Crossing Continents

Mobeen Azhar reports from Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, where police are at war with the Taliban. Given rare access to the work of the police by a Senior Superintendent in Karachi's Criminal Investigation Department, Mobeen joins officers on a night time raid in search of the men who train suicide bombers. He meets a suspect in custody who brags about planting bombs and describes how he urges teenage boys to sacrifice their lives in violent jihad. Mobeen also talks to a businessman who was kidnapped for ransom and meets the families of police officers who have been killed by the militants. Assassinations linked to political parties have blighted the city for over a decade but today, more than 70 groups representing the militant Taliban are also fighting for control. This guerrilla war, once confined to the tribal belt of Waziristan has moved into Karachi with devastating results.

In one remote district in Ivory Coast, men are going back to school. Their studies are part of a UN-backed project dubbed 'the school for husbands' and designed to save the lives of women and children. The idea is to teach decision makers - the men - about the importance of family planning, check-ups, and pre-natal care for their wives. The aim is to help women and also improve general welfare in farming villages where food is scarce and incomes are dependent on the weather and good fortune. Lucy Ash hears stories from the schools for husbands and finds out why Ivory Coast's health system is struggling to recover from the post-election crisis three years ago, even as the country's economy roars ahead.Producer: Mike Wendling.

It has one of the largest fishing fleets in the world and much of the catch from Thailand's fishing boats ends up on Japanese, European and American plates. Yet the industry stands accused of profiting from slave labour.The BBC's Becky Palmstrom investigates this tale of modern day slavery. She travels to Thailand and Myanmar to find out why and how illegal migrants are being forced onto Thai fishing boats, many of them working for months unpaid. She hears allegations of cruelty and even murder.In Thailand Becky meets Ken, from rural Myanmar, who hoped to make a better life for himself and his ageing parents. He ended up being trafficked twice onto Thai fishing boats. The BBC team was able to bring his parents, back in Myanmar, the first news they had had of their son for four years.The Thai authorities admit that most of their fishing fleet is unregistered and much of it relies on illegal migrant labour. The Thai government insists it is making every effort to clamp down on trafficking and forced labour in its fishing industry. Yet the US State Department has recently downgraded Thailand to Tier 3 in its "Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP)" - a measure of how little it believes Thailand is doing to curb the problem. Producer: John Murphy.

In the Spanish mining town of Turon a male choir meets once a week for rehearsals. They often sing to the patron saint of miners Santa Bárbara Bendita. Since 1934 miners have been singing this beautiful song in memory of four miners killed in a mining accident in the Maria Luisa mine. Coal mining, once a major industry in Spain, has been in decline for years and in the next few years the EU's subsidies for non-profitable pits will stop altogether. For most miners the closure of pits signals the death of their communities. Natalio Cosoy travels to northern Spain to talk to the miners and their families. Will Santa Bárbara Bendita watch over them as they face an uncertain future? James Fletcher producing.

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in cocaine trafficking through Guatemala en route north, to the United States. Part of the fallout locally, has been a rise in addiction. As a result, more than 200 drug rehabilitation centres have been set up in the capital alone. Many of these are run by Pentecostal churches, with little oversight or regulation. Often addicts are swept up from the streets by 'hunting parties', and forced to attend such a centre. Linda Pressly travels to Guatemala City to investigate compulsory drug rehabilitation.

Gaelic Football is Ireland's most popular sport - there are clubs in every parish of the country. The game is very much part of the Irish identity. But it is losing its lifeblood. And all because of emigration. John Murphy goes to the far west of Ireland, to learn about this uniquely Irish game and hear how clubs are struggling to keep going as more and more young people leave the country, to find jobs abroad. Helen Grady producing.

Almighty God vs the Red Dragon: It sounds like a fantasy action film but it is in fact a real and disturbing struggle in China. The most vivid case involves a group of people who beat a stranger to death in a fast food restaurant. They said they had no choice because the victim was a 'demon'. The killers are fanatical followers of the Church of the Almighty God, a Christian doomsday cult which claims millions of members across China and pledges to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party - which it calls the 'Great Red Dragon'. Gracie uses her fluent Chinese to gain access to families of those caught up in the cult, including a man who infiltrated it to save his wife.

Europe and the US have imposed the toughest sanctions on Russia since the Cold War amid anger over the Kremlin's support for east Ukrainian separatists who stand accused of shooting down a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet. But the crisis began further south with Russia's annexation of Crimea in March.Crimea's idyllic scenery drew Soviet visitors for years - some called it the Communist Cote d'Azur. The collapse of communism did little to dent Russia's appetite for their bit of paradise on the Black Sea along with the thousands of Ukrainian holidaymakers who flocked there each year. But now the Ukrainians are staying away and the Russian government is trying to fill the gap by urging employers in Russia to send staff on subsidised breaks in Crimea. A holiday in the newly annexed peninsula has become every Russian's patriotic duty. For Crossing Continents, Lucy Ash visits Crimean tourist resorts and explores the motives behind Vladimir Putin's fateful decision to reclaim Russia's paradise.

For decades, Turkey's Kurds have been struggling against a state that used to deny their very existence as a separate people. In the low level war between the Turkish military and the militant Kurdish group, the PKK, both side have been accused of atrocities. In the 29 years of fighting up to last year's ceasefire, at least 40,000 people died and hundreds of villages were destroyed. But now, just when Kurds in neighbouring Iraq are considering establishing an independent state, and many believe the chaos in Syria will change borders across the region, Kurds in Turkey are increasingly reconciled to remaining within existing frontiers. As Turkey pursues peace talks with the PKK, the militant movement's supporters talk of changing society, not borders. And already, they've initiated some radical experiments.Pro-PKK towns and villages across eastern Turkey are now each governed by two co-mayors, male and female, and the new system has propelled many dynamic young women into power in regions that were once socially conservative. One is a survivor of domestic violence determined to use her position to encourage other women to speak up about what until now has been a taboo subject. She's not just the first woman mayor of her town, but also the first woman ever to get a divorce there. Tim Whewell travels to the region to meet her and other social reformers, and discover why so many of Turkey's Kurds say they have turned their back on nationalism, and want to express their identity in ways they say are more modern.Producers: Charlotte Pritchard and Guney Yildiz.

When a twisting funnel drops from the sky with tearing winds of up to 500 km/h, what do you do? In Oklahoma, people thought they knew the answer. The state is in the heart of tornado alley in the USA, where the public is regularly drilled on storm awareness. But when the largest storm ever recorded formed on the outskirts of Oklahoma City last year, people ignored the best advice and nearly died in their thousands. Now, officials are nervously watching where the next storm will form...and trying to figure what people will do when it does. Neal Razzell goes out and about with the storm chasers in Oklahoma City.