Naomi, what is the prospect of authorities actually getting on top of the unrest?

So I think the date that everyone's looking towards is now Saturday, when the organisers of this weekend's protest have called for an Act 2.

They've also declined to condemn the violence, saying that they understand the anger of the people.

So I think we're going to see a different response this time.

I'm imagining it'll be a full police response with a lot of controls in place in multiple cities.

One of the concerns was that One of the phenomenons, I suppose, with rioting and looting is that it becomes self-fulfilling.

If people think that law and order has collapsed, they can sometimes go out and try and take advantage.

and lastly what about the reaction among particularly small business owners in urban areas because we've seen awful footage of people literally being pushed out of the doors of their own shops so that looters can go in and steal their merchandise

What has the country in this sort of stasis changed?

budgetary crises of this nature, there's like the long backstory and then the shorter one.

The long backstory is that I think France hasn't balanced its books since the 1970s.

Like a lot of these protesters, France would have run a deficit every year that they've been alive.

So it's steadily been accumulating debt and that really ran out of control during the COVID-19 pandemic.

with quite like wild levels of deficits year on year.

There was a lot of subsidies handed out to help people with the cost of living, but this really did damage to France's overall debt.

How are his opponents using what has happened to further their own message?

[lip smacks] But he, he, he seemed to have a somewhat fractious relationship with his parents in that he, he, he's, he, even when he was a teenager, he didn't, uh, he didn't like the idea of being wealthy or, or accumulating wealth.

Yeah.

[sighs] So I think this is, we start to get to why he would end up in Ireland, you know, living homeless.

Uh, it seems that he had a very, uh, difficult relationship with his parents.

Um, he moved out as soon as he could, basically.

When he was 18, he moved into a smaller flat, which was owned by his grandmother, um, and that was, um, according to his family, so that he could have the maximum independence that he could and kind of, you know, get out of the family setting.

Um, I was given a copy of an essay that he wrote when he was 14, and in that, he wrote about y- that he didn't have any interest in money, riches, or anything like that.

Now, he, a- and eventually, he moved to Ireland permanently, first in, in Tralee, as, or in, i-i-in Tralee, as I understand it, where, where w- people were a bit worried about him.

[lips smack] But he, he, he seemed to have a somewhat fractious relationship with his parents in that he, he, he's, he, even when he was a teenager, he didn't, uh, he didn't like the idea of being wealthy or, or accumulating wealth.

Yeah.

So I think this is, we start to get to why he would end up in Ireland, you know, living homeless.

Uh, it seems that he had a very, uh, difficult relationship with his parents.

Um, he moved out as soon as he could, basically.

When he was 18, he moved into a smaller flat, which was owned by his grandmother, um, and that was, um, according to his family, so that he could have the maximum independence that he could and kind of, you know, get out of the family setting.

Um, I was given a copy of an essay that he wrote when he was 14, and in that, he wrote about y- that he didn't have any interest in money, riches, or anything like that.

Now, uh, a- and eventually, he moved to Ireland permanently, first in, in Tralee as, or in, uh, in Tralee, as I understand it, where, where, wh- people were a bit worried about him.

Naomi, before we get to the expectations for today, just remind us how this ballooned from relatively small, um, initial protests.

Sure.

So the first protest was on September 17th, and it was just one high school in the Parisian suburbs, and then it spread from there, first of all, through the capital, and then from last week, these protests coincided with a protest by civil servants, um, a kind of, like, minor strike, and that included many teachers.

And from there, it seems to have gained a huge momentum.

It really went nationwide, and it began to cause widespread disruption with as many as 500 schools closed yesterday, several schools trashed in the protests, and just widespread blocking of roads, causing transport havoc, and really contentious debates about, um, whether the police, uh, response is t- too heavy-handed or whether the state needs to do more to gain control.

Does that mean that we are going to see even more significant clashes?

It's, it is, um, potential- potentially gonna be the case, but, um, I think also the police are being very closely watched because no one wants to see people who are minors, um, being injured in, like, brutal baton charges and things like that.

That is, like, hugely unpopular.

Here we go.

