Beyond the Headlines podcast: Wars on the horizon

This week, we discuss the game of attrition between the US and North Korea, tensions on the Lebanese-Israeli border and controversial cartoons.

A man looks towards North Korea (at rear) while visiting the Broken Bridge, in the border city of Dandong, in China's northeast Liaoning province on September 5, 2017.
The Broken Bridge once connected Dandong and the North Korean town of Sinuiju, but was bombed by the US during the Korean war and now only reaches half way across the Yalu River. / AFP PHOTO / GREG BAKER
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Despite two potential wars on the horizon, people are still finding it in them to get angry at cartoons. This week, nuclear war might break out between the US and North Korea in an unpredictable game of attrition. Reporter Rob Crilly explains to us how tensions are rising between the two. With nuclear weapons involved a war between the two would involve the entire region, if not the entire world. How likely is that to happen?

In the Middle East, Israel and Lebanon might be going at it again. With the US sounding the alarm and Israel making complaints at the UN, war in Lebanon might be closer than we think. We spoke to Luna Safwan, a Beirut-based journalist, who told us that war this time would be even worse than the conflict between the two in 2006.

Despite all this war of talk, possibly the most controversial message to come out of any periodical or newspaper this week was surprisingly, a cartoon. Unsurprisingly, it came from Charlie Hebdo. Cartoonist Armand Homsi shed some light on the ethics of cartooning and how drawing the line in satire is difficult to understand internationally.

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