News & Analysis

In an "Upfront" special, we speak to former U.S. President Barack Obama adviser Derek Chollet on the legacy of the outgoing president's foreign and security policies.

In the Reality Check, Mehdi Hasan exposes Obama's dark legacy on deportations.

We also talk to Reggie Love, Obama's former personal aide and "body man," on what Obama is like when the cameras are off.

The media layoffs are here. It's new media’s sky-is-falling moment. Instead of the promised golden age, we're seeing rolling cutbacks and massive layoffs at digital darlings like Vice and Buzzfeed. Is that it, for workers rights? Are unions any match for advertising pressure from Google and Facebook?

FRANCE 24 is a leading 24/7 international news channel. Its mission is to cover international current events from a French perspective.

China is developing rapidly, fueled by decades of economic growth. But perhaps nowhere in the country is the process more complicated than in the far northwester region of Xinjiang, where the changes have affected people's long-held beliefs and traditions. Reporter Han Bin puts the spotlight on Xinjiang, where people are experiencing both the pains and the gains of development.

Art serves different purposes, from expressing one's emotions and identity to portraying daily life and recording history. During the Ottoman era in Turkey, artists depicted reality and kept a record of events through a painting style with Islamic and Chinese influences. Although miniature painting has survived to this day, the art form is slowly dying and fewer people are patronizing it. In Istanbul, reporter Natalie Carney meets artists working hard to keep Ottoman miniature art alive and relevant.

A conflict between government forces and various ethnic groups has raged in Myanmar since independence in 1948. The long-running civil war has not only displaced more than half a million people, but also forced the country's young into the front lines. Reporter Barnaby Lo travels to Myanmar's impoverished countryside, where young villagers tell stories of being abducted and coerced to work as soldiers either by the military or insurgents.

This edition of Assignment Asia takes you to the seas of the Philippines and the forests of Indonesia to highlight issues concerning the region's fragile wildlife. Whale shark tourism is a growing industry in the Philippines. It attracts thousands of visitors and generates millions of dollars in income every year. But environmentalists criticize the practice, saying excessive interaction with humans and the feeding of whale sharks are harming the endangered species.

The first episode of this series of "Assignment Asia" profiles people who if nothing else display courage in their everyday life/tells stories about courage, from the gleaming skyscrapers of Shanghai to the farmlands of the Lao countryside. First we go to the gleaming skyscrapers of Shanghai to discover a people whose lives are less than "gleaming." For Shanghai depends for its growth on the cheap labor of migrant workers. Reporter Han Bin takes high above the city to meet the workers who endure lives away from their loved ones to earn a living away from the poverty in their hometowns.