Beyond the Headlines

With one hundred days to go before Expo 2020 opens its gates, the grounds are buzzing. The site is bigger than 600 football fields. And there are twenty thousand workers busy building, welding and adding the final touches ahead of the grand opening on October 1. The event, running over six months, will be one of the most ambitious ever held. This week's host Nilanjana Gupta takes a look behind the scenes of Expo 2020 Dubai.

Like millions in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a football fan. Before he became the country’s leader, he was a semi-professional player. He publicly backs a small Istanbul team - which won the country’s super league in 2020 - and was the best man at the wedding of Mesut Özil, the German national team footballer who is of Turkish heritage. Mr Erdogan’s love of the game and his close ties to certain clubs and the national team is wrankling with some fans who say the president is politicising a once national-unifier. As the country competes in the delayed Euro 2020 finals, some are even saying the president has made them switch off completely. On this week's Beyond the Headlines, host James Haines Young asks: is the Turkish President politicising football?

Over 13 years, the US spent at least $21.7 billion training and equipping the Iraqi army, police and counter-terror forces. Then, in the space of a few days in the summer of 2014. it all collapsed. As thousands of ISIS fighters poured over the border from Syria, as many as 90,000 soldiers and police deserted their posts. The terror group seized major cities in a matter of hours. Within days, they were charging towards the capital of Baghdad and the semi-autonomous Kurdish capital of Erbil. The borders between Iraq and Syria that had existed for 100 years disappeared overnight. With the Iraqi military in shambles, the government called for volunteers to defend  their homeland. In the holy city of Najef, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani – one of the most respected Shiite voices – urged all able-bodied Iraqis to enlist. Soon, neighbourhoods bristled with newly formed militias – manning  checkpoints and holding rallies to sign up more recruits. But, nearly seven years after the call went out, Iraq’s militias are still there and they’re more powerful than ever. Welcomed into the security establishment to stop the country falling to ISIS, these largely Shiite forces now run a nearly parallel state. But some of the groups stand accused of kidnapping, torturing and assassinating dozens of prominent Iraqi activists and protesters since late 2019, as thousands take to the streets demanding a new Iraq, one without corruption and nepotism, and where the state can provide education, jobs, power and water. There is very little the government can do. The country, today, faces a new battle – for an Iraq ruled by the militias or one ruled by an elected government where the rule of law is paramount. On this week's Beyond the Headlines host James Haines-Young looks at the man in the middle of these two, Iraq’s prime minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi, and asks how can he rein in the militias?

As coronavirus has spread across continents, our way of life has completely changed. Planes have ground to a halt, borders closed off and families separated. But now, as vaccination programmes surge ahead, the aviation industry is working with governments to try to secure safe and efficient ways to travel. A digital proof of one’s vaccination status, a vaccine passport, is being welcomed as the key to reigniting the travel sector -  a way to ensure all those travelling can verify their Covid status and ensure a smooth process in airports around the world. But there are many opposed to such a system, citing concerns about data privacy and fears of it leading to an unequal world. On this week's Beyond The Headlines host Suhail Akram asks: are vaccine passports necessary or will they make travel discriminatory?

For 11 days rockets rained down on Gaza in the latest escalation of a conflict that has gone on for nearly three quarters of a century. More than 250 people were killed as homes were destroyed and livelihoods shattered.  But the battle wasn’t only taking place over Gaza and Israel; online a separate but connected fight broke out freedom of expression. Palestinians turned to social media in the hope of bringing attention to the mounting death toll in Gaza. In East Jerusalem, families facing eviction from their homes to make way for Israeli settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood logged in to tell their stories.  Others tried to post videos from Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and around the world supporters shared messaged of solidarity. But posts were disappearing, often without explanation. Accounts were suspended. Hashtags were blocked. Palestinians, already living within the walled confines of Gaza and the West Bank, said they found a wall of restrictions put up by the social media platforms they thought would empower them. On this week's Beyond the Headlines, host James Haines-Young asks, are social media companies censoring pro-Palestinian posts?

What started with a court hearing over the ownership of land on the outskirts of Jerusalem’s Old City has escalated into the bloodiest round of fighting between Hamas in Gaza and the Israeli military since 2014. The outbreak of fighting between the armed groups in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and Israel killed hundreds, mostly Palestinians but also people in Israel. It came after months of simmering tensions, over the court cases to decide the fate of a dozen Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah area and elsewhere in occupied East Jerusalem. It also came against the backdrop of a surge in support for far-right nationalist groups, propelling them to electoral gains as Israel faces a major political crisis. In this week's Beyond the Headlines host James Haines Young speaks to The National's correspondents in Jerusalem and Gaza to understand the months of tensions that led to the outbreak of fighting.

On April 19, Nasa’s Ingenuity helicopter lifted off from the surface of Mars in a history-making first flight. The small, drone-like rotorcraft, which arrived on the Red Planet attached to the Perseverance rover, climbed three metres into the thin air, hovering for 30 seconds before touching back down in the Jezero crater. It was the first controlled flight by a powered aircraft on another planet. Another groundbreaking first for science followed a day after. A gold device about the size of a car battery on Perseverance, called Moxie, created oxygen out of that same thin atmosphere. Previous missions have focused mainly on answering long-held questions about our mysterious celestial neighbour. Has it ever supported life? Can we find liquid water there? But this new generation of experimental technology has begun to pave the way for the eventual human exploration - and even colonisation - of Mars. On this week's Beyond the Headlines host Arthur Scott-Geddes looks at the latest wave of pioneering science missions on Mars, which are helping to usher in a new era in the exploration of the solar system.

Within months of the emergence of coronavirus in late 2019 drug companies around the world were racing for a vaccine. Within a year, shots were being delivered into people’s arms. The speed at which the world developed not one but several different Covid-19 vaccines in seemingly record time has thrown into sharp relief other vaccine programmes that have toiled for years with no final breakthrough. HIV, the virus that causes Aids, kills nearly 700,000 every year, but has outwitted vaccine developers for more than three decades. Even regular influenzas can be deadly and our tools to stop it are very limited. But now, there is renewed hope that this could change – and that may be thanks to the work on Covid-19 vaccines. On this week's Beyond the Headlines, host James Haines-Young delves into how Covid-19 vaccines have already shaken up the drug industry and how what we are learning now could one day lead to tailor-made treatment for almost any ailment.

India hit what it thought was its peak of Covid-19 infections in September 2020 when the pandemic then started to ease. But the country now has the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases, surpassing Brazil, and is now only behind the United States. The new, deadly explosion has overwhelmed India’s hospitals, graveyards and crematoriums, particularly in its biggest cities of Delhi and Mumbai. On this week's Beyond the Headlines host Suhail Akram speaks to those affected by the crisis to understand how India’s Covid-19 crisis got so out of hand.

Desalination used to be the preserve of money-rich but water-poor Middle Eastern countries. It was expensive and caused pollution but in the arid desert where rain is scarce, there was little choice. Without desalination, taps across the Gulf would run dry and farms would wither and die. Experts have issued warnings about the water wars of the future as one of the world’s most precious resources begins to dry up. This week on Beyond the Headlines, host James Haines-Young looks at how Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel and Gulf states led a water revolution and how desalination could quench the world’s water worries.   c856e29038ff517b227136c93c96a2ec65582c96