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His critics say he's a secretive oligarch who pulls all the strings in a country caught between Europe and Russia.His supporters say he's a just a successful businessman-turned-politician with his country's best interests at heart.But who is the man whom many know as Moldova's Puppet Master? And what lies behind murky allegations of blackmail, ...…

It may come as a surprise to those who thought the practice had long since been outlawed internationally, but although almost universally condemned as inhumane by animal rights groups and conservationists, commercial whaling still goes on - in Japan, Norway and, albeit with occasional breaks, Iceland.In the latter, where this documentary was fi ...…

During World War II, Britain mobilised a huge, now-forgotten, army of African soldiers from its colonies on the continent to fight against the Axis powers (Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan) in battlefields across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.But when peace came in 1945, the rapidly diminishing British Empire cynically betrayed these men, subj ...…

In 2018 a new government came to power in Armenia, amid widespread optimism that its leader Nikol Pashinyan would end decades of corruption and economic and industrial mismanagement.But now his administration faces a major dilemma - whether to proceed with a hugely divisive, multi-billion dollar mining project at Amulsar in the mountainous sout ...…

Niger has long been a key staging point for migrants and asylum seekers from sub-Saharan West Africa, but the traffic reached a peak in 2015/16 when the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimated that 330,000 people followed the desert routes north - through often inhospitable country - to reach Libya or Algeria, and then the Medi ...…

Prior to his election as Prime Minister of Pakistan in July 2018, Imran Khan was accused by his rivals of being strong on rhetoric and short on genuine policies or answers to the country’s many problems.His response was to promise that in its first three months in power his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) would be transformational. It woul ...…

In June 2016, in a national referendum, the people of Britain opted by a small majority to leave the European Union. It was clear right away that it was to be a controversial decision of truly historical significance (to the UK, if not to everyone else), but few could have foreseen how it would go on to become one of the most divisive, long dra ...…

Former senior military personnel have warned that the United States could be about to re-introduce a programme of torture outlawed by the then President, Barack Obama, in 2009.Following the 9/11 attacks, a covert CIA programme led to individuals being abducted and subjected to so-called enhanced interrogation, techniques including sleep depriva ...…

Former senior military personnel have warned that the United States could be about to re-introduce a programme of torture outlawed by the then President, Barack Obama, in 2009.Following the 9/11 attacks, a covert CIA programme led to individuals being abducted and subjected to so-called enhanced interrogation, techniques including sleep depriva ...…

The war in eastern Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists has dragged on for almost five years, taking the lives of more than ten thousand people and resulting in a million internally displaced refugees. It has also led to a deeply nationalistic and polarised country, where now another human tragedy is unfolding; a surge in hate crimes agai ...…

As long as there is war, poverty and insecurity in Africa and the Middle East, migrants and refugees will try and seek a better life in Europe. For many years now, one of the principle transit routes has been the dangerous sea crossing over the Mediterranean between Libya and Italy.Images of anxious people crammed into small and manifestly unsa ...…

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Taiwan - a sovereign democracy, or a wayward breakaway province of the People's Republic of China that must inevitably return to mainland control?As the island comes under increasing military and diplomatic pressure from Beijing - against a background of fluctuating relations between China and the United States, Taiwan's principal ally - the ba ...…

The Gambia is one of Africa's smallest, most impoverished and least developed countries, with many of its 2 million inhabitants heavily reliant on subsistence farming and with a youth unemployment rate of around 40 percent. It is inevitable then that migration to seek work and support families back home has long been a regular way of life.For d ...…

Desperate for a better life, be it relief from war and persecution or simply an escape from grinding poverty and lack of opportunity, huge numbers of people from the Middle East and Africa have sought refuge in Europe in recent years - around 1.8 million of them since 2014.Sometimes their dreams of sanctuary and welcome are realised; they make ...…

Struggling with a failing economy and underperforming or inadequate public services and divided over the not always welcome interference of two rival regional powers, many Lebanese hoped that elections in May 2018 (the first in almost a decade) might jolt the state's political establishment into addressing their many problems.Others were more p ...…

More than 600,000 migrants have arrived by boat in southern Italy over the past four years - seeking sanctuary from war, persecution and extreme poverty across the Mediterranean.At first, most Italians were as tolerant and patient with the new arrivals as any other European might have been - or at least gave shrugging acceptance to their countr ...…

For over three years, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS) controlled and terrorised large swaths of northern Iraq.Then, after it was militarily defeated and largely driven out by the Iraqi army and international forces in late 2017, local militias took over short term responsibility for law and order in som ...…

Two decades ago, the small Balkan state of Kosovo was fighting to secede from neighbouring Serbia, which was resisting the final break-up of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.After NATO intervened on the side of Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanian population, the separatists won and a decade later in 2008 declared full independence.This h ...…

Afghanistan: The GeneralLast year, US President Donald Trump announced a "new" strategy for his country's forces in Afghanistan.The plan involved reversing his predecessor's phased withdrawal, bumping up the number of US troops to as many as 15,000, and giving new authority to US commanders to strike the Taliban in an effort to force the group ...…

Last month South African President Jacob Zuma was forced from office by his own party, the African National Congress, when almost a decade's worth of corruption, bribery and racketeering allegations finally became too great to ignore. It is possible that within weeks he could appear in court to face charges relating to at least one of the many ...…

The United states's constitutionally enshrined love-affair with firearms has given it the highest levels of private gun ownership in the world, a truly staggering rate of gun related deaths (from high profile "mass killings" to more routine daily homicides) and a hugely powerful and wealthy arms industry dedicated to preserving the status quo.F ...…

It's well known that the United States exports billions of dollars' worth of arms and ammunition to its allies. What isn't as widely understood is that many of the guns it supplies to "partner forces" fighting wars in the Middle East - particularly to rebels in Syria - are Soviet-style munitions such as RPGs and Kalashnikovs which are obtained ...…

Launched in early 2014, the operation was initially thought to be routine - one of a number of similar ongoing probes that the Brazilian Federal Police had on their books.In this case, the targets were doleiros: black-market money dealers who used small businesses, such as petrol stations and car washes, to launder the profits of crime.But it s ...…

When the former British colony of Singapore became an independent nation in 1965, there were doubts about its survival. The tiny island state has no hinterland and few natural resources and few at the time thought it a candidate for any kind of success on the world stage.But today, it's one of Asia's richest cities, a truly modern metropolis th ...…

In August 2017, a devastating landslide in Sierra Leone, killed over a thousand people. It was a terrible blow to a country that still bears the scars of a brutal civil war that ended two decades ago and the more recent, but equally appalling, Ebola crisis, which stretched the nation's limited resources to breaking point. Initially freak rains ...…

For democracies to flourish and succeed, voters need accurate information on which to base their decisions; to weigh up the relative merits of proposed policy A over proposed policy B, to judge whether this candidate is more trustworthy or reliable than that one, or that these promises are more likely to be kept than those.But recent elections, ...…

The Mapuche people of southern Argentina and Chile have long protested the loss of ancestral lands at the hands of the colonial-era settlers. The settlers followed Spanish conquistadors down the spine of South America in the 16th century, territory that nowadays is dominated by vast privately owned estates and huge timber plantations. Campaigne ...…

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has become one of the main destinations for immigration in the world.According to figures from the United Nations 2015-2016 international migration report, the country is tied with Germany for the second spot in terms of the number of migrants living within its borders, with the United Stat ...…