Fifth Floor

Since the pandemic, reports from Uganda say there has been a 300% increase in pregnancies among girls aged 10-14. Sexual violence has been further fuelled in the north by the legacy of a 20-year insurgency led by notorious warlord Joseph Kony, and cases of sexual abuse of girls as young as three are being reported. For BBC Africa Eye, Paul Bakibinga investigates the true scale of the problem. Russ...

Since anti-government protests erupted in Iran following the death in police custody last September of Mahsa Amini, at least 30,000 people have been arrested. While most have been released on bail, it's reported that more than a hundred have been sentenced to death or charged with capital offences. BBC Persian's Firouzeh Akbarian tells us about the lawyers who are trying to stop more executions as...

A year ago India evacuated thousands of students, mostly studying medicine, from Ukraine following the Russian invasion. Their arrival home was greeted with great thanks and fanfare, so why have more than a thousand felt compelled to return? BBC Hindi’s Jugal Purohit has been finding out. Chicken poop power A farmer in Kenya has developed an original way of tackling the rising cost of living, usin...

BBC Arabic’s recent film ‘Blind Faith’ exposes the clinics offering bogus, and potentially dangerous, treatments to people living with an incurable eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, or RP. The reporter is Ramadan Younes, who's based in Egypt. He also has RP and is visually impaired, and underwent one of these treatments himself. Vietnamese embassy protests in Poland Poland's Vietnamese comm...

With big political changes in Brazil after a divisive election which brought in a new president, Faranak Amidi is in the country's largest city São Paulo to look at the stories being covered by the BBC journalists based there. The heart of São Paulo: Avenida Paulista Leticia Mori takes us to the famous Avenida Paulista, built for the rich of São Paulo and now home to many businesses and banks. It...

February's earthquake spanned the Turkey-Syria border and refocused international attention on the complicated geopolitics of northern Syria. We hear how the earthquake aid operation presented both challenges and opportunities to the different groups controlling Syria, from the government in Damascus to the rebel leaders of Idlib province. With BBC Monitoring jihadi expert Mina al-Lami and BBC Mid...

We look at the Belarusian regiment of volunteers serving under Ukrainian command in the war against Russia, and explore Ukraine's complex relationship with Belarus, with BBC Monitoring journalist, and Belarusian, Gennadiy Kot. Me and my name BBC Mundo's Atahualpa Amerise reflects on what it’s like to be a Spaniard named after the last Inca emperor. Thai punishment haircuts Historically Thai studen...

There's fear and anger in Iran over a wave of poisonings that have affected hundreds of schoolgirls across the country. Soroush Pakzad from BBC Persian's social media team describes the challenges of investigating the story, and Aalia Farzan from BBC Dari tells us how the cause of similar incidents in Afghanistan a few years back was never established. BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year The sporti...

Faranak Amidi meets the BBC Russian journalists who relocated from Moscow to the Latvian capital after the invasion of Ukraine. The first anniversary: what's in the news? Editor Sergei Zakin tells us what the news focus has been for his team in the week of the first anniversary of the invasion. The move from Moscow to Riga Bureau chief Andrei Goryanov explains why the difficult decision was taken...

Since the start of the war in Ukraine nearly a year ago, thousands of lives have been lost on both sides, and millions of Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes. For BBC Ukrainian, it's been a year of upheaval, with many journalists from Kyiv moving to new hubs in Lviv and Warsaw, and some living apart from family members. We hear how the team have continued to report the war, from edito...

We hear from some of the language service journalists reporting on the catastrophic earthquakes that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday. Fundanur Öztürk from BBC Turkish travelled to Hatay, one of the worst hit cities, while BBC Arabic's Nisrine Hatoum was on holiday in Turkey at the time and quickly switched to reporting the disaster. Meanwhile her colleague Dina Waqqaf is Syrian...

Since the 2021 coup in Myanmar, many Burmese have taken up arms against the military and thousands more have fled. BBC Burmese editor Soe Win Than tells us about life in the country now, and the challenges he and his team face in reporting it. What's in a name? People in Thailand take naming very seriously. BBC Thai's Tossapol Chaisomritpol explains the meanings behind his many names - from birth,...

