Special

Thousands of journalists around the world are on the frontlines of important stories, often risking a lot to bring us the facts, while trying hard not to become part of the story themselves.

But some Palestinian journalists are accusing Israel of “deliberately” targeting them, as they cover the recent protests at the Gaza border.  

In just five short weeks, two Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli snipers and at least 12 others injured.

Israel denies it's targeting reporters.

But it's facing international criticism for using heavy-handed tactics.

People in Gaza have been under Israeli blockade for years - and many are unemployed.

And the weeks-long protests along the Israeli security fence appear to be escalating since they began nearly a month ago.

So, are Palestinian journalists being targeted?

It was just one small gesture, one small step forward, but the significance of the move by North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un is certainly historic, and will be remembered for years to come.

Kim became the first North Korean leader to vist South Korea since the end of the war between the two countries in 1953.

He was warmly welcomed and embraced by South Korea's President Moon Jae-In.

Both leaders were relaxed and smiling during small talk.

But big and complicated issues need to be negotiated.

After decades of military standoff between the two sides, their leaders made a declaration of peace and promised a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

So, is peace coming to the Korean peninsula?

If the current trend of pollution continues - scientists predict by the year 2050, there could be more plastic in our oceans than fish. That is an extraordinary prediction.

Now, more than 40 large companies in the UK have signed up to an agreement.

The aim: to eliminate single plastic use or packaging that cannot be reused. The goal: to do it in the next seven years.

The move is a first and the decision is expected to be followed by companies in other countries.

Now, a million plastic bottles are purchased every minute in the United States alone.

And approximately 500 million straws are used and discarded in that country every day. For coffee lovers in Britain, perhaps this figure will give you a jolt: 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups are used each year.

So, what can companies and governments do to encourage plastic recycling?

Eight-year-old Asifa Bano was grazing her horses in Indian Kashmir when she was reportedly kidnapped, drugged, and fatally gang-raped by four policemen and a former government official.

Horrific accounts of the January case - released on 11 April - have sparked protests across India, with thousands calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to take action.

Investigators say the attack was premeditated - a conspiracy meant to intimidate Asifa's nomadic Bakarwal Muslim community into leaving the area. The accused perpetrators, however, have found support among BJP officials and Hindu nationalist groups, who say some of the Muslim investigators are biased against their party and community.

Although Prime Minister Modi has vowed to ensure justice for Asifa and other rape victims, the case has become politicised along religious and cultural lines, increasing animosity between some Muslims and Hindus. But many Indians - in parliament, the streets, and online - have rallied around the #JusticeForAsifa hashtag to demand harsher penalties for convicted rapists and push the government to uphold the principles of the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao ("Save the girl-child, Educate the girl-child") campaign it launched to combat gender-based violence.

“This is a national issue and not a political one. ...This is about our women", said Indian National Congress President Rahul Gandhi at a demonstration near the famous India Gate. "This situation in the country is such today that one after another incident of murder, rape and violence is taking place. We are standing here against that and we want the government to act."

So, why is the tragic murder of Asifa Bano haunting the social conscience of India months after it happened? And what practical measures and penalties can the authorities implement to punish rapists and ease communal tensions?

More than 40,000 rapes are reported in India every year. With every rape case, calls for tougher laws raise, but that didn't seem to have worked.

Every so often one will get widespread media attention and prompt angry protests. But this latest one led to the biggest demonstrations in years, with levels of anger and revulsion not seen for a long time.

The girl was just eight - she was kidnapped while grazing the family's cattle, sedated heavily and kept hidden in a Hindu temple. She was raped multiple times, and eventually murdered.

The suspects include police officers and a government official. And the ruling BJP party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been accused of trying to protect the men involved.

Is the Prime Minister stoking the flames of social and religious tensions?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called in front of the US lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week after it was discovered that millions of users' data was improperly obtained by a UK-based political consultancy group, Cambridge Analytica. They allegedly used that information to help target ads to support Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.

While Zuckerberg apologised and pledged to ensure such a data breach can never happen again, this scenario is a reflection of the ever-changing world of online advertising in which technologies help companies make money from processing users' personal data.

There is a lack of transparency, trust and even insight into how this world operates.

Facebook puts out a lot of information on how to buy ads on its platform. The social network shows you how to create ads that don't look like ads, in what is known as native advertising.

Companies can then choose their audience based on demographics, location, interests and behaviour.

They can feed ads to other apps and mobile websites through the Facebook audience network. All of this is completely unregulated.

According to GroupM data, by the end of 2017, Google and Facebook had an 84 percent share of global digital media - excluding China. Traditional media and ad agencies just can't compete.

Google and Facebook share none of the responsibility of traditional media and insist on being called technology companies - despite making more money from ads than every newspaper, magazine, and radio network in the world combined.

