♪ anchor: french authorities attain three people after a police employee was stabbed to death near paris. the attacker is a suspected islamist extremists, shot dead by security forces. russia begins withdrawing troops from the ukrainian border, marking a de-escalation after weeks of mounting tensions between moscow and the west. and it is blastoff for spacex's dragon capsule from cape canaveral. four astronauts are bound for the international space station for a six month mission.

thank you for joining us on france 24. our top story this hour, french authorities have detained three people believed to be connected to the man who stabbed a police worker to death earlier today. a terrorism investigation has been opened into the killing, which was near paris. the suspect, a town resident, allegedly scouted the scene before launching the attack. we have the details. reporter: brutally attacked with a knife as she returned from her lunch break, the 49-year-old police administrative worker and mother of two died from her injuries shortly afterwards. the assailant, a suspected islamist extremists, was shot dead outside by police forces in the town roughly 60 kilometers outside of paris. the french prime minister arrived quickly at the scene, alongside the interior minister. >> my first thoughts are with her family and loved ones.

once again, the the department has squared off against the scourge of terrorism. we all remember the awful attack in 2016. more recently, the murder of samuel patty. reporter: the chief terror prosecutor also spoke outside the station, confirming the comments made by the assailant indicated a terror motive. >> an investigation has been opened into the murder of a person holding public office in relation to a terrorist undertaking and associating with known terrorists. reporter: according to an anonymous police source, the 36-year-old attacker arrived in france in 2009 but had obtained residency papers and had recently moved to the area. the source added he was unknown

to security services. anchor: we will bring you more on this developing story throughout the evening. let's move on to russia. it's defense ministry has started withdrawing troops from parts of crimea and the ukrainian border. or weeks, moscow's -- moscow was barking fears of an invasion. there are calls to monitor the situation closely. we have the latest from the ukrainian capital. reporter: it doesn't seem to be in response to anything happening on the ground. battles rumble on as they have been doing for weeks. it is possible it has less to do with anything going on in ukraine, as with conversions vladimir putin has been having with joe biden on other issues and relations between the united states and russia. if it is about ukraine, one thing that seems to be moving

slightly is the possibility of talks between the ukrainian and russian leadership. vladimir putin refused sullen skis -- refused a request to meet, he invited him to moscow but he laid down some details unacceptable to ukrainians. the g4 are going to meet to discuss the situation. at the moment, the ukrainian side is not keen on the idea. one of the reasons they were not keen on the idea is it might jeopardize the possibility of a meeting at the top between resident zelensky and vladimir putin. it seems that talks about talks are underway, and it is possible because they felt they might the able to organize a some kind of meeting, that's why the russians felt that was an objective achieved. but really this is just speculation.

we also don't know why they were there in the first place, that's what the current ukrainian foreign minister said every clearly in a statement, that russia owes the world an explanation about what is going on. anchor: we don't know why russia was there in the first place or why they have decided to withdraw now, nevertheless, ukrainians breathing a sigh of relief. reporter: yeah, there certainly is relief in tf. -- kiev. less than half of ukrainians leaved and invasion was a possibility but it was clear th it created an explosive situation, things could've have easily gotten out of hd. with the russian propaganda both in russia and broadcasting to the occupied territories, constantly going on about the possibility of a ukrainian offensive and the need for the russian side to respond, clearly it wasn't probably still is an explosive situation. that is the message from volodymyr zelensky.

he said ukraine welcomes the de-escalation but remains a vilant and observers have been noting russia maintains a large contingent in crimea, still not letting ukrainian warships tween thblack sea, and we don't know how many of these forces are going to be withdrawn. russia has said he would move troops away and hasn't done it. even after the announcement, there will still be a large contingent until the autumn 220 kilometers from the ukrainian border. i don't think people feel the threat has gone away. anchor: jailed russian opposition later alexei navalny has ended his hunger strike. he made the decision after his doctors warned him continuing would threaten his life. he went on hunger strike after prison authorities refused to let his personal physicians visit him. he had developed severe back

pain and numbness in his legs. he was detained in january on his return from germany. he'd been receiving treatment there after being poisoned with a deadly nerve agents. -- agent. france hasn't tightened quarantine rules for travelers from five countries to stop the spread of new covid variants. arrivals from purcell, india, south africa, argentina and chile will need to quarantine and get tested before and after landing and expect a visit from police. for travelers within france, the ban on domestic travel will be lifted from the third of may. a nighttime curfew from 7:00 p.m. will be maintained until at least mid may. the british, brazilian and south african variants are familiar, that officials are setting the alarm over the new indian

variant. students infected with it recently passed through the paris airport. we have this report. reporter: for nearly two weeks, this belgian town has been home to 20 indian students in isolation. they tested positive for covid-19, specifically the indian variant. >> we have identified them all and they are in strict quarantine. it is not like they are being imprisoned, but the pice are monitoring the situation. reporter: the 20 student nurses from india arrived at charles de gaulle airport, tted negative in paris, and boarded a bus to belgium, where they started to show symptoms. they discovered they were curing the indian version of covid-19, considered a double mutant, twice as danger and -- dangerous. >> they were probably infected during their trip. some say there was a sick person

