>> it is cannes. "> welcome to the "france 24 newsroom. headlines -- iranians vote for the next president. the moderate incumbent faces a strong challenge. u.s. president donald trump says he is the victim of a domestic witchhunt, this as he gears up for his first international trip. and president emmanuel macron is reconfirm -- reaffirm

france's commitment to fight jihadi. we are on the ground. molly: we begin with swedish prosecutors who have dropped a seven-year rape investigation into julian assange, a legal victory for the wikileaks founder who has been in the ecuadorian embassy in london since 2012. let's cross to our correspondent who joins us from the united kingdom. today was the deadline for the prosecutor's office to renew or lift the arrest warrant. why did she drop the investigation, and does this mean we're likely to see a staunch leave the embassy? -- likely to see julian assange leave the embassy? >> it seems that the clock has

just been running, and assange has played the timing. they have become exhausted with the difficulty of questioning him and charging him or not charging him. that is the swedish system. 45 and tookis refuge in the united kingdom, arrested back in 2010. the ecuadorian embassy since 2012, having completely exhausted the justice system here, having had an extradition trial that he lost, therefore he was due for extradition. and because of a european arrest warrant, an eaw, the british that,orced to respect arrest him, and extradite him. but they could not do so because he was taking refuge.

there were various recourses in the british legal system, supreme court and the high court before that. that is where he has been living. so i do not think we will see him anytime soon coming out of that embassy. the british police announced it remained obliged to arrest mr. assange on a lesser charge, but nevertheless a charge, and it would go to a british court. so if he leaves the embassy, british police have made it clear that they will arrest julian assange. now what becomes even more pertinent is the fact that mr. assange has not actually, it seems, feared being extradited to sweden but being extradited for the publishing of top secret documents on wikileaks. it is clear that the trump administration has said that his

arrest as a priority. what we do not know at this moment is whether the british authorities have received a request from the american authorities to arrest and extradite mr. assange. that is a big unknown. so we do not think we are to see julian assange any time soon come out of the ecuadorian embassy and risk that. that of course, we will have to see what mr. assange decides to do. molly: thank you very much for that report from london. donald trump goes on his first overseas trip as u.s. president, and the first stop is saudi arabia. the white house hopes the shift then tour will focus from domestic controversies involving the fbi and russia. the president has called a new special investigation a witchhunt. let's get the details. >> donald trump is on the defensive as he faces allegations that he interfered into ongoing investigation

possible links between his campaign and russia. theas dismissed accusations, calling them totally ridiculous. president trump: the entire thing has been a witchhunt, and there is no collusion between myself and my campaign. but i can only speak for myself and the russians, zero. pressure has mountains and sea fired fbi director james comey on may 9. at issue, whether or not trump pushed comey to drop the investigation into his former adviser michael flynn, suspected of improper contact with russian officials. >> did you at any time urge former fbi director james comey to close her back down the investigation of michael flynn? president trump: no, no. next question. >> despite his denials, a special counsel has already been appointed to look into the matter. former fbi director robert

miller will have -- robert mueller will head of the investigation. >> it is to determine whether any laws have been broken. we have to leave it to him and trust him, and i do trust him. very much, russia was involved in trying to undermine public confidence in our election. it is syrian enough that we are conducting a bipartisan investigation. >> lawmakers on capitol hill have welcome to the appointment. molly: french president emmanuel is friday onmali his first official visit outside europe after taking power. he will address 1600 french soldiers in mali's east. we're joined now by our reporter there. what are we expecting to see from the president on this visit? the president is currently meeting with the head of the

malian state. speak, andlking as i they will then give a joint press conference. havebjective is to cooperation between france and mali in defending this massive desert, which is the theater of an operation, where soldiers are area, europen trying to make sure terrorists are not able to set up safe haven. after this, the president will spend time with each troops, the main objective of the trip. he will fly over the base in a helicopter. he will take the time to have theh with the troops in canteen of the base. he will be briefed precisely

about the operations by the head of the operations. a half spend four and hours with the actual french troops here. understand, and it is very hot here. there is a lot of dangers on the missions. tell us more about the military operations there in mali. macro to president continue his predecessor's policy regardingn this -- we expect president macron to continue his predecessor's policies. doingh these men here are , 4000 in all, is going across this desert and making sure there are no hidden jihadist bases set up. they are also inspecting vehicles that try to cross this desert as there is a lot of

