Philippines and Cuba

Available for over a year

Pascale Harter presents stories from Kate McGeown in the Philippines and Will Grant in Cuba. On the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, roadside bombings, kidnappings and shoot-outs between rebels and the police have been part of daily life for the last 40 years. Every president since the 1970s has tried to end the insurgency. But now, the largest rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front has signed a framework agreement with the government and is promising to lay down its arms. Kate McGeown went to Mindanao to see if this time a deal really could hold. Fifty years ago Soviet missiles placed in Cuba, locked the Kremlin and the White House in a game of who blinks first and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. In the end, Russia agreed to move the missiles and the US agreed not to invade its communist neighbour. Today the Soviet Union no longer exists and the Cold War has been history for a generation, and yet Will Grant finds that the past still lingers on in Havana. (Image: An anti-tank 'Moon' missile. Credit: STR/AFP/GettyImages)