreement ​on a memorandum of understanding to extend their ceasefire for ​60 ‌days. But ⁠President Donald Trump has yet to ‌approve it. In an attempt to speed up the negotiations, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Mohammad Ishaq Dar, will fly to Washington on Friday to meet his US counterpart, Marco Rubio.

About that four-week campaign that the Pentagon promised… Overnight volleys between Iran and the United States met by many with a shrug…so often has the current ceasefire been violated. Even the deal in the works is mostly to roll over that fragile truce and open more talks… not to permanently settle differences.Ceasefires and their violations the norm...as Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade blows and US-brokered truces for both Lebanon and Gaza go mostly ignored. We’ll ask if the taking of the Crusaders-era castle at Beaufort’s a PR stunt or are Israelis digging in at what was an army command center for nearly two decades during the last occupation of south Lebanon?

Here's one for free speech absolutists to chew on: What should the French government do when the former head of Russian state television's French-language channel is offered a place of rank on an all-news station with a free-to-air broadcast license and she touts Kremlin propaganda lines with little or no pushback or fact-checking? Introducing Xenia Fedorova, who's just had her 10-year residency permit approved and who's become the darling of far-right shipping magnate-turned-media mogul Vincent Bolloré, the same Bolloré who’s swooped for French TV, radio, print and publishing outlets.

The list runs long, strategic sectors where Europe's rarely the master of its own destiny, energy, manufacturing, even its nuclear deterrence. How about digital? Who even owns the personal data of its own citizens? The European Commission this Wednesday unveiling its tech sovereignty roadmap.

François Picard is pleased to welcome Ulrike Franke, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. According to Franke, the project's demise was "not a surprise to anybody." While acknowledging that Dassault was often perceived as "quite difficult to deal with," she argues that the deeper problem lay in a structural design flaw that brought together industrial rivals who "never really had the incentive to properly work together."