Air pollution: Uncovering the dirty secret behind BP’s bumper profits
Far removed from the world leaders making climate pledges at COP, are people like Ali Hussein Julood, a young leukaemia survivor living on an Iraqi oil field co-managed by BP. When the BBC discovered BP was not declaring the field's gas flaring, Ali helped us to reveal the truth about the poisonous air the local community has to breathe.
I first saw videos shared on Twitter of burning skies and clouds of black smoke over people's houses in Iraq's oil fields in 2019, and learned that this was a common procedure known as gas flaring - burning off the toxic excess gas that is a by-product of oil drilling.
We discovered through satellite data that Rumaila in Basra, southern Iraq, is the world's worst offender for gas flaring. Gas flaring is not only a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, it is also known to emit benzene - which heightens the risk of cancer, particularly childhood leukaemia.
Russian oligarchs and companies under sanctions are among lobbyists at Cop27
Russian oligarchs and executives from multiple companies under international sanctions are among the lobbyists currently attending Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Among those at the pivotal climate talks are the billionaire and former aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska, who is under UK sanctions, and the billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, the former head of the Russian fertiliser company the EuroChem group, who has been targeted with individual sanctions by the European Union which he disputed, calling them “absurd and nonsensical”.
The Gas giant Gazprom has sent six delegates to the talks, alongside the managing director of Sberbank. Both are under US and EU sanctions. Representatives from the oil company Lukoil, the mining company Severstal, and Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works are also in attendance, all of which are under US sanctions.
Is India's push for self-reliance putting defense at risk?
For those who believe that India is under threat from its militarily powerful neighbors, the question of how and where to acquire modern weapons is a question of life and death.
Right-wing populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has time and again called for India to become "self-reliant" in procuring arms and defense technology ever since he came to power in 2014.
"The state of the world today teaches us that a self-reliant India is the only path," Modi said in a 2020 address to the nation as a response to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Iranian exile who got stuck for years in French airport dies
An Iranian who got stuck for 18 years in a Paris airport, inspiring a Steven Spielberg movie starring Tom Hanks died on Saturday at the terminal, an airport official said.
Mehran Karimi Nasseri died of natural causes just before midday on Saturday in terminal 2F at Charles de Gaulle airport outside the French capital, the official told AFP.
Caught originally in an immigration trap -- unable to enter France and with nowhere to go -- he became dependent on his unusual place of abode and increasingly a national and international cause celebre.
Iran pushes back against protest scrutiny at the UN
Iran has pushed back against efforts spearheaded by Western countries to scrutinise at the United Nations its handling of weeks of protests across the country.
Germany and Iceland said on Friday they submitted a request on behalf of 42 countries to hold a special session of the UN Human Rights Council later this month on the continuing demonstrations in Iran – which would signal the first time such a meeting is being convened on Iran.
Holocaust survivor left on a bench as a baby finds new family at 80
When Alice Grusová was a baby, her parents left her on a train station bench, with no idea of what would become of her.
It was June 1942 and this was the last desperate act by Marta and Alexandr Knapp to save their daughter as their attempt to escape what was then Czechoslovakia ended in disaster.
The couple had fled Prague, but when their train drew in to Pardubice, eastern Bohemia, Nazi soldiers boarded in search of fleeing Jews.
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