Ukraine is facing yet another major challenge in its fight to preserve its borders, its land and its people. The military battle continues as it has since 2014, intensifying sharply in 2022. The latest challenge is the emergence of a new US-Russia framework to end the war – a proposal that has left observers perplexed and many Ukrainians stunned. The plan appears to pressure Ukraine into giving up territory, surrendering arms and downsize its armed forces to placate Vladimir Putin's Russia. It would also reportedly impose cultural concessions, including the suppression of the Ukrainian language in favour of Russian. Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s close adviser on global affairs, met with Putin aide Kiril Dmitriev in Miami last month to discuss the plan.

Ever since he first ran for president in 2015, Donald Trump has claimed that to “drain the swamp”, America needs a leader who knows where “the bodies are buried” in the corrupt circles of Wall Street and Washington.  So why has the MAGA base turned against him over the Epstein files? Why is it so difficult for Trump – who has already survived allegations of inciting an insurrection, undermining the Constitution and facing multiple criminal charges – to make this story go away?

As the Middle East undergoes a once-in-a-generation shift in political fault lines, great power diplomacy could make the difference for millions between peace and stability or turbulence and endless conflict. So what's driving that diplomacy? Between the US and Saudi Arabia, it's a confusing mix of bilateral security ties, regional reach-outs to the likes of Syria and Israel and personal enrichment. We ask about the Trump family's longstanding ties to the kingdom, as well as reports that the US president is about to get a lot richer.

It's much-needed backing from a key ally of Ukraine, along with welcome photo op for a president who's under pressure at home. After a gas deal with Greece, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is signing a 10-year military pact with France, far from Kyiv where a corruption scandal has brought down two ministers and has the main backer of his 2019 campaign on the run.

A string of coups and the pushing out of former colonial power France in favour of Russian support haven't stopped insurgents from going from strength throughout the so-called coup belt from Burkina Faso to Niger. We ask about the blockade on Bamako that's made it perilous for fuel delivery trucks to reach the capital of landlocked Mali, and what it would take to repel the JNIM.

Could the artificial intelligence boom already be running out of road? We examine the warning signs. To think that three short years ago, the commercial launch of ChatGPT took the world by storm. AI has since sparked a global race for cash, energy resources and data – all to feed the seemingly insatiable appetite of large language model computing systems.

From radical insurgent with a $10 million bounty on his head to a red carpet welcome at the White House, the rebranding of Syria's Ahmed al-Sharaa is now complete.

When it came to the Amazon, his predecessor was all for "chop, baby, chop". An easy act to follow if you're hosting the world for a climate summit. Since the return of Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, deforestation has continued but drastically slowed in what's by far the world's largest rainforest. But by bringing the United Nations COP30 summit to the Amazonian city of Belem, Lula is also drawing attention to Brazil's broader track record on the environment.

One year after a presidential election where Donald Trump swept swing states and secured majorities in both houses of the US Congress, a first test has produced a radically different result. 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani has blown past establishment candidates for mayor of New York, unveiling his transition team this Wednesday. We ask about Mamdani's win and the highest turnout in the city's municipal elections in more than half a century. 

Protesters fuming at Chinese e-commerce giant Shein electing the French capital as its debut point for physical in-shop presence. We’ll ask about behemoths that churn out clothes faster than we can scroll, Shein’s choice of the iconic Right Bank department store BHV for its launch…

Is too much effort devoted to planet’s warming and not enough to helping humans adapt to the new normal? The Microsoft co-founder-cum-billionaire philanthropist turning the heat up on activists traveling to the Cop 30, the annual UN climate summit this year in the Brazilian Amazon city of Belem.

After launching a trade war with China, Donald Trump is now declaring a deal is at hand for a one-year truce. With nothing yet signed, we ask about the South Korean sit-down between the US president and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, promises of reduced tariffs and computer chip exports by the US, the easing of restrictions on rare earth minerals and a return to soybean imports by Beijing.

The whole world is watching 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani, whose army of Gen Z supporters have propelled the Democratic Socialist to heavy favorite to win next Tuesday's race for mayor of New York City. We ask about his promises of rent freezes and free buses and whether that's too radical for the world's financial capital.

First it was a revolution confiscated, then a dispute between coup leaders that became a civil war. Three years on, Sudan is wondering if the fall of a key city in the western Darfur region is the cue for a second partition of the country. The massacre of civilians in Darfur is drawing comparisons with the genocide there two decades ago. That’s hardly surprising as the paramilitary leader who led the 18-month siege of El-Fasher is the same Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – aka General Hemedti – who was an instrumental leader of the notorious Janjaweed militias that operated in Darfur under deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir.

"Speak softly and carry a big stick." That was US President Theodore Roosevelt's adage to stake out Washington's turf in the Americas. More than a century on, it's being evoked by some after an upset win in Argentina's midterm elections by a close ally of the current occupant of the White House. Only Donald Trump didn't speak softly. He bluntly warned that rejection of the party of far-right libertarian Javier Milei would imperil Washington's $20 billion lifeline for a peso that's teetering.

It's been a long seven days, even by Russia-Ukraine standards. Last week at this time, the talk was of Tomahawks. But instead of delivering missiles, Donald Trump instead gave a closed-door earful at the White House to Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Then came talk of a mano a mano U-S-Russia summit in Budapest.

The Louvre reopening for the first time since Sunday’s heist of the century. We’ll follow leads in a daylight robbery now estimated at 88 million euros and check security at the world’s most visited museum.

Sometimes former presidents do go to jail. Nicolas Sarkozy has begun his five-year sentence over the illicit financing of his 2007 presidential campaign by Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Is this proof that justice is truly blind? Or, as his supporters contend, are we seeing revenge by magistrates who were often maligned by the 70-year-old conservative when he was in power? France is split on that debate.

Why is the United States suddenly in the business of blowing boats out of the water in the Caribbean? And why without summation? More than 30 people have been killed in seven strikes that started in early September, all under the orders of the same Donald Trump who wants a Nobel Peace Prize and who questions 80 years of US military presence in Europe, Korea and Japan. He's now gone beyond a war on drug trafficking in the Caribbean with not-so veiled threats to overthrow Venezuela’s regime. We ask about the operation and the resignation of the head of the US Southern Command that's in charge.

Whenever Donald Trump boasts of solving eight wars in eight months, the US president always adds a sigh of regret and repeats that he thought Ukraine and Russia would be the easiest one to solve. He did it again at Monday's signing in Egypt of the plan to end the war in Gaza. So if rolling out the red carpet in Alaska and bringing Vladimir Putin in from the cold didn't work, what will?