Hundreds of monumental human shaped statues are motionless, and exposed to the elements, on Rapa Nui - also known as Easter Island. A name that dates back to 1722, when a Dutch explorer first saw it on Easter Sunday.

The statues, or Moai, were there centuries before that and are sacred to the Rapa Nui people.

They have also become a world famous tourist attraction and can be found in multiple outdoor locations across the small island. They are heavy and huge - sizes range from 1 to 20 metres tall. Some are upright on platforms, others are toppled over and broken.

Over the years, global weather has become more extreme and is having a devastating effect. Can the statues of Easter Island survive climate change?

Contributors:

Presenter: Charmaine Cozier

The South China Sea is a major world shipping route bordered by a number of countries including China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, all of whom have staked claims to various zones in this vast expanse of water.

But tensions have grown in recent years between China who claim the majority of the South China Sea for themselves and the Philippines. Lately these tensions have escalated into a series of dangerous encounters as the two countries seek to enforce their right to disputed reefs and outcrops in these contested waters.

At the heart of this particular dispute lies a rusting warship, which belongs to the Philippine navy. It has been berthed on a submerged reef, the Second Thomas Shoal, since 1999, an outpost that the Philippine government claim belongs to them. The Sierra Madre is manned by a small Filipino crew who need a continual supply of provisions from the mainland, but the supply ships are encountering increasingly dangerous stand-offs with the Chinese coast guard in the South China Sea. The Chinese claim these encounters are just aimed at blocking an ‘illegal transportation’ of supplies. But there are concerns that this regional dispute could spark a wider conflict between China and the US, who are treaty-bound to come to the defence of the Philippines, should it come under attack.

So, on this week’s Inquiry, ‘What can a rusting warship tell us about tensions in the South China Sea?’

Contributors:

(Photo: The Philippine ship BRP Sierra Madre in the disputed Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea. Credit: Lisa Marie David/Getty Images)

The H5N1 bird flu virus has spread from birds to dairy cattle in the United States where a number of agricultural workers have also been infected by it. This is thought to be the first time humans have caught the virus from another mammal and the first time the virus has been detected in cattle.

This unusual development is being tracked by virologists who have followed Bird Flu since it first emerged in Hong Kong in the 1990s.

Since then, across the world millions of wild birds and poultry have died from the virus and over 400 human deaths worldwide have been linked to it. So it is a concern that the US outbreak has emerged in dairy cattle herds and that there has been some human infection - although there has been no person-to-person infection.

This Inquiry examines how the virus infects birds and mammals and what the potential is for further transmission to humans.

Contributors:

Presenter: Charmaine Cozier

(Photo Cows queuing for their midway milking at United Dreams Dairy, in North Freedom, Wisconsin. Credit: The Washington Post/Getty Images

Since the CNN Presidential Debate in June 2024 headlines in the US calling for Joe Biden to pull out of the race have been relentless. There have been questions about his age, performance, and ability to run for a second term in the White House.

Biden’s ratings have slipped, and donors and party members have publicly said that Biden should step aside.

Joe Biden maintains he will not go and that he is the best person to beat would-be president Donald Trump.

He does still have staunch supporters and he was democratically elected as presumptive nominee by the electorate.

But with weeks to go before the Democratic National Committee meets to make Biden the official candidate, how easy would it be to find a replacement?

This week on The Inquiry we’re asking, can the Democrats replace Biden?

Presented by Tanya Beckett

Contributors:

Martha McDevitt Pugh, International Chair of Democrats Abroad

Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow in Governance Studies and the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at The Brookings Institution

Ed Kilgore, political columnist for New York Magazine

Hans Noel, associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University

Image Credit: Bloomberg\Getty

The European Union is made up of 27 sovereign member states and has several governing institutions. On 1 July 2024, Viktor Orbán’s government will hold the presidency of the Council of the European Union for six months.

This diplomatic role may present its challenges because Hungary takes a divergent view from centrist colleagues in a few areas, two of them being climate policy and support for Ukraine. And in the past Hungary has used its veto to stall votes on policies that support Ukraine.

