From Our Own Correspondent

Analysis, colour, wit and observation from journalists worldwide. Today: Pascale Harter chronicles the fury in Spain at reports that politicians are lining their pockets while the people are making painful sacrifices in the name of austerity. James Harkin on the death of a young engineer who wanted to help build a new Syria after the revolution. Jill McGivering on the Indian women being talked int...

Tim Whewell, just back from Mali, talks of retribution. Every conflict throws up winners and losers. And it's the nomadic Touareg, he tells us, who have become targets for revenge. Arguments over gun control have once again been dominating the headlines in the US and Paul Adams has been reporting on a debate he says is quintessentially American. Darius Bazargan has been in northern Lebanon, where...

Correspondents take a closer look at events in their part of the world. Aleem Maqbool follows a week of street protests with the question - can democracy really take root in Egypt? The arts world is in turmoil in Hungary, and Nick Thorpe tells us how the government there is being accused of hijacking the cultural agenda to promote its own political ends. Parto Parvin, and that's not her real name,...

Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem says keep that election bunting close at hand - Israelis may have to vote again before long. Will Self goes to the Romanian capital, Bucharest: millions live there but he's of the opinion that it would be hard to find a less homely place. The Chinese authorities say they're tackling the Great Smog of Beijing, but Martin Patience doesn't expect great change any time soon...

Andrew Harding travels to the centre of Mali to find out how the fight against the Islamist rebels is affecting life in one small country town. Thousands of prisoners are being released from jail in Georgia -- Damien McGuinness has been learning that not all Georgians think that's such a good idea. Silvio Berlusconi's trying again to be prime minister of Italy. Alan Johnston in Rome's been finding...

Correspondents around the world telling their stories: Lyse Doucet has been meeting some of the millions of people who've been forced to flee their homes in Syria because of the continuing bloodshed there. Mark Doyle in Bamako on how the fighting in Mali has seen a new alliance being forged between the French and the Nigerian military. The Hungarian economy may be tottering - but Petroc Trelawny h...

Correspondents' news and views from around the globe: Hugh Schofield is in Paris as French troops take on Islamist rebels in the former French colony of Mali; Will Grant on how Venezuelans are starting to consider a future without their president, Hugo Chavez; Emily Buchanan on the Indian holy man who wowed the ladies in New England; Jo Fidgen on how the Sami people of northern Sweden haven't quit...

Kate Adie presents reporters' despatches from across the globe. Matthew Teller meets the stateless bidoons of Kuwait Mark Lobel looks attempts to improve one of Cape Town's poorest settlement in the wake of a devastating fire. Jonathan Fryer assesses Baghdad's surprising aspiration to become the conference capital of the Middle East. Alan Johnston wonders whether the mystery of Garbaldi's final re...

Andrew North reflects on whether the recent rape and murder of a woman in Delhi might bring a greater soul searching amongst all sections of Indian society. Owen Bennett-Jones teeters on the "fiscal cliff" with anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, asking if he's really the most powerful man in America? Nicholas Shakespeare makes a nostalgic return to Phnom Penh. Andrew Bomford uncovers the secrets o...

As the year draws to an end, Kate Adie presents a feast of highlights from correspondents' despatches across 2012. Fucshia Dunlop is in Shanghai, dancing the the city's glamourous past. Lucy Ash is challenged by a call of nature in Russia's Siberian wilderness. Kate McGowan decides against boiled duck foetus for breakfast in Manila. Allan Little uncovers the great egg crisis in the Falkland Island...

Kate Adie presents despatches from reporters across the globe. Lucy Ash travels to Burma where she finds that Chinese investment ventures are being challenged by local people. As Greece receives it latest tranche of bailout funds, Mark Lowen looks back over a tumultuous year in the country. Andrew North looks at the controversy surrounding the proposed introduction of foreign supermarkets to India...

Reporters worldwide provide context to the week's news. Today: South Africa's ANC at the crossroads? As the party prepares for conference, its figurehead Nelson Mandela in fragile health, Andrew Harding reads the political runes at a critical time for the country. Allan Little is in the Polish city of Wroclaw observing how old allegiances and old identities are emerging in the new Europe. Now what...

The BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen examines claims that a conclusion to the long conflict in Syria is within sight. After a year of protests against President Putin, Steve Rosenberg finds support for him is still strong -- particularly in cities away from the capital, Moscow. Bethany Bell's in South Tyrol where some are angry that the Italian authorities, in the midst of financial crisis, w...

