From Our Own Correspondent

Turkey and the EU are hammering out a deal that would turn Turkey into the gatekeeper of Europe, to stop undocumented migrants from reaching the West. But will the refugees agree to stay in Turkey, or try to reach the EU by any means possible?They have lost limbs, parents, homes, and favourite dolls. But not their bravery and spirit. We meet the children who have been affected by the five years of war in Syria. If you're an American, your annual tax return form 1040 has an instruction booklet that's over 100 pages long. Luckily, help is at hand, not just from accountants, but also from specially trained volunteers, like our correspondent. We go on a pilgrimage to the holy city of the Mourides brotherhood in Senegal, where offering hospitality is such an honour, that some believers ask people at the bus stop if they'd come and be their guest. And Paris fashion - for those with no interest in sartorial trends. Was it the universe that pushed our correspondent to brush up on his 'overcast shell hems', and 'poodl

In China, customers are staying away from the pearl and jewellery shops, but lingerie sales are soaring. The strange effects that the clampdown on corruption is having on the country's economy. Fighting elephant poachers can a dangerous business in the Democratic Republic of Congo where part of who you're up against appears to be a neighbouring country's army. We travel on the ancient Via Egnatia that used to join two great empires. Though on the modern Greek version of the route, you don't get quite as far as you hope. Though it's nothing to do with closed borders. And, with the zika virus outbreak in Brazil, would you want to try for a baby there now? What if you're at an age where you can't afford to wait too much longer?

They are coiffed, lacquered, expensively attired and perfumed - and that's just the men in a Donald Trump audience in Florida. And while our North America editor expects the unexpected from Donald Trump, he is surprised to find him in a conciliatory mood. Spending four months on a single page of A4 - the art of calligraphy and other skills are being revived in Kabul, and now exhibited in Washington. They're both in their nineties, and now the former Auschwitz guard comes face to face with an Auschwitz survivor in a German courtroom. Germany confronts its past just as violent anti-migrant attacks are on the rise. In Pakistan, thousands turn out at a funeral to mourn their hero, a killer. He was executed for murdering a provincial governor who had wanted to reform the harsh blasphemy laws. And the road to Mandalay - in a right-hand drive taxi, on a left-hand drive road. So what were the passengers talking about?

Having reached Greece after often perilous journeys, many migrants now find that their hoped-for route north is blocked. Danny Savage meets some of those who have to live in tents in Athens, and on the Greek-Macedonian border with little hope of reaching their final destinations. Many refugees have come from Syria, where neighbourhoods in some cities have been reduced to rubble. Warda al-Jawahiry visits Homs, parts of which have been completely bombed out. Yet there are those who still live there, and bear emotional scars that are as real as the physical destruction. In the Ethiopian capital Addis Abeba, James Jeffrey goes for his early morning run, and finds he's not alone. For early dawn is the time when hyenas finish their night time scavenging in the city. Chris Bockman is in the Spanish enclave of Llivia - a small town completely surrounded by France, but with surprisingly few French speakers. And in Mongolia many young people are giving up the outdoor life of herding sheep on the steppe, and reading nov

The human stories behind the headlines. In this edition, we hear from India, where protests deprived ten million Delhi residents of their water. Members of the Jat caste want to force the government to reclassify them as lower-caste, so they can get quotas for government jobs and study places. Used Field Marshall for sale - the things you find on eBay in Egypt, when locals take the president at his word. What happens when a Trump supporter meets a young Muslim refugee for brunch in Alabama? Our Moscow correspondent gets a distinctly chilly welcome in Siberia, and no, it's nothing to do with the weather. And arriving at the airport in Havana, it's an event in itself.

The stories behind the headlines. In this edition, we hear from Turkey, where the authorities are blaming a Syrian Kurd for a bombing that killed 29 people. Turkey is unhappy at US support for Kurdish fighters in Syria, who combat so-called Islamic State there. The complexities of the war in Syria are becoming mingled with those of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. Sri Lanka suffered almost 30 years of civil war, and many an autocratic regime, yet now the country seems set on a path of reconciliation. But will a former President and his supporters try and scupper it? In Ethiopia, our correspondent faints at the sight of eyelid surgery - performed on sufferers of an infection that risks turning them blind. The Galapagos islands are home to wondrous wildlife, but there are fears that this year's seal pups might not survive the effects of the El Nino phenomenon. And Detroit, once known for its motors and recent bankruptcy, is now reinventing itself as a place that makes bicycles, and attracts crowds of hipsters.

