A Brighter Future?

The surprise election of Istanbul's new mayor reveals just how hungry many Turkish voters are for a message of hope and conciliation. Mark Lowen saw the ecstatic celebrations on the streets of the city last week.

Pascale Harter introduces this and other stories of daily life, personal aspiration, and the value of news, with dispatches from reporters and writers around the world.

The college-admissions scandal in the US may have seemed nearly farcical - with tales of faked tests, cash bribes and fraudulent sporting achievements. But Laura Trevelyan explains why it reflects some of the deepest divides, and the most heartfelt ambitions, in American society - and particularly among parents who've come to expect that their children will enjoy the same elite college education which they received.

Alastair Leithead's been the BBC's Africa correspondent for the past four years - and during that time he's experimented with several new ways to report the news, from interactive virtual-reality to podcasting. As he prepares to spend a year researching the modern media landscape, and how to relay the BBC's journalism to the widest possible audiences, he's been thinking about what kind of news we want - especially from Africa - and how we want to get to it.

And Albana Kasapi revisits a village in Kosovo, where 20 years ago, as a young journalist, she reported on the aftermath of an attack in which 14 Serb villagers had been killed. Can the mourners go back? And how do they feel about the prospects for justice?

(Image: Ekrem Imamoglu's supporters celebrate in Istanbul after the re-run of Istanbul's mayoral elections. Credit: EPA/ERDEM SAHIN)