Jon Leyne in Cairo reflects on the debate about Egypt's future. Will it be dictatorship or democracy? Secular or religious? Ed Butler's been to Halabja, the town in the Kurdish region of Iraq which, almost 25 years ago, was attacked with chemical weapons. The tea industry in India is in trouble - Mark Tully says change is on the way to the tea plantations of Assam. Celeste Hicks returns to her old...

Despatches from reporters across the globe. Jon Donnison was in Gaza as the city came under Israeli attack and a BBC man took a distressing phone call. Gabriel Gatehouse was in Goma as rebels took the town in eastern Congo with UN peacekeepers standing by, seemingly unable to intervene. Petroc Trelawny was in a part of France which is taking a special interest in the vote in Catalonia which many f...

Reporters' despatches from around the world. Afghanistan: as pressure grows on the British prime minister to bring the troops back home early, defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt considers the legacy they'll leave behind. Russia: the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk is the country's prisons capital. Alex Preston has been to meet a former convict trying to help others, recently released, to find a toe...

Burma: Jonathan Head goes to Rakhine state in Burma where bitter unrest has resulted in more than a hundred deaths and a hundred thousand displaced. Libya: Kevin Connolly visits a war graves cemetery and considers stories of loss and love, grief and anger. Japan: Rupert Wingfield-Hayes takes a boat to the islands at the centre of a bitter argument in the South China Sea. USA: As the dust settles a...

The United States of America: after the election excitement the Obama team start planning for four more years. Paul Adams. Mali: preparations well advanced for a military operation to repel Islamist rebels from the north of the country. Afua Hirsch. Oman: the Arab Spring comes calling at the Gulf state once called 'a place of wind and spiders.' Matthew Teller. Georgia: Can the new government act t...

Will Ross on the bloodshed in Northern Nigeria;Theopi Skarlatos on why Golden Dawn is becoming Greece's worse nightmare;Anu Anand vents her frustrations about shambolic India - business is booming but what about power cuts and burst balloons? Also privileged Princeton - Dave Edmonds explains why so many alumnae are happy to donate billions to one of the world's richest universities. And Joanna Rob...

Gabriel Gatehouse talks to a once-loyal Alawite pilot who ran foul of Syrian intelligence and was accused of planting bombs on military planes. Syrian refugees in Jordan tell Sahkr al Makhadhi how they fled the war zone but are now desperate to return. In Moscow, a new map marking the homes of Stalin's victims gives our correspondent Daniel Sandrof uncomfortable information about his own flat. Fac...

Kate Adie presents despatches from: Tim Whewell in a small town in Syria in the midst of the current conflict. Andrew North on trepidation in Afghanistan as the country prepares for NATO withdrawal and elections in 2014. Rajan Datar meets members of Brazil's Valley of the Dawn cult. Tim Dinham explains why your social life really can depend on the kind of Bewab or caretaker your apartment has in C...

Will Grant in Cuba: 50 years after the Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro still has the power to made headlines. Jill McGivering in Shenzhen sees the gulf between different generations in modern China. Kate McGeown looks at the hopes for peace in the Southern Philippines. Kim Philley experiences the art of animist 'spirit possession' in Burma. And Steve Evans explores the etiquette of cycling in Berlin.

Dispatches from reporters across the globe, presented by Kate Adie. Chris Morris in Berlin analyses Angela Merkel's increasing international confidence. Fergal Keane hears the echoes of history amidst Syrian refugees in the Turkish city of Izmir. Niall O'Gallagher takes the temperature of Catalan nationalism on the streets of Barcelona. Craig Jeffrey asks if "jugaad" - the spirit of creative and q...

Thousands of Kenyans prepare to go to court to pursue claims against the British. Gabriel Gatehouse in Nairobi explains how they date back to the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s and why they are getting little publicity inside Kenya itself. The Dutch are changing their famously-liberal drugs laws. Manuela Saragosa says the decision's delighted some but infuriated others. Caspar Leighton's been obse...

Andrew Harding's in Zimbabwe where there are fears of a return to violence as the election season approaches Ian Pannell's been in the Syrian city of Aleppo where there's been fierce fighting and where foreign fighters have responded to calls from the rebels for assistance Will Grant tells us of the embarrassment suffered by the authorities in Mexico after the disappearance of the body of one of t...