Perspective

From the woman who was sent to track down Panama dictator Manuel Noriega, to the lady who joined the KGB for love, to the wife in France who juggled her baby and family life with cataloguing the movements of Soviet diplomats, six female former spies who worked for intelligence agencies around the world spoke to journalist Chloé Aeberhardt. She shares her perspective on the lives of female spies across the globe and whether the Hollywood image of the Bond girl is in any way close to reality.

With cultural venues closed due to the pandemic, the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris has launched a series of evenings with Irish artists called "Addressing the Nations", where they give their take on the state of the world a year into the crisis. One of them is dancer and choreographer Dylan Quinn, who expressed both a frustration at the growing inequality gap but also hope in humans, saying the world needs evolution or a revolution. His dance company crosses the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, a line that is a century old this year.

It's probably the greatest mystery in modern aviation: what happened to flight MH370? On March 8, 2014, the Malaysian Airlines flight disappeared en route to Beijing. Seven years later and despite the most expensive underwater search in history, no wreckage has been found and the families of those on board are no closer to understanding what happened. Florence de Changy, an investigative journalist, has spent years trying to get answers. She has now published her second book on the topic, "The Disappearing Act". She tells us why she does not trust the official narrative.

Seven months after its departure from Earth, NASA's latest Mars rover is just hours away from its destination. We speak to former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman about the perils of trying to land on the red planet, how exactly the samples that Perseverance collects are supposed to get back to Earth, and whether he'll be signing up for future manned missions to Mars.

A recent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit on the state of democratic freedoms has downgraded France to a "flawed democracy", as civil liberties in rich and poor countries alike come under attack amid Covid-19 restrictions. We discuss the delicate balancing act of protecting individual freedoms in the midst of a global health crisis with the report's author Joan Hoey, Europe Editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit. She says that although "nobody has put forward a convincing alternative to the policy of lockdowns and social distancing", checks and balances remain essential.

Ten years on from the Libyan revolution and the power vacuum that ensued, Libya is often described as a failed state. Yet there are cautious hopes that a new unity government can help turn the page on years of civil war. A UN-brokered ceasefire between the two main warring sides was agreed in October and the interim government is set to hold elections at the end of this year. We discuss Libya's difficult path to peace with Wolfram Lacher, senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and the author of "Libya's Fragmentation".

As this year's G5 Sahel summit kicks off in Chad, France is making no secret of the fact it wants to reduce the number of French troops fighting the jihadist threat in the region. So what will be France's strategy going forward? Our Perspective guest is Jérôme Pigné, researcher and Sahel expert at the Thomas More Institute.

Around the world, tens of thousands of children are fighting in armed conflicts where they're routinely exposed to violence, sexual exploitation and psychological trauma. Some 40 percent of them are girls. This Red Hand Day, also known as the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers, we speak to Camille Romain des Boscs, CEO of the NGO World Vision France. She tells us about how to protect the world's most vulnerable children from being recruited and how to rehabilitate those who are.

With his focus on stamping out endemic corruption and his canny ability to bypass state media channels, the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is a thorn in the side of President Vladimir Putin. Navalny may now be in jail, but his support base is wide and repeated attempts to silence him increasingly seem to have the opposite effect. Guardian journalist and former Moscow correspondent Luke Harding shares his Perspective on why the opposition figure is a force to be reckoned with.

The US Senate has voted to proceed with the first ever trial of a former president, ruling that the end of a term does not mean an end to justice being sought. Donald Trump's defence team had argued he was exercising his First Amendment right to free speech when he addressed crowds ahead of the storming of the Capitol. Julie Norman, a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at University College London, brings us her Perspective on US politics and process and where Trump may go from here.