Meeting the people populating the world of news. In this edition: thousands were massacred in the Bosnian town of Visegrad during the war there in 1992 - today, as Fergal Keane has been finding out, the authorities there want it to become a tourist destination. Visegrad is also on Nick Thorpe's mind only he's talking about the town by the River Danube in Hungary, where the so-called Visegrad 4, a grouping of regional nations, was born. Nick says that in today's Europe, their voice can no longer be ignored. As the US-election spotlight turns to South Carolina and Nevada, Robert Hodierne examines gun control and why the laws governing it won't be changing any time soon. Beth McLeod is in Malawi travelling on a boat built in Scotland when the country was a British protectorate which continues to provide a vital service to local communities. And he may have lived in Paris for two decades, but our man Hugh Schofield explains why it's only now, finally, that he seems to wield a bit of influence!

Colouring in the space between the headlines. In this edition: behind the scenes at the EU as a meeting nears which could determine Britain's future in Europe; why many in Venezuela, mired in economic crisis, have a fond word for their former hardline socialist president Hugo Chavez; mass migrations's one of the biggest stories of our time but in Portugal they're concerned not about new arrivals, but about the number of people leaving; a visit to a jail in the US state of Oregon leaves our correspondent considering what it must be like to be locked up there and what it must be like to work there -- and clog dancing's not a subject tackled frequently on this programme but in Brittany, we find, it’s a good excuse for a bit of a knees-up!

Human stories behind the headlines: Fergal Keane is on the frontline in Ukraine with a husband and wife who are determined to stay on in their home even as war consumes their town. Two boys talk to Quentin Sommerville about life, death and indoctrination in an ISIS-held town in Syria. Grace Livingstone is in the Venezuelan countryside finding that livelihoods are being hit hard by the financial crisis. On Mafia Island, off the coast of Tanzania, Hannah McNeish finds there are two principal topics of conversation - the performance of the new president and a fish called Jesus which, so the story goes, is as big as a car. And it is now official: the very best baguettes in the world are baked by Koreans. Steve Evans, in Seoul, talks of changing tastes in a young market with a global, fashionable appetite for the trappings of European culture and cuisine

The fuller story. In this edition, crime's a major talking point as campaigning intensifies in the US presidential election - activists under the banner 'Black Lives Matter' are drawing attention to the number of young African-American men who've been shot by the police; security forces are standing by as a presidential election looms in Uganda - some aren't happy that President Museveni is trying to extend a rule which has already lasted thirty years; Malaysia may be a rainbow nation made up of ethnic Malays, Chinese, Indian and indigenous people but resentment is festering and a controversy over the prime minister's financial affairs threatens to polarise the country further; thousands of migrants have come ashore on the Italian island of Lampedusa - it's a place which used to rely on its tourism, today the holidaymakers are staying away and … as Valentine's Day approaches, we look inside the world of internet dating - more and more people are using it but some say it's addictive, impersonal and it's made l

The human stories behind the headlines. In this edition one correspondent flies through the Latin American night visiting three countries in search of the truth about the Zika crisis; another accompanies members of a private militia on patrol in Kenya. They're looking for rhino poachers and if they find them, they'll kill them; the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been built on oil. But the oil price has nosedived and for the Saudi leaders, it's a time of unprecedented insecurity; the Syria peace talks in Geneva have been put on hold - no point talking just for the sake of talking, says the UN special envoy. And 'imagine a dolphin or a unicorn jumping through your third eye!' That's one of the suggestions at a group therapy session out in the Sahara Desert. But what did the man from the BBC make of it all?

In this edition: how Russian military activity above and below the surface of the Baltic Sea is causing increasing concern in Sweden; Ethiopia's suffering its worst drought in years - but with a buoyant economy why does it need international aid to help it cope? We find out why Finns appear to have fallen out of love with the migrants and why the migrants no longer seem fond of Finland; Belarus might have a reputation as Europe's last dictatorship but a visit to its capital Minsk reveals a positively gleaming city - a cathedral with standing room only and an opera house thronged with the well-heeled and the expensively turned-out. Mali's best-loved export, music, has struggled to make its voice heard during recent years of instability in the country. But a festival's just been staged in the capital, Bamako. Its aim, to show the world there's more to Mali than disorder and violence

Correspondents around the world tell their stories. In this edition Gabriel Gatehouse is back in Tripoli as speculation grows about a new military intervention in Libya; Mark Lowen is in Diyarbakir where there's been intense fighting between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants; Miles Warde is in a dusty town on the edge of Kenya where there are plans for pipelines, resort cities and Chinese-built railways but the locals wonder if any of them will ever materialise; Claudia Hammond visits what they call a 'geriatric rehabilitation centre' in Cuba where, apparently, there's never a dull moment and Victoria Gill is in Antarctica meeting the rather amusing residents of a place called Moot Point

