Fifth Floor

Last year BBC Africa TV reported on the big challenge of getting medicines and healthcare to Kenya's Maasai, Samburu and Turkana people, who are often on the move with their livestock. Christine Njeri discovered how camels have been enlisted to help with transport. Saris in lockdown Chinki Sinha, who's a contributor to BBC Hindi in Delhi, returned to the family home in Bihar for lockdown. As time...

The Nagorno Karabakh conflict has put Turkey’s Armenian community in a predicament. The disputed territory is an Armenian-populated enclave inside Azerbaijan controlled by separatist Armenians. Turkey backs Azerbaijan while Armenia backs the separatists. But beneath these allegiances lie even deeper divisions that affect ethnic Armenians in Turkey. BBC Turkish journalist Esra Yalcinalp helps unpic...

A BBC Arabic investigation has uncovered systemic child abuse inside Islamic schools in Sudan, known as khalwas. It found that boys are routinely chained, shackled and beaten; in some khalwas there was evidence of sexual abuse. The BBC’s Mamdouh Akbiek worked with a local investigative journalist on the story. Boston's Brazilian party-goers Boston’s large Brazilian community has stirred up controv...

Florida makes or breaks the US presidential election, and Spanish language ads have been bombarding Latino voters. BBC Monitoring journalist in Miami Luis Fajardo analyses the tactics and tunes being used by both Republicans and Democrats to swing the state. Egypt’s septuagenarian record breaking footballer Ezzeldin Bahader recently entered the record books as the world’s oldest professional footb...

How do you simultaneously interpret a live US presidential debate, when the candidates are talking over each other, and throwing in the odd insult as well? Over to BBC Persian’s top team, Siavash Ardalan and Nicholas Niksadat. Image: BBC Persian's simultaneous interpreters, alongside President Trump and Joe Biden Credit: BBC

This year armies from India and China clashed along the disputed border between Indian-administered Kashmir and China. A recent funeral with full military honours on the Indian side revealed an intriguing story. Nayima Tanzin was a Tibetan refugee, who his family say was serving with a covert Indian regiment, the Special Frontier Force, a force never acknowledged by Indian authorities. The BBC’s A...

As fighting flares again over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, we ask why it's so hard to resolve this conflict, and why a chunk of Armenian-controlled territory came to be inside Azerbaijan in the first place. BBC Russian editor Famil Ismailov is originally from Azerbaijan, and has followed this story for decades. Pot plants and plant influencers in Indonesia Houseplants have become a tre...

This week, the World Service marked World Alzheimer's Day with a BBC Music and Memory project, exploring the power of music to reach sufferers with the disease. It launched a website of global tracks to trigger memories, compiled with the help of the BBC's language services. Behzad Bolour compiled BBC Persian's list, his father suffered from dementia, but still sang with him. He also explores Iran...

A video showing the repeated tazering of a Colombian lawyer Javier Ordóñez by police as he begged for mercy, and his subsequent death from internal injuries, triggered riots in which several people died. BBC Mundo's Daniel Pardo is based in Bogota, and explains what this story reveals about Colombians relationship with law enforcement. My Hometown: Hanoi A return visit with Nga Pham to her hometow...

Surat in Gujarat is the world's diamond polishing hub, cutting and polishing 70% of all diamonds. But lockdown brought that industry to a halt, with many losing their jobs. BBC Indian languages journalist Nitin Srivastava spoke to some of those affected. Ethiopians in Yemen The Gulf states and Middle East are historically popular destinations for migrant workers from Ethiopia, and travelling throu...

It's been three years since violence in Myanmar's Rakhine State forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people to flee to Bangladesh. Since then home has been the crowded Cox’s Bazar refugee camp. BBC Bangla’s Shahnewaj Rocky has revisited the camp and met some of the children living there. My Hometown: Samut Prakan We travel to the outskirts of Bangkok with Chaiyot Yongcharoenchai of BBC Thai to...

Last week Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was taken seriously ill on a flight to Moscow. Poisoning is suspected, and he remains in a coma in Germany undergoing treatment. But who is Navalny and what does he stand for? We speak to BBC Russian editor Famil Ismailov to get a closer look at Putin's biggest political rival. In praise of mariachi In Mexico City, Plaza Garibaldi is the heart...

The taboo of domestic violence in Iran is being tackled by a podcaster who calls herself Maryam. She tells the story of her own abusive marriage, and is joined in each podcast by other women who share their experiences. Nooshin of BBC Monitoring explains why this taboo persists in her home country. From the streets of Belarus to Franco’s Spain: the story of a song The anthem being sung by proteste...

