Hong Kong and the Mediterranean

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Alan Johnston introduces insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents around the world. In this edition, Claudia Hammond visits a Hong Kong beach resort trying to fight a reputation as a suicide hotspot and Sarah Rainsford takes a trip to the sea floor to witness an unusual link-up of NATO and Russian submarines. Cheung Chau island: a small place with a big responsibility Hong Kong isn't only one of the most densely populated places on earth. It's also brassy, materialistic and famously hard-working - and it can be pretty exhausting. If you want to escape the clamour of the city, though, you can always catch a ferry to the much more sleepy "outer islands", that lie scattered in the South China Sea. But as Claudia Hammond heard on a recent visit, the people of one of these islands have had to fight to overcome its rather dark and unsettling reputation. A once-unthinkable link-up on the seabed A major military exercise has just ended off the coast of southern Spain. Crews from more than a dozen navies carried out submarine rescue drills, and practiced docking their craft with subs from other countries. And for the first time since these Nato-led exercises began, this year Russia took part too. Our former Moscow correspondent, Sarah Rainsford couldn't resist dropping in on the Russian crew far beneath the waves.