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Putin Forever Feb 13, 2020

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The residents of an ordinary Moscow apartment block were recently tricked into showing what they really think of their president by a prankster who installed a massive portrait of Vladimir Putin in their lift. Some of the reactions were incredulous, some angry and a few unprintable ..and they had the whole country in stitches. Yet many Russians are confused rather than amused about proposed changes to their constitution. When President Putin dropped his bombshell announcement last month about rearranging Russia's power structure, some wondered if he was looking for a smooth exit or rather that he wanted to stay in charge of his country for life. Steve Rosenberg has been to Russia’s industrial heartland to canvass opinions.

Yesterday the left wing senator Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire Democratic primary contest. He declared the night “the beginning of the end” of Donald Trump but it is just one stage in the race to unseat the President and win the White House in November. Away from the campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire voters in New Jersey tend towards the centre ground of American politics. And they’re a savvy bunch in the Garden State. Sandra Kanthal says the best place to hear about the twists and turns of the 2020 US elections is over the countertop of the venerable diner in her home town.

This week China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak has drawn comparisons with the way in which the Soviet authorities handled the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. Had the USSR sounded the alarm sooner, the global ramifications of the accident would perhaps not have been so severe. When Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan first tried to warn of the outbreak of the coronavirus in December, he was investigated by police and accused of scaremongering. Now he has been killed by the virus which has been declared a global health emergency. Many foreigners have left China on specially chartered flights but Andy Bostock has stayed behind in Suzhou, a city near Shanghai.

Mali may have a reputation for armed Islamic extremists, bombs, kidnapping and violence between Fulani herdsmen and sedentary farmers. But the country is also known for its photographers and one of Africa's largest photography festivals, Bamako Encounters, which is held in the capital every two years. Now celebrating its 25th birthday, the festival is at a turning point says Fleur Macdonald with work shown not only in museums and galleries but also in people's homes.

Life in Ladakh, a region administered by India in the Western Himalayas is often harsh. Remote villages lack transport links communication and many other basic facilities. Getting an education has long been a challenge, especially if your parents are nomadic goat herders. But Andrew Eames has been to visit a boarding school determined to boost the life chances of its young Ladakhi pupils.

Jacob Zuma's Sick Note Feb 08, 2020

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South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma has been charged with a string of crimes including corruption, racketeering and money-laundering. He denies all allegations of wrongdoing and earlier this week didn’t attend his trial saying he was too sick. But photos posted on social media suggest otherwise and Andrew Harding says its South Africans who are really sick - sick of Zuma’s excuses.

A self-described ''Asian man who's good at math”, Andrew Yang is a very long-shot for the White House. But self deprecating humour aside, the Chinese American entrepreneur and candidate for the Democratic party has lasted longer in the contest than many expected. He broke down in tears last week in Iowa, saying that campaigning for the last two years had been “the journey of my life.” Among the audience were some curious students from mainland China. Some 360,000 Chinese students now study in the US but what are they learning about the American way of voting, asked Zhaoyin Feng, the BBC’s Mandarin correspondent in Washington.

In celebration of the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution next Tuesday, there will be mass rallies across the country and fiery speeches about the Great Satan – the demonising epithet for the United States. This year long simmering tensions with America reached boiling point after the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. But this hostility isn’t just between countries. The government in Tehran has plenty of Iranian critics as well, both inside and outside the country. And some of them didn’t just live through the revolution – they once longed for it to happen. - Supported its aims. - Even took part in it themselves. Sadeq Sabah who was head of the BBC Persian service for some years, has his own memories of dangerous days in 1979 and afterwards.

The flow of grisly headlines coming from Mexico has been almost constant in recent weeks. A group of Mormon mothers and children were murdered at the end of last year, this week four boys were shot dead in an amusement arcade and the bodies of two conservationists were found in a Monarch butterfly sanctuary in the west of the country. But many simply vanish in Mexico’s violent drug war. With no body or any clear sign as to what happened to them, families are left desperate for information. Will Grant was reminded of meeting one such family following a different breed of criminal abduction.

Will Grant. In the early 1990s there were newspaper headlines comparing Sicily’s capital Palermo to Beirut. Following the killings of two high profile anti mafia judges in 1992, the government dispatched the army to contain what by that point had become an all-out war against the Italian state. The buildings in Palermo fared little better than residents. Palaces and villas were neglected while the mafia built concrete tower blocks in the suburbs. But recently the historic centre was declared a world heritage site and one man has helped to bring Palermo back from the brink says Dany Mitzman.