So I spoke to the French finance minister, Roland Lescure, last week in his office in the economy ministry in Paris, which is like overlooking the Seine.

And I asked him if he could, if he wouldn't mind telling me in the bluntest possible terms where the main differences between the thinking in France and the thinking in Ireland lie on the issues of digital rules and on taxation.

So he kind of started off with a preamble about how Ireland was a very constructive partner and he had lots of things he admired about Ireland and he was confident about the abilities of the Irish presidency and so forth.

And then he got, you know, he said some pretty blunt things, which was essentially Ireland is enjoying quite a large share of the available global tax take from multinational tech giants because they're headquartered in Ireland.

And he said, we need to make sure that everyone gets a fair share of a cake.

That's a European cake, not an Irish cake.

Yeah, the French would welcome this money, I assume, because they're a bit cash dropped at the moment.

Here we go.

So I spoke to the French Finance Minister Roland Lescure last week in his office in the economy ministry in Paris, which is, like overlooking the Seine.

And I asked him if he could, if he wouldn't mind telling me in the bluntest possible terms, where the main differences between the thinking in France and the thinking in Ireland lie on the issues of, uh, digital rules and on taxation.

So he kinda started off with a preamble about how Ireland was a very constructive partner, and he had lots of things he admired about Ireland, and he was confident about the abilities of the Irish presidency, and so forth.

And then he got...

You know, he said some pretty blunt things, which was essentially Ireland is enjoying quite a large share of the available, uh, global tax take from multinational tech giants because they're headquartered in Ireland.

And he said, "We need to make sure that everyone gets a fair share of a cake.

The French would welcome this money, I assume, because, um, they're, they're a bit cash-strapped at the moment.

But what is the likelihood of it actually happening? I know Simon Harris was quite clear that tax is a sovereign matter among states themselves rather than a European one.

Right.

So France has long pushed for an overhaul of how taxation is calculated.

So in their view, the advent of the digital economy means that the system we have for taxation is outdated.

their view is that taxation should be based upon where the consumers are, the users are, rather than where companies are headquartered.

And they believe that, especially when it comes to digital services, that reflects better where the kind of economic activity is happening.

So they see the tax take that Ireland has, which is really huge for massive multinational tech companies, as actually reflecting economic activity and income that's being earned across the 500 million strong single market rather than just within Ireland.

It's kind of stuck, but Ireland has signed up to it.

And Naomi started by telling me how she first noticed what was going on.

I can remember seeing this.

It's unbelievable to think back at that time and how quickly time has passed since then.

But I think it was in one of the darkest days of lockdown, you know, people were stuck in their homes and all the news was relentless pandemic stuff, you know, the measures of restrictions here and there, people sick and dying.

And amid all of this, it was the early days of it.

I noticed a fundraiser on social media for Native American families in the Navajo and Hopi nations in the United States.

And essentially they were in a really difficult situation because they live in areas where there isn't always running water.

It's an amazing outpouring by the Irish people, wasn't it?

And Naomi started by telling me how she first noticed what was going on.

I can remember seeing this.

It was, it's unbelievable to think back at that time and how quickly time has passed since then.

But I think it was in one of the darkest days of lockdown, you know, people were stuck in their homes and all the news was relentless pandemic stuff, you know, the measures of restrictions here and there, people sick and dying.

And amid all of this, it was the early days of it.

I noticed a fundraiser on social media for Native American families in the Navajo and Hopi nations in the United States.

And essentially they were in a really difficult situation because they live in areas where there isn't always running water.

It's an amazing outpouring by the Irish people, wasn't it?

There is something of an agreement amongst academics and others that somehow the Moroccan government were involved in this.

Well, there is video footage that's been verified, very reputable media outlets of Moroccan security officials, you know, ushering people through.

And people were... allowed to come through.

This is the flip side of relying on states like Morocco, by the way, to police the European Union's borders, which is what they usually do.

They usually don't let people in.

That means they have leverage over the EU to let people in when they want to.

And for political reasons, states on the borders of the European Union sometimes like to do that.

I mean, am I perceiving that wrong? Is there a different element to migration now than there was say 15 years ago?

