The recent announcement of a US-backed rail and shipping project linking India with the Middle East and Europe is seen as a challenge to Beijing's "Belt and Road Initiative."

Beijing has called a European Commission probe into Chinese electric vehicle subsidies, a "naked protectionist act."

Enlargement of the European Union was one of the priorities outlined by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the Union speech on September 13th, and it is likely to become an ever more pressing issue over the next few years. After the speech, Talking Europe sat down with the EU Commissioner in charge of neighbourhood and enlargement, Olivér Várhelyi. He is a distinguished Hungarian diplomat and lawyer. He served as Hungary's ambassador to the EU, and has held prominent positions at the Hungarian ministry of justice and ministry of foreign affairs.

Niger's coup leaders have tried to expel France's ambassador, but Paris says it doesn't recognize their authority to order him out. Macron said on TV he was "literally" a "hostage," stuck in the French Embassy in Niamey.

A video purporting to show the French Ambassador to Niger being booed as he is forced to leave the Embassy has been widely shared since Thursday, at a time of heightened tensions between coup leaders in Niger and France. This video, however, has nothing to do with that. It actually shows another coup-hit African country, as Emerald Maxwell explains.

Three West African countries ruled by military juntas have signed a mutual defense pact. Mali and Burkina Faso had previously promised to come to Niger's aid in the event of an attack.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said on Tuesday he was seeking to re-establish constitutional order to address political and economic problems in neighboring Niger following a July coup and welcomed any support for the process.

The political crisis in Niger has disrupted aid efforts, the UN's humanitarian chief in the West African nation, Louise Aubin, told DW in an exclusive interview. The current wave of insecurity in Niger has also hampered the UN's aid operations there, Aubin added.

The foreign minister of Mali told the UN General Assembly that any military intervention in Niger would threaten Mali's security. The juntas in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso signed a mutual defense pact last week.

European governments have a duty to rescue asylum seekers who cross the sea to escape conflict, Pope Francis said in Marseille. He called it "a duty of humanity" to save people in difficulty.

The UN chief has called it an epidemic of coups. In Africa, since 2020, military officers have seized power, or attempted to do so, in numerous sub-Saharan countries. Just in the last two and a half months, soldiers in Gabon announced a takeover of power, while in Niger, members of the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum and announced that they were seizing power.

During a speech in France, the Catholic leader urged a humane pan-European response to migration. French President Emmanuel Macron attended the address as his government deliberates a harsher response to asylum-seekers.