Freezing and Fighting for Aid: Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

As Syria’s civil war has raged over the past four years, more than a million refugees have fled into neighboring Lebanon. The Bekaa Valley, which serves as the main passageway between Damascus and Beirut, is now home to the largest concentration of Lebanon’s Syrian refugees.

Currently in Lebanon there is one Syrian for every four Lebanese citizens — a population growth that has created a strain on the small villages and towns that bear the responsibility of hosting the refugees. Al Marj, a small city of about 15,000 in the southern end of the Bekaa Valley, is home to a refugee camp where approximately 400 families are living.

VICE News traveled to the Bekaa Valley to see how the refugee population is faring as winter fully sets in, and found that the freezing temperatures are only one of their problems.

Watch "The War Next Door (Full Length)” - http://bit.ly/1we4sbb

The Billion Dollar Cockfighting Industry: VICE INTL (Australia)

In the Philippines, the 6,000 year-old sport of cockfighting has been transformed into a fully-legal, billion dollar industry. Known locally as sabong, it takes place in 2,500 dedicated stadiums across the country and kills an estimated 30 million roosters each year.

The Last Farmer in Fukushima's Post-Nuclear Wasteland: VICE INTL (Japan)

Two years since the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant went into full meltdown, and the resulting 20km evacuation zone was enforced, one farmer still remains behind braving high levels of radiation and loneliness to tend to abandoned animals.

His name is Naoto Matsumura, and he is the last man standing in the ghost town of Tomioka. Another farmer, Kenji Hasegawa's town of Iidate was also evacuated due to high levels of radiation, he sought refuge in temporary housing. Faced with a post­nuclear world both these men share brutally honest views on the state of their lives, TEPCO, government inaction and some of the hardest situations they have had to face in the midst of overwhelming radioactivity.

VICE NEWS: Yemen: A Failed State

Since 2011, when Yemeni youths took to the streets and sparked the eventual demise of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime, the country has fallen to pieces. The new embattled government is now struggling to cope with a bevy of issues, including sectarian rivalries, CIA drone strikes, and one of al Qaeda's most sophisticated branches. It now risks presiding over the failure of one of the world's most fragile countries.

In "Yemen: A Failed State," VICE News visits some of Yemen's most dangerous and hard-to-reach places and groups, including the national Army in the country's lawless East, the Houthis in Sana'a, and the Popular Committee in the South, to find out how both the government and the West's policy toward Yemen have gone wrong.

Check out "Al-Qaeda Hospital Massacre in Yemen" - http://bit.ly/1lWbsLA

VICE NEWS: Ghosts of Aleppo (Full Length)

Aleppo is Syria's largest metropolitan area and a millennia-old commercial capital. Today, however, it is a relative ghost town, threatened by regime bombing from the air and a militant offensive on the ground. For two weeks over the summer, VICE News embedded with the Islamic Front, a coalition of Islamist rebels fighting the forces of President Bashar al-Assad on one hand, and Islamic State militants on the other. From their secret tunnels beneath the ancient city to their threatened frontline outposts in Aleppo's ruined medieval centre, VICE NEWS followed the Islamic Front as, against overwhelming odds, they battled to retain control of the capital of the Syrian revolution.

VICE NEWS: The Islamic State (Full Length) ISIS

The Islamic State, a hardline Sunni jihadist group that formerly had ties to al Qaeda, has conquered large swathes of Iraq and Syria. Previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the group has announced its intention to reestablish the caliphate and has declared its leader, the shadowy Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as the caliph.

The lightning advances the Islamic State made across Syria and Iraq in June shocked the world. But it's not just the group's military victories that have garnered attention — it's also the pace with which its members have begun to carve out a viable state.

Flush with cash and US weapons seized during its advances in Iraq, the Islamic State's expansion shows no sign of slowing down. In the first week of August alone, Islamic State fighters have taken over new areas in northern Iraq, encroaching on Kurdish territory and sending Christians and other minorities fleeing as reports of massacres emerged.

VICE News reporter Medyan Dairieh spent three weeks embedded with the Islamic State, gaining unprecedented access to the group in Iraq and Syria as the first and only journalist to document its inner workings. 

Reversing Female Circumcision: The Cut That Heals

On the International Day for Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, VICE News reports on a little-known surgery that restores sexual function to the clitoris for women who had their genitals mutilated as children. We meet and follow a 32-year-old prospective patient who was mutilated at the age of six in Somalia, and who now lives and works as a nurse in the United States.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a cultural tradition that affects millions of women worldwide. Sometimes referred to as female circumcision or female genital cutting, the practice varies in severity depending on where it is performed. The procedure can range from minor nicks to the clitoris to the total removal of the clitoris and labia. In its severest form, the two sides of the vulva are sewn together, leaving only a small hole for menstruation and urination.

While the practice has been outlawed in many of the 29 countries where FGM is concentrated, it persists in some rural areas as a centuries-old cultural tradition, where it is usually performed by women elders as a part of a coming-of-age ritual. The tradition is sometimes believed to "purify" a woman and performed to preserve virginity before marriage.

The World Health Organization estimates that some 6,000 girls undergo FGM around the world every day. The procedure is often performed in unsafe and unsanitary conditions on girls between the ages of four and 12. FGM can be fatal, and can lead to immediate complications such as infections and urine retention, as well as long-term complications such as severe pain and tearing during intercourse and major complications during childbirth.

VICE News saw the result of the severest form of FGM first-hand in Dr. Marci Bowers' operating room in San Mateo, California, and watched as she performed a defibulation procedure — the re-opening of genitalia that had been sewn shut — and clitoroplasty, the reconstruction and restoration of sexual function to the clitoris. 

Read "After Genital Cutting in Somalia, a Woman Chooses Reconstructive Surgery in America" - http://bit.ly/1D5WUOJ