Ukraine’s anti-corruption campaign is in the spotlight, with the recent dismissal or resignation of several top officials after a string of corruption scandals. Vitaliy Shevchenko of BBC Monitoring explains how the war with Russia has affected Ukraine’s long-running efforts to deal with corruption. Iraq and the Gulf Cup A recent sports story from Iraq provided a welcome change from conflict and po...

It's becoming more and more dangerous to speak Belarusian in Belarus, with reports of people being sacked and even arrested for trying to conduct their work in Belarusian. The linguistic clampdown escalated after the 2020 pro-democracy protests against long-term leader Alexander Lukashenko, as BBC Russian journalist, and Belarusian, Tatsiana Yanutsevich reports. Sri Lanka's education crisis In Sri...

Why are students in Kenya burning their boarding schools? That was the question that inspired BBC Africa reporter Ashley Lime in the Nairobi bureau to investigate these sometimes deadly arson attacks which escalated after the covid pandemic. She spoke to students, relatives of teenagers who died in the fires and experts to better understand this decades old problem. Russian 'Old New Year' After th...

For decades, Ukraine's super-rich oligarchs wielded enormous economic and political power. But in 2021, a new law was introduced to curb their influence, and the war with Russia has cost them billions in lost assets and revenue. Vitaly Shevchenko of BBC Monitoring tells us about the dramatic change in their fortunes. The endangered pink iguanas of the Galapagos Scientists have for the first time d...

In a year packed with big news stories, who are the interviewees whose stories have stayed with our language service colleagues? BBC Ukrainian's Zhanna Bezpiatchuk tells the story of the teenager forced to flee his home in Borodianka, who now dreams of becoming a journalist. BBC Pashto's Shazia Haya shares the story of a mother of daughters now denied their secondary school education. Parham Ghoba...

Last week Istanbul's Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu was sentenced to two years seven months in jail and banned from taking part in politics. It’s not clear if his sentence will be ratified by two higher courts, but his crime was to call Turkey’s election officials ‘fools’ after the rerun 2019 mayoral elections, though many believe it has more to do with next year's presidential elections. BBC Monitoring jou...

Yevgeny Prigozhin is the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, a role that he denied until September. Andrei Zakharov of BBC Russian has been investigating the story of Mr Prigozhin for many years, and he shares his insights. Qatar cultural exchange As the Arab world's first football World Cup concludes, the BBC's Lina Shaikhouni shares her impressions of the cultural exchanges the event has...

Hisham Yezza of BBC Monitoring has been observing the impact in the Middle East and North Africa of the war in Ukraine since the invasion nearly ten months ago. He tells us how the war is reported and discussed in the region, and how at a political level, traditional alliances with the West are shifting. A sweet treat that could help the Amazon People from Brazil's Amazon region enjoy many dishes...

A fire in a residential block fire in Urumqi, which killed 10 people, sparked protests among citizens tired of living under China’s strict zero-Covid policy. As well as brave and vocal protests, many have adopted more creative ways to get their voices heard, as BBC Chinese Editor Howard Zhang reports. India street girl update BBC Marathi's Dipali Jagtap won India’s Laadli Award for her report into...

On March 6th, huge anti-war demonstrations across Russia led to the arrest of more than 5,000 protesters. Among them were at least 11 women who were taken to Moscow's Brateyevo Police Station, where they were questioned and subjected to verbal and physical abuse, which in some cases amounted to torture. The man overseeing this was an unnamed police officer they nicknamed 'the man in black'. Using...

President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit this week to Kherson, soon after the Russian withdrawal, prompted lively commentary on Ukrainian social media, and some comparisons with the Russian president. BBC Monitoring's Margaryta Maliukova tells us more. Hell on earth: the Korean Japanese people persuaded to move to North Korea In 1960, Eika Kawasaki left her family in Japan and moved to North Korea. Sh...

BBC Arabic's Sally Nabil is one of the team in Sharm el-Sheikh reporting on the COP27 climate summit. She tells us how the conference centre and beach resort exist side by side, and why this choice of venue offers so many advantages to the host country, Egypt. COP27: three stories from the language services BBC Swahili's Anne Ngugi visited Kenya's Amboseli national park, where the worst drought in...

The BBC’s Addis Ababa correspondent Kalkidan Yibeltal tells us about the agreement just reached between the Ethiopian government and officials from the Tigray region, to stop fighting and to allow unhindered humanitarian access. He also reflects on the challenges of reporting the civil war over the last two years. The centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb It's 100 years since the discov...