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Residents of several Cape Town precincts have suffered through outbursts of gang-related violence for years, and are frustrated by ineffective attempts by the police to end the bloodshed. Now the army has been deployed to particularly dangerous areas of the South African city, after a weekend during which 43 people were murdered.

Units of the South African National Defence Force (ANDF) began rolling into Cape Flats on Thursday, a week after South Africa’s police minister first announced what is being called Operation Prosper. For the next three months troops will support police to quell violence and give overworked police an opportunity to restore general law and order and investigate outstanding cases.

For many people living in the ten precincts covered by the military deployment, the presence of soldiers on the streets is a sorely needed show of force against gang members, many of whom battle rivals for drug sales turf. But critics say the state should not use the army to help in the battle against stubborn crime, pointing out that soldiers’ training differs markedly from that given to police officers and that the creeping militarization of public life undermines efforts to tackle unemployment, poor health and a lack of opportunity that is fueling criminal behaviour.

On Thursday we’ll ask our panel if army deployments are the answer to Cape Town’s indelible reputation as one of the world’s deadliest cities.

A power-sharing deal is agreed in Sudan, but there's talk of another coup attempt.
 
For months, people protested in Sudan, calling for civilian rule. Several people were killed and hundreds injured.

Once again, people are out on the streets. But this time the Sudanese Professionals Association has mobilised its supporters to show they're committed to a new start.

All this, after Ethiopia and the African Union, worked to bring them all to the negotiating table.

Sudan’s opposition coalition has met to resolve differences over the formation of a transitional government with the ruling military council.

Now, they've reached what they call 'a political deal'. But the military says it foiled a coup attempt on Wednesday.

And the military's chief of staff was among high-ranking officials who were detained.

So with the deal yet to be implemented, what does it all mean?

And can turmoil be contained?

Hundreds of thousands of people have continued to take to the streets of Puerto Rico in some of the biggest protests to hit the island in recent history. Puerto Ricans are demanding embattled Governor Ricardo Rosselló's resignation after the publication of nearly 900 pages of leaked group chat messages in which he and other government officials made misogynistic and homophobic remarks about opposition leaders, journalists and public figures.
 
The chat also made light of deaths in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Puerto Ricans are still recovering from Maria and many have grown to distrust the island's leadership as they struggle to rebuild. The leak came just a day after top officials were arrested for directing $15.5 million in government contracts to businesses they favoured.
 
The scandal, dubbed ‘chatgate’, ignited days of protests in the capital San Juan. The hashtag #RickyRenuncia (Resign Ricky) has become a rallying cry both on social media and on the streets. And many celebrities and musicians including pop star Ricky Martin, Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and reggaeton artist Bad Bunny have joined calls for the governor to step down.
 
Despite this growing pressure, Rosselló has refused to go. However, on Sunday he announced via Facebook live that he would resign down from his role as president of his party and that he would not seek a second term as governor in 2020. For many protesters, though, this did not go far enough.
 
In this episode, we’ll take a look at this most recent scandal and ask why similar protests have been happening for decades.

Beijing has outlined its defense plans that include a modern and advanced army.

Global military competition is on the rise and China believes it's lagging behind.

Beijing says the U.S. has increased its defense budgets, modernised its weapons, and developed its capacity in cyberspace - and space itself.

And the Chinese government wants to catch up. Now it's detailed how it intends to do just that.

In a national defense paper released on Wednesday, Beijing declares it wants greater modernization of its armed forces and weapons.

It says its ambitious plans are peaceful, but not if Taiwan tries to achieve independence from the mainland.

China's defense ministry has warned it is ready to go to war to safeguard its national unity.

And it says it will take all necessary measures to defeat those it calls 'separatists'.

It has also accused the U.S. of undermining global stability.

So how will this defense policy play out, both in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond?

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has now been declared an international health emergency by the World Health Organization. The designation was made after the virus was recently detected in the country’s largest city Goma.

The DRC's nearly year-long struggle to contain the disease has been complicated by violence from armed groups and conspiracy theories that have hindered public health efforts. Health workers and some medical facilities have also endured violent attacks from locals frightened that they are responsible for spreading the disease.

Over 2,500 people have been infected and more than 1,700 people have died from Ebola since August, making it the second-deadliest Ebola epidemic on record. Fever checks have been stepped up at the borders, but so far limits to cross-border travel and trade have not been imposed.

In this episode, we'll hear how those on the front lines of containing the outbreak are faring.

Boris Johnson will be the UK's Prime Minister after winning the Conservative Party leadership

Boris Johnson had campaigned on a 'do-or-die' pledge to deliver Brexit.
 
The man who's provoked much controversy, won the leadership of the conservatives as was expected, and will be Britain's next prime minister.

When Johnson walks into Number 10 in Downing Street this week, he will be tasked with persuading the European Union to revive talks on a withdrawal deal. If that fails, he says he's ready to lead Britain out of the bloc without a deal on the 31st of October.

But Brexit is not Johnson's only challenge.

The prime minister has to deal with an escalating standoff with Iran over its seizure of a UK tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.

And his critics will be watching very closely how he handles the so-called 'special relationship' with the U.S.

Donald Trump has backed Johnson to become the UK's prime minister.

So, how will he deliver on Brexit and the many other challenges ahead?

