From Our Own Correspondent

In Mozambique, the northernmost province of Cabo Delgado may have become the latest outpost of the so-called Islamic State insurgency, with reports of massacres and beheadings. The area is rich in precious gemstones and has huge natural gas reserves, but the local people are poor and increasingly have to flee. Andrew Harding reports on a region where everything is at stake. War has erupted again in Nagorno-Karabakh, the territory disputed by Armenia and Azerbaijan. Most of the residents are ethnic Armenians, who have been governing the territory since a first, vicious war three decades ago. But even the intervening years have hardly been peaceful, as Rayhan Demytrie found out. Hong Kong is living under a new National Security Law which authorities hope might put an end to a year of violent youth-led pro-democracy protests. This law has given Beijing unprecedented powers within Hong Kong to police public speech and demonstrations. There seems to be a new, mainland Chinese secret police too. Activists and journalists find they're now being followed, including Danny Vincent. It's Germany's National Unity Day, marking the reunification of West and East Germany 30 years ago today, after 45 years of being separated by the Iron Curtain. Since then, the westerners and easterners haven't always seen eye to eye. And five years ago, they took in a million refugees. John Kampfner takes the pulse of modern-day Germany. In France, a reckoning of sex, power and gender has begun, with new campaigns against domestic violence. An issue that the government has started to tackle, too. And, as Joanna Robertson says in Paris, the underlying fires of the battle are being stoked with pieces of paper and pots of glue.Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius

Lebanon has suffered not just a catastrophic blast that cost around two hundred lives, but also a devastating economic crisis. The value of the currency has plunged and the pandemic lockdown forced nearly a third of businesses to close, leaving thousands jobless. Is Lebanon now a sinking ship? People are leaving in droves, as Leila Molana-Allen reports from Beirut. Chile's central region has been so dry over the past ten years, that scientists speak of a “mega-drought”. But how do you farm without water? Jane Chambers visited the Til Til region to find out how the residents are coping with the agricultural crisis. In the Philippines Facebook took down more than 200 accounts accused of promoting pro-Duterte propaganda last week. Opposition politicians, human rights activists and journalists have reported receiving threatening posts. But a group was formed, to stand up to the abuse: The Troll Patrol. Howard Johnson went to meet one of them. In the Australian city of Melbourne, they’ve been having a second, full lockdown since July. Constraints have now started to be eased, beginning with the lifting of the curfew. But this second lockdown has been happening during the winter in the southern hemisphere, and, as Will Higginbotham reports, it took a heavier toll on residents’ mental health than the first. The spread of coronavirus has triggered a tangle of travel restrictions around the world. The UK demands that people arriving back from most foreign countries - though not Germany - self-isolate at home for 14 days. Reason enough for Simon Calder to watch his step very carefully at the German-Belgian-Dutch border.Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius

The first formal face-to-face Afghanistan peace talks are underway in Doha, the capital of the Gulf State of Qatar. These historic negotiations between the Afghan Taliban and a delegation of the Afghan government are focused on finding a negotiated end to a destructive war that’s now lasted more than four decades. How much have the Taliban changed since their harsh rule of the 1990’s, asks Lyse Doucet. In Yemen, the United Nations have this week announced that the critical aid they supply across the country has had to be substantially cut, as they have only received a third of the donations they need to operate. This despite the fact that Yemen has been enduring the world’s worst humanitarian crisis as a result of five years of war. And that was already before the coronavirus hit. Mai Noman reflects on how her fellow Yemenis cope with it all. Cuba has long had a complicated monetary system, and currently three currencies: the peso, the convertible peso or CUC, and the US dollar. The dollar was illegal until he mid-90s, when the CUC was also introduced to help cope with the worst years of post-Soviet austerity. Originally used to pay for luxury goods, the CUC was only exchangeable within the country. But are its days numbered now, asks Will Grant in Havana? And on a Sicilian hilltop glowing in early autumn colours, Horatio Clare surveys two and a half thousand years of history, from the ancient city where Phoenicians worshipped their love goddess, to the site of the annual corporate retreat of Google. Western Sicily doesn't offer the tourist escapism so much as a deep reminder of our common human history and faiths, up to our current trust in a certain search engine.Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius

