Crossing Continents

Rebuilding Ukraine after the destruction inflicted by Russia will be a gigantic task. Foreign donors have pledged billions of dollars. But they want reassurances that the money will be properly spent, in a country which still has high levels of corruption. For Crossing Continents Tim Whewell visits Bucha, near the capital Kyiv, site of some of the worst Russian atrocities, to see the beginning of...

As hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers defend their country against Russia, many patriotic civilians are engaged in a struggle that's less risky, but that they believe is also vital. They’re battling for a fairer, less corrupt Ukraine, worthy of its heroes. For Crossing Continents, Tim Whewell follows one tireless citizens’ group in the city of Dnipro as they continue, even in wartime, to...

Cyprus is one of the main resting stops for songbirds as they migrate between Europe, Africa and the Middle East. For centuries, Cypriots trapped and ate a small number of migrating songbirds, as part of a subsistence diet. But over recent decades, the consumption of songbirds became a lucrative commercial business and the level of slaughter reached industrial levels . Millions of birds were kille...

Crossing Continents reports from Poland’s eastern frontier, where the Polish government has built a steel border wall - 186 kilometres long and five metres high, it’s meant to stop global migrants from Asia and Africa trying to cross from the Belarusian side. But the wall cuts straight through the Białowieza forest - the largest remaining stretch of primeval forest in Europe, which is also a UNESC...

Americans on both sides of the political spectrum are escaping states they no longer feel comfortable in - they’re calling themselves ‘political refugees’. And the sunshine state of Florida is at the heart of this political sorting. How can one US state be both a safe haven for Americans fleeing their homes in the north and a dangerous threat to liberal families? From Miami to Chicago, Lucy Procto...

Kirkenes, in the far north-east of Norway, once thrived on its close ties with neighbouring Russia. All that changed after the invasion of Ukraine. Now it’s become home to Ukrainian refugees and a safe haven for some Russian journalists escaping President Putin’s media clampdown. For decades this area popularised the phrase “High North, Low Tension.” Close economic and cultural ties developed with...

There are one hundred thousand missing Syrians, according to the UN, who’ve been detained or have disappeared since the beginning of the uprising in Syria twelve years ago and the civil war that followed. Most of their families have no idea where they are and whether they’re alive or dead. Many are paying thousands of dollars for information about them which almost always comes to nothing. Lina Si...

In the early hours of 14th June, a heavily overcrowded, rusty fishing trawler carrying as many as 750 migrants capsized off the coast of Greece. The passengers - men, women and children from countries including Pakistan, Egypt and Syria - were fleeing conflict and poverty, hoping to start safer and more prosperous lives in Europe. After its engine broke down, the boat drifted for several hours whi...

Gnawa music is a Moroccan spiritual musical tradition developed by descendants of enslaved people from Sub-Saharan Africa. It combines ritual poetry with traditional music and dance, and is traditionally only performed by men. But one female Moroccan artist, Asmâa Hamzaoui, has broken the mould. She's become an international star, who has even performed for Madonna on her birthday. Reporter Myriam...

In 2020 Belize was broke. Again. This small, climate-vulnerable, Central American nation is home to the western hemisphere’s longest barrier reef. And it was about to default on a debt of over half a billion dollars. Enter an American NGO... The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is the world’s largest conservation charity. TNC made an offer to the government of Belize: it would help restructure the debt, i...

Tens of thousands of Zimbabweans are fleeing their country, looking for work in the West, especially in the United Kingdom. Last year Zimbabwe was the third largest source of foreign workers for the UK, behind India and Nigeria, and ahead of the Philippines and Pakistan, which have much larger populations. A popular social media post reads: “the Zimbabwean dream is to leave Zimbabwe.” Many of thos...

Tens of thousands of Russian criminals – murderers, rapists, robbers – were recruited from prisons by the mercenary group, Wagner, to fight in Ukraine. Now, after six months on the battlefield, the survivors have returned home, with official pardons. Many served only a fraction of their original sentences. And now, they're officially treated as heroes - protected by a new law which criminalises di...