One of India's largest metropolitan cities is almost out of water. For many of the nearly 11 million residents of Chennai, everyday life has been put on hold and instead become about finding enough water to drink and stay clean.

Long lines are common at the water tankers brought in by the government each week. A special train is also bringing in some 2.5 million liters of water from a dam 250km away. But real relief won't arrive until November, with the beginning of the monsoon season.

Climate change and a booming population have taxed Chennai’s water supply. But most are blaming poor government management for the current crisis.

Chennai's woes are being watched closely in India, where 21 major cities are at risk of running out of groundwater by next year, according to a government think tank. The situation also serves as a cautionary tale for other countries that are water-stressed, including Morocco, Iraq, Spain and South Africa.

We'll take a look at Chennai's water woes and ask what the world can learn from this crisis.

Philippine president calls for the death penalty as part of the drug crackdown.

The Philippine president is urging his Congress to bring back the death penalty for drugs offenders.

Rodrigo Duterte made the call during his annual 'State of the Nation' address as he defended his so-called 'war on drugs'.

Thousands of Filipinos have died in the internationally-condemned campaign.

Duterte's supporters, though, praise him for his tough stance.

Three years into his leadership, has Duterte delivered on his promises?

It has been a quarter of a century since some of the most brutal wars tore through the once huge country called Yugoslavia.

The stories of collective memory, the narratives of loss, and the legacies of those wars are still fresh in the minds of so many who lived through those years. And as a Kosovar-Albanian working on The Listening Post, telling those stories - especially the ones that capture the damage done to our discourse and the mutilation of our media culture - has been close to my heart.

The genesis of this report - telling the tale of a large scale project to re-engineer Serbian understanding of their role in the Yugoslav wars - actually came during the process of filming another report that my colleague Johanna Hoes and I produced in January this year.

As Serbs protested their government and its hold over the country's media, it became evident to both of us that it is not just the country's current media climate that is problematic, but that there is a hangover from the wars that has skewed the historical memory of a majority of Serbs.

As I researched this phenomenon, I came across numerous headlines denying key events from the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Headlines like "No genocide in Srebrenica". Demonstrably fake news. And books, 119 of them, written by 22 former generals and politicians - convicted of war crimes including genocide - now turned authors. And finally, television appearances by former Hague detainees dismissing any accusations that they played a role in a deadly war.

There is an entire self-sustaining structure perpetuating a historical delusion: that, contrary to the established proof unearthed by investigators and prosecutors, Serbs did not mastermind and execute the crimes of Bosnian and Kosovan wars.

"The facts are horrible," Emir Suljagic, a professor from the International University of Sarajevo, told us. "But they don't care about facts, and they don't care what you or I think about it. This is tailor-made for the Serbs. And it's made in a way that would fit in the pre-existing narratives of what Yugoslavia was, of what and who the Serbs are."

"Stories make nations. Radovan Karadzic [Bosnian Serb former politician, convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] is not going to be remembered as a murdering genocidal maniac, but as a great Serbian hero who made the first Serb 'state' on the left bank of Adina River. Nebojsa Pavkovic [commander of Third Army of the Armed Forces of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War and convicted by the ICTY of crimes against humanity and war crimes] is going to be remembered by future generations of Serbs, not as a murderer of Albanian children in Kosovo, but as a great war hero who stood up to NATO. End of story," Suljagic says.

Natasa Kandic has spent years documenting and campaigning for human rights in the region.

During the Kosovo war, Kandic was a lone voice of reason from Belgrade, at a time when reason and logic were branded hate and propaganda by the Serbian state.

Two decades later, I found myself standing in front of her, filming an interview about the revisionist literature of Serbia. "I think these books are short-lived, they cannot survive," she tells us. "But even the short time these books will last is still lost time. Time we've lost for setting up different relations in the region and getting over these ethnic divisions and tensions, creating the conditions in which we can think about common goals in the future."

These books are commonly available in bookstores across Serbia. Many of them are even published and marketed by Serbia's Ministry of Defence.

As Aleksandar Brezar told us: "When it comes to some of the books we know that for instance Alexander Vucic - the current president of Serbia - wrote a couple of forewords to some of the editions. Now if you have a legitimate representative of a country write a foreword for books of an alleged war criminal that is a huge issue. And I think that tells you a lot about just how far the current political structures will go in order to push this narrative onto the public."

"People have actually managed to move on from their own experiences of the 90s," says Suljagic. "But the people who did that to them have not moved an inch. Denying a past genocide, it's never just about denying genocide in the past. It's about planning and or hoping for the next one. Otherwise, why do it? Why glorify genocidal maniacs, why glorify mass murderers unless you're prepared to repeat it?"

Produced by Hasan Rrahmani and Johanna Hoes

Questions over the seizure of oil tankers

The threat of military action between Britain and Iran over the seizure of oil tankers is provoking debate about a common shipping practice.

Many vessels are owned by companies in one country but registered in another.

One example is the Iranian tanker Grace 1, which was detained by Britain's Royal Marines a couple of weeks ago.

Like around 7,000 ships world-wide, the tanker is registered in Panama.

The Panamanians say they removed the supertanker from their shipping register two months ago.

Panama has deregistered around 60 ships in the past few months, most of them linked to Iran and Syria.

Are flags of convenience an inconvenient truth for the shipping industry?