Greece and Turkey have agreed to hold talks to help defuse their stand-off over disputed gas reserves near their shores. Ankara had deployed a research vessel accompanied by warships near a Greek island, and military exercises on both sides followed, giving rise to fears of war between the two long-term rivals, as Heidi Fuller Love reports from Crete.Pakistan was shocked by the gang-rape of a woman on a motorway leading out of the city of Lahore late at night. Sexual violence towards women in Pakistan is commonplace, but this case led to a backlash, as police appeared to blame the victim. As women come together to campaign for change, could it be a turning point to make everyday life safer for women, asks Secunder Kermani.Peru now has the highest per capita death rate from coronavirus in the world. More than half of the nation’s territory is Amazon rainforest and the indigenous people who live there have been badly affected by the pandemic, but have received little help, with little medical treatment available, as Dan Collyns reports.In the republic of Georgia, there are still people trapped inside ageing Soviet-era institutions, isolated from society simply for having a learning disability or a mental illness. But one woman has made it her life's work to help patients leave these clinical establishments, and to provide family-style homes for everyone she can prove is capable of independent living. Robin Forestier-Walker was invited along to one such rescue mission. Concerts and music festivals around the world have been cancelled but there is one festival that did go ahead, high up in the Alps in Switzerland. It featured live rock music and raclette cheese. Ben Russell went along.Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed agreements to normalise relations with Israel, this week, motivated by a desire to build a united front against Iran. Palestinians have condemned the move as a betrayal. Yolande Knell reports on out how the deal has gone down with young Emiratis and Israelis. Wildfires continue to rage across the West Coast region of the United States. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes as over four and a half million acres of land have now been scorched. President Trump visited this week and blamed “poor forest management” for the conflagrations. California’s governor insisted they’re due to climate change. Peter Bowes knows the devastation and destruction of these fires all too well.... On the Greek island of Lesbos, efforts have begun to move thousands of migrants and refugees from the fire-gutted Moria camp to a new tent city nearby. The camp had become overcrowded and squalid, and now many would prefer to leave Lesbos altogether. But where can they go, asks Bethany Bell. In Romania, the small Transylvanian village of Viscri has become a magnet for tourists, including the Prince of Wales. Stephen McGrath has been finding out why, and what impact it's been having. It would normally be peak safari season in the Serengeti region in northern Tanzania at this time of year, with carloads of tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of a giraffe, an elephant or even a pride of lions. But this year the visitors have stayed away because of the coronavirus. Well, not all of them. Michelle Jana Chan did go, and got a front row seat seeing some of nature’s grandest spectacles.Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius

India now has the second highest number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the world, having overtaken Brazil. This is placing huge demands on hospitals and ambulances. The medical services, particularly in smaller cities and rural areas, can find it hard to cope, sometimes leading to what relatives think were preventable deaths, as Yogita Limaye reports. Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is retiring. His politically conservative party will elect his successor on Monday. Mr Abe has taken his observers by surprise more than once. Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo looks at the effect of those surprises, and at his legacy. In Poland, some politicians’ hostility to gay rights has become a flash-point in a culture war pitting the religious right against the more liberal-minded. Last month the EU denied funding to six Polish towns which had declared themselves “LGBT ideology-free zones”. Lucy Ash has been to one of them, Tuchow. Wildfires have raged through central and northern Argentina for most of the year. Apart from forests and grasslands, about half a million acres of wetlands next to the mighty Parana river have been lost in the worst fires in over a decade. This has endangered livelihoods and sparked concern among environmentalists, as Natalio Cosoy reports. Cap d'Agde on the French Mediterranean coast is home to the biggest nudist resort in Europe. But with France’s recent surge in coronavirus cases, how have the naturists and also the considerable number of swingers there fared with the restrictions? Chris Bockman went to find out.Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius

This week’s dispatches, introduced by Kate Adie, are:Steve Rosenberg in Belarus reflects on the history he shares with President Lukashenko, recently re-elected in a poll widely regarded as fradulent. It’s based on their separate links with a small town in the countryside. Yet even these didn’t prevent him from being detained by the regime’s police force.Phil Mercer in Sydney considers the strains being placed on Australia’s cohesion as many of its principal states and territories close their borders to each other. From the maintenance of urgent medical care to opportunistic flits across the country, the restrictions are causing hardship and leading to disaffection.A deal has been initialled in Sudan between its transitional government and the main rebel alliance designed to bring peace to the long-troubled North African state. Hailed by outside governments, the agreement has, however, yet to be endorsed by all parties to the Sudanese conflict. Anne Soy reported on widespread protests in the country last year and considers whether this third peace deal will prove more durable than the preceding ones.Five years after a million migrants and putative refugees arrived in Europe, Nick Thorpe in Budapest assesses how the Hungarian government has handled the flow of people since then – and discovers how some of those he met in 2015 seeking to start new lives in Europe have fared.And finally carol singers and Father Christmases appear each summer on a peculiar day in Boston’s calendar – notably not disrupted by Covid-19 this year – when nearly three-quarters of those who rent their homes in the US city move house. Recent arrival there, Alice Hutton, went to meet her new neighbours to find out what it was all about.Producer Simon Coates