Naomi, is it as simple as Trump likes winners? And in his book, Zelensky is now a winner because Ukraine are holding their own against Russia.

You know, I think there might be something to that argument.

I noticed this sea change happen at the G7, which I was reporting on in France and Evian Lebanon.

And Trump arrived the night before he'd called Putin and he'd called Zelensky.

So they both talked.

And when he spoke about that call with Vladimir Putin, You could kind of sense this real frustration in his voice, like, yada, yada, yada.

It was the same old thing from him.

What do you make of it?

What is the situation in Spain then, Naomi?

So in Spain, you also have, uh, three major fires, as well as other smaller ones.

Um, [clears throat] the one that's, um, of particular concern is to the west of Madrid, where two, two fires that started off as being separate actually joined together.

Um, it's the biggest fire in Spanish history, and again, it's causing enormous pollution of the air, [clears throat] with many people ordered to shelter in their homes, and over 90,000 people, um, evacuated, um, from the, from at-risk areas.

Um, that's, that's in Madrid.

There's, there, it's also in Toledo.

Um, yesterday, we saw Prime Minister, um, Pedro Sánchez visit Valencia, where one of, to an operations center where firefighters were, were coordinating the response.

Like, we've never seen anything like this in living memory.

So what can you tell us, please, about these fires, where they're at now, and wha- the impact it's having on people's day-to-day lives in France and Spain?

So both France and Spain are battling multiple massive fires at the same time, but there have been some wildfires of record-breaking scale.

So in France, in the Gironde region, outside of Bordeaux, there's a huge fire, one of the largest that's been seen, um, in recent times in France.

Um, there's another one that has cut off, it's, it's kind of related to that one, cut off the Cap Ferrat, um, area, pop- popular tourism destination.

Uh, there's more than 220,000 people who have been evacuated due to these fires, and they're being accommodated in places like sports halls and, uh, municipal buildings.

Um, it's also caused a huge problem with toxic fumes, with a lot of people ordered to stay in their homes because of the danger of wildfire smoke, uh, which is quite damaging to people's lungs.

The problem is that there's extremely dry conditions, um, which have been fueled as well by quite warm winds, that makes these fires really, really difficult to combat.

Has the conversation now moved on to discussing combating climate change, or are there still, despite the fires, the climate change deniers out there saying that this is just normal summer fare in some way?

Naomi, can you remind us what this court case was actually about and how the appeals court went in favour of Marine Le Pen?

Right, so this whole legal process goes back a long time, back more than a decade, when basically it was noticed that in the European Parliament, many MEPs that worked with the National Rally Party, Marine Le Pen's party, were scarcely to be seen in Brussels or Strasbourg, and they were sort of listed as having roles in the national party.

And investigations established that there was a system in place, essentially, to hire assistants for MEPs who didn't really work for the MEPs.

They were actually used for other jobs in France, but while using...

European Parliament money, i.e. taxpayers' money.

And the courts have found that Marine Le Pen had a kind of a leading organising role in that, which she denies.

She says it was, you know, it might have been disorganised, but there was never any attempt to commit a crime.

And what did Le Pen's political opponents say about the ruling and indeed her candidacy?

I think it's getting closer to thousands at this point, isn't it?

Certainly, there's more than that.

I think there's hundreds of firefighters just moved within Europe itself.

So the way it works is when during emergency situations, the European Union has this system where neighboring countries can pledge to send extra fire trucks, planes and firefighters.

And that's what's happened.

So I think we have 245 headed for Greece alone and then many more sent to Portugal from Spain and Italy.

So quite a significant number.

But is there any sense as to what actually sparked any of these fires?

And, and rather than try to catalog each and every one of those, uh, uh, extra deaths, they just look at what is the normal death toll during a typical, uh, June, and then they compare it to what happens, and they know for sure, for sure there are excessive deaths which, uh, have been caused by the temperature.

Yeah.

The, y- the figures they have so far are partial, um, because it takes a little while to count all the deaths.

They're counted in different ways.

But the figure we have now are, is over 2,000 excess deaths, so more deaths than would be expected during the heat wave period.

