2022: Strength in a year of storms

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Sri Lanka’s political crisis erupted in the summer of 2022 after months of rising public anger and concern over its dire economic straits. Before the protests turned violent, Rajini Vaidyanathan had seen how the country’s problems could be illuminated by a simple dinner at home – cooked over a wood fire and eaten by the light of a kerosene lamp. The hillsides of Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, are steep, crowded – and often made sodden by tropical rainstorms. After these cloudbursts, houses can be washed away in a matter of moments, as landslides send them collapsing into ravines. Nick Loomis met a team of urban planners trying to stop that happening – and prepare local residents to better flood-proof their homes. The people of Mosul, in Iraq, have had many years to consider how to keep a city’s culture alive during wartime. They’ve survived overlapping stages of armed conflict – and seen Saddam Hussein, the forces of US-NATO intervention, al Qaeda and the Islamic State group trying to control their town. After so much trauma and war damage, there’s still a place for music and poetry, as Leila Molana Allen heard after an ecstatic concert of traditional music. And from Paris, Hugh Schofield reveals an exclusive release from the ateliers: his natty new presidential-style suit, a sharp narrow-cut number with a definite aura of power. But as he discovered during the French presidential election in 2022, looking like 'a factory-produced Macron boy' was not always the best image to project in other parts of the nation. Producer: Polly Hope Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Iona Hammond