The Real Story

Science has changed the world - it helps us live longer and more productive lives. It helps us communicate, explore the universe, understand our planet and cure our illnesses. It's so powerful a force that it has undermined confidence in religion and challenged humans to rethink their purpose. Yet some of science's keenest advocates fear that there is a problem with science, that there is somethin...

Donald Trump came into the White House promising to tear up the US foreign policy playbook: Russia could be a friend, NATO was ‘obsolete’, and trade deals hurt American jobs. In his first hundred days has President Trump carried out his radical promises or is he beginning to sense the limitations of the most important job in the world? This week on Newshour Extra Owen Bennett Jones and a panel of...

Is the increasingly autocratic brand of populism adopted by Hungary’s right-wing government becoming a laboratory for right wing parties around the world? Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s tough policy against Muslim migrants and his call to defend Europe’s Christian civilisation have put him at odds with the rest of the European Union. On Newshour Extra this week, Owen Bennett Jones and his guests di...

Highly sophisticated techniques to ‘micro-target’ voters, using personal data and demographics have been credited with contributing to the recent outcomes of both the Brexit vote in the UK and Donald Trump’s victory in America. Strategists involved in the forthcoming elections in France and Germany ignore these latest methods at their peril. But can techniques used in marketing to sell cars and to...

How will President Trump's pledge to remove illegal immigrants and create jobs for Americans impact America's agricultural heartlands? Owen Bennett Jones and his guests are in the rural American state of Nebraska to discuss whether Mr Trump's trade policies could in fact hurt farming communities rather than help them. Photo: Nebraska cattle farmer. Credit: Getty Images

The state of Minnesota is home to America’s largest Somali community. This week, Owen Bennett Jones and the Newshour Extra team are there for a special edition of the programme. In front of a live audience, Owen and his guests will examine the impact of President Trump’s executive order to exclude immigrants from majority-muslim countries including Somalia. Mr Trump argues that current immigration...

South Sudan, the world’s newest state, faces a humanitarian catastrophe from famine driven by conflict. According to the United Nations many millions are threatened by severe food insecurity, with at least 100,000 facing starvation. Aid agencies are gearing up their efforts to reach some of the country’s remotest regions, but the presence of armed groups makes food distribution difficult. This wee...

This week the UK’s parliament gave Prime Minister Theresa May permission to trigger the process that will take the UK out of the European Union. Two years of negotiations will follow. But what kind of deal should Mrs May go for? Hard Brexit that treats the EU like any other trading partner, or something much closer? On this week’s Newshour Extra Owen Bennett Jones and a panel of experts sift throu...

Pakistan was conceived of as a country where Muslims could live free of Hindu domination and discrimination but was that the extent of the project? Was it meant to be a country in which Muslims could live safely or was the idea to establish an Islamic state? And is, in fact, an Islamic state the final goal of Muslims? Are there ways of blending the ideas of Islam with systems of government that do...

If we had the scientific capability to bring back extinct species should we do it? Which ones would we choose and why? How about woolly mammoths roaming across the Arctic tundra, or vast flocks of passenger pigeons – once the most numerous birds on earth – back in our skies again? Scientists believe they are on the threshold of the technologies that could make all this possible. But could the powe...

A presidential race for the Elysee Palace that has torn up the rule book is nearing its tumultuous conclusion. France’s two main parties have cast aside their old leaders and an independent candidate, Emmanuel Macron - the youthful leader of a new left-leaning movement ‘En Marche’ - is now widely seen as the front runner. The only certainty throughout has been the strong support for the far-right...

Six years ago this week the brutal repression of a protest in Libya's second city of Benghazi inspired a revolution that led to the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Today the country is preyed on by more than 1500 militias. Different governments rule in the west around Tripoli and in the east from Tobruk. Now some international powers are considering abandoning the ineffectual UN-led attempts to f...

