International report

This is a busy time of the year for Santa Claus, especially for those who make a living impersonating him!

One of the busiest in the world is Tim Connaghan.

He is America’s full-time national Santa Claus, who even runs a school for Santas where other Santas come to learn the trade.

Correspondent Colm Flynn has this report.

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In Guinea, the parliament recently voted on a law that would ban polygamy.

But the move has got many Guineans up in arms.

While many unmarried young people have welcomed the ban, a majority of older Guineans condemn this new law.

Islamic religious leaders have described the banning of polygamy as a sabotage of Islam.

Karim Kamara has this report from Conakry.

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Video on demand has become a global battlefield with the likes of Netflix, Hulu, and Apple fighting for global share.

But in Africa, a different approach is emerging that aims to fit the situation on the ground better.

Startups are targeting mobile viewers and finding ways to bring original African material and support local content providers.

Frank Hersey reports from Côte d’Ivoire.

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The global video games industry is now worth 120 billion Euros; three times the size of the film industry.

And it's growing fast with the popularity of mobile gaming.

As games become increasingly complex, they create an expanding variety of jobs. With an eye on the rapidly growing population, developers in Cote d’Ivoire are hoping to get in on the action.

Frank Hersey reports from Abidjan, the economic capital of Cote d’Ivoire.

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Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) campaigners face widly different situations across Africa.

South Africa allows same sex marriage, but many governments in east Africa are becoming increasingly repressive.

In west Africa, several groups are quietly pushing ahead with initiatives, not necessarily for dramatic changes to the law, but to improve living standards for the LGBT community.

A recent talent show in Cote d’Ivoire had the express aim of helping LGBT people find jobs.

Frank Hersey went to the show and has this report from Ivorian capital.

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Cameroon's Prime Minister, Joseph Dion Ngute, who is himself an English-speaker, recently began a visit to the troubled Anglophone regions as part of government efforts to find a lasting solution to the separatist crisis there.

The emergency was sparked in late 2016 against percieved marginalisation of the minority English-speakers by the majority Francophone government. It then escalated into an armed conflict at the close of 2017.

The PM's arrival in Bamenda was greeted by a wailing scene staged by scores of women in what they call a lamentation campaign basically aimed at urging the protagonists to end the conflict.

From Bamenda, Alphonse Tebeck has this report.

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Earlier this month, on 15 May, millions of Palestinians inside the occupied territories and in the diaspora, marked the 71st anniversary of the Palestinian people's departure from their homeland, the event known as the Nakbah or catastrophe.

With Brexit being postponed until later this year, the United Kingdom is obliged to take part in the European Parliament elections.

Voters in the UK, including EU citizens, are going to the polls today, Thursday 23 May.

This has been a very peculiar campaign for EU voters and candidate.

In Scotland, a nation which voted to stay in the EU, today's elections are gearing up to mean more than usual as Assa Samaké-Roman reports.

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As the eyes of the world turn towards India where ballot counting is continuing after a month-long election involving 900 million voters, we go to one area in Mumbai where many voters work in the informal sector of laundry.

Ekrem Imamoglu shook Turkish politics when he won Istanbul's mayorship, ending 25 years of domination by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party.

But Turkey’s electoral board controversially ordered a run of the vote, putting Imamoglu at the center of an unprecedented political storm.

Correspondent Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.

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