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As Donald Trump prepared to take office, his predecessor Barack Obama warned that North Korea would be the greatest challenge of his presidency.

But rather than proceed with caution, President Trump responded to a series of intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear weapons tests with bellicose rhetoric, warning North Korea's threats would "be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen."

By the end of 2017, US fears of a conflict with North Korea that might escalate into a nuclear war had never been higher.

Then in March, the White House surprised everyone, by announcing out of nowhere that Trump would hold face-to-face talks with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un.

The high-stakes summit is slated to take place in May or June, but the outcome remains hard to predict.

North Korea's isolation makes it difficult to read. And over the past year, the Trump administration's messaging toward North Korea has been as inconsistent as it has been provocative.

Over the course of three eventful months, Fault Lines spoke with a range of Washington insiders in an effort to understand Donald Trump's North Korea strategy. They include former US government officials, policy-makers and intelligence analysts who combined have spent more than 100 years working on North Korea.

The result is a portrait of an impulsive brand of leadership in which personality confounds policy, with far-reaching consequences for North Korea, US allies in East Asia, and the United States.

Somalia has been in conflict for much of the past 25 years. But the horn of Africa nation has been showing signs of recovery.

And that's provoked interest from many regional countries including the United Arab Emirates.

The Gulf nation has been conducting a military training programme and running a hospital in the capital Mogadishu.

But, the UAE's government has now abruptly ended its involvement on both those fronts after a series of recent diplomatic disagreements.

So, why are the UAE and other regional countries interested in Somalia?

They are called the "Windrush generation". That is a refefence to the ship, the Empire Windrush, that carried the first wave of immigrants from the West Indies to Britain in 1948.

Many arrvied as children on their parents' passports - and have lived in the UK for over 70 years, paying taxes and insurance, but never formally becoming British Citizens.

Now, as the government tightens its immigration rules, those without the proper documents are being denied services and could even face deportation.

Some are calling it 'cruel and inhumane' treatment.

The government has apologised and it's promsing an investigation. But will that be enough?

Palestinians have demonstrated for the third consecutive Friday as part of the Great Return March, a six-week programme of non-violent action near Gaza's southern border with Israel. They are demanding an end to an Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory as well as the right to return to their ancestral lands.

The toll of the protests has been high. So far dozens of people have been killed by Israeli snipers and hundreds more have been seriously injured. Yet the vast majority of Gazans say they have little to lose by demonstrating close to the Israel-Gaza border - the eleven-year blockade of Gaza has left them in a perilous position.

Beyond the Great Return March, activists face challenges in building a long-term popular movement that encompasses both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. A much-heralded reconciliation deal reached between Hamas and Fatah in October has sputtered out amid mutual recrimination.

The Stream will examine how the Great Return March fits into a lineage of Palestinian protest and what the prospects are for a broad-based, non-affiliated movement over the long term.

Early last month, Pakistan's Geo TV went black and remains off the air across much of the country and no one in a position of authority is saying why. Government ministers and the broadcasting regulator have denied any involvement.

The cable companies that pulled the plug on Geo are staying silent. As is the Pakistani military, which has butted heads with Geo before and is suspected by numerous political and media observers as having ordered the blackout.

While Geo TV used to follow the government line, it has in the last decade began to grow in another direction, according to observers.

"What we see now is actually Geo trying to not completely follow the state narrative on politics and that is largely considered to be the source of current friction between the channel and the military, according to Ayesha Siddiqa, research associate at SOAS University and author of Military Inc. "Geo was offering a bit of an alternative and even that was not tolerated."

Authorities in various countries tend to grow less tolerant of critical journalism as elections approach - and Pakistan has one coming up later this year.

Among the election-related topics Geo has covered that may have landed it in trouble is the 18th amendment, a constitutional change made in 2010 that forbids the military from getting involved in political areas outside its own remit of defence.

The army chief of staff wants that amendment abolished. Geo has taken a contrary - and, therefore, politically contentious view.

There is also the corruption trial of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was permanently banned from politics by the Supreme Court this past week. His visibility has been much higher on Geo than on other news channels.

"Recently, New York Times wrote an article and they claimed that Geo is supporting Nawaz Sharif, so that's why some powerful people in Pakistan are not happy with the Geo TV," says Hamid Mir, senior anchor at Geo News. "But even if Geo is supporting Nawaz Sharif, it is not a legal excuse to shut down a TV channel."

The Pakistani media's almost complete silence on the side-lining of their journalistic colleagues at Geo tells its own story. One that could, in the not too distant future, come back to haunt them.

"Geo's story has not been reported anywhere except for the social media, and this is extremely unfortunate," explains Asad Baig, executive director at Media Matters for Pakistan. "Naturally, we don't expect any of these rivals to be reporting the shutdown of Geo. Why would they? It's good for their business. It's as plain and simple as that."

Arab heads of state discussed a wide range of issues from the wars in Yemen and Syria to Israel's role in the UN Security Council.

But they were clear about what they will not be talking about. The air strikes by the US, UK and France in Syria are not on the agenda. Nor is the GCC crisis and the Saudi-led blockade on Qatar.

US President Donald Trump's plan to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem topped the agenda.

Yemen is also on the table, with the UAE and Saudi Arabia heavily involved in the war and the humanitarian crisis there.

What can Arab leaders offer? And do these summits serve any purpose at all?