Last week's catastrophic explosion in Beirut devastated the port area and left at least 170 dead, thousands injured, and many more homeless. It's a painful time for our journalists who come from Beirut - in both BBC Arabic and BBC Monitoring. We hear the reflections of Nahed Najjar, Nisrine Hatoum, Hesham Shawish, Nidale Abou Mrad and Julien Hajj. The dream of Gran Colombia Gran Colombia was a vas...

A teenage Afghan girl was recently celebrated as a hero, and photos of her holding an AK47 widely circulated, after she killed two Taliban fighters who attacked her home. But Firuz Rahimi of BBC Uzbek – himself from Afghanistan – shares the story behind the story, revealing the complexity of Afghan life and loyalties. Unmasking the masks Nasobuco, barbijo, tapabocas and mascarilla – the proliferat...

The BBC’s Anne Soy has been to her birthplace, Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, to meet members of the Talai clan, who have been feared and shunned since colonial times. When the Talai resisted British settlers more than a century ago, they were punished and branded ‘evil’, a slur that left them impoverished and marginalised, and still persists today. Afghan etiquette - what's in a title? BBC Pashto's P...

There's hot debate in Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelensky helped secure the release of a busload of hostages by complying with the hostage-taker's bizarre demand. Irena Taranyuk of BBC Ukrainian has been following the arguments over whether he took the right decision. Birdwatching in lockdown Kathmandu For Shreejana Shrestha of BBC Nepali, lockdown in the capital Kathmandu brought an unexpe...

The world’s largest jade mines are in Myanmar. It’s an industry worth an estimated $30 billion a year for the mine owners. But it's a hazardous living for the hundreds of thousands who scavenge through mountains of rubble in search of fragments of jade. Earlier this month 172 died when one of those piles collapsed. A BBC Burmese team visited the area last weekend - their editor in London, Soe Win...

Lockdown has boosted online gaming everywhere, but when Sheida Hooshmandi of BBC Persian investigated Iran’s gaming scene she discovered a surprising number of participants are women. So what are the particular challenges for female gamers in the Islamic Republic of Iran? ABC…. It’s as easy as ABC, but learning your alphabet is trickier in some places than others. Fifth Floor class of 2015 takes u...

Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, is famous for high productivity, addictive plots and glamorous premiers. Princess Abumere in BBC Lagos has been to a few premiers herself, and has been finding out how Nollywood is adapting to the Covid-19 shutdown. Tongue Twisters revisited Fun and epic fails from the Fifth Floor teams trying to get their tongues round some fieldish tongue twisters. Black Li...

India's financial capital Mumbai is its worst affected city with 70,000 confirmed Covid-19 infections and more than 5,000 deaths. BBC Marathi's Mayuresh Konnur filmed doctors and nurses in the King Edward Memorial hospital ICU to find out how they are coping. It was a challenging story to report. My Home Town: Eldoret BBC Swahili’s Beryl Munoko shares memories of her home town in western Kenya. Th...

This week 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash with Chinese forces in the disputed region of Ladakh. It's the first fatality in 45 years, but one of many skirmishes along the de facto border. BBC Indian languages journalist Aamir Peerzada looks at the impact of the current stand-off on the nomadic livestock herders who inhabit the high altitude desert. #A man should know his place Many women...

The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman has reignited the ongoing debate about institutional racism in Brazil. BBC Brasil's Camilla Costa tells the stories of some of Brazil's own George Floyds, including 5 year old Miguel, whose shocking death last week led to the #justiçaparamiguel protests. My home town: Cali, Colombia Luis Fajardo of BBC Monitoring takes us to his hometown of Ca...

BBC Arabic tells the stories doctors, restaurateurs, bus-drivers, volunteers, and pianists from London’s Arabic speaking community as they lived through two months of the corona virus lockdown. Producer Emir Nader, and film-maker Namak Khoshnaw, take us behind the scenes of ‘London Lockdown’. Animal noises around the world Does your tiger roar, or say halloom? Another chance to hear animal noises...

The Covid-19 pandemic is being exploited in many ways by criminal organisations across the world. For BBC Monitoring, Laura Gozzi and Luis Fajardo have been looking at the new opportunities which have opened up for the Italian mafia and the Mexican drug cartels. Picture: Portrait of mafia boss Credit: Jilla Dastmalchi