Millions of people left Romania after it entered the EU in 2007. They were haemorrhaging doctors at such a rate they had to shut entire hospitals and losing so many builders they had to cancel major infrastructure projects. By 2015, nearly 20% of the population lived abroad. Now their government wants them to come home. They’ve doubled health care salaries, offered tax breaks to builders and dishe...

The battle to keep the peace between people and elephants in northern Botswana. The earth’s largest land mammal, the elephant, is an endangered species. Poaching, habitat loss and disease have decimated elephant populations. But not in Botswana, which has the world’s biggest population of elephants. In the north of the country, in the area around the remarkable Okavango Delta (the world’s largest...

For more than 15 months the Ukrainian armed forces have held out against the superior numbers of the Russian invasion force. But not every Ukrainian man subject to the draft is willing to fight. More than 6,000 Ukrainian men of military age have been granted protection in Romania since the beginning of the war, according to figures supplied by the Romanian immigration authority. Some left Ukraine...

New Orleans is the murder capital of the United States: researchers into 2022’s crime figures say it suffered more homicides per capita than any other major city. Carjackings, armed robberies and other potentially lethal offences are also at sky high levels in ‘The Big Easy’ - a place better known for its happy mix of cuisine, carnival and colonial architecture. Crime plagues many American cities,...

In the chaos following Turkey’s devastating earthquake in February, Omar was separated from his son Ahmed after both were pulled alive from the collapsed ruins of their home. Omar's wife and older son were killed. But he believes Ahmed could still be alive. Many children went missing in the aftermath of the earthquake. Some ended up in hospitals or childrens’ homes on the other side of the country...

Thousands of Kenyan villagers are being given free cash as part of a huge trial being run by an American non-profit, GiveDirectly. Why? Some aid organisations believe that simply giving people money is one of the most effective ways to tackle extreme poverty and boost development. After all, they argue, local people themselves know best how to use the funds to improve their lives. But does it work...

50 years after the last US bombs fell on Laos, they’re still killing and maiming. In an effort to stop the march of communism, between 1964 and 1973, America dropped over two million tonnes of ordnance on neutral Laos: on average, a planeload of bombs was released every eight minutes, 24 hours a day. This is more than was dropped on Germany and Japan in the entire Second World War. Laos, today a c...

Record numbers are fleeing the island in the wake of a brutal economic crisis – perhaps one in twenty five Sri Lankans left last year alone. Some 300,000 went for contracted positions, mostly in the Gulf. But hundreds of thousands of others took less official routes. Many of them get scammed, some even lose their lives, as illegal migrants in what looks like a web of corruption and organised crime...

The Gran Chaco Forest is Latin America’s second largest ecosystem. It is a mix of hot and arid scrublands, forests and wetlands, part of the River Plata basin, so large it extends into Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. Large parts of the forests have already been cleared to make way for farms. Now a new highway being driven through it is heralding further change. The so called Bi-oceanic Co...

In Britain we have have failed for decades to build enough houses with good design and make living in them affordable – whether rented or bought. All this affects millions, especially young people. One place which seems to have a far better record is Vienna. Rents are affordable, the housing is high quality, there’s a good social mix with new estates designed with everyone in mind. So how has the...

Why did people take to the streets, risking arrest and a barrage of bullets? After protests turned violent and hundreds of people were killed, four Iranians tell the story of why they risked their lives. What has been happening in Iran to drive them out onto the streets to face bullets? ‘Agrin’ tells Phoebe Keane she’s tired of being objectified as a woman, and having no faith that the authorities...

In 2018 the town of Paradise in the hills of northern California was wiped out by one of the worst wildfires in California's history. The disaster made headlines around the world - regarded as a symbol of the dangers posed by climate change. So what does the future hold for communities like Paradise in a region increasingly threatened by wildfire? Four years on, Alex Last travelled to Paradise to...

Southern Italy is home to some of Europe's most powerful criminal organisations; the Sicilian Mafia, the Camorra in Naples and the Ndrangheta based in Calabria. For many, crime is a family business. So a judge in Sicily has come up with a radical plan to prevent young people becoming the next generation of mobsters. He’s been taking children away from Mafia families. This controversial policy is n...