A weekly news show produced with photos, videos and personal accounts from FRANCE 24 Observers around the world – all checked by our staff here in Paris.

For more than twenty years, the Beni region of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been engulfed in conflict between rival rebel groups. Over the years, one group has become more feared than the rest: the Allied Democratic Forces. Frequently referred to as the ADF, they are accused of the massacre of several thousand civilians.

Nina Gomes is no average environmentalist. With bright pink goggles and just 4 years old, she picks trash with her father from the water along the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. With Nina in tow, Gomes sets out on a paddleboard into the picturesque but polluted waters of Rio's Guanabara Bay, where she grabs plastic bottles and bags and puts them in a mesh net.

Students protest at the University of Kinshasa campus in the Democratic Republic of Congo, after a police officer shot a student over the weekend for not wearing a mask while filming on the streets of the capital.

Thousands of tons of refuse are being cleared from Germany's flood-hit regions. Removing unprecedented mountains of belongings is a challenge, but it is also helping residents begin to move forward.

A distillery in the Highlands of Scotland is using waste from its whisky production process to create biofuel for trucks. Managers at the distillery say the fuel has the potential to save about 250 tons of carbon emissions for trucks on the road.

Volunteers from Lima’s soup kitchens are calling on supermarkets to allow them to collect any excess food, to feed the rising number of families relying on their services to survive. In Peru, poverty has risen over the course of the pandemic to affect almost a third of the population.

Ten years after their glory days, disabled music group Staff Benda Bilili dreams of returning to the music scene and of claiming the fruits of their former success, even if it means falling out with those who made them famous.

WHO horrified over sexual exploitation by aid workers in DR Congo. The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is horrified at the findings of a report into alleged sexual abuse by aid workers tackling the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The World Health Organization again apologises to the victims who suffered rape and sexual abuse by workers sent to fight Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2018 to 2020.

China's mining activities in DR Congo have led to protests recently in North Kivu province over working conditions, amid broader accusations of pillaging and neo-colonialist practices. Against that backdrop, we look at two fake videos that have been circulating on social media, casting Chinese activities in DR Congo in a negative light.

In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in the heart of Beni territory, plagued by extreme violence from Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels, employees of the Virunga National Park are battling to keep a chocolate factory running. Their aim is to process cocoa locally to prevent it being smuggled to neighbouring Uganda and to create jobs to combat enrolment in illegal armed groups.