In January 2018, a local paper in the western Indian state of Punjab, The Tribune, published an article revealing that the private details of millions of Indians - gathered under the Aadhaar scheme - could be bought, cheap.

Aadhaar, a nationwide identity programme that is run by the Indian government, is the world's largest biometric identification system. The programme is the keystone in an ambitious plan to digitise India's economy and to make the distribution of state welfare more efficient.

It took over a decade to design and roll out, and more than 1.2 billion Indians have already signed up to it. But it's been dogged by legal challenges and questions over privacy.

Despite news reports raising legitimate questions about data privacy and identity theft, the government body in charge of it, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), insists that Aadhaar is secure.

Just days after The Tribune correspondent Rachna Khaira's data breach report was published, UIDAI filed a police complaint against her.

"I have been accused of hatching a conspiracy, I have been charged under Section 419, 420, 468, and 471, that pertains to cheating, impersonation, dishonesty, forgery, Section 36 and 37 of the Aadhaar Act, that is having unauthorised access to the database I have been accused, and now I am on the fugitive list of the Delhi Police," says Rachna Khaira.

"All I wanted was to highlight these concerns. I am depressed to see how officials instead of, paying concerns to the issues which I have raised in my story - they have made me a story," Khaira says.

The UIDAI's official line on data security has been that the reporting is inaccurate, overblown and misleading. However, many journalists say that dealing with the UIDAI is problematic, that officials there are elusive and often unavailable for comment.

"I would say that Aadhaar is more dangerous [than Facebook], because it's essentially a disproportionate amount of data in the hands of the state," explains Nikhil Pahwa, founding and editor of Medianama. "They're connecting things like traffic violations, property records, and land-holding size, religion and caste, which is data which should not be linked to and collected and used by the state. So, I think the risks are substantially greater in terms of misuse of this data."

But Zoheb Hossain, the lawyer representing UIDAI, says, "I think the two domains are extremely different and disparate. Facebook has far more personally sensitive information about you and me than Aadhaar. Aadhaar has very little information about you. Aadhaar is only a tool to match your identity and say that 'yes, you are who you claim to be.'"

Journalists covering the Aadhaar story are having to tread carefully. Two months after that Tribune report was published, the editor of the paper resigned. He gave no reason, but sources at the paper said the pressure on him after the Aadhaar expose was huge.

The U.S., the UK and France launch air strikes on Syria, targeting suspected chemical weapons sites.

In what is the biggest military action against President Bashar Al Assad since the start of Syria's war 7 years ago, the U.S., UK and France have bombed multiple government facilities.

The air strikes targeted a research centre outside the capital Damascus and two suspected chemical weapons storage sites near the city of Homs.

The action was in response to an alleged chemical attack by Syria on civilians in the town of Douma last week.

The Syrian government claims to have shot down many of the more than a hundred missiles launched – and in Damascus people celebrated on the streets, honking their car horns in a show of defiance.

Russia says the strikes are an act of aggression and warns of consequences. But what does this mean for the war in Syria? And will the strikes stop chemical attacks against civilians?

The Syrian government is being accused of another suspected chemical weapons attack on its own people, and world leaders are debating how to respond.

The April 7 attack in the rebel-held town of Douma killed at least 70 residents and injured hundreds more. In response, US President Donald Trump called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "a gas killing animal".

Trump had previously criticised former President Barack Obama's inaction following a chemical attack in 2013, but it remains to be seen what effect US attacks on Syria would have.

"The record that the United States is going to drop bombs in order to bring happiness or to protect people in the world is an extremely poor one," says journalist and cofounder of The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald. "That's generally the excuse it uses for geopolitical reasons."

Greenwald points to the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya as examples where US intervention based on humanitarian purposes did not turn out well for the people they were supposedly trying to help.

Eli Lake, a columnist for Bloomberg View, disagrees. He says US intervention in Iraq and the enforcement of a no-fly zone protected Iraq's Kurdish people.

He argues there is a now a trend of using chemical agents in the world and "if you want to reverse that trend, Bashar al-Assad must pay a very heavy price." He argues if the US does not do this, no one will.

Complicating the situation are the thousands of Russian troops stationed throughout Syria, supporting the Assad government.

Crippling Assad would mean killing Russians, says Greenwald. He argues a US-led intervention poses a "serious risk of an actual hot war between two countries that have very deep-seated animosities going back decades".

After more than seven years of war and half a million people killed, Lake says "we're watching the consequences of non-intervention." He says the US is through with feeling bad about its mistake of non-intervention.

"The United States hasn't had a policy of non-intervention in Syria," argues Greenwald. "It has armed the rebels to a tune of $1bn a year, not enough to overthrow Assad, but enough to keep the war going."

Greenwald says the US has played a big role in Syria and they are not going to solve the problem under Trump.

Media mystery in Pakistan - who ordered Geo News off the air and why? Plus, the challenges of covering the world's largest biometric database.

Why did Pakistan's Geo TV go dark?

Pakistan's most-watched broadcast network Geo TV has been off the air for more than a month across much of the country and no one in a position of authority is saying why.

Government ministers and the broadcasting regulator have denied any involvement and the cable companies that pulled the plug on Geo are staying silent.

As is the Pakistani military, which has butted heads with Geo before and is suspected by numerous political and media observers as having ordered the blackout.

With no explanation offered, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on trial for corruption, and elections coming - it would seem that Geo's dominance of the media landscape has once again put it on a collision course with the military.