The Inquiry

A deadly al-Qaeda attack on an Ivory Coast resort town in March reminded the world that the terror network once led by Osama bin Laden has not gone away. But in recent years it has been eclipsed and diminished by the so-called Islamic State group. IS has attracted not just global attention, but fighters and funds too. So how depleted is the group which in 2001 triggered America’s “global war on terror”? In other words: what happened to al-Qaeda?Presenter: Helena Merriman(Photo: A fighter is seen standing in front of an image of Osama bin Laden, the late head of al-Qaeda, in the town of Rada. Credit: Getty Images)

Most research places Mexico at the top of the chart when it comes to the consumption of sugary drinks – by some estimates, they get through half a litre per person every day. Mexico also has some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the world, exacerbated by their love of sugar sweetened beverages. To understand why, we look at how Coca-Cola became the country’s most popular fizzy drink brand, seen everywhere from sports fields to religious ceremonies. We explore the role the country’s poor water quality plays, and ask whether a tax on sugary drinks is helping Mexicans change their habits.(Photo: A variety of fizzy drinks stocked on a shelf in a shop. Credit: Getty Images)

They are at once the most predictable and unpredictable killers. We know continent-sized slabs of earth are moving beneath our feet. We know they move at a speed that is often harmless - the same rate as our fingernails grow. But sometimes, without warning, they can slip tens of metres in a second - and bring down whole cities. About a million people have died in earthquakes in the last two decades, most in a handful of huge quakes in urban areas. Yet the populations of cities at risk continue to grow. So, how can we quake-proof a city?(Photo: A general view shows excavator vehicles and rescue workers in front of a building which collapsed in the 6.4 magnitude earthquake, in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan early on 9 February, 2016. Credit: Getty Images)

Pay packets in developed economies have hardly grown in decades. Economic output and the number of people in jobs have both improved since the global downturn. But with income levels failing to rise, ordinary workers aren't feeling the benefit. And for many, the good times were over long before the 2008 financial crash.In this edition of The Inquiry we hear from experts in the three largest economies to have suffered flat wage growth in recent years: Japan, Germany and the US. What lies behind the experience in each country – and can those answers help to explain the wider phenomenon?Presenter: Linda Yueh

The clash between Apple and the FBI is the latest battle in a century-long conflict over the power to keep secrets. The FBI wants Apple to build a “backdoor to the iPhone” so that it can read encrypted data on a locked phone used by one of the San Bernadino attackers. Apple says such a backdoor would be the equivalent of “a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks”. Creating such a key, Apple says, would “undermine decades of security advancements”. Cryptography was once controlled by the state, which deployed it for military and diplomatic ends. But in the 1970s, long-haired hippy Whitfield Diffie came up with what has been described as the most revolutionary concept in encryption since the Renaissance. Diffie’s invention took the keys away from the state and marked the start of the ‘Crypto Wars’ – the fight for the right of individuals and companies to communicate beyond the gaze of government agencies. The Inquiry tells the compelling story of the ongoing encryption war, taking evid

Bashar al-Assad and his Syrian National Army appear to have the upper hand. The president has the momentum in a civil war that has raged for five years. It is a very different picture from that of 2011, when a wave of popular protests spread through the country and the international community demanded Mr Assad’s resignation as his army brutally crushed demonstrations. At home, he remains in the presidential palace, supported by his inner circle. Russian air strikes and support from Iranian Revolutionary Guards have helped the Syrian leader win key battles. And on the international stage, the threat from so-called Islamic State and the role of jihadi groups within the opposition have caused those countries which wanted him gone to consider whether that remains a viable policy. So, has President Assad won?(Photo: President Assad makes a speech. Credit: AP)

Mosquitoes are the most dangerous animals on the planet. They spread diseases - malaria, dengue and zika – that kill huge numbers of people and cause suffering to many more.So why not eradicate them?It wouldn’t be easy. Scientists in Mali have found the mosquito is a surprisingly formidable foe, able to hide for months and evade capture. Other scientists are working on genetically-modifying mosquito populations so that they can’t breed.But could releasing these re-modelled mosquitoes have unintended consequences? And might we accidentally destroy ecosystems by removing mosquitoes altogether? It turns out this tiny creature presents us with huge practical and ethical problems. Presenter: Michael Blastland(Image: Fumigation against the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Credit AFP/Getty)

