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GZERO Reports
Israeli strikes put ancient Roman ruins of Baalbek at risk
Israeli airstrikes targeting Baalbek, Lebanon, threaten some of the best-preserved ancient Roman ruins anywhere in the world. The temples of Bacchus and Jupiter, which are designated UNESCO World Heritage sites, have stood in Baalbek for over two millennia. The city is located in a region of eastern Lebanon dominated by Hezbollah, so it's become a critical target amid Israel’s offensive.
In November, an airstrike hit a parking lot just meters from the temples, destroying other buildings on the site and covering the ruins in dust and debris. Archaeological experts worry that if the tentative ceasefire in Lebanon doesn’t hold, an important piece of the world’s cultural heritage is at risk of disappearing completely. Fin DePencier was on the ground in Baalbek, Lebanon for GZERO Reports to survey the damage and hear from locals, who see the site as a source of pride in a country torn apart by sectarian division.
“The owner of these sites is not Lebanon,” says local tour guide Fahmi Sharif, “but all humanity”
Watch full episode: Syria after Assad.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
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Just days after Donald Trump's decisive victory in the US presidential election, leaders from around the world gathered in Paris for the annual Peace Forum. With so much uncertainty about the future of America's global commitments, from climate financing to funding for Ukraine, the vibe is anything but peaceful. Now in its seventh year, the Paris Peace Forum brings together a global network of government, nonprofit, and private-sector leaders to tackle the biggest issues of our time.
But on that stage, it's been looking more like curtains for true cooperation. The theme this year is "Wanted: A Functioning Global Order." What makes the current world order so dysfunctional? And a new era of regional wars is making those problems worse. This year's Global Peace Index reported the highest levels of armed conflict since the end of World War II, at a time when geopolitical competition threatens diplomatic efforts for peace. There was no shortage of critical issues for leaders to address here in Paris, but top of mind for Europe was the ongoing war in Ukraine and what Donald Trump's victory in the US election might mean for American support next year.
Watch the full GZERO World episode: Trump foreign policy in a MAGA, MAGA world
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
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In a small town out in coal country, a lone assassin shoots a controversial populous leader. The leader miraculously survives, and his supporters blame the press and his political opponents for fomenting violence. Does that sound familiar? Months before Donald Trump was shot in Pennsylvania in the first assassination attempt of its kind in America in 40 years, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico took a bullet to the stomach during a visit to Central Slovakia. But Fico is just one of many leaders or high-level candidates who have been attacked in democracies around the world in recent years.
Across the democratic world, political violence and violent political language are becoming more common again as polarization deepens, viewpoints harden, and political differences start to feel like existential battles. Here in the US last year, there were more than 8,000 threats of violence against federal lawmakers alone, a tenfold increase since 2016. And as we head into the most contentious and high-stakes election in America's modern history, people are bracing for more. A poll taken just after the attempt on Trump's life showed that two-thirds of Americans think the current environment makes political violence more likely. Who is responsible for stopping this slide into violence? Is it our leaders, our media outlets, or our social media platforms? Is it ourselves? Unless things change, we will be lucky if it's another 40 years before this happens again in the US.
Watch full episode: Trump, Biden & the US election: What could be next?
Season 7 of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, launches nationwide on public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don''t miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
GZERO went inside the Shatila Camp in Beirut, one of Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camps, to better understand what the loss of UNRWA funding would mean for the people who call it home—the teachers, doctors, and local government workers who rely on UNRWA to provide basic services, like education, healthcare, and clean water to residents. The agency says it has enough funds to last through June, but it will need to make some tough choices after that.
“The reason UNRWA still exists after 75 years is because there is no political solution,” says Dorothee Klaus, URWA’s Lebanon director, “It is time to find a solution for Palestinian refugees to live in dignity like everybody else.
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The past few weeks of student protests, counter-protests, and police activity at Columbia have been the tensest moments the University has seen in over 50 years. What’s it like to be a student and graduating senior during this historic moment?
