Beyond Today

South Korea’s playground for the rich and famous has been rocked by a major scandal over the alleged drugging and rape of women and young girls. Police have arrested more than 350 people in connection with claims of sexual abuse and exploitation in Seoul’s Gangnam nightclub district. A BBC investigation spoke to victims who say they were drugged with an undetectable substance before being dragged into nightclub back rooms or alleyways and then raped by one or more men, sometimes while being filmed on mobile phones. We speak to Laura Bicker, the BBC’s correspondent in Seoul about the scandal, and what it could mean for women in South Korea.

Producers: Philly Beaumont and Lucy Hancock

Boris Johnson is the clear favourite to replace Theresa May. He easily made it to the final along with Jeremy Hunt after getting backing from more than 100 Tory MPs. But things have gone a bit wrong for him after his neighbours recorded a row with his girlfriend Carrie Symonds and gave it to the press. He’s also faced criticism for hiding from TV debates – Jeremy Hunt has told him to “man up”. So with a less than a month to go before we have a new Prime Minister, just how vulnerable is Boris Johnson? We speak to BBC Political Correspondent Ben Wright and Joanne Nadler, author of “Too Nice to be a Tory”. We also hear from Nels Abbey, author of “Think Like A White Man”, who tells us how things would be different for Boris Johnson if he were black.

The Chinese authorities say they are schools students attend voluntarily. Human rights groups say hundreds of thousands of Muslims are detained there without trial. So what’s really going on inside the mysterious camps in Xinjiang, the majority Muslim province in the far west of China? BBC China Correspondent John Sudworth and his producer Kathy Long have been attempting to get to the truth of the story for months, studying satellite images and getting as close as they can to the tall walls and barbed wire that surround the camps. Now, for the first time, they’ve been allowed inside.

Producers: Harriet Noble and Alicia Burrell

Johny Pitts is a writer, photographer and TV presenter who you may have seen on CD:UK, Blue Peter or MTV. He’s now written a book called Afropean which, among other things, has helped him understand his heritage as a boy from Sheffield with a white-English mother and an African-American father. In the book Johny also sets out to explore the state of black culture and identity in Europe today as he travels from Sheffield to France and onwards to Russia. He came into the Beyond Today studio to tell us why, now more than ever, it's important to establish a pan-European black identity.

Producers: Philly Beaumont and Jaja Muhammad

Mobeen Azhar thought his hometown was a sleepy place where nothing really happened. Then a young man was shot by police on the motorway and Mobeen went home to investigate the killing. He found way more than he bargained for, and uncovered some uncomfortable truths about the place he grew up.

Two million people took to the streets in Hong Kong over the past week to protest against a controversial extradition bill. Led by young people the protests are a direct challenge to Chinese rule in Hong Kong. We spoke to BBC reporters Danny Vincent, who lives in Hong Kong and Helier Cheung who was brought up there. We also spoke to student leader Joshua Wong about what’s at stake.

Produced by Duncan Barber and Philly Beaumont

It’s almost a year since a Thai football team of 12 boys and their coach found themselves trapped for more than two weeks in the Tham Luang caves in northern Thailand. In a story that gripped the entire world, the rescue became a race against time to save the Wild Boars before heavy monsoon rains flooded the caves. The task was so complex and dangerous that it led to the death of one of the rescuers - Saman Gunan.

British caver Vernon Unsworth knows the Tham Luang caves better than anyone and played a crucial role in the rescue. In an exclusive interview he tells Beyond Today how difficult it was to get the operation off the ground, and the BBC’s South East Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, remembers how it all happened.

Producers: Seren Jones, Harriet Noble and Jaja Muhammad

Young people in Liverpool are being offered hundreds of pounds by older gang leaders to stab each other. An investigation by Layla Wright for Beyond Today found that bounties are being used in knife attacks. We speak to Alan Walsh, an experienced youth worker in Merseyside who spoke to and recorded the teenagers. He says he was shocked by what he heard. Merseyside Police say they have no evidence that this is happening, but have urged anyone who knows about it to come forward. We also hear from Layla about how difficult it was to get the teenagers to speak.

Producers: Layla Wright, Philly Beaumont

Michael Barbaro is the host of The New York Times’ podcast The Daily - a podcast that spends 20 minutes every day focussing on one big news story. Regular listeners of Beyond Today might find this familiar… And in truth without The Daily we might not exist: it was a blueprint for a new type of journalism, a revolution in how news is reported and covered. And The Daily started around about the same time as another revolution was taking place - the election of President Donald Trump. Here Michael Barbaro helps us look back the Trump presidency - what we’ve learnt, what we’ve got wrong, how the world is different – and how journalists have responded.

Producer: Harriet Noble.

Botswana is home to the world’s largest population of elephants. And now you can hunt them.

It’s a fascinating debate which pitches the moral question and knee-jerk reaction against killing endangered animals, against the economic and social reality of having more elephants than anywhere else on earth. Elephants can be very destructive when they encroach onto farmland and move through villages destroying crops and sometimes killing people.

But conservationists are angry. They believe the move is political. It could also damage the country's international reputation for conservation and affect its revenues from tourism, the second largest source of foreign income after diamond mining.

Alastair Leathead is the BBC’s Africa correspondent. He has spent a lot of time in Botswana and is caught up in the story. We got him into the Beyond Today studio to find out whether killing some elephants will save many more.

Producer: Duncan Barber