The Real Story

It has been a torrid week for US-Russian relations. Days after Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election, President Trump met President Putin in Helsinki. In an extraordinary press conference Mr Trump said he preferred to believe Mr Putin rather than US intelligence agencies when it came to accusations of Russian meddling in the US election. Mr Trump’s comments have caused outrage across the US political spectrum – and led to a rare climb-down from Mr Trump, who said he ‘misspoke’.

Next week Mr Trump’s former campaign chief Paul Manafort goes on trial for tax evasion. Mr Trump’s links with Russia have long dogged him but will they now damage him? He has made it clear that he sees the Mueller investigation as biased, in his words ‘a rigged witch hunt’. With the US mid-term elections on the horizon, the fate of the Mueller investigation and Mr Trump’s political future both hang in the balance. Ritula Shah looks at the Mueller investigation and asks what it is doing, what has it discovered, and whether it is political.

(Photo: Special counsel Robert Mueller leaves after a closed meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Donald Trump has arrived in England but he's not getting the red carpet treatment a US president might expect. Big protests are planned in London, featuring a march to Trafalgar Square and a six metre high balloon of Donald Trump as a snarling orange baby. The protests may let people vent their feelings about the US president’s controversial style and policies, but few expect much change as a result. So, while protests still occupy a prominent place in the drama of democracy, do they really achieve anything anymore?

How have cultural forces and social media changed the way protests are organised? And can non-violent protests still force elected politicians to change?

Presenter: Ritula Shah

Poland is one of Europe's economic success stories - and after Brexit, Poland stands to become the EU's fifth-largest state. France and Germany had hoped Poland would work with them to find solutions to the EU's big challenges, such as migration. But Poland is taking a different path. Since taking power in 2015, the Law and Justice Party has attacked EU institutions and criticised the German government in particular for being too welcoming to migrants. Tensions came to a head this week with the implementation of a new law in Poland that requires judges to retire when they turn sixty-five. The European Commission has accused Poland of undermining the independence of its judiciary and has launched legal action against the government in Warsaw. So, is Poland implementing necessary reforms or slipping towards authoritarianism?

"The fragility of the EU is increasing," says EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, and, "the cracks are growing in size." The cracks appear in many forms. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel says migration is the issue that "could decide the EU's fate." Her French counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron, wants urgent economic reform and a "profound transformation" of the EU. His solution in part is to "give Europe back to its citizens." But what do European citizen want? Some want out, as seen in Brexit. Many others don't like the way the EU is currently run. That's behind the rise of Eurosceptic governments in Hungary, Poland, and now Italy. Can the gap be closed between French hopes and German fears? Who has the will and the wherewithal to reform the EU before another political or economic crisis engulfs it? And if no change comes is the EU's very survival at risk?

(Photo: EU flag billows all tattered and torn. Credit: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

Images of crying children separated from their parents at the US border with Mexico have brought a new urgency to the migration debate in the US. After a week of intense scrutiny on the issue, President Trump signed an executive order so that families apprehended trying to enter the US illegally would not be split up while criminal proceedings took place. In Europe, too, the migration debate is testing governments. This week, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, went to battle with her Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer, over whether migrants at the German border should be turned away if they had registered elsewhere in the EU. So, as the UNHCR says the world is experiencing record levels of migration, should countries get tougher or adjust to the new reality? Are public concerns justified, or are they fanned by populists hoping to make political gains?

What is Donald Trump thinking? In one week he calls Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ‘dishonest and weak’ and then proceeds to boast of his ‘terrific relationship’ with the dictator Kim Jong-Un. In just a few days, he riles America’s closest allies at the G7 summit and then signs a nuclear deal with the country considered one of the biggest threats to international security. The president’s critics say he is tearing up the rule book without considering the consequences. His supporters say a new approach to international diplomacy is long overdue. So which is it? Has President Trump decided to abandon the military and political alliances that structured the post-World War II liberal order – or is he simply reminding old allies not to take the United States for granted? Is ‘the West’ dead – or is the alliance mutating into one where the US has more space to put itself ‘first’. On the Real Story this week, Ritula Shah and a panel of guests considers how we have arrived at this great disruption of the international order – and where the world is heading.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

All eyes will be on Russia shortly as it hosts the FIFA World Cup, one of the world's great sporting occasions. The country will get a boost as tourists visit Russia's many far flung cities and spend freely in hotels and restaurants. But staging the event is not cheap. Russia will be spending at least $12 billion at a time when its economy is suffering from sanctions. And - once the teams and their fans leave, the clean-up is expensive and the legacy uncertain. This week Ritula Shah and a panel of experts ask what's to gain from hosting the beautiful game's greatest showcase.

After nearly three months of negotiations and disputes, Italy has a new government. The country that road-tested Trump-style populist politics before the Donald has handed power to a pair of anti-establishment parties, The League and the 5 Star Movement. Italy's president, Sergio Mattarella, had blocked the coalition's choice of finance minister, Paolo Savona, claiming his views imperilled Italy's position in the Eurozone. But the coalition has backed down. Its new choice for finance minister has been accepted by the president. Nonetheless, Italy is entering uncharted waters. Its coalition is unhappy with the Eurozone's rules and Italian voters are looking for relief from unemployment, a massive debt, and what the 5 Star Movement calls "the sea taxi service" bringing migrants to Italy's shores. Ritula Shah and a panel of politicians and analysts unpick what lies behind Italy's divisions and discuss whether Italians are ready to risk leaving the Eurozone.

Ebola is back. In 2014, it killed over 11,000 people in West Africa. Now the disease has struck once again in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This time doctors are better equipped, with a vaccine and immunisation campaign but the outbreak highlights the ever-present dangers posed by infectious diseases. One hundred years ago the Spanish flu killed over 50 million people in just one year. And doctors now say the next pandemic will be upon us in a matter of decades. We don't know where it will start but in a hyper-connected world we know it will spread easily. Ritula Shah asks a panel of expert guests about the scenarios that keep them up at night and whether global health infrastructure is ready for the coming pandemic.

Hundreds of millions around the world will watch live coverage of the latest British Royal wedding. Queen Elizabeth's grandson Prince Harry is marrying Meghan Markle, an American actress. Divorced and biracial, she wouldn't have been considered British princess material 50 years ago. But times have changed and the British monarchy has had to change with them. The popularity of the Harry-Meghan match appears to show a recipe for a successful modern monarchy - equal parts tradition and change. So, is that the formula to keep constitutional monarchies afloat in Britain, Western Europe, and the Arab World? Ritula Shah and a panel of guests explore the forces working against monarchies and discuss how they manage to survive.

(Photo of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle by Eddie Mulholland - WPA Pool/Getty Images)