Representatives of the pro- and anti-independence camps of France’s strife-torn Pacific Ocean territory of New Caledonia on Saturday announced they had reached an agreement for a package of institutional and economic reforms aimed at defusing the volatile situation on the archipelago, where 14 people died in a separatist revolt last year. It includes the creation of a state of New Caledonia, but which would remain a part of France. “We’ve given work to jurists for the next twenty years,” jokingly commented one negotiator. Ellen Salvi reports.

Lawyer Maxime Tessier, 33, a defence counsel for former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec, who was handed a 20-year jail sentence in May for variously raping and sexually assaulting 299 victims, mostly child patients, died in an apparent suicide overnight on Tuesday. Amid the shocked reactions to Tessier’s death, which one psychiatrist said may have been the result of vicarious trauma caused by the horror of Le Scouarnec’s crimes, a number criticised the lack of psychological support offered to lawyers faced with such harrowing cases. Hugo Lemonier and Mathilde Mathieu report.

A criminal investigation was launched in France in 2021 over the sale of 36 Dassault Aviation Rafale fighter aircraft to India in a deal concluded in 2016 and worth 7.8 billion euros. The judge-led probe is examining the involvement of India's Reliance Group, owned and run by businessman Anil Ambani, who became Dassault's industrial partner in the massive contract signed by the French and Indian governments. Detectives are also looking into the funding by Anil Ambani's company at the same time of a film produced by actor and producer Julie Gayet, the partner of the then French president François Hollande. She has been questioned by detectives as part of the investigation. Will the former president himself now be interviewed? Karl Laske reports.

For culture minister Rachida Dati the stakes this summer  could not be much higher. She is overseeing legislation on the reform of public broadcasting – which got off to a bad start on Monday when the National Assembly voted not to discuss it - has been taking a close personal interest in impending moves to change the electoral system in Paris, and is facing her own legal troubles in an ongoing criminal investigation. Indeed, these next ten days will be critical for the culture minister as she seeks to fulfil her dream; that of being mayor of Paris. As Ilyes Ramdani and Ellen Salvi report, her intention to be a candidate for the high-profile position at next year's elections is as clear as it is feared within her own political camp, where her methods continue to divide opinion.

An international investigation called 'Dirty Payments', conducted by Mediapart and 20 other global media outlets, reveals the billions of euros in dubious transactions processed by the French online payments giant Worldline, a group run by the cream of France's elite. The probe shows how for ten years, and with complete impunity, the group handled these fraudulent or unethical payments on behalf of the worst figures in e-commerce: online swindlers, illegal casinos, shady pornography groups and prostitution websites. Following the initial publication of the revelations by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network, prosecutors in Belgium announced they were launching an investigation into alleged “money laundering” in relation to Worldline's Belgian operation. In a statement, Worldline said it would cooperate with the authorities in Brussels. Yann Philippin and Clément Rabu report.

There have been accusations of anti-Semitism, calls for its dissolution, and now a parliamentary investigation has begun into its supposed “links” with Islamist organisations: criticism of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's radical-left La France Insoumise has reached unprecedented levels in recent times. In fact, the party now operates on the fringes of political debate, rather like the French Communist Party did in the last century. As such, the leftwing group represents a convenient and strategically-useful bogeyman for political rivals to attack, as some opponents have admitted. Pauline Graulle and Ilyes Ramdani report.

With the fate of the world depending on the erratic and criminal strategies of autocrats who flout international law, the citizen protests seen across the globe, and in particular those against the genocidal operations in Gaza, bear witness to a shared conscience and a collective ability to stand together, writes Mediapart's publishing editor Carine Fouteau in this op-ed article. She argues that only these protests and this unity can halt the unfolding catastrophe, a looming disaster exemplified by the American bombing of Iranian sites this weekend.

The war declared on Iran by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has completely changed the stance of French diplomacy. A planned conference in New York that would have highlighted France's position on events in Gaza and the wider Palestinian situation was postponed, and French recognition of the state of Palestine currently seems to be on hold once more. Once again, Paris is back to showing public support for Israel. Mediapart's Ilyes Ramdani analyses the impact of the Israeli air strikes on the French president's Middle East diplomacy.

In a series of confessions before US and German prosecutors, the transcripts of which have been obtained by Mediapart, former Libyan secret services agent Musbah Eter detailed how intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, Muammar Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, and his bomb-maker “Masud”, planned and carried out a series of bombings in the 1980s, including that which downed a Pan Am Boeing 747 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. Eter’s statements, given in a series of interrogations between 2013 and 2015, have never before been made public and remained unexploited by prosecution services. That may change ahead of a new trial over the Lockerbie bombing due in the US next April. Karl Laske and Vincent Nouzille report.  

Mediapart is publishing a series of reports regularly sent to it from inside the Gaza Strip by two young Palestinians. Nour Elassy, a 22-year-old journalist, who is also a poet and writer, and Ibrahim Badra, a 23-year-old journalist and human rights activist, chronicle the grim reality of life and death in Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to wage a genocidal war against the population of about 2.1 million. “Famine is not a natural disaster,” writes Ibrahim Badra in his first contributions published here. “Famine is a despicable, deliberate policy used by the occupation to collectively oppress the people of Gaza.”