HBO Latin America announced the premiere of the fresh, gritty series VICE on June 7th in the Caribbean. The taboo-breaking news-magazine series is co-created and hosted by Shane Smith, co-founder of the edgy multi-media company of the same name. It features startling, groundbreaking news stories from around the world. From Afghanistan to North Korea to Thailand and beyond, VICE delivers some of the most shocking, compelling and hard-hitting stories reported from some of the most controversial places on earth.

As U.S. troops prepare to leave Afghanistan, the Taliban stoops to an all-time low by recruiting confused, innocent children – some as young as six – to be suicide bombers. In Mauritania, young girls are force-fed thousands of calories worth of fatty food daily in order to achieve the country’s “ideal” weight for women. The shortage of available women is denying a generation of Chinese men love and one of life’s more intimate pleasures. These are the kinds of stories that are usually overlooked by the mainstream media that will be investigated on VICE.

Premiering after “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday nights, VICE is hosted by Smith and executive produced by Bill Maher, Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti (VICE’s chief creative officer), with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria serving as consultant.