trafficking of drugs and human beings. they have managed to pretty much put a stop to all that, but they have not stopped -- solves the terrorism problem itself. there was a significant incident in january when 70 people were killed when a bomb hit and a vehicle blew up. it shows that there are still many challenges. what we were told hereby one of the heads of the operations is they basically do not control the whole area, but they can go wherever they want whenever they want, and that is to make sure nobody can set up shop, if you will. they are managing. isanuel macron has said he afraid this military operation would last for a very long time and france might get stuck here in mali. this is the secondary objective, make sure that malian soldiers are trained in order to take the

security of this region and their own hands. molly: thank you for that, joining us from mali. we expect to hear president macron speaking within the hour. we will cross back there for the press conference. next, a ron is holding its presidential election this friday, the first one since the nuclear deal with world powers. the incumbent is seeking another term in office, but he is facing a challenge from a hard-line opponent. for more, let's cross over to our reporter who joins us from the iranian capital. how is today's vote unfolding there? polls open at 8:00 a.m. local time for 55 million eligible voters. city, in the north of the a more affluent, liberal area, and it has been buzzing.

some people started showing up at 6:00 a.m., the heat of the day on a friday. in the south, we're hearing it is a lot quieter. that is not a surprise. it is a more traditional sector of iranian society. candidateon whichever they vote for, that will show which direction iran will take. one has championed the international community, and the other may seek to isolate the country. according to polls, president rouhani is ahead, but these holes are unreliable. historical trends suggest he could be a winner. since the revolution in 1979, every iranian president has served a second term. molly: walk us through the key issues on voters' minds today as they cast their ballots. economy, economy, economy. i cannot stress how important

this issue has been or despite clinching the historic nuclear deal and opening a ron up to the international community, very few benefits go down to the ordinary iranians it's 73 percent of them, polls say their lives have not improved. yes, inflation has dropped from 40% to single digits, which is unprecedented, but unemployment is still at 12%. another issue is social freedom. iran is due to reform 60% of the society them a very much attracted to this issue. something that has not really come up is national security. that is rather strange, seendering that you have the rise of the islamic state group and the conflict in syria. molly: how does this look compare to elections in the past year in the west, france , and the united states where we saw a strong populist push? rise in has been a

populism across europe and the u.s. the hard-line contender in, raisi, has tapped into popular speech. if you want to compare this to american support, some people have compared the support of raisi and rouhani to that of donald trump and hillary clinton. raisi isspeech, attracting the more poor and traditional sector of society, the forgotten. hashe other hand, rouhani an appeal to the younger, more liberal, educated sector of iranians. that is the comparison. the big question now is what really matters to the citizens of this country. molly: thank you very much for tehran.ort from in the nearly four-decade history of the islamic republic, no woman has been allowed to stand for the top office. the difference between rouhani

and the moderate challenger, ebrahim raisi, is particularly stark. >> an image you do not often see in iran, a woman and public with her hair completely uncovered. sara, a student, knows she could be stopped by the so-called morality police. wearing a headscarf, she says when women object to do so, male politicians do not listen. not a problem, they say . if this is so, please let us take off the scarf. >> incumbent president has on rouhani has reached out to modern female voters like sarah. showedh, social media him alongside two female hikers, which would not the considered appropriate by hard-liners.

i has aative ebrahim rais harder time appealing to young women. his views are close to iran supreme leader alley, and a -- ali khamenei. women are restricted from riding bicycles in public. this woman is a motorcross rider, iran's national champion. >> it is difficult because no other girls try to do it. >> norah and her friends are driving the country forward, regardless of who is in office, all the while keeping their hair tagged under the helmet, in line with laws. molly: next, brazil's michel replaced dilma rousseff, and now he faces impeachment calls of his own. the president is accused of organizing to pay hush money to a key witness in a corruption

scandal. let's get the details. [genting] -- chanting] brazilians took to the streets to send a message to michel temer. >> we demand an election and want to speak for ourselves and choose a president without restrictions. >> despite the popular outcry, michel temer defiantly refused to step down after the supreme court authorized a probe against him. >> i will not resign. i repeat, i will not resign. knoww what i did, and i what i did was right. >> tmemer is accused of having authorized payments to silence a disgraced former house speaker who is currently jailed for taking millions of dollars in bribes. the revelation by a newspaper sparked a political earthquake, and there was a resignation on

thursday. the party said it would leave the ruling coalition. the opposition, meanwhile, has filed a total of eight impeachment demands against the president. >> we are turning towards the lower house speaker we will formalize another impeachment request against the president of the republic. >> any impeachment proceedings would need to be approved by congress. backing of athe powerful ruling coalition. there are reports of more defections, so the president will need to consolidate his support and is set to meet his defense minister and several military commanders. almost one-third of his commitment is are currently under investigation for corruption. molly: next, the cannes film festival is in full swing, and for the first time ever movies financed by streaming service netflix are being screened, sparking controversy on the riviera and across the french film industry. let's find out why.