At 4pm on 6 October 2008, as the global financial crisis ravaged Iceland’s economy, its prime minister addressed the nation. "There is a danger, fellow citizens," he said, "that Iceland could be sucked into the whirlpool and the result could be national bankruptcy. It was decided this morning to suspend trading with the banks. God Bless Iceland.” The message was clear. Iceland was about to do what no other country had done - let its banking sector fail. And that was only the start. Over the coming years, Iceland would go on to do much more - clean up its banks and prosecute many senior bankers. And the story is still unfolding. Just two months ago, five more bank executives were jailed. So how exactly has Iceland done it? What happened next to Iceland’s economy? And why aren’t other nations following Iceland’s example?(Photo: Protest against the Icelandic government 29 November 2008 in Reykjavik. Credit AFP/Getty Images)

The World Health Organisation says the number of cancer cases will rise by 70% over the next 20 years. A huge amount of effort and money is spent fighting the disease. But are we getting that fight right? One leading oncologist, Vincent DeVita, tells us the nature of modern medical research and oversight means we are not able to benefit as much as we might from the extraordinary clinical tools we have at our disposal. Another expert witness, professor Heidi Williams from MIT, describes research which shows incentives for drug companies promote short term gains over treatments that could cure early stage cancers. Dr Christopher Wild from the WHO says it does not make sense to spend most of the cancer research budget on cures when up to 40% of cancers are preventable. And, Pekka Puska, a pioneer in the world of public health, explains how communities can make big changes and prevent many cases of lifestyle-related cancers.(Photo: Lab Technician preparing protein, Credit: Reuters Archive)

When President Obama wept at a recent press conference to announce action on gun control, his tears might have been born of frustration as well as sadness. Despite frequent mass-shootings, events which some might think would strengthen the case for tighter gun laws, it is difficult for any politician or party to change the rules on gun ownership in the US. One organisation is often credited with, or blamed for that - the National Rifle Association, or NRA. This programme is not about the arguments over gun control but about the NRA itself. Few could dispute its success. Even if one allows for the possibility that it reflects the public mood, rather than shapes it, it has unquestionably changed the gun debate in Washington DC. So how has it done it? Former NRA insiders recall how the NRA was transformed from a hunting and marksmanship club into a political lobbying group in the 1970s, and the tactics it used from then on to influence Washington lawmakers by organising its huge grass roots base.(Photo: US-Polit

The air in much of China is so bad the government has repeatedly declared "war" on it. The enemy are tiny particulates which spew forth from countless cars, coal-fired power stations and steel plants to create a dense, putty-coloured smog. Known as PM2.5s, after their length in micrometres, the particulates contain toxic droplets so small they embed deep in the lungs and sometimes even the bloodstream. A former Chinese minister of health has estimated that as many as 500,000 Chinese citizens die prematurely because of them every year. Others have suggested the figure is far higher. Campaigners speak of an ‘airpocalypse’. Public anger is rising, and winning this war has become a top priority for the Communist Party. Beijing recently issued its first pollution 'red alert', closing schools, factories and construction sites. It ordered half of all private cars off the road. But such draconian measures were only temporary. The real question, in a country where millions of people still look to industrialisation t

Gender identity is considered more fluid than ever because of the success of the trans movement. But most trans people, just like everyone else, still identify as either a man or a women. For those who feel they are neither – or both – the male-female distinction does not fit. And, for the one in 2000 who are born with indeterminate sex, finding a place in this binary world can be damaging. So, are there enough genders? We hear from Dr Imran Mushtaq, who works with intersex children at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London; bi-gender vlogger Brin Convenient; Tamara Adrian, Venezuela’s first transgender congresswomen (who wants gender erased from official forms); and the writer Mark Gevisser.(Photo: Transgender transsexual concept. Credit: Thinkstock by Getty Images)

The richest 10% of Americans earn half of all of income. In Britain, the top 10% hold 40% of all the income. Inequality is not just an issue for rich countries. A billion people have been lifted out of poverty since 1990, and inequality has been rising in many other countries too. So, how much inequality is too much? Many may recoil from such a question - inequality is a dirty word. But this programme isn't about fairness. This programme is about economics – and how far inequality affects growth and prosperity. Presented by Linda Yueh.(Photo: A woman walks past a poor man. Credit: Getty Images)