This week, as the leading opposition figure in Russia, Alexei Navalny, lies comatose in Berlin’s Charité hospital, Sarah Rainsford in Moscow considers the Kremlin’s peculiar hate and fear of its critics and the methods it is widely thought to have employed in dealing with them.Gabriel Gatehouse in Beirut observes the sharp generational divide that characterises post-civil war Lebanon – and wonders what it might portend for the country's future.North America Correspondent, Jane O’Brien, checks in to the “virtual” Republican party convention centred on the White House and detects a new confidence and a different style in the Trump – and Republican – campaigns for November’s US elections. What explains the shift?Sebastien Ash in the Swabian town of Heidenheim, southern Germany, reveals the significance of a face-off of statues linked to the so-called “Desert Fox” – Erwin Rommel, the well-known general of the Nazi era, noted for his role in World War Two’s North Africa campaign.And Christine Finn takes the plunge on the Paris-plages – and discovers that the fellow-bathers at the pools at and near the river Seine whom she encounters give a contemporary twist to the national motto of liberty, equality and fraternity – although not perhaps in quite the way we might expect.

Mishal Husain presents a range of perspectives on Britain today.Edinburgh is usually thronged with crowds and alive with performers from around the world at Festival time. But the Scottish capital is in decidedly unfamiliar guise this August. Long-time resident, James Naughtie, experiences a city that is not itself.Sparked by the shift in living patterns during lockdown, councils in England have implemented low traffic neigbourhoods aimed at cutting the number of vehicles on busy streets. But, as Tom Edwards, BBC London's Transport Correspondent, discovers, while residents like the respite, for motorists the new measures add to already time-consuming journeys.Deep in the Cotswolds lies an opera house popular with aficionados for miles around. This summer, though, silence - not music - has reigned there. Gillian Powell, part of Longborough Festival Opera's team, reflects on what she has been missing, what's still been possible to do and what she might be able to look forward to next year.During the Hindu festival of Janmastimi - a time of family reunion and celebration - Harshad Mistry received particularly sad and unwelcome news - the passing of his Motabhai or big brother. It has prompted not only poignant memories but also thoughts about ambition, kinship and community.And Ian McMillan reveals his youthful attempts with a friend at breaking the time barrier in Barnsley - with the help of a hill of sand and a baked bean tin - and explains why it's something that still preoccupies him.Producer: Simon Coates

Former US Vice-president Joe Biden accepted the Democratic party’s nomination for the presidency via video-link from his home in Wilmington, Delaware. The party convention was going to be a big celebratory event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with balloons and standing ovations. But not during the pandemic. Laura Trevelyan reports from this unconventional convention. South Africa banned alcohol to help keep hospital beds free for Covid-19 patients. So many have a drinking problem in the country that over 62,000 deaths a year are attributed to alcohol. But banning it damages the drinks industry. Vumani Mkhize reports on that dilemma and looks back at his own experiences with alcohol. There have been protests and strikes in Belarus since the contested elections of 9 August. And now the long-term ruler Alexander Lukashenko has given orders to end the unrest. The official result gave him 80% of the vote while the opposition denounced the poll as fraudulent. But where do they go from here, asks Jonah Fisher in the capital Minsk. The blast in Beirut cost many lives and caused thousands of injuries. One of those whose wounds still haven't healed is Leila Morana-Allen. But during the first days after the explosion, it wasn't just her injuries she was worried about, but her pet dog. Was he lost? Did he die? Would Lebanon's networks of dog-lovers be able to help? Being a foreign correspondent may sound glamorous to some, but the reality is working long hours with lots of short-notice travel. Correspondents accept that as part of the deal. But what's harder to deal with is the separation from loved ones. And now, as Shaimaa Khalil is finding in Sydney, due to pandemic travel restrictions she may not see her husband for a year. Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius