When police watchdogs lack teeth

Jason Rezaian knows the cost of free speech. He spent 544 days in an Iranian prison for simply being a journalist.The world is witnessing the erosion of democratic values. The Freedom Desk video podcast is about what comes next in the global fight for free expression.Every week, ... Show More

Just over seven years ago, we launched this daily news podcast from The Washington Post.Our goal was to bring you inside our newsroom, sharing our reporting with listeners to help make sense of what was happening in the world. We’ve published hundreds of episodes. We’ve covered e ... Show More

In his second term, President Donald Trump has gone on a mission to reinvent the Kennedy Center, the beloved performing arts venue in Washington, D.C.Trump promised to overhaul the center’s programming. He installed loyalists on the board who made him chairman. In December, Trump ... Show More

State and local pandemic responses are scattershot; a national effort is all but nonexistent. A creeping sense of fatalism makes for peril far beyond the country’s borders. Aggregate American jobs numbers are promising, but our correspondent digs deeper to find <a href="https://w ... Show More

Many of the country’s institutions are being <a href="https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/11/28/narendra-modi-threatens-to-turn-india-into-a-one-party-state?utm_campaign=the-intelligence&utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=third-party-host&utm_content=show-notes" rel="noopener nore ... Show More

Dozens have died in anti-government protests in Peru. Journalist Simeon Tegel reports from Lima on how the mounting anger over corruption and inequality has implications for the entire hemisphere. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked b ... Show More

Watchdog finds it's "too easy for the wrong people” to join. A critical police report has found that hundreds of officers who should have failed vetting checks may be working in forces in England and Wales.Zoe Billingham, who was Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and Fire a ... Show More

Some 300,000 people are homeless after an explosion of unthinkable size. The culprit appears to be sheer negligence, brought on by a <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/08/05/beirut-after-the-blast-the-crunch-of-glass-acrid-smoke-and-stairs-slick-with-b ... Show More

Poorer countries have received less than 1 percent of the Covid-19 vaccines distributed around the world. Vox’s Julia Belluz explains what the WHO is calling a “catastrophic moral failure.” Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoic ... Show More

"When the agency that's supposed to protect you is also an agency that you fear, there is really little place for you to find shelter," says Jorge Barrera, a reporter with CBC's Indigenous Unit, in relation to a disturbing new report about the Thunder Bay Police Service. Ontario' ... Show More