The Inquiry

In December 2024, the decades-old Assad regime in Syria fell following 13 years of brutal civil war. The Islamist rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, seized power in the capital Damascus, having co-ordinated a lightning offensive along with other opposition forces across the country. This week on The Inquiry, we examine how recent events led to the current situation, who the main players are vying...

Drinks with toxic ingredients have been linked to deaths and poisonings in Turkey, Laos and India in 2024. Fake alcohol is unrecorded and unregulated alcohol that hasn’t been registered in official statistics for sales, production or trade. The range of unrecorded alcohol includes alcohol smuggled across borders, counterfeit alcohol and homemade brew. This week of The Inquiry we look at how toxic...

Cancer is a disease that will affect 1 in 5 people in our lifetime, and it’s estimated that around 20 million people worldwide will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in 2025. But how might a vaccine help in the treatment of cancer? Numerous trials began testing the viability of cancer vaccines in 2024, including one for melanoma and another for lung cancer. With all the promise that these new...

Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew of America's 35th President, John F. Kennedy, has been nominated to be the next US health secretary by President-elect Donald Trump. The post oversees everything from medical research to food safety and public welfare programmes. Kennedy has been the face of “Make America Healthy Again”, a movement dedicated to “public health, sustainable practices and a government that...

The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, sandwiched between China and India, is perhaps best known around the globe for its unconventional measure of national development: Gross National Happiness. The concept was introduced back in 1972 by the fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. It assesses the country’s overall wellbeing on the basis of sustainable and equitable socio-economic development; en...

Accusations of sabotage have been made after a Chinese merchant ship cut through two important undersea cables in the Baltic Sea. Eight of the nine states in the Baltic are members of Nato but Russia has access to the sea from St Petersburg and for its Kaliningrad exclave. With previous incidents of damage to underwater pipelines and cables, there is concern that the security of critical underwate...

When Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his finance minister, Christian Lindner last month, Germany’s ‘traffic light’ government collapsed, an uneasy coalition between parties with differing perspectives and strained relations, the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Free Democrats. At the heart of the political dispute lie deeply opposing views about spending plans, and how to fund much needed investm...

The car industry across the European Union employs over thirteen million people, both directly and indirectly, that’s around six percent of the bloc’s workforce. But in recent years, Europe’s manufacturers have been struggling to cope with issues like economic downturns, clean energy requirements and the digital revolution. Some of the oldest, biggest carmakers are considering plant closures and j...

When protests against decades of rule by the Assad family were crushed by Syrian government forces in the spring of 2011, opposition groups took up arms and the country descended into civil war. The conflict drew in Syria’s Kurds, jihadi groups including Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and the international community. 13 years on President Assad controls around two thirds of the country, but northern...

Aerospace giant Boeing has had big problems to overcome since the crashes of two of its 737 Max aircraft. Its situation was compounded this year with another safety scare and a strike losing it billions of dollars. It has a new CEO who has pledged to return the company to its engineering roots and away from cost cutting and in October, Boeing managed to raise 21bn US dollars by issuing new shares...

Earlier this year the global video sharing platform You Tube dominated TV viewership in the United States, knocking Disney off the top spot and leaving major media names like Netflix, Paramount, Amazon and Fox in its wake. In a first for the streaming platform, the time people spent watching YouTube on television accounted for 10.4 percent of total TV in the month of July. In terms of its world re...

The International Space Station will be decommissioned in 2030 and crash down into the Pacific Ocean, ending more than three decades of international cooperation. Launched in the wake of the Cold War, the ISS is seen as a triumph of global diplomacy between the US, Russia and other nations. Its demise will mark the end of an era. Nasa has awarded contracts to commercial companies to develop potent...

This year wildfires in Canada have caused devastation to the country’s treasured town of Jasper. The wildfires have ravaged the landscape, destroyed communities and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The causes are many, and fires are a natural occurrence. But humans, and the climate, are making them worse. As the number and intensity of fires increase, the methods used to both prevent and...

Ukraine’s President Zelensky recently presented his ‘Victory Plan’ to end the war in Ukraine to both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the two candidates competing to be the next President of the United States of America. President Zelensky’s view is that if his plan is supported by Ukraine’s allies, then the war could be ended by next year. But both US Presidential candidates, whilst in agreement t...

A court room in the US State of Nevada provided the setting for the recent hearing between media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his children, over who will inherit his empire on the 93 year old’s death. The succession battle, worthy of the TV drama Succession, which was partly inspired by the Murdoch dynasty, was played out behind closed doors and it’s unlikely that the decision, when it comes, will be...

With Lebanon, Gaza, and Israel all under fire and a death count running into tens of thousands, the Middle East has never been in a more dangerous position. The United States has been a big diplomatic influence on attempts at peace negotiations in the Middle East. The last major attempt at peace negotiations was in the spring of 2024 when the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited the regio...

In September Greek Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni announced the introduction of special fees for passengers disembarking from cruise ships at Mykonos, Santorini and some other ports. The fees are part of a broader strategy to manage the resurgence of mass tourism post-covid, reducing some of the negative impacts such as pressure on water supplies, waste management and overcrowding, while sprea...

Just over three years ago the Taliban seized Kabul and stormed to power in Afghanistan. They soon declared a new government which is still not recognised by any other country. The Taliban claim they have made improvements to the country. War is over and, they say, there is more peace and security than before they came to power. But millions of people are struggling to survive in the country, there...

At the beginning of September, the far-right party Alternative for Germany or AfD, won an election in the eastern state of Thuringia. The result marked the far right’s first win, in a state parliament election, since World War Two. In the more populous neighbouring state of Saxony the party came in a close second. Whilst in both states the party has been officially classed as ‘right-wing extremist...

In August this year, a US court in Washington DC ruled that Google acted illegally to crush its competition and maintain a monopoly on online search and related advertising. This is just one of a number of lawsuits that have been filed against the big tech companies, as US antitrust authorities attempt to strengthen competition in the industry. Now Google is facing another legal case in Virginia,...

Hezbollah has both political and military wings both of which are designated by several countries as terror organisations. It emerged several decades ago in Lebanon. Since Israel launched its war in Gaza in the wake of the Hamas attacks of October 7th, it has intensified its military activities along the border between Israel and Lebanon. The persistent question has been what is it trying to achie...

In 2018 an historic document known as the ‘Provisional Agreement’ was signed between the Catholic Church and the People’s Republic of China. So far this agreement has been renewed every two years and the expectation is that it will be renewed again this year. The only detail that has been made public is that the Agreement allows the Pope final approval on Bishops appointed by the Chinese authoriti...

Project 2025 is a blueprint for the next conservative president of the US. The think tank behind it, The Heritage Foundation, has published a book, ‘Mandate for Leadership’. It’s an anthology of ideas that suggest sweeping changes to federal government, presidential power and US involvement in global affairs. Mandate for Leadership is a collection of policy ideas, written for any president to use...

Last year the Canadian province of British Columbia, launched a landmark three-year pilot programme on drug decriminalisation. For a number of years now communities across Canada have been facing their own opioid crisis, as drugs like fentanyl become more easily available. Vancouver in British Columbia, has always been at the forefront of drug policy change, yet it has seen an explosion in overdos...

Hundreds of monumental human shaped statues are motionless, and exposed to the elements, on Rapa Nui - also known as Easter Island. A name that dates back to 1722, when a Dutch explorer first saw it on Easter Sunday. The statues, or Moai, were there centuries before that and are sacred to the Rapa Nui people. They have also become a world famous tourist attraction and can be found in multiple outd...