World News

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Turkey's military say they have today shot down a Russian war plane near its border with Syria after the jet violated Turkish air space. It is claimed the Russian jet failed to listen to numerous warnings over a five minute period. The Russian Sukhoi Su-24 jet was shot down by Turkish F-16 fighter planes after ignoring nearly a dozen warnings, Turkish army officials said. However, Russia's Ministry of Defence claims the jet was in Syrian...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Footage has come to light which appears to show Greek coast guards attempting to sink a migrant boat. It is assumed they did this to ensure the Turkish authorities were forced to pick them up, meaning they wouldn't be able to enter Europe. Instead the passengers would be taken to the port of Didim in Turkey, the place where numerous refugees make their dangerous voyages towards Europe. The clip was allegedly taken on November 12th....

By Rose Taylor Krishna Bahadur does not complain about his tin shack, quite the contrary. He says, compared to the tarpaulin cover under which he and his two sons spent two months it is like ‘a palace’. His sons Kamal, 12 and Ashok, 18, have said little to anyone since losing their mum Kusum. The 42 year old was killed instantly when the roof of their two-storey, mud house collapsed when an earthquake struck Nepal at 11.59am on 25 April...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  The current, ongoing crisis in Ukraine is the most devastating manifestation of East vs West tensions seen since the Cold War era. The Iron Curtain that now runs along the East of Ukraine already bores a physical scar since the annexation of Crimea by Russia on 18 March. Unrest in Donetsk and Luhansk between the post-revolutionary Ukrainian government and pro-Russian insurgents could lead to further splits as Putin takes scissor to cloth, remarking territorial boundaries as he sweeps...

By Rohan Chatterjee This March the National Civil Police (PNC) recorded 481 homicides as El Salvador continued its steady regression to levels of violence once hoped confined to the country’s ultraviolent past. March concluded as the deadliest month in over a decade, recording an average of 16 murders a day, including six separate massacres, as the Central American nation grapples with escalating gang violence. So far this year there have been more than 1,800 homicides in a country of just over...

By Joe Thorpe In a report published at the end of March the FCO and Foreign affairs committee are assessing their actions after the events of the ‘Arab Spring’. The UK has looked at the Libyan state four years after western intervention and has seen what has been obvious for four years now. The state is failing, and in a way that is very dangerous for the UK. “It was not possible for us to visit Libya in 2015”. The Foreign...

“Spain is different” was a slogan composed by Spanish minister Manuel Fraga in the 1960s to persuade the first planeloads of tourists to visit the sun-kissed nation. Spain at the time was under the rule Franco, a former ally of Hitler and Mussolini who won power with their help in a bloody civil war and cemented his grip on it for the next four decades through brutal repression of political opponents. While Britain enjoyed the swinging sixties and French students...

By Joe Thorpe South Africa is renowned for its high crime rates. Tell a friend you are heading out to the ‘Rainbow Nation’ and they’ll tell you to keep a hand on your bag at all times. Much of the media hype surrounding the violent crimes is inflated and over-stated, however there is at times an air of aggression, thinly veiled, and when media storms like the one surrounding Oscar Pistorius and his murder trial, South Africa seems to live...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Tonight (10th December) sees the latest film from the Africa Investigates series, a groundbreaking show that exposes corruption and abuse across Africa. On a continent where investigative reporters face intimidation and beatings and where death threats are an occupational hazard, African journalists go undercover to find the wrongdoers and put them under the spotlight. In this episode reporter Emmanuel Mutaizibwa and director Karim Shah have uncovered corruption in Uganda. It broadcasts on Al Jazeera English, tonight at...