The Inquiry

In February 2026, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty bilateral between Russia and the United States is set to expire. The aim of the New START agreement was to reduce and limit the number of strategic nuclear warheads, but once this treaty comes to an end it means there will no longer be rules on the cap of these nuclear weapons. The legal provisions in the treaty for a one-time five-y...

Kenya is facing rising public discontent over allegations of political corruption, economic stagnation and a shortage of good quality jobs, particularly for the country’s Gen Z. One of the government’s flagship responses is an ambitious push into digital outsourcing. It argues that call centres, coding work and other IT-enabled services can position the country as a global hub and generate a milli...

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour shattered records, becoming the highest-grossing concert tour of all time, redefining what’s possible and confirming a new era in the business of touring. As streaming transformed how we listen to music, selling records is no longer the financial centrepiece it once was for artists. Instead, exclusivity has been transferred to the live experience. But staging shows on this...

Christmas is a time of year when many families and friends come together for a period of joy, peace and goodwill. The story of the birth of Jesus Christ has been translated into thousands of languages over thousands of years. And while you may hear it differently, the message is the same. From carols to conversations, Christmas reminds us how united we can be. But there’s still one thing that sets...

In November gunmen seized more than 300 pupils and a dozen teachers from a Catholic school in northern Nigeria. While authorities have rescued around 100 children, many remain missing. Kidnapping has become a recurring reality in many parts of the country, and in late 2025 President Bola Tinubu declared the crisis a national security emergency. He pledged to boost security in remote areas, but rig...

Changing tastes, climatic conditions, health warnings, economic factors are all creating a perfect storm for the global wine industry. The origins of wine-making date back to around 9,000 years ago, when it was a drink mostly associated with elite society. Since then, it has had a long association with major occasions like weddings and funerals, as the beverage of choice. And it has been integral...

On 10 December 2025, Australia will become the first country in the world to ban under-16s from using social media apps. Children will have their accounts deactivated on most platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, X, and Facebook. Critics say the ban could push children to unregulated platforms, but prime minister Anthony Albanese argues the new law is to safeguard vulnerable members of...

The eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded the north after a military coup backed by Greece. Since then, the northern third has been run by a Turkish-Cypriot government. This self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is recognised as an independent state only by Turkey, while the rest of the world sees it as part of Cyprus. The southern two-...

Cardinal Robert Prevost made history earlier this year, when he became the first American pontiff to lead the Catholic Church. And when he stepped out onto the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica as Pope Leo XIV, dressed in traditional papal robes, some conservatives in the church took it as a sign of a symbolic shift away from what they saw as the liberal drift of his predecessor the late Pope Francis...

From floods in Pakistan to droughts in the Horn of Africa, extreme weather events are already forcing millions of people to move. Most are displaced within their own countries but rising temperatures and sea levels could soon push many across national borders. Yet international law offers little protection for those uprooted by the changing climate, and few countries appear ready for the scale of...

Matcha, a long-time popular drink in Japan, has gone global. Major chains now serve it, and coffee start-ups are competing to offer their own photogenic takes on the vivid green drink. But the growing craze exposes bigger problems for the wider tea industry. Tea is a delicate crop, highly sensitive to changing weather conditions. Around the world, farmers are reporting falling yields, altered grow...

In the aftermath of World War Two, the charter that founded the United Nations was signed, with the aim of preventing a third global conflict. The UN Security Council, one of six organs of the UN, has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It’s made up of 15 member countries, there are 10 rotating non-permanent members who are elected for two-year terms...

Benin has long tried to highlight its role in the transatlantic slave trade through monuments and memorials in the country, in the hope it would attract tourism. Now it has a new plan. It is offering citizenship to descendants of enslaved Africans around the world. US singers Lauryn Hill and Ciara received their citizenship in July. Filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife Tonya Lewis Lee have also been m...

At the beginning of September 2025, within 48 hours, Nepal’s government had been toppled, and more than 70 people had been killed, with many more injured. The trigger for all of this had been a government ban on 26 social media platforms, but the primary reasons ran much deeper. Nepal became a republic in 2008, following a decade long civil war, but since then, the promised stability and prosperit...

Donald Trump once dismissed cryptocurrencies as a scam. But since returning to office, his view of them has shifted dramatically. In July, President Trump signed new legislation aimed at integrating crypto into the financial mainstream. Members of the Trump family have launched their own ventures, generating significant profits and boosting the visibility of digital currencies in American politics...

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection passed on to humans by infected ticks. Symptoms can range from fatigue, joint pain and a circular shaped rash to facial paralysis and heart arrythmia. According to a British Medical Journal (BMJ) global health review, Lyme disease has likely infected about one in 10 people across the globe. Recently, pop star Justin Timberlake went public about contracting the...

The major rivers of the Rio Grande and the Colorado run through both the United States and Mexico and they are the source of a water sharing agreement between the two countries that dates back to 1944. Under the terms of this treaty, Mexico must send 430 million cubic metres of water per year from the Rio Grande to the US, to supply Texas and dozens of cities near the border. Whilst the US sends a...

Deepfakes are videos, picture or audio clips made with artificial intelligence to look real. Although sometimes used for fun, they can also be used to defame or discredit people. Anyone from politicians to celebrities to normal members of the public can become the subject of deepfake imagery. So how can we protect our image from being used maliciously? In Denmark, the government is proposing a new...

In January, the popular Chinese social media app TikTok went offline for its 170 million Americans. The outage marked a turning point in a long-running dispute over data privacy and national security, with US lawmakers concerned about the app’s Chinese ownership. A law passed by Congress required ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to sell its US operations or face a ban. Although ByteDance did no...

“There is no longer any debate that space is a war fighting domain,” These were the words of Commander General Stephen Whiting from the US government’s Space Command at a conference earlier this year. China, the US, India and Russia have tested anti-satellite weapons in space, and technology is blurring the lines between civilian and military satellites. But will there be war in space? Joining us...

A far-right party which came to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic recently showed itself to be a contender to Japan’s centrist political establishment, when it grew from one seat, three years ago to 15 seats in the recent elections. Known as Sanseito, the party is led by Kamiya Sohei, whose YouTube videos spread conspiracy theories about vaccinations. Its political platform is a nationalist...

Children in Indonesia are now receiving free school meals — part of a bold new plan by President Prabowo Subianto to tackle malnutrition. Around one in five children in the country are stunted, meaning they are too short for their age. The lunch programme is central to Prabowo’s vision of a “Golden Indonesia” – a prosperous, high-income nation by 2045. But not everyone is happy. To fund this and o...

When the war in Ukraine began back in February 2022, the remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicle or drone as its commonly known, was peripheral to the conflict. But three years on, the drone in all its shapes and sizes has taken on a central role in this battle, in the air, on land and at sea, for surveillance, reconnaissance, combat and other purposes. Now drone technology is evolving even furt...

In July, a brutal highway hijacking in southern Syria sparked tit-for-tat clashes between Druze and Bedouin fighters. During the week-long violence, over a thousand people were killed and more than 125,000 displaced. Syrian government forces and Israel also entered the conflict. The latest hostilities come less than a year after Syrians celebrated the end of dictatorship and the promise of renewal...

What lies behind the clashes on the Thai Cambodian border is a fractured friendship between the two nations. In July both countries strike each other with civilians killed and injured in the crossfire. More than a hundred thousand are evacuated. Thailand warns the clashes could escalate to war. In May a brief gunfire exchange killed a Cambodian soldier. Just over two weeks later surprising details...