>> when it comes to watching fors him of the options where to do it are limitless, on a plane, your laptop, even your phone. what about the old-fashioned way? that is, in a cinema? cinemaied to go to the two or three times a month to see the new releases. ones i want to watch on tv at home are on-demand. learno to the cinema to about the pleasure of seeing something of the big screen for patiencren and the required to watch a film to the ende. >> when my friends want to go to the movies, i say ok, but otherwise i like to watch at home in my pj's. >> she is not the only one. home streaming services are increasingly popular and their products have hit the red carpet. .> nature and science and i sympathize.

>> okja is one of two features at cannes funded by netflix. it is not getting a theatrical release here in france. >> we will continue to program films they believe to be the greatest films in the world. those films may come to them differently than they used to. the audience is changing. therefore distribution changes. >> yet, this goes against the french protocol am a witch says films are released in cinema first and only on streaming services three years later. union representatives say they are prepared to compromise, but the cultural differences will not be respected. >> the audiovisual limitations must change, we agree, but they need to get around the table with us and discuss it. they cannot take hostages like this. is unacceptable. feeling among many film industry insiders is that even

if netflix and competitors produce high-quality productions , a laptop can never compete with the big screen experience. it is cinema going, which is what the cannes film festival is all about. molly: let's look at the headlines. iranians vote for the next president. incumbent hassan rouhani faces a strong challenge from populist hardliner egrahbrahim raisi. u.s. president donald trump says he is the victim of a domestic witchhunt, this as he gears up for his first international trip. president emmanuelle rock thrown -- emmanuel macron who has arrived in molly to reaffirm france's commitment to fight jihadists -- has arrived in mali. those are live images from mali,

the country's east. we are moments away from a press conference that will be taking place. this is president macron first trip abroad outside of europe. he was sworn into office, installed as president, this past sunday. this marks his first week in office as the head of the french state. a shorted here in mali time ago, earlier today, and he is standing next to the malian president. we will hear from both men. >> [speaking foreign language] molly: we're waiting for our translation to come through.

once again, we have president macron meeting here. they have been speaking for an hour or so. there are some 1600 french soldiers stationed, france is the military base outside of france itself. some 4000 soldiers in total are located in west africa, this chad, andi, niger, mauritania. this is part of an operation that was started by former president franãois hollande. that began the operation, and it is france's largest overseas operation that began in 2014. let's listen in. speaking through translator -- mali has become one of the war,ers of this singular which modern nations are forced

against this faceless enemy, a faceless enemy a rather an enemy with a thousand different faces. increasingly attacked our region of the world since one of our great neighbors has been destabilized. so mali has become one of the main targets for terrorism and africa, one of the main battlefields of what may be the new world war, although it is not widely recognized as such. now this faceless enemy, which ask everywhere on the planet, was recently, a a few years ago, almost in a position to

completely destabilize mali, our country. now that was a time when president franãois hollande decided to come to our rescue. about at hollande spoke debt of blood, france towards mali. mali had never thought of its bloodshed to its children and shoulders during world war ii as a debt that france had. this is why we feel enormous gratitudeto france, that is deeply rooted in history , internally -- history. eat turn only, for all time, mali -- eternally, for all time,

mali will be grateful to france for not leaving our country, its own advisors, for not abandoning mali, for standing by our country in this fight against terrorism. this is why, mr. president, we welcome you today as a friendly country and know how indebted we are to you. we know how difficult this war is. impossible this effort, this military effort, sometimes seems to be. those who have never been confronted at this time of asymmetrical conflict may believe from the outside that we are not doing much or that our nowhere.ave led

when it seems, indeed, the head of the hydra seems to reemerge again and again after it has been cut. but you know, president macron, that even the most powerful nations in the world would have a very hard time fighting this kind of enemy, anywhere from nic ellysee attack, the recent attack, what has happened in france should certainly not lead us to believe that nothing has been done. so here, too, we need to keep fighting this fight. of course it will be a long

road. it is a long and difficult road. and of course, there are a multitude of obstacles

>> my name is philippe vergne. i am the d