Um, and this is because people who are elderly, um, people who might have conditions like diabetes or any kind of chronic condition, and also young children, anyone who's dependent on carers to look after them, they're particularly vulnerable to heat.

Um, it's, it's, it dep- it's about whether you and your body are able to cool yourself down sufficiently, and some people aren't.

Uh, you'd imagine we might be slightly better prepared at this point, but, um, do you think that this will just pass and come a, a, you know, a moderate September, uh, all the politicians will forget it ever happened and nothing will be done?

very bad heat right now.

Absolutely.

So the temperatures that we're looking at in places like Paris are 39, touching 40 in parts of Germany.

It's being described as a heat dome, which is what's used to describe when a weather system like this takes effect over Europe and just kind of sits in place.

So it's not just kind of the height of the temperatures day by day, but also the length of time that they endure for, because the cities gradually get warmer and warmer.

Also, the problem is that the temperatures don't go down that much at night.

So staying up at 24, 25 degrees, which means there's very little relief and the streets and buildings don't have much time to cool down.

Many alleged systemic failures as well to protect her.

It seems to be the latest in a succession of incredibly grim stories coming out in France which relate to child protection flaws, I suppose.

And so you could perhaps see it as maybe the straw that broke the camel's back really, because it comes after weeks and weeks and even months of kind of growing anger, horror at, um, a separate scandal, but I suppose perhaps related regarding the abuse in Parisian nurseries and schools.

Um, so what we saw is, you know, um, protesters saying that this is really kind of one injustice too many.

It's a horrendous story, um, that, um, an eleven-year-old girl was murdered, and the person who is currently in custody suspected of doing that, it turned out, had had several complaints about him already that hadn't progressed at all in the justice system, including a very recent and quite serious, um, charge of rapes of a s- of a girl of similar age.

Um, and you know, it was just heartbreaking to hear the mother of that girl, um, Rosa, the, the girl who wasn't killed, the girl who survived, saying that she'd been calling every Monday morning to ask where was the progress on their complaint, um, which had been made last summer.

And they-- she was always reassured that, you know, the, the investigation was kind of progressing and ongoing.

Domestically, it's gained influence, repressing dissent, and sidelining moderates." Naomi, you've been looking, uh, this week at the plight of those still stuck i-in the Strait of Hormuz.

But had the figures been slowly creeping up over time in terms of beer versus wine consumption?

Yeah, so what's been going on here is that beer drinking is more or less stable.

But over the last few decades, there's been a consistent downward shift in the drinking of wine.

And it's something that's been detected for a good few decades now.

And then last year was just when the tipping point arrived, according to the industry figures that were just released.

So by ever so slightly, the amount of beer consumed over the year was larger than the amount of wine.

and there's kind of studies and speculation into what could be behind this it's broad generational shifts essentially different changes in society there's a few different factors going on one is that uh part of it is is young people turning away from alcohol in general um which is leading them to go to uh drinks that have less strong alcohol contract can like content like beer and also non-alcoholic beer which has been increasing in popularity Another factor is a change in how people socialize.

Is there a generational shift to some degree in that those younger people who either aren't drinking or are drinking beer regard wine as something their parents drank?

No, we had all this with the Greenland stuff only a month ago, didn't we? The same kind of stuff.

Yeah, but of course, you know, the United States, um, he, he's willing to use trade tools, and you don't want to annoy the United States, um, wh- when it comes to that because, you know, they're willing to use that, and they're also obviously a huge econ- um, economic power.

So that's the risk that all, many of the other European leaders are trying to avoid.

So we kind of saw the polar opposite with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, um, who had a, like a joint press opportunity with Trump, um, in the White House, where Trump kind of went to town on Spain and also the UK, criticizing them as being very difficult.

And, you know, Spain, of course, uh, uh, hasn't allowed the US to use its, uh, military bases for the operation.

Um, and it was, you know, it's in that event that, that Trump threatened his trade embargo.

And Merz didn't, didn't say anything, didn't stick up for Spain or the UK, you know, both close allies.

What do you think?