First reports of Ebola

Laila Haidari set up Kabul's first independent drug rehabilitation centre in 2010. Having helped her own brother to quit his heroin addiction she wanted to help others. More than 80% of the world's illegal opium and heroin comes from Afghanistan. International criminal groups have exploited years of warfare and lawlessness to expand production, but the insecurity has also led to poverty and increased drug addiction inside Afghanistan. Laila Haidari explains to Rebecca Kesby how local people have been affected. (PHOTO: An Afghan farmer harvests opium sap from a poppy field in the Surkh Rod district of Nangarhar province in 2018. The US government has spent billions of dollars on a war to eliminate drugs from Afghanistan, but the country still remains the world's top opium producer. (Credit NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP via Getty Images)

3 Jun 202111min

In April 2001 the Peruvian Air Force mistakenly shot down a small passenger plane as it flew over the Amazon jungle. The Peruvians believed the aircraft was carrying drugs. Onboard was a group of American missionaries. Mike Lanchin spoke to Jim Bowers, who survived the crash, but whose wife and baby daughter were killed.This programme is a rebroadcastPhoto: The missionary plane shot down by the Peruvian Air Force lies in shallow waters of the Amazon River. (Photo by Newsmakers)

2 Jun 20219min

The Colombian drug trafficker, once one of the richest men in the world, was shot dead by police in December 1993. He had been on the run from the authorities for over a year. Jordan Dunbar has been speaking to Elizabeth Zilli who worked for the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Colombia and who helped track down Pablo Escobar.Photo: Colombian forces storm the rooftop where drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot dead on 2nd December 1993. (Credit:Jesus Abad-el Colombiano/AFP/Getty Images)

1 Jun 20219min

The first 'war on drugs' was launched by US President Richard Nixon in 1971. He described drug abuse as a 'national emergency' and asked Congress for nearly four hundred million dollars to tackle the problem. Claire Bowes spoke to one of Nixon's policy advisors, Jeffrey Donfeld, about an approach to drugs which he describes as more 'find them and help them' than 'find them and lock them up'. And how he convinced the President to roll out a nationwide programme of methadone treatment for heroin addicts.This programme is a rebroadcastPhoto: US President Richard Nixon (BBC)

31 Mai 20219min

Greenwood was a flourishing and prosperous black neighbourhood of Tulsa, often referred to as Black Wall Street. But in May 1921, a white mob descended on the district, destroying homes, businesses and lives. In this Witness History, Josephine Casserly talks to historian John W. Franklin, of Franklin Global, about the story of his grandfather, Buck Franklin, who survived the massacre. The words of Buck Franklin are voiced by Stefan Adegbola.Image: An African-American man with a camera examining the ashes of a burned-out block after the Tulsa Race Massacre. Credit: Oklahoma Historical Society/Getty Images

28 Mai 20219min

On May 31st 1986 a small group of musicians staged the first charity rock concert ever held in the USSR. It was organised in less than two weeks to raise money for the victims of the Chernobyl disaster. The nuclear reactor accident had happened just a month before in Ukraine. Some of the artists who played at the concert had been previously banned by the Soviet authorities, so the concert was a social revolution, as organiser - Artemy Troitsky explains to Rebecca Kesby.(PHOTO Credit Sputnik: 1986 Charity concert arranged to raise funds for accident management at the Chernobyl power station. Olimpiysky sports complex.)

27 Mai 20219min

In the 1960s and 70s, Amilcar Cabral led the armed struggle to end Portuguese colonial rule in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde in West Africa. Cabral was an unusual rebel leader. He was an agricultural engineer, writer and poet who founded the liberation movement, the PAIGC, in 1956 to end Portuguese rule of his home country. In Guinea Bissau, the PAIGC fought a successful guerrilla war against a much larger Portuguese army. But Cabral was assassinated shortly before Portugal officially conceded independence in 1974. Alex Last spoke to former liberation fighter, Commander Manuel dos Santos about the struggle and his memories of Amilcar Cabral.(Photo: Rebel soldiers on patrol in Guinea Bissau during the Portuguese Colonial War in West Africa, 1972. Credit: Reg Lancaster/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

26 Mai 202114min

Despite opposition from her father, Lotfia Elnadi was determined to realise her dream to fly. With her mother's consent, she secretly took flying lessons from an English instructor at a small airfield in the desert outside Cairo. And in September 1933 she made history by becoming the first female pilot in the Arab world. Mike Lanchin has been hearing from the Egyptian film-maker and writer Wageh George who interviewed Lotfia at the end of her long life for a film about her amazing achievement entitled 'Take Off From The Sand'.Photo credit: AlamyArchive of Lotfia Elnadi from 'Take Off From The Sand'

25 Mai 20219min