From Our Own Correspondent

South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma has been charged with a string of crimes including corruption, racketeering and money-laundering. He denies all allegations of wrongdoing and earlier this week didn’t attend his trial saying he was too sick. But photos posted on social media suggest otherwise and Andrew Harding says its South Africans who are really sick - sick of Zuma’s excuses. A self-d...

In Brittany there’s been some concern about how the UK’s long goodbye to the European Union will affect it’s fishing fleets. Last weekend France reminded Britain that the UK exports most of its fish production to EU countries. Post-Brexit negotiations about fishing rights, security arrangements and a host of other issues promise to be far from straight forward. But Julia Langdon finds many people...

Much thought this week on borders, on nationality and how we get on with our neighbours even at the commemorations to mark the liberation of Auschwitz. The Nazis murdered 1.1 million people at the death camp - ninety per cent of them Jews, but also Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and people from the Roma and Sinti minorities. Two hundred survivors and world leaders from 60 countries. United in rem...

Stephen McDonnell describes the atmosphere in China while he is quarantined at home

Hundreds of foreign nationals are being evacuated from Wuhan, the centre of China's coronavirus outbreak, as more deaths and cases are confirmed. British citizens being flown back to the UK from the city will be put in quarantine for two weeks. Stephen McDonnell was recently in Hubei province where the disease was first identified and is now back in Beijing. He too has been told to stay at home fo...

The anti-nationalist protesters in Italy and the man they are trying to stop - Mark Lowen meets members of the Sardines as well the hard-line politician Matteo Salvini who is hoping to become Prime Minister. Kate Adie introduces this and other stories: In Cape Verde, Colin Freeman finds out why Europe’s drug problem is also a problem for the Atlantic islands. In Greece, Tulip Mazumdar visits the L...

Isabel dos Santos is the billionaire daughter of the former president of Angola and Africa’s richest woman. She claims to be a self-made businesswoman. But more than 700,000 documents, recently leaked from her business empire, suggest otherwise. The emails, charts, contracts, audits, and accounts in the so-called Luanda Leaks have put her under intense scrutiny by her bank and the Angolan governme...

In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from: Vincent Ni on a Chinese man who, like him, has come to Britain and is in his mid-thirties - but there the similarities abruptly end. What does living here undocumented mean in practical terms and why does he do it? With the approach of Holocaust Memorial Day, which this year marks the 75th anniversary of the l...

When Carlos Ghosn skipped bail in Tokyo last month the world was flabbergasted. Despite being under intense surveillance while out on bail, with undercover agents tailing him whenever he left his house, the ex-Nissan boss somehow hot-footed it onto a private jet and made it to Lebanon. Now that the dust has settled, the spotlight has been turned onto what some call, Japan’s "hostage justice" syste...

The Iranian government held an official funeral on Tuesday for General Qassem Soleimani killed by a US airstrike in Baghdad. There were emotional speeches in the general’s home town of Kerman in southeast Iran and so many mourners turned out that at least 50 were killed in the crush. On Twitter the Iranian Foreign Minister had a message for President Donald Trump: "Have you seen such a sea of huma...

The assassination in a US air strike of the senior Iranian general Qasem Soleimani raises the prospect of a response from Teheran that few can predict. Jim Muir reports on the significance of the US target and what might happen next. Thirty years ago the United States acted to remove another foreign threat, this time closer to home. Following the US invasion of Panama shortly before Christmas, the...

Until recently, a small, independent and politically neutral Syrian radio station was broadcasting in exile from Istanbul. But Radio Alwan was forced to close when the Trump administration made the decision last year to pull $200m of funding for Syria’s stabilisation projects, knocking the station off air. Some of the station’s staff are scattered across Europe and those who have remained in Turke...

Recent events in Hong Kong have made many people in Taiwan jumpy. Duncan Hewitt talks to a Taiwanese hacker and activist turned government minister who is full of ideas about how to improve life on the island. He finds an increasingly pluralistic and confident society, now more inclined to stand up to China. Our main focus this week is on the natural world and we begin at the South Pole where Just...

