Our Focus programme brings you exclusive reports from around the world, followed by comment and analysis from our newsroom. Monday to Friday at 7.45 am Paris time.
Three women who had been missing for around a decade have been found alive in Ohio. Kidnapped and held in a house in Cleveland for years, they managed to escape their captor on Monday. The owner of the house and his two brothers have now been arrested over the kidnappings of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.
Mexico's new president, Enrique Pena Nieto, has signed a bill into law that promises recognition and compensation to victims of crimes, in particular those citizens who have become caught up in the country's drug wars. But as France 24's reporters in Mexico found out, many are sceptical it will make any difference.
Kurdish rebels began withdrawing from Turkey on Wednesday, taking a major step towards ending a 29-year conflict which has killed tens of thousands. The PKK originally demanded an independent state in Turkey's Kurdish south-east, but has since scaled down its goals, looking for wider political and cultural autonomy for Kurds in Turkey. A total of 2,000 PKK rebel fighters are expected to leave Turkey and cross into their stronghold in northern Iraq.
After 10 years of research, Japanese engineers have extracted offshore methane hydrate from beneath the ocean floor. The substance, more commonly called flammable ice, is a great hope for the future of Japan, which desperately lacks energy since almost all of its nuclear reactors remain shut after the Fukushima disaster. France 24 asks if methane hydrates will solve the energy puzzle for Japan, or even the world.
It is now more than four months since 20 children and six adults were gunned down at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. At the time, President Obama declared that enough was enough, and that new gun laws had to be brought in. But all the proposals from the White House for new legislation have come to nothing: every one of them has failed in Congress. Gun culture remains alive and well in the US, especially in the rural heartland, as our correspondent found out.
