The Global Story

On Tuesday, the government of the United Kingdom announced sweeping sanctions against Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and accused settlers of ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Soon after, 11 other countries, including Canada, France, Spain and Poland, announced a ban on goods imported from illegal settlements.

In response, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said there would "without a doubt" be a reaction from the US, adding ...

As the summer holiday season draws to a close, foreigners travelling to and from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates are facing delays, cancellations and severe travel warnings. The disruption comes as a result of the UAE’s position in the ongoing US-Israel war with Iran. Throughout the conflict, Iran has attacked the UAE more times than any other country, including Israel.

Until the war with Iran began, Dubai was a major touris...

Twenty-five years on from the deadliest terror attack in history, thousands of grieving families are still fighting for answers. In early 2000, two young Saudis arrived in San Diego. They had never been to America, spoke almost no English, and had no idea how to open a bank account or rent a flat. Within weeks they had done all of it. Twenty months later they hijacked a plane and crashed it into the Pentagon. The BBC’s Jane M...

Lindsay Clancy faces first-degree murder charges over the deaths of her three young children. But if her case had happened elsewhere, the charges might have looked very different.

Clancy’s trial in Massachusetts has captured international attention. It has divided public opinion and ignited debate over how the US prosecutes cases involving mothers who kill their children — and the charges brought against them.

Other count...

Accusations of foreign interference have been making headlines this week.

Elon Musk’s X alleges that China has been stirring up a backlash against American data centres.

Israel and Russia have denied allegations from Spain’s prime minister that they’re partly to blame for the migrant crisis in Ceuta.

And Germany has accused Russia of being behind a spate of drone attacks at a German airport. Vladimir Putin has dismi...

America’s national debt recently hit a new milestone of $40 trillion. It is estimated that interest payments on the national debt are now the second largest expense in the US government budget, trailing only Social Security. How was the US able to borrow so much and for so long? One answer, according Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, is the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

In this episode, Rogof...

As the world watches the aftermath of devastating floods in Nepal, journalist Anup Kaphle has been asking a difficult question: When does coverage of a natural disaster cross from rightful global concern into spectacle?

Kaphle is the group editorial director of Kantipur Media Group, Nepal’s largest media organisation. He’s also a native of Nepal. After more than two decades working for American newsrooms, he returned to ...

Five years after the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban’s near-total crackdown on the rights of women and girls has made the country ‘a global outlier with no parallel in the modern world’, according to the United Nations.

The Taliban governed for five years in the late 1990s before the US invasion. Now, as Afghanistan reaches the same milestone with the Taliban’s second stint in power, ho...

The Netflix show Emily in Paris has been lauded by French President Emmanuel Macron, who presented its creator, Darren Star, with the prestigious Légion d’Honneur last year. “You make France shine across the world,” Macron said.

Many critics disagree. The programme, about a hapless American marketing executive living a glamorous and romantic fantasy in the French capital, is due to return for its sixth and final s...

There have been a lot of sanctions programmes against Iran. But this week US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Operation Economic Outcast, which promises to go further than ever before. It will punish not just Iran but any country helping Iran – including China.

It’s the Trump administration’s latest attempt to end the war. Will it work?

We speak to Vali Nasr,  professor of international affairs and Middle...

What are the costs of standing up to your biggest trading partner?

Canada recently walked away from trade talks with the US hours before Trump's deadline to impose major tariffs on Canadian goods. Prime Minister Mark Carney struck a defiant tone, acknowledging that Canada was now locked in a trade war with the US. "You're at war when you're attacked,” Carney told reporters, “we got attacked". He also announced retaliato...

A new personalised vaccine given in combination with a drug has stopped skin cancer returning in patients during a trial, representing a potentially watershed moment in cancer treatment. Scientists used mRNA technology, which was used for some Covid-19 vaccines.

But that technology - and vaccines more generally - have become increasingly controversial in the United States since the Covid-19 pandemic. The Health Secretary Robert F Ke...

Last week Ukraine's popular ex-defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov called for wartime elections, in what is widely seen as the biggest challenge to Volodymyr Zelensky's presidency since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.

Zelensky, whose five-year presidential term ended in May 2024, has been under pressure from both Washington and Moscow to hold new elections, but they have been suspended until after the war is over. Fedorov says t...

The Duke of Sussex told the BBC last year that he, “can't see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back.” So what’s changed?

Prince Harry and his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, plan to move back to the UK later this month. Their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, are due to start at a British school in September. They are not expected to resume their roles as working Royals.

Prince Har...

How did a prominent Cambridge professor come to embody the fault lines around DEI in higher education?

Three years ago, Jason Arday was celebrated as the youngest black professor ever appointed at the University of Cambridge. But recent questions about his academic work and his life story became the subject of fierce media scrutiny — scrutiny that only intensified after Arday was found dead at his South London home last week. ...

President Trump took to Truth Social last weekend to announce that the US will "substantially reduce" joint military exercises with South Korea. He cited his "very good relationship" with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, but he also accused South Korea of failing to help the US in its war with Iran – comments that suggest major new cracks in the US’s relationship with a key ally.

To understand the reaction from South Ko...

Two Palestinian families in the village of Qusra in the West Bank have been under siege by Israeli settlers for over a week. The Palestinian-American owner of one of the homes traveled to the West Bank from Ohio on Monday, after asking for protection from the US embassy.

His visit comes after the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, called those involved “Israeli terrorists”, amid mounting international pressure on I...

Benjamin Netanyahu has been a major figure in Israeli politics for a long time. You could have just turned 30 years old and never known a time when he wasn’t either prime minister or somewhere near the top of Israeli politics. But could that be about to change?

With less than three months until the Israeli general election, Netanyahu is struggling in some polls. His rival is a man who is little known outside of Israel –...

Wearing loose cotton boxer shorts. Icing your testicles. Doing blood transfusions to ‘clean’ your body of microplastics. Eating raw garlic. These are all unproven methods to boost sperm count being promoted by wellness influencers.

On TikTok and Instagram, hashtags such as #malefertility, #semenanalysis and #sperm attract hundreds of millions of views, while, in the White House, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr ...