Following the dramatic capture of the President of Venezuela and his wife by US special forces on January 3rd, The Briefing Room asks what’s next for Venezuela? Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores have been indicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges in a New York court while in Venezuela the deputy president, Delcy Rodriguez has been sworn in as the country’s interim president. Meanwhile Donald Trump says he is in charge of Venezuela. David Aaronovitch and a panel of Latin American experts discuss who will actually govern Venezuela, what’s going to happen with the oil industry and what the implications are for the rest of the region.

GUESTS

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

As both the year and the current series of The Briefing Room draw to a close, Europe and much of the world have been digesting a lengthy document outlining the Trump administration’s view of foreign policy. The National Security Strategy covers much of the globe but extra special vitriol was reserved for Europe with dire warnings that the continent is facing “civilisational erasure” partly due to immigration. At the same time the growing influence of “patriotic European parties” (those on the far right) is welcomed. But there’s more - the US wants to dominate the “Western Hemisphere” - the Americas and countries on its doorstep. It wants more trade with Asia and China, as well as the Middle East. But there are notable absences -there's no talk of a significant threat from either Russia or China. David Aaronovitch and guests discuss what all this means and ask how worried we, in Europe, should be about the current US view of the world?

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Presenter: David Aaronovitch

In a few days time resident doctors -who used to be known as junior doctors - will go on strike. Just before Christmas and with flu on the rise. This will be the 14th strike by the doctors’ union since March 2023. The ostensible reason is pay but coming up behind it as an issue for younger doctors is the question of their futures- they're very unhappy about their working conditions and their career paths. David Aaronovitch and guests discuss what's going on and ask what the problem is with the way we in Britain train our doctors?

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Presenter: David Aaronovitch

In her budget the Chancellor increased the state pension by 4.8 % in line with the government's triple lock formula. It was good news for pensioners but is it good news for the young? A constant background to spending and economic decisions for well over a decade now has been an argument about generational injustice. That the young are getting poorer. David Aaronovitch and guests look at the facts and ask whether the old are robbing the young and if so what should be done about it?

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Presenter: David Aaronovitch

President Trump wants an end to the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainians want peace too - but not at any cost. The past week saw the emergence of a leaked US 28 - point- plan which was wholly unacceptable to President Zelensky and European leaders. But how it originated and why it looked like a Russian wish list has led to intense debate. ( It included Ukraine giving up territory it still holds in the east, as well as the area already occupied by Russia, a cap on the Ukrainian army of 600 thousand, a permanent ban on NATO membership for Ukraine and an amnesty on all war crimes. ) Talks hastily took place in Europe and Abu Dhabi and there’s now a revised version still to be agreed with Russia. President Zelensky wants to meet President Trump to agree the most sensitive issues.. So why did this latest attempt at peace in Ukraine emerge through a leaked document which many assumed had come straight from Russia? How has Europe and Ukraine responded and could it really mean an end to nearly four years of war?

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Presenter: David Aaronovitch

This week the government announced an overhaul of the UK’s asylum system with the stated aim of making Britain look a lot less attractive to those planning to make their way across the Channel on a small boat or outstay their visa if already here. A raft of proposals include ending a refugee’s effective right to stay in the country indefinitely, a quicker way of deporting those who fail in their asylum applications and a less sympathetic approach to refugee families. Denmark has been held up in recent days as an example of a country with much tougher asylum policies. So are we in the UK now part of a wider European trend of clamping down on asylum seekers? And what can we learn from the success or failure of other asylum policies across the continent.

Guests:

Dr Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has been widely trailing this month’s budget and the difficult decisions she’ll have to make in just under two weeks time. This is being taken as code for tax rises and a possible break in Labour’s manifesto pledge with a rise in income tax. She’s said one of the key reasons for this is that the government's official forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility or OBR, is likely to lower its UK productivity growth forecast for the coming years. So why is UK productivity a problem and what can be done to improve it?

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Presenter: David Aaronovitch

Something is going in the southern Caribbean. The world’s largest aircraft carrier - the American USS Gerald R Ford- is on its way to the region. Small boats said to belong to Venezuelan drug smugglers are being blown up by the US military. Old US bases are being de-mothballed. And there’s media talk of Trump-induced regime change in Caracas, with Venezuela’s authoritarian, leftist president Nicolas Maduro in the crosshairs. In this week's Briefing Room, David Aaronovitch and guests ask what this military show of strength is really about and what it mean for the region?

Guests:

Will Grant, BBC Mexico, Central America and Cuba Correspondent.

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

When a disaster or serious event happens, such as the Grenfell Tower fire, the Manchester Arena terrorist attack or the Covid pandemic, you can be pretty sure that a public inquiry will follow. They’re popular with the public as a means of investigating serious state failure. And for Governments they can be a good way of kicking a difficult issue into the long grass, as usually by the time the inquiry is finished a different set of politicians will have to deal with the report.

There are currently 25 public inquiries in progress in the UK today - the most ever, with six announced so far this year. They range from one into Scottish child abuse, which is the longest current inquiry, to another into a police restraint death which has just lost its chair and the lawyers working for the inquiry, to Covid 19 - the largest currently underway. And which by the end of June this year had cost 177 million pounds. David Aaronovitch and guests discuss how these public inquiries work, what they achieve and who, if anyone, benefits from them?

Guests:

Judith Moritz: BBC Special Correspondent

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

Some of the biggest figures in finance, from the CEO of JPMorganChase to the Governor of the Bank of England, have been warning of potential shocks to the global economy.

As excitement continues to build about the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence, the US stock market has boomed, potentially forming a fragile bubble. Meanwhile, recent bankruptcies in America have raised worries that a rapid growth in lending by private companies (so-called shadow banks) might be built on shaky ground - and have invoked memories of the subprime mortgage debacle that kicked off the Great Financial Crisis in 2007. And if that wasn’t enough, the threat that Donald Trump might reignite his tariff-driven trade war still looms over the global economy.

So how worried should we be? David Aaronovitch speaks to the top experts to find out.

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Presenter: David Aaronovitch