India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, announced a zero tolerance policy towards violence against women when he took office. But Rajini Vaidyanathan says that for many victims his promises ring hollow. According to the latest figures from India's National Crime Records Bureau there were 33,658 female rape victims in 2017 which means one woman was raped every 15 minutes - and those are just the off...

When Russian forces took over parts of Ukraine in spring 2014, much of the world held its breath. Would Western countries side with Ukraine, and could the fighting spread further into Eastern Europe? While that kind of escalation did not happen, life in Eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed rebel forces and Ukraine’s army are still facing off, still looks something like wartime. As Jonah Fisher re...

Throughout Sri Lanka's decades long conflict, attention has focused on the confrontation between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. The country’s Muslims, who are just 10 per cent of the population and see themselves as a separate ethnic group, have often been ignored. But that changed after this year's Easter Sunday attacks, carried out by a small cell of Sri Lankan Islamists, which...

It’s now two years since Robert Mugabe was pushed out of office by the military and replaced by Emerson Mnangagwa. For many Zimbabweans economic conditions- already dire - have actually got worse. Now to add to their misery, there are water shortages and alarming evidence of the negative effect of climate change. But corruption and mismanagement have contributed to the power crisis and evening bla...

In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from journalists and writers reflecting the range of contemporary life in the United Kingdom. Dan Johnson reports direct from the flooded River Don in South Yorkshire where feelings are running high among locals about the response to the latest inundation. As the rain returns after an all-too-brief respite, he refle...

They believe they are fighting for their way of life, for Hong Kong’s very existence, but the protesters know they can’t really win says Paul Adams. Kate Adie introduces this and other stories from around the world: There is a saying in Russia “If he beats you - he loves you” hears Lucy Ash as she visits a refuge for the survivors of domestic violence in Moscow. “Twisted logic, yes, but it is stil...

From coca farmer to president, to political exile - Katy Watson shares the story of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first elected indigenous leader. Kate Adie introduces this and other stories from correspondents around the world: In Austria, Bethany Bell reveals why the hare with amber eyes has returned to Vienna. Finbarr Anderson is in Lebanon’s second city Tripoli, which is being called the ‘bride of th...

What the murder of a Mormon family in Mexico reveals about the country; Will Grant has long chronicled the violence of the ongoing drug war. Kate Adie introduces this and other stories: Rajini Vaidyanathan reflects on the perils of living in Delhi having developed 'pollution anxiety' and become a smoker by proxy. John Kampfner was in Berlin when the Wall fell. Thirty years on he's been back to see...

From their base in Albania, some 3,000 Iranian exiles are committed to overthrowing the government of Iran. Linda Pressly finds out how some members of the M.E.K - the Mujahedin-e Khalq – are adapting to life in Europe. Kate Adie introduces this and other stories: It's thirty years since the fall of Czechoslovakia's communist regime, but Chris Bowlby finds the ghostly remains of its past still loo...

The Rugby World Cup has drawn the attention of the world to Japan for the last six weeks. But the tournament has not been without its difficulties, mostly ones beyond the power of the authorities to control. Rupert Wingfield-Hayes has been sheltering from the storm. Veganism is on the rise in many countries in the world. Switching to a plant-base diet is said to be one of the biggest contributions...

Argentina has elected a new president at a moment of deep economic crisis. Out goes the centre-left, back come the Peronists. Katy Watson reports on a sense of deja vu, with the role of Eva Peron filled this time by Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, a former president, now returning to power as vice president. The winds of change are blowing through the Vatican, after bishops meeting in Rome voted i...

The resignation this week of Mmusi Maimana, the leader of the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party in South Africa, has exposed deep wounds from the apartheid era. Andrew Harding examines the implications for democracy in the country. Demonstrators have been out in force on the streets of Santiago and other cities across Chile after the government announced it was raising the price of me...