on the plane that came in. that's where the cluster among this group of students started. reporter: that would explain why they tested negative in paris, as the incubation period was not finished. >> negative test results means the incubation of the virus was not over yet, weaning if they were tested later, we could have detected it. reporter: three of the students have been vaccinated in india but developed mild symptoms. the belgian authorities have not discovered any cases of this variant outside of the student group remain vigilant. anchor: four astronauts are currently hurtling toward the international space station, where they will stay for six months. among them is french astronaut, thomas pesquet, the first frenchman in history to command the iss. he is joined by two americans and an astronaut from japan. this is the third time spacex has sent a crew and outer space into the first time the company

has teamed up with the european space agency. joining us for more is daniel brown, an astronomy professor based in nottingham. thank you for being with us on the program today. tell us a bit more about the main technical challenges facing the crew on this mission. >> the main challenges are obviously there is a large workload to be done. there are only a certain amount ofeople and they will have to do everything. electricity stops, they have to fix it. if you want a new machine installed, they have to fix it themselves. there is a substantial amount of work installing new panels and equipment that is being delivered. it is a key to increase the amount of people working there. these missions that spacex is providing, reusing modules and making it more commercially viable the fly more people to the iss is helpg, because we

are upping the crew to 11, that is an extra man on board. if they have to take spacewalks, they don't have to pause experiments, they can carry on because they have an extra person there. anchor: thomas pesquet will take over as commander of the iss, but what is the significance of that role? >> it is obviously one where you have to do managing and scheduling, looking after what is going on. definitely something that is built on his previous experience. it is not his first time up there. it is a vast amount of science experiments to be carried out. it is definitely a large responsibility to not only do the housekeeping aspects of what needs to be installed, but also running the day-to-day science experiments, of whicthere are many.

we are talking about medical experiments, especially this time. looking forward to possible manned missions into space. anchor: you touched on spacex reusing modules for this mission. is it fair to say that elon musk's company is transforming the space industry as we know it? >> well, it is aays a bol statement to say that. it is evidently a big step, i n't know about transforming, it more commercially viable, reusing thes this mission is not onlysing th model -- module, but the booster, they are reused. thats vital. not sure he is completely inventing things a new, but he is a streamlining production and making things cheaper. we can afford more men going up there. if you see the competito they

have not yet tested manned mission, so spacex is at the front. by making the production line more effective, which is vital in the industry. anchor: how do you see the space travel industry evolving in the coming years and decades? will domestic space tourism be a reality in a few decades's time? >> that's a challenging one and might be something that goes toward your earlier opinion. i would like that to happen, it will not be something that will be an easy, affordable exercise. it puts a lot of strain on your physiological and medical condition. what these experiments are doing is testing that. thinking about maybe going for longer. if it is space tourism or you are think about traveling to mars, it will be a prolonged period of me.

these experiments tests what happens. we observed that simple things like kidney stones appear space, under microgravity.y, and or if you are looking at your immune system. we are hearing about problems with covid -- the immune system is weakened in space. there are experiments that are exciting being done now with this new mission crew, they will look at these aspec, and help make prolonged visits in space more viable. if it is for space tourism or pronged missions to mars. anchor: daniel brown, we have to leave it there. thank you so much. that is it from us. more news coming up, stay tuned. ♪

♪ anchor: welcome to your essential business briefing. coming up, change on the french railways. we will meet the cooperative raising money to run train services in underserved regions. a look at the american labor movement after the failed attempt to unionize staff at an amazon warehouse in the united states. plus, new life for local landmarks as french towns and cities seek out businesses to move into their old newspaper kiosks. it is a new era of competition on french railways. the monopoly is coming to an end, and private operators can launch new train services on certain routes. this change inspired a group of citizens east and rural france to launch their own bid to run services on lines they say are

underused. they have set up a cooperative, gathered thousands of small investors, and are planning to start a freight service near the city of toulouse. we can speak now to our guest, the deputy managing director of rail co-op, thank you for being with us. how did this venture get started? where did the idea come from? >> hello. the idea started at the end of 2019, precisely. the company was createdt this time. it started a bit earlier, at the beginning of 2019. with the idea to redevelop rail transportation inrance for freight and passengers. we thought a citizens we can also create our own company due to the liberalization of the market. that's how we started in 2019,

and then we created first an ngo, and then we created this compan as a cooperative at the end of 2019. at the beginning, we were 32 people and now we are more than 8000 people in the cooperative. anchor: the original group of people, did it include railway experts? did you know much about the business? >> there were some railway experts, a pple coming from the social economy. people coming from developments. people coming generally from the field of local development. all of these peoe together gathered their expertise to develop this project. anchor: why did you choose the model of a cooperative to run this rather than a commercial, a traditional company? >> for several reasons for first of all, the cooperative ebled peop, all different kinds of