When GZERO writer Riley Callanan began her senior year at Barnard, the women’s college within Columbia, she never expected it would end this way: thousands of student protesters, an encampment and takeover of an administrative building, the attention of the national news media, armed police officers swarming campus, and, ultimately, a canceled graduation ceremony. Now, as she tells colleague Alex Kliment on GZERO World, instead of senior galas and grad parties, Columbia students are having intense debates over the Israel-Palestine conflict, antisemitism, and free speech.
Callanan has been documenting it all—from the early protests on the academic quad to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson delivering on her library steps. GZERO correspondent Alex Kliment sat down with Callahan to hear more about what it’s like to be a college senior in 2024, what she saw during the protests, and what happens after graduation.“We absolutely need to change the default setting on campuses from confrontation is romanticized to cooperation is the norm."
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
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“Putin was my mistake. Getting rid of him is my responsibility.”
It’s clear by the time the character Boris Berezovsky utters that chilling line in the new Broadway play “Patriots” that any attempt to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise would be futile, perhaps even fatal.
The show, which opened for a limited run in New York on April 22, stars Tony and Emmy-nominated actor Michael Stuhlbarg as Berezovsky, a larger-than-life oligarch whose billions buy him into the highest ranks of Russian power after the fall of the Soviet Union. When asked by President Boris Yeltsin to find a successor to lead the fledgling nation, Berezovsky taps Putin, a former KGB agent and ex-mayor of St. Petersburg who few knew well.
The play’s director, Rupert Goold, said while the play is set in a specific moment in modern Russian history, the script has needed changes along the way as major developments colored Putin’s story.
“It does feel like the filter on it changes every day because something else happens every day,” actor Will Keen, who originated the role of Putin in London two years ago, told GZERO’s Tony Maciulis. “It feels like the play has, overall, become darker and darker. It seems to become more and more perturbing.”
“Patriots'' was written by Peter Morgan, creator of Netflix’s “The Crown” and the play puts a similarly-styled lens on Russian history. It’s Shakespearean, more melodrama than history lesson, but the characters are very real. The Broadway audience will also likely receive the show differently than the West End crowd in London, in part because of America’s long and contentious relationship with Russia, and the current polarization in US politics and discourse.
“Patriots” is playing a 12-week run at Broadway’s Barrymore theater.
Catch this full episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on public television beginning this Friday, April 26. Check local listings.
Since 2022, New York City has absorbed more than 170,000 migrants, mostly sent on buses by Texas officials from the US-Mexico border. Many of them are asylum-seekers who hail from South American countries facing political and economic upheaval, like Venezuela and El Salvador. But increasingly, people from Asia, western Africa, and the Caribbean have been making the difficult journey to the US via the southern border as well.
Unlike other so-called “sanctuary cities,” New York has a legal mandate, known as a consent decree, that requires the city to provide shelter to anyone who asks for it. But the already under-funded, under-resourced system is struggling to deal with the influx of so many people. Adding to the chaos, in October, the city changed its policy to require everyone in the shelter system to reapply for a bed every 30-60 days. For asylum seekers already trying to navigate byzantine legal and healthcare systems, the instability can have devastating consequences.
That’s why grassroots organizers like Power Malu of Artists Athletes Activists, Adama Bah of Afrikana, and Ilze Thielmann of TeamTLC have been stepping up to fill a major gap in the city’s immigration system: greeting arrivals, pointing them towards resources, providing food and clothing. Most crucially, they're help people understand their rights and apply for asylum, so they can get work permits and find permanent housing.
Speaking from the front lines of this crisis, the organizers say the city isn't fully meeting the needs of the migrants coming here, despite spending $1.45 billion on migrant costs alone in 2023. "The illusion is that they're in these beautiful hotels and they're getting all of these services and it's not true," Malu says, "That's why you have organizations like ours that have stepped up and had to change from welcoming to now doing case management, social services, helping them with mental health therapy."
GZERO’s Alex Kliment spent time on the ground with newly-arrived asylum-seekers and the volunteers to better understand the reality on the ground, how this current crisis getting so much national attention is functioning day to day, and if the city could be doing more to help.
GZERO has reached out to City Hall for comment and will update with any response.
Learn more about the organizations mentioned in this report:
Catch this full episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on public television beginning this Friday, March 15. Check local listings.
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