Robots, artificial intelligence and automation are spreading beyond the assembly line to compete for many of our jobs. Economists forecast that as many as half of current jobs in the developed world could be lost to computers in a generation, and as many as two-thirds in manufacturing-heavy China. But what about the new jobs that will emerge? And could we be at the threshold of a world in which ro...

Steve Bannon is widely seen as one of the most influential – and in some quarters one of the most dangerous - men in President Trump’s administration. He holds the key post of White House Chief Strategist, but who is he and what does he really believe? Join Owen Bennett Jones and his guests on Newshour Extra this week as they consider Mr Bannon's influence in the future direction of policy. How wi...

Nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction are associated with the Cold War but today more countries have the bomb than ever. An American president has the power to unilaterally start a nuclear war. In South Asia, India and Pakistan face off across a volatile border, both countries hold nuclear arsenals primed and ready to fire. Elsewhere, rogue-nation North Korea edges closer to nuclear cap...

Turkey straddles the divide between Europe and Asia and is seen as a key ally against the rise of islamist extremism. Yet Turkey is at the same time facing its own potentially destabilising political and security crises. In the week of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Newshour Extra takes an in-depth look at the multiple crises facing Turkey, so important to the stability of Europe and the west. Join...

Three years ago this winter hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians gathered in Kiev's Independence Square, demanding closer integration with Europe instead of Russia, and, eventually, forcing the government's resignation. But what's changed in the years since? Demonstrators continue to protest over poor economic conditions and entrenched corruption, and there has been an exodus of reformers from the...

In 2016 the murder rate in the American city of Chicago went up by 50% - there were were 762 killings. That's more killings in Chicago than Los Angeles and New York combined. The fact other cities have far lower levels of violence raises the question - what are they doing right? How have they brought murder rates down? Join Owen Bennett Jones and his panel of experts discussing the social, economi...

BBC correspondents predict what's going to happen on the world stage in the coming year. Joining Owen Bennett Jones to look into the global crystal ball are Lyse Doucet, Jon Sopel, James Robbins and Kevin Connolly. So what are their predictions for Donald Trump's presidency, elections in France, Putin's ambitions and the various crises in the Middle East?

What should we make of the growing influence of Iran in the politics of the region? Along with Russia, Iran has been a key ally to President Assad in turning the tide the Syrian conflict. So is it right to cast this as the growing dominance of Shia powers and their allies over their Sunni rivals, or is this an over-simplistic interpretation of a complex regional power struggle? Join Owen Bennett J...

The delicate balancing act over Taiwan has been a cornerstone of US-China relations for decades, but it appears that Donald Trump wants to shake it up. In early December he broke decades of diplomatic protocol by talking on the phone with the president of Taiwan. It was the first publicly-reported contact between a Taiwanese leader and a US President or president-elect in forty years, and China re...

Opposition leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo are warning that the country faces civil war if the current president, Joseph Kabila, refuses to step down at the end of his term of office. That term was due to end this month but elections will not now be held until April 2018, and his opponents have accused him of trying to cling on to power. The DRC is not only a key source of minerals req...

On just his second day in office, President Obama signed an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year. It’s now approaching the end of his second term and prisoners are still being held there. Why has it been so difficult to close? And what will happen under President Trump, who made campaign promises to expand it? Join Owen Bennett Jones and his guests on this week’s Newsho...

Donald Trump has promised to tear up the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal – or TPP – on his first day in office. The massive trade deal agreed in 2015 would have lowered tariffs and deepened economic ties between twelve countries, which together cover 40% of the world’s economy. The demise of the TPP comes as other global trade deals, such as the TTIP between the US and EU, face calls...

This week, a special programme recorded in Damascus and Beirut looking at the Syrian conflict and its possible solutions. It’s a highly complex struggle. But is it right to characterise it as a civil war, a home-grown uprising to Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime – as many in the Syrian opposition view it? Or is the conflict a war against Syria, conducted by militant jihadi groups supported by Syria...