people -- citizens, personal people, youngsters, younger people can join the cooperative. people, companies, non-ngo's, to work together on the project. it was important for us to create the conditions for the people to be gathered and think together on what could be a new railway transportation in france in the coming years. this format of company allows us to have all of these people thinking together and developing the projectogether. this is the first reason we created the cooperative. the second reason is the cooperative is almost a non-for profit model. we have to generate cash at the balance, but we are not for profit as a normal company pugh

did we thought it was important to have this model of company with limited profit to be able to use what would be from the cooperative to develop real transportation in france. that is basically the two main reasons we chose this format, this type of company. anchor: your first passenger line will be from bordeaux to lyons -- why did you pick this route? >> when we realized the potentl of markets regarding something missing on the map of france. a lack of transportation by railways between these two major cities in france pay when we analyzed the potential of transportation, when we looked at transportation between these two cities, when we looked at the potential development in

terms of demographic and socioeconomic development in the regions, we analyzed the fact erthat these two regions would e important regions -- they are already important, but become even more important in the coming years. we thought there would be a demand of traffic between the two regions. and despite this potential of markets, there is no direct line so far for now. it stopped in 2014 between the cities. we thought there's the potential of market and also it is a very symbolic connection. here we are reconnecting west and east together, connecting all of these little territories at the center of france. the two aspects, the potential of markets, people are waiting

for this line to reopen, and also it is symbolic to re-create this connection between east and west of france. anchor: what will it look like when you take a rail co-op train? how will be different from other train services in france? >> it will look different because all of our services will be designed by the people in the cooperative. we are really thinking together with the people in the cooperative of the kind of services -- for instance, families, people traveling to go skiing when they go from bordeaux to the mountains. these services are now designed by a member of the cooperative. anchor: is your goal to compete? what is the ultimate goal? >> the goal is not to compete, the goal is to take market share

to the road traffic, not rail traffic. our goal is to reinforce the rail services, and we are sure that reinforcing the rail services, it will altogether reinforce real transportation in france. anchor: all right, thank you very much for speaking to us. in early april, workers and an amazon warehouse in the state of alabama overwhelmingly rejected a call to unionize after a bitterly fought campaign. had it succeeded, it would have been a first for staff at an american warehouse run by the e-commerce giant. the union leading the campaign has complained to the national labor relations board in the u.s. that the company interfered with the process, something amazon denies kate moody is here with more. you've been looking more broadly into the state of labor unions in the united states. reporter: union members peaked in the 1950's at about one third

of american workers, but in the 1980's, it was closer to 20% and dropped 10.8% in 2020. that's not much different from the french membership rate, but unions have more weight in the french labor market. companies cannot replace striking workers while american employers can. as in other companies -- countries, public-sector workers are more likely to be unionized. some of the most powerful unions are in the field of education, trucking and auto manufacturing. anchor: why aren't more people members of unions? reporter: it is partly because of the changing landscape of labor. tourism and hospitality are less likely to unionize and manufacturing jobs have dipped in recent decades. younger people are less likely to be any union, suggesting a generational shift in the workforce. activists say america's labor laws need to be modernized. 27 states have so-called right to work laws, which means employees cannot be forced to

join unions or pace of scription's even if they benefit from union contracts. anchor: any signs things might change in the future? 9 they might change -- reporter: they might change because joe biden is one of the most prounion presidents in history. it is unlikely that a proposal will pass the senate. his denver structure proposal has what he described as good paying union jobs. some two thirds of americans approve of unions. this has thrust the union movement back into the spotlight. the decline in organized labor was shown to be contributing to the inequality gap. anchor: newspaper kiosks are a familiar sight on the streets of french towns and cities but many have been hit by the downturn in print media sales in recent years. local authorities are looking for new businesses to take up the small spaces and bring them back to life. we have the story. reporter: steaming cups of

coffee are served throughout the day at this small coffee shop in marseille that used to be a newspaper care ask -- kiosks. it was converted a year ago. >> we have tried to make it warm and welcoming by adding more paneling. reporter: before it was taken over, the kiosk stood d for three years. now more than 100 customers buy their coffee right here every day. despite lacking basic amenities, the kiosk is ideally located, just a few steps from a metro station. >> the economic advantage, it is a small area, so rent is a lot lower than a café. reporter: more and more kiosks are closing in cities and towns are working hard to turn them into something else. like arts and craft stores, ice

cream stands, bakeries, and even florists. in this town near pis, this kiosk stood empty for 18 months until it was converted into a grocery store selling baskets of fresh food from local producers. >> it is a great idea, because we are reusing something that already exists. it still feels like a local store. reporter: some 15% of french newspaper kiosks have already been converted. cities and towns are trying to favor projects which create lots ofóñóñ//■■>óñóñ//■■>aah■

04/23/21 04/23/21 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! pres. biden: this is the decade we must make decisions that will avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis. amy: president biden hosts a virtual global climate summit and pledges to cut u.s. emissions in half by 2030. but enviroental groups say global leaders are not being enough ambitiono