

Fifth Floor
BBC World Service
Faranak Amidi takes a fresh look at the stories of the week with journalists from our 40 language sections.
Episodes
Mentioned books

May 31, 2019 • 9min
What price scaling Everest?
Mount Everest in Nepal draws hundreds of climbers every year keen to scale the world's highest peak. But the effort comes at a high price, both in lives lost, and the cost to the environment. BBC Nepali’s Surendra Phuyal reports on the campaign to clean up the rubbish left behind by the climbers on Nepal's holy mountain.Image: queuing to reach the peak of Everest
Credit: AFP PHOTO/PROJECT POSSIBLE

May 24, 2019 • 11min
Orangutan, elephants, and dams
Indonesia's Leuser rainforest in Sumatra is a unique ecosystem where elephants, orangutan, tigers and rhinos still live together. But this biodiverse forest is now threatened by development, as BBC Indonesia's Mehulika Sitepu found out. Photo: Sumatran orangutan
Copyright: BBC

May 17, 2019 • 12min
A Rohingya drama for Cox’s Bazar
Aa'rar Kissa, or Our Story, is a radio drama made specifically for the Rohingya refugees now living in Bangladesh, having fled their homes in Myanmar. The radio drama was created by the BBC Media Action's local director, Riad Arfin. Image: Rohingya Refugee Camp in Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh
Credit: NurPhoto/Contributor/Getty Images

May 10, 2019 • 13min
'Time for the guns to be silent'
BBC Africa’s Mohanad Hashim shares his impressions of a Sudan without President Omar al-Bashir, and the historic protests which toppled him from power.Image: Sudanese protesters gather to break their fast during Ramadan, outside the army headquarters in Khartoum
Credit: Mohamed El-Shahed/AFP/Getty Images

May 3, 2019 • 13min
Healing Iraq's mental wounds
Namak Knoshnaw spent a year making the BBC Arabic documentary Iraq: A State of Mind. It follows the stories of three people dealing with the psychological impact of half a century of war, invasion, sectarian violence and occupation by the so-called Islamic State. Namak grew up in Iraq, and it is a story close to his heart.(Photo: Karim Wasfi playing his cello in Baghdad. Credit: Sabah Arar/AFP/Getty Images)

Apr 26, 2019 • 14min
Reporting Sri Lankan bomb attacks
Ayeshea Perera is based in the BBC's Delhi office, but flew home to Sri Lanka immediately after Easter Sunday's bomb attacks. She shares her experiences of reporting from Colombo and Negombo, and her memories of civil war the bombings have triggered. Image: St Anthony's Church, Colombo
Credit: EPA

Apr 19, 2019 • 23min
What’s on trend around the world?
New fashions and passions are reported daily on the language services, so we’ve brought together some of our favourites: freediving in Colombia, Sufi fusion music in Pakistan, dreadlocks in Nigeria, and a new kind of tourism in South Korea. With Beatriz de la Pava of BBC Mundo, Julie Yoonnyung Lee of BBC Korean, Princess Abumere from BBC Lagos, and Farah Karim from BBC Africa, whose Global Beats programme this week discovers new music in her second home, Pakistan. Image: hipster girl with pink hair style and binoculars
Credit: Massonstock/Getty Images

Apr 12, 2019 • 9min
An Egyptian take on Algeria's protests
Large scale protests in Algeria forced President Bouteflika to stand down last week. BBC Arabic's Marwa Nasser visited Algiers to meet the protesters demanding change, bringing back memories of her own country's 2011 protests in Tahrir Square.Image: People carry a national flag during a protest to push for the removal of the current political structure, in Algiers
Credit: REUTERS/Ramzi Boudina

Apr 5, 2019 • 9min
The women who joined IS
Thousands of women and children associated with foreign IS fighters are now in limbo following the defeat of the ‘caliphate’. Tse Yin Lee and Matilda Welin are part of a BBC Monitoring team who have been researching why these women joined IS and what happens to them now.Image: wives and members of IS under the supervision of a female fighter from the Syrian Democratic Forces
Credit: BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images

Mar 29, 2019 • 10min
Helmand to Hull: an Afghan journey
Auliya Atrafi of BBC Afghan has been reporting from the northern city of Hull, which was his home for 12 years after he arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker in 2000. The city voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum, and Auliya wanted to assess the impact of the vote. Image: Auliya Atrafi in Hull
Credit: BBC