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Battle Lines Oct 13, 2016

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Today, twenty years after the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, Kate Clark, who was the only Western reporter in the country during their final years in power, reflects on what has changed there during the last twenty years. In Ethiopia, the government has this week declared a six-months-long state of emergency after violent protests in one of the nine ethnically-based states. James Jeffrey in Addis Ababa has been looking at the ethnic tensions which beset the country. The US presidential election campaign has been full of melodrama and incident more befitting a reality television show than a political debate. Gabriel Gatehouse passed through Washington en route to the rustbelt to gauge how far reality and the peculiar 2016 campaign are in alignment. Albania wants to be on everyone's tourist destination list after ending its long period of reclusive communist dictatorship. But Rob Stepney has found some national habits are so ingrained that making such a radical change isn't straightforward. The tentacles of corruption have inveigled their way deep into Mexican life, in part thanks to the drug trade. Antonia Quirke has been to the Caribbean coast to discover just how far they now reach and what effect they have on daily life.

Bitter Harvests Oct 08, 2016

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Kate Adie introduces tales of fear, bravery and love from around the world. Justin Rowlatt is in Bangladesh, asking whether security is as important to the country’s leadership as going after its political enemies. In Michoacán state, one of the centres of Mexico’s war on drugs, Linda Pressly visits a community which rebelled against intimidation and organised crime to protect its forests as well as its people - and decided to shut out national police and political parties too. As Milton Nkosi has reported on South Africa’s student protests this week, he’s been moved to reflect on how young people’s political goals have changed since the apartheid era. Stephen Evans is staying calm under pressure, just like his South Korean neighbours - whether they’re navigating the nightmarish road traffic in Seoul or studiously refusing to be panicked by nuclear threats from Pyongyang. And Juliet Rix has some myths to dispel in Verona, as she sifts history from legend in the courtyard which many tourists believe really was the setting for Romeo and Juliet’s great romance.

Bitter Harvests Oct 08, 2016

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Peeling Back the Layers Oct 06, 2016

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Stories of surface image - and underlying reality - from around the world, introduced by Kate Adie. In Moscow, the alleged killers of liberal politician Boris Nemtsov are on trial, but questions remain about who was really responsible for his murder. Sarah Rainsford, who remembers Nemtsov as one of the poster boys for the newly democratic Russia of the 1990s, describes seeing the legal process unfold in court. In Ethiopia, some of the country's finest farmland is drying out as drought threatens the food supply for almost 18 million people - and Nicola Kelly's left unsure that traditional methods of weather forecasting, like reading signs in the livers of slaughtered goats, can work in these conditions. While travelling in Costa Rica's verdant forests, Tim Hartley also dug into the causes of a rot creeping across the country: corruption, on both the small and large scale. Bob Walker's been trudging a pilgrimage path in the footsteps of St Olaf through rural Sweden, and stepped into some ongoing debates about how many migrants the country could or should shelter. In Morocco, it's not easy for women to walk unmolested and Morgan Meaker hears from some who'd like to put an end to the endemic harassment on the streets.

Peeling Back the Layers Oct 06, 2016

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The Last of the Founding Fathers Oct 01, 2016

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Kate Adie introduces dispatches from around the globe. This week, Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem recollects his last meeting with Shimon Peres, and assesses the late president’s legacy; John Sweeney, trying to cover the bloody conflict in Syria, calls on unorthodox sources in Aleppo to do it; Mary-Ann Ochota explores the reality of contemporary life amid the yaks and motorbikes in the thin air and vast expanses of Tibet; Nick Thorpe in Budapest considers this Sunday’s referendum in Hungary on EU migrants and how likely it is the country’s prime minister will win the vote he has called; and Mary Margaronis travels to the Western Pyrenees to learn about the language which has so many words for rain.

The Wilder Shores Sep 29, 2016

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Kate Adie introduces dispatches from writers and correspondents around the world. In this edition: Tim Ecott reports from the Seychelles in the week the president shocked the affluent island nation by his resignation; amid the growing lawlessness in Venezuela, Jake Wallis Simons is taken to the lair of a gangland boss who explains why he orders so many kidnappings in the district of Caracas where his group's writ runs; Chris Simpson in Mauritania considers the reasons for the persistence of the historic racial divides which characterise its society; Jane Labous reflects on the splendid September spectacle of gathering shell-fish on the Normandy shores - and the colourful characters who do it; while Philip Sweeney samples both the cuisine and the political temperature in Iran now that direct flights between London and Tehran have resumed.

Barriers and Borders Sep 24, 2016

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Kate Adie introduces dispatches from writers and correspondents around the world. This week, Lyse Doucet reports from her native Canada on the country’s sponsorship scheme for refugees; Joe Miller considers the major impact there has been on a Texas border town of many months of migration from Central America by women and unaccompanied children; Lucy Ash travels to the Loire Valley to visit France’s first centre for deradicalisation and discovers what local people think of it; Kamal Ahmed considers whether the Swiss, who have negotiated a bespoke deal with the European Union, offer a model for the United Kingdom to emulate in the Brexit negotiations; and Chris Terrill joins a British ex-soldier who is training wardens in one of South Africa’s private nature reserves to resist poachers.

Barriers and Borders Sep 24, 2016

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Higher Powers Sep 22, 2016

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Kate Adie presents the first in a new series of eight programmes. In this edition, John Murphy reports from Najaf on the mounting death toll among Iraqis from the conflict with so-called Islamic State; Olivia Crellin tells the remarkable story of a transgender couple in Ecuador who are challenging some local assumptions by seeking to become parents; as South Africa's athletes return from Rio, Lindsay Johns in Cape Town reflects on the extraordinary impact that Olympic success is having there on coloured South Africans more than twenty-five years after the end of apartheid; Caroline Davies in Cairo discovers how, despite the growing intolerance Copts face in Egypt, they are enjoying great success in the country's recycling business; and Hugh Schofield in Paris ponders the world of Anglo-French mathematics as he studies for his A level in the subject and his son works on his baccalauréat.

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