03/02/2011

Available for over a year

In Tunis and in Cairo, our reporter traces the roots of the anger that's spreading across the Arab world. Remembering the best of the Soviet Union in the ruins of a lost city. And a celebration of the tea drinking traditions of India. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is desperate to leave the stage with a degree of dignity. He's fighting to stay in power until elections can be arranged. And Mr Mubarak's reported to have said that he has a "PhD in obstinacy". But his people may yet prove equally well qualified in their determination to get rid of him sooner than he wants to go. Lyse Doucet is watching the revolution unfold on the banks of the Nile. There was more bleak news the other day from Afghanistan. Figures released by a monitoring organisation show that the number of civilians killed last year was the highest since the war began. More than 2,400 non-combatants died - as many as seven every day. Most were killed at the hands of the insurgents. Civilians are often caught in the crossfire when the Taleban launch attacks on the American-led forces. The foreign troops themselves are believed to be responsible for around twenty per cent of civilian deaths. But Robert Fox says that in some places, the Americans are gaining ground. Few countries are as homophobic as Uganda. Homosexual acts can be punished with many years in prison. And there was a recent parliamentary attempt to introduce the death penalty in some cases. Confronting the violent anti-gay bigotry in Uganda takes real courage - but that is what a man called David Kato did. He was a leading gay rights campaigner, and just recently he was found dead. He'd been beaten to death. The police are still investigating, and the motive for the killing is not yet clear. But Anna Cavell says Uganda's beleaguered gay community is mourning a hero. It's nearly twenty-five years now since the world realised that something terrible had happened in Ukraine. The Soviet authorities there only gradually admitted the full extent of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. But eventually it became clear that the accident had released at least 100 times more radiation than the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thousands of people are believed to have been killed. And even now there's danger. A new cover's being built to shelter many tons of radio-active wreckage. The polluted area around the plant is now known as the "Zone of Alienation". And Richard Hollingham has been exploring the ghost town that lies within it - a place called Pripiyat. There are certain things that link Britain with India: railways, cricket and curry, to name a few. But one thing that divides the two countries as much as it unites them is tea. It wasn't a popular drink among Indians until the British started cultivating the tea plant in Assam in the nineteenth century. India then adopted what its people call "chai" with huge enthusiasm. But they brought to the drink their own style - completely transforming its preparation. And Judy Swallow remembers acquiring a taste for chai, and an appreciation for the way it's traditionally served.