North Korea and Burkina Faso

Pascale Harter introduces insight and analysis from correspondents and writers around the world. Rupert Wingfield Hayes explains how the thriving trade in Choco Pie biscuits and smuggled DVDs reveals hidden weaknesses in the Pyongyang regime. Are North Koreans really as isolated from the rest of the world as foreign analysts and media tend to assume? On the banks of the Kou River in Burkina Faso, Emilie Filou joins a brave team of animal hunters who actually volunteer to be bitten. Their quarry is tiny, but still a menace: the black fly, less than a millimetre long yet a crucial vector for the scourge of river blindness.