From Our Own Correspondent

The number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 has surged in Brazil. And yet there are many Brazilians who fail to observe social distancing or to wear masks. Some people blame President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of the crisis. He has criticised state governors for imposing quarantines. And as Katy Watson reports from Sao Paulo, the pandemic is turning into a political issue as much as a health one. It...

For weeks President Donald Trump downplayed the threat of the coronavirus. The White House carried on with business as usual. But then a few members of staff tested positive for the virus. Anthony Zurcher reports on the impact this has had on both the White House, and on the Trump administration more widely. In Ukraine, it's a year since the new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, came to office. Befor...

France had one of the toughest lockdowns but now people can go shopping again in outlets that had been shut for the last two months. Lucy Williamson joins customers in Paris as they queue outside, to ask them how they have been faring. Sudan can't spend much money on healthcare. But as Mark Weston reports, the young activists from the revolutionary committees that helped to oust President Omar al-...

Videos and images of Africans being evicted from their apartments, forced into quarantine, blocked from hotels and even being barred from a local McDonald’s in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou recently went viral on social media. Danny Vincent looks at the way the coronavirus has amplified existing tensions and says the injustices faced by Africans in China are a by-product of authoritarian...

At the height of the Covid-19 outbreak in April, a New Yorker was dying almost every two minutes — more than 800 a day - four times the city’s normal death rate. The pandemic appears to have passed its peak and a gradual reopening is planned after more than 40 days of lockdown. Nick Bryant describes the impact of the virus on the city he loves and on his own family. Ever since Kim Jong-un failed t...

In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from journalists and writers around the United Kingdom that reflect the range of contemporary life in the country. From Dorset, Jane Labous reflects on how she coped with early isolation with her young daughter in response to Covid-19 and the lessons she is drawing as a single parent as the experience continues and...

Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel and her CDU party have been in the political doldrums in recent years. But as Jenny Hill reports, polls suggest Angela Merkel has risen in popularity thanks to her calm, scientific approach to the coronavirus. The same is true of Bavaria's regional Prime Minister, who has a good chance of succeeding Mrs Merkel. Singapore had been hailed for how it dealt with the...

Sri Lanka's economy was improving and tourism flourishing after three decades of civil war but last Easter, a group of Muslims youths, inspired by Islamic State group, murdered more than 250 people in a series of bomb attacks. Jane Corbin has been gauging the lasting effect on the island, one year on. In Georgia, the country's powerful Orthodox Church is at loggerheads with the government over Eas...

Fifteen years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is facing another lethal storm. The city on Louisiana’s coast has become one of the worst-hit areas in the US. Some have blamed the high death toll on the decision to allow the annual Mardi Gras parade to go ahead. But musician and actor Harry Shearer, famous, among other things for voicing characters in The Simpsons, says don’t victim blame and d...

India’s prime minister imposed a three week lockdown with four hours notice. It was an attempt to prevent the coronavirus spreading. But the nationwide order has caused confusion and anger, especially for millions of migrant workers trying to return home says Rahul Tandon. The United Nations is concerned about Africa's chronically underfunded health services and their ability to cope with Covid-19...

Stories from Singapore, the US, Britain, Germany and Antarctica on battling COVID-19.

Mishal Husain presents pieces by writers and journalists across the UK presenting portraits of life today. Garry Owen of BBC Radio Cymru visits Llanelli and Hospital Notes - an amateur choir there comprising hospital and care workers and members of the emergency services. He discovers how its members de-compress at times of stress - when social distancing restrictions permit it - and what benefits...

Italy marked a grim milestone at the end of this week as its number of deaths from the coronavirus exceeded those in China. Yet most Italians are supportive of the country's struggling authorities says Mark Lowen who has covered the crisis from its outset. Across the world ten of millions of people are having to adapt their way of life to avoid infection. Fergal Keane has spent decades reporting o...

While Europe seals its borders, Latin America, which has far fewer confirmed Coronavirus cases, has started to do the same to stop the disease spreading. But not all leaders are taking the threats seriously says Katy Watson. All over the world Coronavirus is spreading, unseen. Paul Adams found himself in Beirut as it approached. He watched as the city shut down and found himself reflecting on this...

For well over a decade, the Al Qaeda linked group Al Shabab has struck terror in Somalia, Kenya and beyond blowing up shopping malls and hotels. Its senior leaders want to establish a caliphate, where their draconian form of Islam is imposed. But most Al Shabaab foot-soldiers come from deprived backgrounds and now hundreds have defected and are rebuilding their lives. Mary Harper visited a rehabil...

Stories from Russia, France, the Philippines, Italy and Yemen's most dangerous road. Yemen has been devastated by a war which began in 2015 between Saudi-backed pro-government forces and the rebel Houthi movement, aligned to Iran. Lyse Doucet was there dodging snipers and meeting overworked doctors. But that's not the whole picture. This week, the trial opened of three Russians and a Ukrainian for...

Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has accused the European Union of failing to help him manage the growing crisis in northern Syria. Turkey already has 3.7 million refugees from the conflict there and the recent killing of at least 50 Turkish soldiers last month may have been the last straw. Although the EU promised billions more euros in aid, Turkey decided to open its borders with Greece...

Trump may deride him as ‘sleepy Joe’ but this week the former vice president Joe Biden was the rejuvenated, 70 something, comeback kid. He won nine of the 14 states that voted to pick a Democratic White House candidate on Super Tuesday. An astonishing turnaround says Anthony Zurcher. Israelis went to the polls this week for their third election in just a year. The country’s political system has be...

Deadly violence erupted this week in north-east Delhi between supporters and opponents of India’s new and controversial citizenship law. The legislation grants amnesty to illegal immigrants but only non-Muslim ones. The worst of the violence has abated but Yogita Limaye says many are stunned by the ferocity of the attacks. The former President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak has been buried in Cairo with...

Stories from China, Iraq, Pakistan and Russia and the cost of breaking bones in America. Healthcare is a very hot issue in the US race for the Democratic presidential nominee. Bernie Sanders is promising to roll out government-run health insurance for everyone. When Laura Trevelyan broke her wrist, she found navigating the US insurance system both pricey and confusing. Health concerns of a differe...

Stories from the West Bank, Germany, Brazil, the US and the heart of the European Union. President Trump’s plan for peace in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories would allow Israel to apply its sovereignty to all the Jewish settlements as well as swathes of strategic land in the West Bank. The Palestinian leadership has rejected the plan outright saying it would create a "Swiss cheese s...

Stories from Kenya, Italy, Russia, Syria and Portugal. For the past few months, swarms of desert locusts have been eating their way across the Middle East and Africa. As Joe Inwood finds, stopping the swarms has so far proved nigh on impossible for people in the region - with many resorting to yelling, blowing whistles or even firing guns at them. Italy’s anti-mafia police do their best to catch t...

In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from journalists and writers around the United Kingdom reflecting the range of contemporary life in the country. Emma Jane Kirby, in Birmingham, reports on the seeds of magic sown by teachers there in schools serving deprived neighbourhoods - but also on the sometimes shocking realities of daily life at home for a n...

French prosecutors announced this week that say they have started an investigation into the business activities of the Maltese magnate charged with complicity to murder the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. It’s just the latest development in a scandal that shocked Europe and led to the resignation of Malta’s prime minister last month. The inquiry in Paris is a response to allegations by the repo...

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 change...