Baffled in Brittany Feb 06, 2020

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In Brittany there’s been some concern about how the UK’s long goodbye to the European Union will affect it’s fishing fleets. Last weekend France reminded Britain that the UK exports most of its fish production to EU countries. Post-Brexit negotiations about fishing rights, security arrangements and a host of other issues promise to be far from straight forward. But Julia Langdon finds many people in the historic port of St Malo are not that bothered about what’s just happened on the other side of the channel. They have – as it were - other fish to fry.

Two guards who worked at a prison in Yaroslavl, north east of Moscow, were jailed last month for abusing an inmate. Despite official claims that Russian penitentiaries are cleaning up their act, prisoners, their relatives and human rights activists tell a very different story. Oleg Boldyrev investigated another recent case.

The Naga, a Tibeto-Burman people made up of dozens of different tribes, inhabit the mountainous borderlands of India and Myanmar. Administered by the British from the middle of the 19th century until after WW2, at least 200,000 Naga have since died fighting for an independent homeland. Although an official ceasefire was signed in 1997, there’s still sporadic fighting between the Indian Army and Naga rebel groups. Antonia Bolingbroke Kent sensed the tension in a remote village straddling the Indo-Myanmar border.

In a small village in western Cameroon a martial arts academy has become a Mecca for local youth. With a judo area, boxing ring and top quality instructors it is a hive of activity in an otherwise sleepy rural community. Zak Brophy was made to sweat for the story when he visited but as a reward his boxing coach took him to meet his dad.

A spate of deadly bear attacks in Romania has raised fears that the number of Europe's largest protected carnivore is getting out of hand. Fatal encounters between bears and humans have become disturbingly common. Many believe the steep increase in the bear population is down to a 2016 ban on trophy hunting by environmentalists. But Jeremy Bristow discovered that the bears are far from the only danger in Romania’s forests.

Distorting the Past Feb 01, 2020

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Much thought this week on borders, on nationality and how we get on with our neighbours even at the commemorations to mark the liberation of Auschwitz. The Nazis murdered 1.1 million people at the death camp - ninety per cent of them Jews, but also Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and people from the Roma and Sinti minorities. Two hundred survivors and world leaders from 60 countries. United in remembering but, 75 years on says Adam Easton, the anniversary was overshadowed by disagreements between Russia and Poland about their respective roles in World War II.

The bushfires , fuelled in a large part by the relentless drought, have brought the climate change debate to the fore in Australia. But the prime minister – a big supporter of the fossil fuel industry – has refused to make any changes to the government’s climate policy. This week the state of New South Wales said it would open an independent inquiry into the on-going fires to examine both the causes and how the state responded to them. Shaimaa Khalil met people from a once thriving tourist town on the coast which went up in flames on New Year’s Eve.

Politicians in Ireland are making their final pitches before voters head to the polls next Thursday. For generations two centrist parties - Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil - have dominated the country’s politics and, in recent years, the two have been in an uneasy alliance. Fine Gael’s leader Leo Varadkar, of Indian heritage and openly gay, has been something of a poster boy for the new Ireland. While his government has won plaudits from some corners overseas, particularly for its handling of Brexit, it is facing growing criticism at home. Ireland’s political scene is fast fragmenting, says Kieran Cooke.

Many think of Antarctica as a vast empty expanse of snow and ice, punctuated by the odd penguin or polar explorer. But actually the world’s southernmost continent is home to 75 research stations run by 30 countries. Justin Rowlatt was there for tow months with a team of British and American scientists reporting on the most complex scientific field project in Antarctic history. But thanks to a storm, he spent a bit longer than planned at the US research station, McMurdo and discovered the delights and the drawbacks of life in the world’s coldest town.

Jordan has one of the highest levels of water scarcity in the world. A warming planet and population growth are making the problem worse. But increasing numbers of women there are picking up pliers, spanners and drain rods and taking matters into their own hands. In the capital Amman, Charlie Faulkner met the country’s first female plumber.

