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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: 20/10/2012

20/10/2012

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, 20/10/2012

The fall of Gaddafi: a Libyan journalist gives an insider's view on how the BBC covered it

A Libyan journalist recalls the fall of Gaddafi; Tajikistan's lessons from Lenin; reporting rape in India; and where is your exit visa - a tale of woe and despair

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

ANNIVERSARY OF AN OVERTHROW
A year ago, Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed. It was the end of one era and the beginning of another, all played out in real-time on streaming video and in gruesome fashion, as pictures of Gaddafi's corpse were beamed around the globe. Tarik Kafala was Middle East editor of BBCNews.com that day, and remembers the day that changed his native Libya forever. 

ONLINE GREATEST HITS
BBC Brasil's Thomas Pappon gives the lowdown on the big-hitting stories across the World Service language sites this week - including alien planets, boxcar racing and the catfights of Downing Street.

LESSONS FROM LENIN
When BBC Uzbek reporter Khayrulla Fayz was a young boy growing up in Soviet Tajikistan, he like many others, spoke Russian and looked up to Lenin as the father of the nation. As a child in Dushanbe, he had pinned up Lenin's picture on his bedroom wall but ripped it up after a sharp reprimand from his father. So why was his father upset and what's happening to the current generation of Tajiks - now 20 years on from the end of the Soviet era - how has their relationship to Russia changed? 

REPORTING RAPE IN INDIA
This week a village chief in the northern Indian state of Haryana blamed the consumption of chow mein - a Chinese noodle dish - for an increase in gang-rapes in the area. This comment was amongst a slew of others made by prominent politicians, including one who claimed that 90% of rape incidents are "consensual". When such a mindset exists, reporting sexual violence and gender issues is never easy, a fact most familiar to the Hindi Service's Rupa Jha. 

THIS IS NOT AN EXIT
Cuba announced this week that it is removing the need for exit permits for those leaving the country to travel abroad. A few years ago, Liliet Heredero had to leave Havana but the journey started with her being forced to renounce her Cuban identity, give up her home and her car. From Cuba, Ethiopia, to Ukraine - and even a trip on the Trans-Siberian Express, we delve into some ill-fated exit visa stories. With Liliet Heredero, Damian Zane, Lili Wang and Olexiy Soluhobenko.

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