A 'duopoly' has formed in the world's advertising industry, but even industry insiders admit they don't exactly know how it all works.

Frederike Kaltheuner, a data programme lead at Privacy International talks to Counting the Cost about Facebook, privacy, the secret world of online advertising, and regulation.

She says the conversation is about how "companies use personal data, and as it stands people cannot understand the way in which companies can exploit their data for advertisement."

"Facebook loves to talk about the data you share on Facebook, but prefers to talk less about the data you share with them. The data ecosystem in many countries around the world is heavily underregulated and the current scandal shows how urgently regulation is needed.

"Companies like Facebook love to talk about content, they love to talk about the data you share because this puts the onus on the consumer. Privacy setting means that it is your responsibility to control what data people can access But in reality, companies track you around the web, companies track you across devices, they use this data to profile you and then target advertisement," says Kaltheuner.

"So there's the misconception that Facebook shares data, but it allows advertisements instead to target you in very precise criteria, and that's exactly what has happened here," explains Kaltheuner. On the deepest level, "it is the invasiveness about finding very specific audiences, and in a political context, that becomes very problematic."

"The advertisement practices have changed on Facebook over time. And what has happened is the targeting has become ever more precise and ever more invasive. It's one thing to declare that you're interested in something and receive an ad. It's something entirely different if you're being tracked around everything you do, if the company then uses this data to make fine grain profiles of you and then target advertisement. It's not just about advertisement...[Facebook] can still make money with advertisement without targeting them at that fine grain level," says Kaltheuner.

The French president's big test
French President Emmanuel Macron has been defending his economic policies.

He's facing a big test, as the first anniversary of his election nears: the reform of the railways.

Unions are casting the dispute as an attack on unions in general and a defence of state ownership against privatisation.

Macron's challenge is to convince people that his mission to modernise is not in the interests of the rich.

Will he be derailed in his attempt to shake up the world's fifth largest economy?

This month the United Kingdom will host a gathering of some 53 heads of government representing about a third of the world's population, all of them members of the Commonwealth of Nations.

But what exactly is the Commonwealth and does being a member really matter?

The Commonwealth was formed in 1949, in part, as a way to give former British colonies the ability to establish their own government.

Over the years it’s grown to include nations with no ties to the United Kingdom. However to join, a nation must have a historical constitutional association with another Commonwealth country. Joining nations must also agree to the broad principles of the Commonwealth - development, democracy, human rights and peace.

Some so-called Brexiters, those in favour of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, believe the Commonwealth could take the place of the EU. That’s an idea journalist Ishaan Tharoor disagrees with. Tharoor, a foreign affairs correspondent for The Washington Post, believes it’s far-fetched to assume that the Commonwealth will take the place of other global partnerships.

So does the Commonwealth have a purpose? We'll discuss that on this episode of The Stream.

For the first time since Myanmar's military crackdown last year that led to almost 700,000 Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh, a government minister has visited a refugee camp.

Social Welfare Minister Win Myat Aye provoked anger when he reportedly told a group of about 40 Rohingya if they were to return to Myanmar they must accept national verification cards and state they were migrants from Bangladesh.

The refugees at the Kutupalong camp in the border city of Cox’s Bazar say they belong to Myanmar. They gave the minister a list of 13 demands they want met before they return home.

Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed to begin their repatriation in January, but there were delays because of safety concerns.

So how will the govenrment respond and how committed is it to resolving the crisis?

A ''big price to pay''. That is the warning from the US president Donald Trump to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and his backers Iran and Russia.

It was made in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack in eastern Ghouta near Damascus on Saturday.

At least 85 people were killed.

UN investigators have documented at least 33 alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria since 2011. They say 27 of them were carried out by government forces.

The worst was in Eastern Ghouta in August 2013 - a sarin gas attack that killed at least 1,000 people. But with Trump sending mixed signals on US troops in Syria, what more can he do to stop such attacks?

Sadhna Prime News

Alok Bhatt, Director; Ashok Mishra, Bureau Head; Khalid, Marketing Head, Sadhna Prime News, Lucknow

As soon as the reporter tells Bhatt about his agenda, Bhatt replies: ''Our business is Hindutva, exactly.'' The bonhomie between Bhatt and his prospective client thus sets in at the outset.

After the reporter apprises him of his campaign, Bhatt informs us of his links with the BJP government and the RSS: ''Hum log toh exclusive bhi karte rahte hain aur humare apne jo resources hain usmein kuch log Sangh key ya sarakar ke wo exclusively humein dete hain cheejon ko (We are do exclusive programmes and some of our resources and people are associated with the Sangh or the government who give us such stuff exclusively).'' The reason of this closeness is that his grandfather was one of the founding leaders of the RSS and he and his family are RSS followers by birth, we come to know. We are speaking to a man who is already schooled in the mould of RSS.