Crossing Continents

Mukul Devichand goes on the road with young children travelling alone on a journey of desperation, danger and hope - south from Zimbabwe and across the border to South Africa. Producer: Judy Fladmark.

David Shukman reports on the thousands who have become ill from the toxic dust that blanketed Lower Manhattan after the Twin Towers collapsed on Sept 11th. The buildings released a cocktail of deadly carcinogens including, asbestos, lead, mercury and PCBs.Frontline responders such as fire-fighters, police and emergency medical workers breathed in the contamination for several weeks as they toiled at Ground Zero. The fires burned for a hundred days and many of the emergency workers toiled without respirators or proper protection amid the dust and debris.Now officials say more than 18,000 people have received medical treatment in the last 12 months for World Trade Center related conditions - many of them serious. The head of the federal programme overseeing victims compensation says he expects more people to die because of their exposure.Nearly three thousand people perished on the day, but the suffering resulting from the attack is far from over. Producer: Linda Sills.

On the 18th of February 2011 a Palestinian engineer by the name of Dirar Abu Sisi boarded a train in eastern Ukraine. He was travelling to Kiev, where he hoped to apply for Ukrainian citizenship. But when the train arrived at its destination the following morning, Mr Abu Sisi was no longer on board. He had vanished. For more than a week, nothing was heard from Mr Abu Sisi, a manager at Gaza's main power plant. Then his wife got a phone call: her husband was in an Israeli jail. Now he is awaiting trial, accused of being the brains behind Hamas' rocket programme.Only twice in the country's history has Israel abducted someone on foreign soil to bring them back to face trial at home. Adolf Eichmann, one of the principal organizers of the Holocaust, was kidnapped in Argentina in 1960, and subsequently tried and executed. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu was drugged and smuggled out of Italy after revealing the existence of Israel's nuclear programme. So who is Dirar Abu Sisi? Did he really study rocket science at a Ukrainian military academy, as the Israeli indictment claims? Is he a senior Hamas operative? Or is he an innocent victim of mistaken identity? What role if any did the Ukrainian authorities play in his disappearance from that train? In this edition of Crossing Continents, Gabriel Gatehouse unravels the mystery of Dirar Abu Sisi, tracking his journey across Ukraine and beyond, to Israel and Gaza. It's a story that involves the secret services of at least two nations, and goes to the very heart of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Producer: Smita Patel.

In December, Ghana turned on the taps and began pumping its first commercial oil. Production will top 100,000 barrels a day this year -- enough the government believes to more than double the country's economic growth. At the centre of this oil rush is the once sleepy city of Takoradi. Already things are starting to change here: new businesses setting up to service the offshore oil industry, an increase in population, and, spiralling expectations. So can Ghana - one of the most stable countries in Africa - escape the curse of violence and corruption that has afflicted other big oil producers on the continent? Rob Walker visits Takoradi to find out, and he'll be returning to observe the transformation of Africa's newest oil city over the coming years. Producer: Katharine Hodgson.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Central Americans leave home and travel north overland, hoping to make a new life in the United States.This has always been a difficult journey. Now it is perilous. Mexican drug cartels have seen a business opportunity in the migrants: they are being systematically kidnapped en route, and held to ransom. Often they have been killed, and Mexico is currently investigating a number of mass graves.With the Mexican government's hardline military campaign against the cartels, these criminal organisations are moving south. The northern Guatemalan department of Peten - an area through which many migrants cross to Mexico - is vulnerable. On May, 27 farmworkers were killed at a remote farm in Peten. This was apparently revenge for a drug debt, and the killers are believed to be Zetas - the bloodiest Mexican cartel. The Zetas are battling other organised crime groups to take control of Peten. There's a fear that if they succeed, not only will they terrorise the local population, but they will begin to kidnap, extort and murder some of the thousands of migrants moving through - as they do routinely in Mexico. Crossing Continents follows part of the migrants' route - from Peten in Guatemala, to the southern Mexican town of Tenosique. Linda Pressly meets two Hondurans who were lucky to escape with their lives after an encounter with the Zetas. She hears from a Franciscan monk dedicated to protecting migrants. But the story of migration is complex. Not only do the cartels abuse the migrants, they also recruit them. And alongside the hopeful, innocent travellers travelling north, come criminals. In Tenosique, she speaks to a local businessman whose son was kidnapped and killed.

Tim Judah travels to Senegal to report on the Mourides, an increasingly powerful Senegalese Muslim movement that stresses the importance of hard workMany of the African street sellers in cities like Paris or Rome, and on Mediterranean beaches, are in fact Mourides. Far from being chancers who washed up on Europe's shores and now barely scrape a living from selling fake designer handbags or miniature Eiffel towers, they are part of a very organised and supportive brotherhood that now wields great economic and political power in Senegal. Thanks to their strong work ethic and the unparalleled networking opportunities the brotherhood provides, Mourides now dominate many sectors of the economy.They are said to constitute up to 40% of Senegalese Muslims (who make up over 90% of the population.) So not surprisingly, senior politicians, if they are not Mourides anyway, are courting the Mouride vote by going on pilgrimage to the Mouride holy city, Touba, several hours' drive east of the capital. The president of Senegal is a Mouride, as is the man who is probably the most famous Senegalese of all: singer Youssou N'Dour, who tells Tim why his Mouridism matters to him, and why it could be a way forward for Africa. So who are the Mourides? What do they believe and what matters to them? Tim travels to Dakar and the fabled holy city of Touba to find out. Producer: Arlene Gregorius.

Lucy Williamson reports from Seoul on the dangerous trade of the people brokers, smuggling desperate people out of North Korea to the safety of the South. She investigates the way the South Korean government tries to integrate refugees from the North into their own modern, open society - and the challenges this creates for people who have only known poverty and extreme political repression.

Crossing Continents joins a British doctor volunteering to help women and children stranded in Tunisian refugee camps while the men fight Gaddafi's forces in the mountains south of Tripoli. Producer: Bill Law.

The BBC's Kim Ghattas has gained exclusive, behind the scenes access to the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during one of her recent overseas visits. Code named "Special Air Mission 883", the trip took eight days, covered thirty thousand miles and touched down in four countries in the Middle East and Africa.Kim joins what is affectionately known as "the bubble", the travelling band of diplomatic staffers, special security detail, international press and handlers that accompany the Secretary, or "S" as she is known, on the trip. We share their thoughts and hopes, priorities and frustrations as Hillary Clinton pursues United States foreign policy goals. There are meetings of high diplomacy with kings and rulers as well as more grass roots events like the promotion of democracy and good governance at an African womens collective.A surprisingly intimate portrait of the Secretary and her closest aides. Producer: Jane Beresford.

Early-onset Alzheimer's has stalked a poor extended family in Medellin, Colombia. The family carries a dominant gene that means that half are at risk. The disease strikes family members as young as 25 and by their 40s sufferers are in the grip of full-blown dementia. Alzheimer's is by and large a disease of the developed world, if for no other reason than that people in the developing world don't live long enough to suffer from it. Now by using the Colombian family to trial new drugs, researchers say they may be on the road to a global cure for Alzheimer's. Bill Law asks if this represents an unfair exploitation of desperate people - many of them barely literate - to benefit those in the West? Or is it a case of bringing hope to those in a hopeless situation? Producer: Natalie Morton.