From Our Own Correspondent Jan 30, 2020

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Stephen McDonnell describes the atmosphere in China while he is quarantined at home

Lockdown in China Jan 30, 2020

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Hundreds of foreign nationals are being evacuated from Wuhan, the centre of China's coronavirus outbreak, as more deaths and cases are confirmed. British citizens being flown back to the UK from the city will be put in quarantine for two weeks. Stephen McDonnell was recently in Hubei province where the disease was first identified and is now back in Beijing. He too has been told to stay at home for a fortnight and he reflects on how even the Chinese capital feels eerily deserted.

This month, Colombia’s war crimes tribunal, the court which was created as part of the 2016 peace deal between the government and the left wing guerrillas known as the FARC or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, began hearing testimony about the illegal recruitment of children and teenagers. The FARC denies that it ever forced underage soldiers to fight. But the Prosecutor General’s office says the guerrillas recruited more than 5,000 minors during the decades long conflict. Matthew Charles visited one of the worst affected communities in the eastern province of Vaupes .

It’s been a year since a dam at a mine in Brazil collapsed, killing 270 people. The dam, near Brumadinho in the province of Minas Gerais was owned by the mining company Vale - and just last week 11 of its employees, including its former President, were charged with murder over the incident. While investigations into how it collapsed and who’s to blame continue, the community next to the iron ore mine is struggling to pick up the pieces. Katy Watson returned to speak to survivors.

The Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has just moved from Germany to the UK. In 2015 he was released from house arrest and to much fanfare arrived in Berlin. Berliners were thrilled to give refuge to such a global star. And Ai Weiwei said he loved Germany. But since then the mutual admiration has faded: Ai Weiwei has given a series of interviews in which he’s said he’s leaving Berlin in part because Germans are rude, racist and authoritarian. In Germany that has sparked outrage and some soul searching. Damien McGuinness wonders whether Germans really are impolite or simply misunderstood.

New York's health care system is often accused of being expensive and labyrinthine. Yet a visit to two hospitals in Brooklyn and Manhattan left Laura Trevelyan feeling curiously uplifted, despite the physical pain, and the bureaucracy of US healthcare. On her odyssey through the emergency rooms, she made some new friends while guided by an old one.

Salvini and The Sardines Jan 25, 2020

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The anti-nationalist protesters in Italy and the man they are trying to stop - Mark Lowen meets members of the Sardines as well the hard-line politician Matteo Salvini who is hoping to become Prime Minister.

Kate Adie introduces this and other stories:

In Cape Verde, Colin Freeman finds out why Europe’s drug problem is also a problem for the Atlantic islands.

In Greece, Tulip Mazumdar visits the Lesbos migrant camp built for 2,000 people and now home to more than 18,000.

In China, Yvonne Murray gets to know her new neighbours - rats. According to the Chinese zodiac, they are thought to be ambitious and clever, hard-working and imaginative but she finds them a little less appealing.

And Fergal Keane reflects on heroism, compassion and the remarkable story of a woman who sheltered a man who plotted to kill Adolf Hitler.

Angola's Asymmetrical Billionaire Jan 23, 2020

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Isabel dos Santos is the billionaire daughter of the former president of Angola and Africa’s richest woman. She claims to be a self-made businesswoman. But more than 700,000 documents, recently leaked from her business empire, suggest otherwise. The emails, charts, contracts, audits, and accounts in the so-called Luanda Leaks have put her under intense scrutiny by her bank and the Angolan government. But in an interview with Andrew Harding she batted aside allegations of corruption and nepotism.

Escalating violence in Libya has encouraged a growing number of its citizens to flee and risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Sally Hayden has been on board a rescue boat off the Libyan coast.

The 18 year Afghan conflict has killed tens of thousands of Afghans, more than 2,400 American troops and cost the US around $900 billion. President Donald Trump has often said he wants to remove the estimated 13,000 U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan. That would leave more of the fight against the Taliban to the Afghan security forces. But in Helmand Province Nanna Muus Steffesen found that Afghan soldiers and police are already suffering devastating casualties.

Famed for its traditional shoulder-shaking iskista dancing, mesinko-playing minstrels and live bands playing Ethio-Jazz, the Addis Ababa music scene has always drawn on a vibrant past. Now a new generation of producers and DJs are mixing Ethiopia's tribal, religious and jazz sounds with thumping garage beats to create a new form known locally as Ethiopian Electronic. James Jeffrey hit the dance floor.

