Kate McGough

German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood before the youth wing of her Christian Democratic Union Party over the weekend and said that multiculturalism has failed in the country. The integration of Muslim Turks and Germans has gone on unsuccessfully over the last 40 years.

From Madrid to Brussels to Dublin to Paris, workers all over the European Union are taking to the streets today in a mass day of action. Hundreds of thousands of European workers are protesting a wide range of austerity measures proposed by their own governments—like spending cuts in Britain and increasing the retirement age in France. The BBC's Nick Childs is in the thick of the protests in Brussels. He reports on what may be the beginning of Europe's winter of discontent.

Yuri Luzhkov, the longtime mayor of Moscow, has been fired by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev after holding the job for 18 years. Though Luzhkov has been considered a popular politician, Premier Vladimir Putin changed the Russian constitution so mayors and governors are now appointed and dismissed by presidential decree. To tell us how and why fortunes changed for this once powerful politicians, we're joined by the BBC's Olexiy Solohubenko in Moscow.

The already tenuous U.S.-led peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians are in danger of being torn asunder this morning. Last night, a ten month moratorium on building Jewish settlements in the West Bank expired, putting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the difficult position of deciding whether to continue with the talks. The BBC's West Bank correspondent Jon Donnison reports on the latest from Ramallah.

On August 31, President Obama announced the end of combat operations in Iraq. "Operation Iraqi Freedom is over," he said from the Oval Office, as he ordered the withdrawal of all combat forces from the country. Now, only 50,000 troops remain, tasked with handing security operations over to the Iraqis.

A documentary team for our partner the BBC discovered a previously unknown population of tigers living in Bhutan at a higher altitude than tigers have been known to live before. Gordon Buchanan, a member of the BBC's Natural History Unit who shot the footage of these tigers, joins the program.

On Saturday, Afghanistan will hold parliamentary elections. There are concerns about violence and about whether the vote will be legitime. Election monitors have been deployed to ensure that the vote is free and fair, yet many challenges still exist. Shukria Barakzai is one of the country's 71 female members of Parliament. She describes her running for re-election and how Afghanistan has continued to change since 2001. We also speak with the BBC's Quentin Somerville, who is on the ground in Kabul.

Soldiers in Mexico killed 27 suspected cartel members in a raid and gun battle near the U.S. border. Mexican president, Felipe Calderon, insists that this fighting is crucial to ending the drug war in that country. "I'm completely conscious that during this last year, the problem of violence has worsened. This is fundamentally because there is an even bloodier war between organized criminal groups in their battle for territory, markets and routes," said Calderon.

Ad Pakistan struggles to cope with a devastating flood, the U.S. has stepped in, delivering aid, boxes of biscuits and sacks of flour, and evacuating people from flooded areas by helicopter.  The U.S. has become the single biggest international donor to Pakistan during these troubles and their presence and aid has shifted Pakistani perceptions of America. However, this may not necessarily mean a consistently positive relationship on a political level.

In the U.S., many are relieved to see combat troops and operations cease to be in Iraq. But what about in Iraq? We speak with Dr. Ziad al-Hassani, an Iraqi medical doctor and civil society activist in Baghdad. He knows what it is like to live in a place without reliable infrastructure or government. al-Hassani shares his insight on the future of Iraq as a whole, the day-to-day workings of his city, and what the role should be for the thousands of U.S. troops who remain there.

People in China and Pakistan aren't the only ones hit by devastating floods and food shortages. Niger is facing its most severe food crisis in a decade. After a drought, heavy rains have washed away the remaining crops leaving 80 percent of Niger's population is at risk for food insecurity. Thomas Fessy, reporter for the BBC explains the humanitarian crisis that the country faces.

The last convoy of U.S. combat troops left Iraq overnight, moving into Kuwait under cover of darkness. Today, how are Iraqis feeling about the war? Is it over? Are they relieved, or worried about combat troops leaving when the country remains in politicial turmoil? We're joined by Lubna Naji, a 24-year-old medicine studies graduate from Baghdad, who tells us about her own feelings on the current situation there. She says, "They had a good strategy for war. they did not have a strategy for what's going to happen after the war."

BP has pledged to give $20 billion in compensation to victims of the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil gusher. So far, $300 million has been distributed, but many are concerned that some portion of this money has gone to people scamming the system.

The Green Zone was established in Baghdad when U.S. troops invaded in 2003, and since then it has come to symbolize much of the American presence, both in Iraq and abroad. It is a fortress, a city within a city, and the headquarters of both American power and the Iraqi government.

Today we take a look at the Green Zone’s future and legacy as American troops continue their withdrawal from Iraq, and whether the Green Zone needs to be dismantled in order for the country to have true sovereignty.

As the U.S. prepares for a full drawdown of troops in Iraq, we check in with Lubna Naji, a recent graduate of Baghdad Medical School. She says she is less concerned with the withdrawal of troops from her country than the restoration of services like electricity and water supplies. Life there is "barely tolerable," she says.

Arizona's controversial immigration law will come into effect tomorrow, unless a federal judge says otherwise. We take a look across the border to Loma Buenavista, Mexico. Sixty percent of the town's population is thought to have crossed the border into Arizona. The 800-person town depends on residents' relatives in the U.S. to send money back home; if their relatives leave, the town stands to be significantly affected by this new law. 

92,000 cryptic reports that offer an hour-by-hour, and sometimes a minute-by-minute, look at the U.S. Army’s actions in Afghanistan were leaked this Sunday by WikiLeaks, a European news organization devoted to uncovering secrets of all kinds. The documents were shared with The Guardian, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel weeks ago, and made public in those papers, and on the Internet, on Sunday.

Three American hikers, Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were arrested on the Iranian border a year ago and were accused of espionage. No charges have been brought against the hikers and there has been little contact with them. The mother of Sarah, Nora Shourd says that she's only spoken to her daughter twice since the arrest. She joins us from London, where she's working to raise public awareness of the incident "so people will know the story and understand how unfair and illegal it is."

Americans are not exactly known as the world's biggest soccer fans, but as the rest of the globe is consumed with World Cup mania, we at The Takeaway have been wondering, who are the world's biggest soccer fans? The Afghan people may not come to mind, but Rahmatullah Qureshi, a civil servant in the Ministry of Education in Kabul, just might be Afghanistan's biggest soccer fan.

The devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has led us to consider the effects of oil contamination in other parts of the world. Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta is considered to be the world capital of oil pollution. But it's a violent place – armed gangs attack people who work for the oil industry, kidnapping workers and blowing up pipelines – and the area is under the control of the Nigerian military.