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The Fifth Floor

Factual: Life Stories

Global stories from the BBC’s 40 Language Services, with Faranak Amidi

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services.

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services

The Fifth Floor: 14/04/2012

Discussion & Talk

14/04/2012

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, 14/04/2012

Reporting from the world's highest battlefield - is Siachen worth dying for?

The spectacular fall of Bo Xilai; reporting from the world's highest battleground; reporting by proxy & explosive vodka in Kazakhstan.

A fresh look at the week's global news from across the World Service's 27 language sections, with David Amanor.

BO'S DOWNFALL
Groomed for greatness, tipped for the top - but now one of China's most popular politicians is stranded in the gutter. Bo Xilai has been stripped of all status in the governing communist party and now his wife is detained as a suspect in a murder investigation. It's a plot that's stranger than fiction. Raymond Li, editor of BBC Chinese, recounts the spectacular downfall of the former shining star Bo Xilai.

WORLD'S HIGHEST BATTLEFIELD
It's 20,000 icy feet above sea level and more than 20 degrees below zero. The Siachen Glacier is also the world's highest battleground. A week ago more than 100 Pakistani soldiers were buried there in a huge and deadly avalanche. Now BBC Urdu's Zaheeruddin Babar is the first Pakistani journalist to have been given access to report from there. But he is following in the footsteps of Mukesh Sharma of BBC Hindi, who was the first BBC journalist to have been to granted access to the glacier in 2006. 

PAPPON'S PICKS
Our internet guru Thomas Pappon gives the lowdown on the big-hitting stories across the World Service language sites this week - watch out for flying cars, a superfood health craze favoured by the ancient Aztecs and the Russian actress who treading the boards for Putin.

THE LIFT PITCH
Ibrat Safo gets into the lift on the first floor to tell us about a printing error on a vodka bottle that's proved an explosive cocktail in Kazakhstan. There's only five floors to go before the doors open. So what's the story? 

REPORTING BY PROXY
In the wake of Bo Xilai's purge in China and gradual opening up of the once restricted Burma, how did the BBC's language services cover big stories in places with restricted media access. Lily Wang of the Chinese service joins Soe Win Than of the Burmese service to explore the many techniques of reporting by proxy.

(Photo: An Indian army soldier keeps vigil at the Indo-Pakistan border at Siachen, at over 23,000 feet of altitude  Credit: Getty Images)

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