After recent European elections hard-right parties now have a greater presence in the European Parliament and they have different priorities from their more centrist counterparts. The question is how the far-right, together with Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the EU, can alter the direction of European politics.

Presenter: Tanya Beckett

Contributors:

Thu Nguyen, deputy director of the EU policy think tank the Jacques Delors Centre in Berlin

Dimitar Bechev, from the School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford and Senior fellow at Carnegie Europe

Marta Mucznik, senior EU analyst for International Crisis Group

(Photo:Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Mihaly Orban. Credit: Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

Artificial Intelligence is something that’s all around us in our daily lives. And even if we do use it, whether that’s to search for a recipe online, make a funny photo, or ask it to help with our homework, every task that AI does uses power. That power is electricity.

Around the world there are thousands of data centres hosting computers that process all our requests. And as those tasks get more sophisticated, and AI becomes Super Intelligent, they will need even more electricity.

But as Super AI develops, could it become so intelligent that it is able to solve the very problems it creates?

Contributors:

Presented by David Baker

The Caribbean country of Haiti has been blighted for years by groups of armed gangs, who have proved more than a match for the national police force, who have struggled to confront them.

Now as the country descends further into lawlessness, a response to Haiti’s plea for international assistance may finally be at hand, in the form of a United Nations backed multi-national security force led by Kenya and supported financially by the United States. This East African country has volunteered to lead the mission with their own elite police unit, to help Haiti’s transitional authorities restore order. But the Kenyan government’s decision to involve itself in another country’s problems has raised some questions back home about the deployment.

Contributors:

Presenter: Charmaine Cozier

Image/Credit: Haiti awaits the arrival of Kenyan led international security support mission, Port Au Prince/ORLANDO BARRIA/EPA-EFE/REX Shutterstock via BBC Images

In September 2022 a Christian pastor had a meeting with Kim Keon Hee, the first lady of South Korea, in her private residence. That meeting was recorded with a hidden camera and the film was released a year later.

What happens in the footage is not entirely clear … except that it appears to show two people - a man and a woman meeting, and one offering an expensive bagged gift to the other. This obscure video triggered a political storm so large that some say it even affected the outcome of the country’s parliamentary elections.

So what does a designer handbag say about South Korean politics?

Contributors:

Presented by Tanya Beckett

Image Credit: Philip Fong\Getty

On the 28th of May, in a small country on the easternmost reaches of Europe, a new law came into effect.

For the vast majority of people around the world, this new ruling, in a nation of fewer than 4 million inhabitants, went largely unnoticed.

However, for many of the citizens of Georgia it marked a setback, throwing off course the country’s prospects of joining the European Union and aligning it more closely with Moscow.

This week on The Inquiry we’re asking, ‘Is Georgia turning its back on Europe?’

Contributors:

Megi Kartsivadze, DPhil student, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, and an invited lecturer at the University of Tbilisi, Georgia

Professor Stephen Jones, Director of the Program on Georgian Studies at the Davis Center at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Dr. Lia Tsuladze, Executive Director of the Center for Social Sciences and an Associate Professor of Sociology at Tbilisi State University, Georgia

Maia Nikoladze, Assistant Director in the GeoEconomics Center, Atlantic Council, Washington DC

Production team:

Presenter: Tanya Beckett

Image Credit: David Mdzinarishvili/Epa-Efe/Rex/Shutterstock

The current record holder for the world’s biggest iceberg is the A23a. Back in 1986 this colossus broke away from an Antarctic ice sheet. This process of breaking off or ‘calving’ as it is known is a natural part of the life cycle of an ice sheet. But A23a then became lodged in the Weddell Sea for more than thirty years, until four years ago a gradual melting allowed the berg to refloat.

Since then it’s been steadily on the move, heading in the same direction as Antarctic icebergs before it, towards the warm waters of the Southern Ocean, where it will eventually shrink from melting.

As it travels, the iceberg has been playing an important role on the ecological environment around it, both in positive and negative ways.

Contributors:

Presenter: William Crawley

Image Credit: A23a in Antarctica, Jan 2024. Rob Suisted/Reuters/via BBC Images