Beyond the Headlines

During his 2015 presidential primary race, a day after the San Bernadino shootings in which a married Islamist couple shot and killed 14 people, Donald Trump said he wanted “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on”. In 2017, when Trump came to power, the so-called “Muslim Ban” was introduced. Trump signed an executive order banning the nationals of 7 predominantly Muslim countries from entering the USA for 90 day. All Syrian refugees were banned indefinitely and all other refugees were banned for 120 days. Although the ban hit some constitutional hurdles a slightly watered-down version came into effect in March of that year. When Biden became the Democratic nominee he pledged to repeal the ban on his very first day in office. And true to his word, on January 20 he did exactly that.  On this week's Beyond the Headlines host Cody Combs looks at how the repeal of the “Muslim Ban” will affect Muslim refugees.

In December 2019, two months after the start of the popular protests across Lebanon, Human Rights Watch warned of an impending health crisis in the country.  The government was failing to fund public and private hospitals, and they in turn were struggling to pay staff and purchase medical equipment. This was before anyone in Lebanon had even heard of Covid-19. Since then the situation has been getting worse. The impact of Covid-19 has steadily been building - the economy shrank over 19% in 2020 and inflation continued to rise. When an explosion tore through Beirut in August, five nurses died, hospitals were damaged and the pressure on the healthcare system increased yet more. On this week's Beyond the Headlines, host Gareth Browne, takes a look at Lebanon’s failing health system and asks, can it survive the coronavirus pandemic?

On 20 January, 2021, Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. President Biden has come into power breaking records and making history. He received more votes than any other president in history, beating Barack Obama’s previous record. At 78, he is the oldest president to be sworn in, breaking Donald Trump’s record. And he is the first president to have a female vice president, Kamala Harris. At the same time, as Trump leaves the White House, he too departs having made history. Trump is the only president to have been impeached twice. We talk to Dr Lindsay Chervinsky, presidential historian and scholar at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies in New York state, and Bryant Harris, The National’s correspondent in Washington, about how unprecedented this presidential handover has been. Hosted by Cody Combs.

In December 2011 in Cairo, during a protest in Tahrir Square, a woman was captured on video being dragged along the ground. During the attack, her abaya, the name for the long, loose cloak worn by women in many Arab and Muslim countries, came undone, exposing her midriff and her blue bra. This moment became the catalyst for a growing women's movement in Egypt.  Host Ayesha Khan talks to Ragia Omran, a lawyer from Egypt who has been a human and women’s rights activist since the mid ’90s, and Engy Ghozlan, a social activist from Egypt, about the movement. We also hear from Nadine Abdel Hamid, a 22-year-old woman who exposed Ahmed Bassem Zaki, a sexual predator who preyed on a shocking number of women and underage girls.

2020 ended with some relief that we now have vaccines for Covid-19. But the pandemic is not over yet and new strains of coronavirus have spread. Now we have to work out how to distribute the vaccines globally. And anyway, just how effective are they? Which is the best? How long will it take for them to reach us?  On this week's Beyond the Headlines, Suhail Akram looks at the next front in the battle against Covid-19.

As we look back on the year 2020 it is undeniable that there is one story that has defined the year. But beyond the coronavirus, what have been the defining stories from The National’s newsroom?  Iraq had a tumultuous year as it slid into economic despair after a year of anti-establishment protests. Lebanon sank deeper into economic crisis only to be hit with a blast that left a quarter of a million people homeless, two hundred dead and more than 6,000 injured. Ethiopia nearly came to blows over the Great Nile Dam, while fighting in the country’s Tigray region pushed the country to the brink of civil war. A brutal conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh killed more than 5,000 soldiers and 144 civilians on both sides. And then there was the simmering tension between Iran and the US, as well as, what was described as the most crucial election in America’s history.  On this week's Beyond the Headlines host Suhail Akram brings you the stories from some of our correspondents around the world about the defining moments of 2020.

On December 10, Azerbaijan held a triumphant military parade in its capital, Baku. Two-and-a-half months after the start of a conflict over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region in the west of the country, Azerbaijan had won a victory against the local ethnic Armenian forces, and their supporters in Yerevan. The Azerbaijan flag hung from balconies and shop windows, alongside that of the country’s principal ally, Turkey. On this week's Beyond the Headlines, Finbar Anderson looks at Azerbaijan’s apparently decisive victory In Nagorno-Karabakh, and the prospect for peace in a region that has seen decades of conflict.

It is three years since then Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi declared the gruelling battle against the most feared terror group in history was over. ISIS had been defeated. The conflict itself took three long years. The legacy left behind in the rubble of Mosul, the mass graves across Sinjar and the divided parliament in Baghdad will last a generation. In this week's Beyond the Headlines, host James Haines Young looks back at the time when the black flag of ISIS hung like a pall over Iraq and how its former rule has left a seemingly indelible mark on the country.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit - global trade ground to a halt. Around the world people were scrambling to buy essentials as supermarket shelves emptied. But the UAE, a country that relies on imports for more than 90% of its food supermarkets, appeared to have more than enough. The government repeatedly assured people there would be no shortages. This week, we hear from Maximo Torero Cullen, the chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organisation at the UN, and Kyle Wagner, Head of Operations at Madar Farms, about how the UAE began preparing for a food crisis over a decade ago. We also hear from Nicole Rogers, founder and CEO of Agripocity, a UAE-based company that connects farmers directly to the international marketplace.

On August 7, Habib Daoud, a Lebanese professor of history in Iran, was gunned down on a street in northern Tehran. Killed alongside him was his 27-year-old daughter Maryam. The assassin was riding a motorbike, and escaped without being identified.   Reports suggest that Daoud’s killing was carried out by Israeli spies. It fits the profile of those carried out by Israeli agents in Iran in previous years. Past targets, however, were mainly Iranian nuclear scientists. Daoud was a different kind of enemy to Israel. He was said to be affiliated with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is funded by Iran. At least, that was the story reported by the Iranian press.   Thre months later, news reports in the United States and Saudi Arabia told a different story, in which the man Iranian authorities identified as Habib Daoud never actually existed. While the assassins were still likely to be Israeli agents, Daoud’s identity was a cover.   There is a strong likelihood, rather, that the man assassinated in Tehran that day was a senior operative in one of the world’s most notorious terrorist organisations – one that has long claimed to be an enemy of Iran’s government.   The man has been identified by US and Israeli officials as Abu Muhammad Al Masri, second-in-command of Al Qaeda.   On this week's Beyond the Headlines host Sulaiman Hakemy looks at Iran’s covert and counterintuitive relationship with Al Qaeda.