Beyond the Headlines

It's hard to overstate just how significant Pope Francis's visit to Iraq really was. Nor how remarkable it is that it actually went ahead. Iraq, despite the best efforts of the security forces, is not stable. Just days before the Pope arrived on March 5, a US civilian contractor was killed in a rocket attack, probably the work of an Iran-backed militia. Pope Francis’s predecessor Benedict said day...

It was beyond our capacity of understanding ten years ago when a young man in Tunisia decided to take his own life by setting himself on fire. This act was enough to start large-scale protests in what became known as the Arab uprisings. Two months ago, in the impoverished city of Kasserine, a desperate and jobless man in his twenties set himself on fire in west-central Tunisia. He narrowly escaped...

On February 21 about 120,000 Indian farmers gathered at a grain market in Punjab to protest against the government. The crowds of men and women arrived early, making their way to the market in tractors, buses, trailers and cars. They waved flags and vowed to head south to the capital of New Delhi to make their voices heard.  Waiting for them in Delhi were tens of thousands more farmers who had bee...

At the beginning of 2020 the UAE faced a conundrum. Abu Dhabi Ports was seeking to boost its cargo-handling capacity, which meant more construction above and below water. A new project with Etihad Rail was also planned to connect Khalifa Port with the proposed national railway that would run through the country. But the Abu Dhabi shoreline is home to the Ras Ghanada reef, consisting of 8 million c...

On February 9, 2021, after seven months in space and six years since the mission's inception, a room full of Emirati engineers watched anxiously as their attempt to put a satellite into orbit around Mars reached its final destination. The UAE is just the fifth nation to send a spacecraft to the Red Planet. In this episode, we hear from Omar Adbelrahman Hussain, lead mission design and navigation e...

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 sign...

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 get...

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 pr...

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 Omra...

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 batt...

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 milli...

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...

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, hos...

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 c...

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...

In 2019, Abiy Ahmed was riding high. For a year he had been Ethiopia’s prime minister, having emerged from byzantine internal jockeying at a time of deep unease and anger. He had ushered in a series of swift democratic reforms, seemingly bringing an end to decades of repression as he opened up the press and released political prisoners.  Then, the charismatic 43-year-old blew on to the internation...

For nearly four years, US President Donald Trump has torn up America’s foreign policy handbook. The implications, both at home and abroad, have been significant. Most recently, Trump’s administration was lauded for facilitating the Abraham Accord, the normalisation of relations between the UAE and Bahrain, and Israel. In exchange, Israel’s government has agreed to halt its proposed annexation of p...

The Philippines is no stranger to storms. The country's group of islands weather around 20 storms and typhoons a year. But when news of supertyphoon Goni was announced, it took action, preparing itself as best it could under the restrictions of Covid-19. 390,000 people were evacuated from their homes as 2020’s strongest storm hit the archipelago on the November 1. The storm was the most powerful t...

In this special edition of Beyond the Headlines, Michael Goldfarb, author, journalist and host of the FRDH podcast based in the UK, talks to Joyce Karam, The National's correspondent in Washington, and James Reinl, The National's correspondent in New York, about what has happened so far in the US elections leading up to November 3. They examine the logistics of an election of this size in a pandem...

Arab-Americans make up a tiny fraction of America’s 300 plus million people. But in three key swing states: Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania they are a significant enough voting block that they could help determine the outcome of the November 3rd Presidential election. Willy Lowry and Sophie Tremblay takes us through the heart of Arab America to look at the issues important to the growing...

The fires didn’t start the revolution, but you could say it was the kindling. The country suffers fires every year, but these were different. In this week's Beyond the Headlines, host James Haines-Young, looks back at a turbulent year in Lebanon from fires, to revolution to a massive explosion.

News update: Since publishing this podcast China announced on October 9 that it has joined Covax, the global scheme for the distribution of COVID-19 vaccine backed by the World Health Organisation. There are currently more than 150 Covid-19 vaccines in development. Billions of dollars are being pumped into research in the hope that a viable drug can reach the market in record time and ease the eff...

On October the 1st 2019, protestors took to the streets of Iraq demonstrating against unemployment, government corruption and poor public services, such as electricity and clean water. As Iraqis mark the one year anniversary of the October protests, demonstrators have vowed to keep the protests going unless their demands of a peaceful and prosperous homeland are met. Renad Mansour, senior research...

Nadia Abdulwahab, Lecturer in English Literature at Umm Al Qura University, and Marcel Kupershoek, author and senior humanities research fellow at NYU Abu Dhabi takes us through the evolution of Saudi Arabia and its people, since the founding of the kingdom. We also hear from Ahmed Al Saleh, a 25-year old Saudi student, and Salma Ibrahim, a 27-year old electrical engineer, about the changes they s...

On the 15th of September, the UAE signed the historic Abraham Accord with Israel at a ceremony in Washington DC, in the first such agreement between an Arab country and Israel in over a quarter of a century. We hear from Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh, UAE’s permanent representative to the United Nations, and Omar Ghobash, UAE's assistant minister for cultural affairs and public diplomacy, about the UA...