Drugs, arms, and terror: A high-profile defector on Kim's North Korea

Australia’s vaccination rollout has really picked up in recent months, partly due to Covid outbreaks in Sydney and Melbourne. But in remote areas hardly touched by the virus, it’s often a different story. Australia’s famous Royal Flying Doctor Service is part of a huge logistical effort to get jabs in arms. The BBC joined them…

Western countries with higher rates of obesity are seeing more deaths from coronavirus than Asian countries with less obesity, the World Obesity Federation’s Dr Olivia Cavalcanti has said. She told BBC World News it was not clear why overweight people were more at risk, but could be due to an inflammatory response of the body….

Israel’s military was trying to minimise civilian casualties in Gaza, but Hamas was effectively using Palestinian civilians as human shields, the Israeli Defence Forces spokesperson has said. “Hamas, purposely embeds its military infrastructure within the civilian population creating an almost impossible situation where they are using Palestinian civilians as their human shields while they fire…

Chris Fox looks at the best of the week’s technology news stories including: US tech company Yahoo ends its presence in mainland China Facebook says it will end the use of facial recognition on the social network to identify and tag people in photos Game streaming site Twitch adds a new category for animal livestreams…

Ingrida Simonyte, the prime minister of Lithuania, has criticised Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko’s statement about diverting a flight to Minsk on Sunday. “It is so complicated for anyone who believes in the rule of law, institutions and the Western democracies to believe in anything Mr Lukashenko is saying,” she told BBC World News. “I think…