Insight, storytelling, colour, detail. In this edition, the Russians in Syria show off their fighter jets and warships, a message from Moscow that Russia once again sees itself as a major player on the world stage. A million incomers to Germany in a year -- can they give the economy a useful bounce as well as defuse a demographic timebomb? The old men of the Vietnamese communist party leadership have their say at the big five-yearly meeting in Hanoi, but is their tightly-controlled socialist state beginning to unravel and is there anything they can do to stop it? We visit the world's largest refugee camp in the Kenyan desert. It has a population the size of New Orleans'. Many were born there and will never leave it. Some wonder if similarly huge camps will soon spring up on the fringes of Europe. Pensioners have been among the hardest hit by the Greek government's tough austerity measures. Their income's been cut a dozen times as the government tries to hit economic targets set by the EU and the IMF. It's lef

China's economy falters and is blamed for nosediving stock markets and, partly, for the loss of hundreds of steel industry jobs in South Wales. In this edition, Steve Evans visits a steelworks in China, which has just closed down, and considers the lessons the Chinese leadership may consider. The misery of the war in Yemen continues and Nawal al-Maghafi, recently back from there, explains why no-one is rushing into peace talks. Chris Morris joins a group of migrants on their voyage to across the Mediterranean to Europe and learns about some of the extraordinary lengths that Syrians are going to to escape the killing fields of home. Mobile phones and televisions come to a monastery in the foothills of the Himalayas in now-Chinese eastern Tibet. Horatio Clare wonders if a centuries-old monastic way of life is under threat. And, in Delhi, Anu Anand weaves a tale about music and memory set against a backdrop of love, loss and the passing of time

Today our correspondents ... are in the classroom as migrants, newly arrived in Finland, are taught about Finnish values, culture and the place of women in western society; consider how much the self-styled Islamic State has been damaged by recent successes by Iraqi government forces supported by foreign air power; go to Norway, a country outside the EU but inside the single market. Is that an example the UK might follow after the referendum has been held on whether it should stay in or leave the EU? Our man in Cuba takes a stroll through Havana's poorly lit streets amid concerns that an upsurge in tourism will lead to a rise in crime; and a trip to the hopfields of southern Germany where one brewer is finding that beer and art can be an intoxicating mix.

'Don't tell us how to run our country!' That was the word from Warsaw as the European Commission launched an investigation into some of the decisions taken by the new right-wing government in Poland; the authorities in India meet on Monday to evaluate the controversial traffic experiment in Delhi which was aimed at reducing pollution; the latest consumer spending figures in France offer little evidence that an economic recovery is underway -- but in Toulouse some people know where to get their food for free; lawyers for the Mexican drug lord known as 'el Chapo' have started to prepare a case against his extradition to the US -- some in Mexico would anyway prefer to see him face justice there. And there's something to sing about in northern Norway - after six weeks their polar night season has come to an end, the sun has finally made an appearance and it’s something to sing about!

The best in news and current affairs storytelling. Today, after a troubled week for the Chinese economy, we wonder who's more popular in China today, the author of that Little Red Book, Chairman Mao, or the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Colonel Sanders. Violence continues to rain down on Yemen - the Islamic State group has now become involved in the civil war and is believed to have been behind a string of suicide bombings. Our correspondent witnessed the horrific aftermath of one such attack in the capital Sana'a. Chancellor Merkel's ruling Christian Democrats in Germany plan tougher action against migrants who commit crimes. The announcement follows the assaults on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve which have triggered further heated debate about Mrs Merkel's welcoming policy towards migrants. Was the recent election in Seychelles, those 'paradise islands' in the Indian Ocean, rigged? While the people wait for a court's verdict, we visit Seychelles and hear there have been big changes in the way of li

Your window on the wider world. The Iraqi forces claimed victory over IS fighters when they swept into the city of Ramadi - but the place has been devastated, it will be months before residents can return to their homes. Thomas Fessy, who's been there, explains why this is being viewed as a significant achievement by the Iraqi security forces. On the Greek island of Lesbos, bad weather has slowed the tide of human migrants sweeping into the EU but Paul Adams says the new year will see European leaders trying again to come up with a coherent response to what's been one of the great human migrations of recent times. The new Argentine president is trying to breathe life into the country's moribund economy -- in Buenos Aires, as Petroc Trelawny's been finding out, some dare to dream this could bring the glamour back to the once-smart shopping streets of the capital. We're amazed to learn from Carolyn Browne in Brittany that it's possible to drive a car quite legally on the roads of France -- even if you've lost y

Looking back at some historic FOOC despatches: Allan Little, Bridget Kendall, Emma Jane Kirby, Steve Evans and Gabriel Gatehouse read pieces by Fergal Keane, Caroline Wyatt, Charles Wheeler, John Crawley and Kevin Connolly