The five-day election
Philippa Thomas hears from voters across the United States on the agony and ecstasy of waiting for results of the unusually protracted presidential election.
18 Nov 202028min
Obesity crisis In Thai temples
Obesity is a growing problem in Thailand. As the country becomes more affluent, its citizens are working more and cooking less which means that they are buying more convenience foods containing high levels of fat and sugar. In the Thai population at large, one in three men is obese but the numbers are worse in Thai temples where one in two Buddhist monks is obese. They eat the same food as the Thai population and they only eat in the mornings so what is the problem? Sucheera Maguire has been to Bangkok to talk to those who give and receive alms and she takes a look at some of the ingenious solutions that Thai nutritionists have come up with to combat the obesity crisis in Thai temples.
17 Nov 202028min
Blood lands
At dusk on a warm evening in 2016, two men arrive, unexpectedly, at a remote South African farmhouse. The frenzy that follows will come to haunt a community, destroying families, turning neighbours into "traitors", prompting street protests and threats of violence, and dividing the small farming and tourist town of Parys along racial lines. Correspondent Andrew Harding has followed every twist of the police’s hunt for the killers, the betrayals that opened the door to an explosive trial, and the fortunes of all those involved – from the dead men’s families to the handful of men controversially selected for prosecution.
15 Nov 202050min
US election: A test of democracy
Joe Biden is the projected winner of the race to be the next president of the United States. Donald Trump, however, refuses to concede the election and many of his supporters continue to believe that he will remain in power after the inauguration in January. Host Ben James shares conversations among Trump supporters in Georgia, Florida and Washington DC, who believe President Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud. One of them changed from a Democrat because she felt Trump treated immigrants better. Plus women from both political sides come together to consider the impact of Kamala Harris as America’s first female Vice-President elect.
14 Nov 202024min
The burning scar
Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of palm oil, a product found in everything from shampoo to soup; in the last two decades vast areas of forests have been cleared to make way for plantations. The remote province of Papua, home to Asia’s largest remaining rainforests has escaped fairly untouched...until now. It's the new frontier for unfair palm oil expansion. In this remote region Rebecca Henschke and Ayomi Amindoni investigate allegations of unfair land deals, violations of indigenous rights and illegal burning. (Image: Tadius Butipo, 30 years old, with his son, in a oil palm plantation. Credit: Albertus Vembrianto/BBC)
12 Nov 202026min
India's missing children
In India, a child goes missing every eight minutes. BBC South Asia Correspondent Rajini Vaidyanathan meets the family of one of those children and follows their attempts to trace their daughter. It’s a journey that takes us into the murky world of human trafficking, where children are bought and sold as commodities – forced to work long hours in factories, brothels or as domestic servants. And far from slowing the trade, the Coronavirus has fuelled demand for child labour and led to an increase in child trafficking as ‘middle-men’ target communities worst-hit by the pandemic.
10 Nov 202027min
US election: Divided nation
The US election has amplified political and racial divisions across the nation, so how do voters feel about the splits in their society?Host Nuala McGovern is in Reno, Nevada, speaking to people across the political spectrum to hear how they feel about the vote and the state of their nation. In this election assumptions have been overturned and expectations upended. Double the number of Black voters are believed to have supported President Trump at the polls compared to 2016, and several prominent Republicans publicly declared they were voting for Joe Biden, instead of the leader of their own party. Among our conversations, we hear from three Black Trump supporters about why they voted for him, and two women from opposing sides of the political fence on the controversy surrounding the voting and counting.
7 Nov 202024min
Sicily’s prisoner fishermen
Eighteen fishermen from Sicily are in jail in Benghazi, accused of fishing in Libya’s waters. And in this part of the Mediterranean, rich in the highly-prized and lucrative red prawn, these kinds of arrests are frequent. Usually the Libyans release the men after negotiations. This time it’s different. General Khalifa Haftar – the warlord with authority over the east of Libya – is demanding a prisoner swap: the freeing of four Libyans in jail in Sicily convicted of human trafficking and implicated in the deaths of 49 migrants, in return for the fishermen. For Assignment, Linda Pressly explores a little-known conflict in the Mediterranean - the so-called, ‘Red Prawn War’ and its fall-out. (Image: Domenico Asaro, a third generation fishermen from Mazara del Vallo who has been arrested at sea by Libya three times. Credit: BBC)
5 Nov 202026min
