International report

A London council has become the first in Britain to agree to stop anti-abortion protests taking place outside a local clinic. Pro-choice supporters say it's a landmark victory for women's rights. But anti-abortion groups say the verdict smothers their legal right to protest. Katerina Vittozzi has more from London.

India has been celebrating several Hindu festivals in recent weeks. And today begins the Diwali festival of lights. Traditionally these are happy occasions, but in some Indian cities, people are unhappy about the damage that festivals may be doing to the environment. Correspondent Jack Fereday reports from New Delhi.

The United Nations said this week that the number of Rohingya Muslims who’ve fled from Myanmar across the border to Bangladesh has now hit 582,000 people after the Myanmar armed forces responded to attacks in late August.

The recent treatment of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar has been described by the United Nations as "ethnic cleansing".

Ahmer Khan reports from just across the border in Bangladesh, Cox’s Bazar, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas are now refugees.

The biggest herd of hippopotamuses outside of Africa is in Colombia. It only exists because of drug-dealers. The lumbering giants are a the legacy of the notorious Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar in the 1980s and amassed billions of dollars in drug money.

One of the things he spent his money on wasa huge estate called Hacienda Napoles outside his home town of Medellin where he built a zoo.

Today the hippopotamuses from his zoo have become a herd of about 40 animals and attract visitors to the estate.Najet Benrabaa has this report.

In Zimbabwe, government health workers are offering HIV and AIDS testing at night because they believe more people will come for testing rather than during the day. And, as Jeffrey Moyo reports from Harare, it appears to be working.

Gambia’s former dictator leader Yaya Jammeh, who seized power in a bloodless putsch in 1994, ruled the small West Africa nation for 22 years. But in December 2016, he was defeated in the presidential elections by a coalition of eight political parties led by Adama Barrow. Correspondent Alpha Jallow reports from Banjul on how Gambians are taking to the post-Jammeh era.

How do you recruit 60,000 young millennials in Africa? Through a reality TV game show! In Senegal, Farm Factory will hit the screen this month. It’s the first show of its kind sponsored by a government farming agency to make agriculture attractive again.

To bolster food security in the country, the agency plans to create 60,000 jobs for young people in agriculture by 2019 and lure young people back to the land.

Around 30 contestants will live, eat and work on a farm and get voted off every week until 20 remain for a face-off between two teams.

Emmanuelle Landais went to find out what life on the farm is like before the big launch on 9 October.

In Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, a new initiative has been launched to put cameras inside taxis. The city's authorities say this will provide security for both drivers and passengers.

Since last year’s failed coup more than 60,000 people have been locked up and nearly 200,000 have been fired from their jobs, on orders from the Turkish government.

So are the new taxis with cameras – called iTaksi – about making people feel safe, or about watching them more closely?

Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, of President Abbas’s Fatah party, will travel to the Gaza strip this Monday, in an effort to bring together Fatah and its rival Hamas -- which runs the Gaza strip.

The two Palestinian parties split more than ten years ago, but Monday’s visit comes after Hamas agreed to make concessions and hold elections – something that was seen as a move towards Palestinian unity.

Ahead of Monday’s visit, correspondent Rami Almeghari in Gaza assesses the talk of improved relations between the two parties.

A number of farmers and business people in Senegal have formed a movement called Convivium to revive farming methods from the pre-colonial period.

 

The group will help farmers grow crops that used to be cultivated, but which disappeared during the colonial era when cash crops like rice were encouraged.

Emmanuelle Landais has this report.