World leaders gathered in Jerusalem this week to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp - where more than a million people, most of them Jews, were murdered by the Nazis. The French President Emmanuel Macron warned that seventy-five years on, the shadow of anti-Semitism was expanding. Just fifteen years ago, the French Riviera city of Nice was home to over 20,000 Jews. That’s now dwindled to three thousand. During the Second World War, Nice witnessed one of the most vicious round-ups of Jews in Western Europe. Next week, it will unveil a memorial wall of Holocaust victims. One of the names engraved on it is that of Edith (Ay-deet) Mueller. But her teenage daughter Huguette had a narrow escape - as Rosie Whitehouse discovered.

From Our Home Correspondent 19/01/2020 Jan 19, 2020

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In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from:

Vincent Ni on a Chinese man who, like him, has come to Britain and is in his mid-thirties - but there the similarities abruptly end. What does living here undocumented mean in practical terms and why does he do it?

With the approach of Holocaust Memorial Day, which this year marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Adam Shaw reflects on the striking contemporary relevance of his own father's refugee status and escape from Nazi persecution in places as varied as a country estate in Northumberland and a "Lord of the Flies"-like "school" in Scotland. In a letter addressed to his father's grandchildren, he reveals how this child refugee managed to survive largely alone and ponders whether this story is as remote from our experience as we might first imagine.

Emilie Filou visits Pembrokeshire to meet the bug champions of St Davids and how an entomologist's start-up, created with her chef husband, is trying to influence how children think about what they eat. Can their bold ideas wreak a revolution in the city of the country's patron saint?

In Kent petrol-head Martin Gurdon ponders the reasons for - and implications of - today's teenagers not driving as much as previous generations.

And in Middlesbrough, Martin Vennard finds that while the town is proud of its explorer son 250 years on from James Cook's exploration of the Antipodes, it doesn't necessarily know a great deal about him. And that matters, he says, because Cook's life has significant contemporary relevance for today's Tees-siders.

Producer: Simon Coates

Japanese Justice and the Fugitive CEO Jan 18, 2020

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When Carlos Ghosn skipped bail in Tokyo last month the world was flabbergasted. Despite being under intense surveillance while out on bail, with undercover agents tailing him whenever he left his house, the ex-Nissan boss somehow hot-footed it onto a private jet and made it to Lebanon. Now that the dust has settled, the spotlight has been turned onto what some call, Japan’s "hostage justice" system. The country has an enviably low crime rate which is often attributed to a small income gap and full employment, but Rupert Wingfield Hayes says many people are just terrified of being arrested.

Lebanon, Carlos Ghosn’s temporary bolt hole, is a country often caught up in all manner of international rows and intrigues. It is also one of the many countries in the Middle East where Iran determinedly exerts its influence. The Iranian general Qassem Soleimani helped to spread that influence through the Shia Islamist political party and militant group , Hezbollah. So in the wake of Soleimani’s killing in a US drone strike, Hezbollah has been determined to mourn him. Lizzie Porter attends one such memorial event in the south of the country.

In India there have been violent demonstrations against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA. The new law gives amnesty to illegal immigrants from three neighbouring countries, but excludes followers of Islam. So Indian Muslims whose family might have lived in the same spot for generations, but don’t have the paperwork to prove it, could suddenly find themselves stateless. Protesters, including students and Bollywood stars, say the law serves the ruling BJP party’s goal of remaking India as a Hindu homeland and Yogita Limaye says many citizens are troubled – including non Muslims.

China has also been under the spotlight for its treatment of a mostly-Muslim sector of its society; the Turkic-speaking ethnic minorities in its far west. The Chinese state has detained an estimated one million people in high-security prison camps across Xinjiang since 2017 – most of them ethnic Uighurs. Beijing says that these are vocational or re-education camps. But has China’s state control reached new levels of persecution and is it being extended beyond its borders? Claire Press met with several Kazakhs north of Almaty who’d been imprisoned in China.

It may be a global leader in solar and wind power, and last year sold more electric cars than the rest of the world combined. But China is also the planet’s biggest consumer and producer of coal. It has to cut back drastically to bring carbon emissions to a peak by 2030 and fulfil a pledge made as part of the 2015 Paris agreement. However Beijing is still approving new coal-fired plants as the economy slows. On a trip to Inner Mongolia Robin Brant discover that people are not always keen to make the transition to cleaner alternatives.

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