The world has a problem. The climate is changing. At least, most people think so. That’s why global leaders have been meeting in Paris to work out a way to deal with the problem. They blame carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, much of it released by the human need for energy, obtained from fossil fuels like oil and coal. But believe it or not the world also has a solution at hand: sunlight. Harvest it where it shines brightest, in the Sahara Desert for example, and you have the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card: a techno-fix to the mother of all problems. So, our question this week: why don't we solar panel the Sahara? Our contributors include: Gerhard Knies, a German physicist who has developed the idea; Tony Patt, who leads on this issue for the European Research Council; Daniel Egbe from the African Network for Solar Energy; and Helen Anne Curry, a technology historian, from Cambridge University in the UK. Presented by Michael Blastland(Photo: Sahara Desert. Credit: Getty Images)

The UN forecasts that the number of people living in Africa will double in the next 35 years. Nigeria, the fastest-growing nation, is expected to become the third-largest country in the world by 2050. By the end of the century, almost 40% of the world’s population will live on this one continent. It raises questions about how countries – some of which are already facing big challenges – will cope with twice the number of inhabitants in just one generation. There are fears about the impact a demographic explosion will have on health, society and the environment. But others say Africa’s population boom could turn out to be a good news story. How will a population boom change Africa? Ruth Alexander investigates.(Photo: Onitsha-Asaba Highway. Credit: Pius Utomi Ekpei/Getty Images)

Many claim that ‘Islamic State’ is the ideological offspring of Saudi Arabia; that the strict form of Islam originating in the Kingdom - and the Saudi state's aggressive promotion of it around the world – has fostered terrorism. Saudi Arabia is also accused of funding IS, either directly or by failing to prevent private citizens from sending money to the group. But what is the evidence for these claims? Our expert witnesses include: a former recruiter for Al Qaeda who explains what motivates jihadists; an Islamic law scholar who explains the little-understood beliefs of the so-called Islamic State; and a Saudi government official who says, far from aiding IS, his country is at the cutting edge of countering it.Presenter: Helena Merriman(Photo: Kingdom Tower in Riyadh. Credit to Shutterstock)

Imagine waking up one morning to the sound of a helicopter overhead. You look out and see that packages are being dropped in front of the homes of everyone on your street. You race downstairs, and tear open your package. Inside? Exactly $10,000 in new bills. A gift of freshly-printed money from your government – no strings attached. What would you do? Economists hope you would go out and spend – and that your spending would help kick start the post-industrial economies which many fear are grinding, inexorably, to a complete halt. We explore whether so-called “helicopter money” (more likely, money would simply be wired to your account) really is a solution to the problem of a low- or no-growth future. Our expert witnesses include: Adair Turner, the former head of Britain’s Financial Services Authority, who is prescribing just such economic medicine; Mohamed El-Erian, chairman of President Obama's Global Development Council; Professor Barry Eichengreen of Berkeley University in the United States and Richard Koo

In November the US Drug Enforcement Administration issued its Drug Threat Assessment. Mexican ‘transnational criminal organisations’, it said, are the primary suppliers of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana to the United States. Drugs – the DEA says – are killing 46,000 Americans a year. But between Mexico’s criminal enterprises, and their clients, is a vast expanse of difficult geography and an international border. So, how do cartels get drugs into the US? The Inquiry hears from serving US law enforcement personnel tasked with intercepting drugs shipments. Their stories – of tunnels, “narco-subs” and complex criminal networks – are astonishing.(Photo: Narco-Submarines, Credit: Reuters)

We first asked this question over a year ago. So far, the answer has been no. The attacks in Paris killed 129 people. The day before that 43 people died when suicide bombers hit Beirut. Nearly two weeks before that a Russian passenger jet exploded over Egypt, killing all 224 people on board. The group calling itself Islamic State has claimed responsibility for all these attacks. If true, in two weeks, they have killed almost 400 civilians, in places way beyond the areas they control in Syria and Iraq. And they would have managed all that while being challenged on the ground by Kurdish fighters and bombed from the air, by coalition war planes, over 8,000 times. Can IS be defeated? We have gone back to the same expert witnesses we met the first time we asked the question. Now, over a year later, we want to know whether their answers have changed.(Photo: Female Kurdish soldier on the frontline against ISIL, Credit: Getty Images)

New research suggests plants might be capable of more than many of us might expect. Some – controversially – even describe plants as “intelligent”, or even “sentient”. So, this week, we’re asking: have we underestimated plants? Our expert witnesses include an academic studying how networks of trees communicate through what she describes as a “wood wide web”, and the pioneer who is using plants to develop robotics.(Photo: US-Fall-Shenandoah, Credit: Getty Images)