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Outlook: Outlook Weekend: Pick of the Week

Albie Sachs, Sergey Ananov

16/08/2015

Outlook Weekend: Pick of the Week

BBC World Service - Outlook, Outlook Weekend: Pick of the Week

South African freedom fighter and lawyer Albie Sachs; Russian pilot stranded in Arctic.

South African freedom fighter and lawyer Albie Sachs on a lifetime fighting apartheid; the Russian pilot who survived an arctic helicopter crash and polar bears.

Albie Sachs is a prominent figure in South Africa, a well-known fighter against apartheid, who paid for it with time in solitary confinement, exile, and hospital, after an attempt on his life. He trained as a lawyer in the 1950s, specialising in civil rights - and ended up as a judge, helping to write the new South Africa's constitution that recognised equality between blacks and whites. 

Sergey Ananov was attempting to become the first person to fly around the world in a light helicopter, weighing less than one tonne. But the record journey went dramatically wrong near the Arctic Circle, and he had to ditch into the ice-cold sea just off Baffin Island in Canada. He was stuck on an ice floe for 36 hours and had to fight off polar bears. He told Jo Fidgen about his incredible fight for survival.

An estimated 6,000 soldiers have died in the conflict in Ukraine. It's difficult for representatives of the Ukrainian government to go into rebel-held territory like Donetsk to retrieve the bodies of their fallen soldiers. So the two sides have agreed that volunteers can do it for them. The group is made up of mechanics, doctors, labourers, economists - and it's led by former businessman Yaroslav Zhilkin. He tells Jo Fidgen about the difficult and distressing task of retrieving the dead. 

Thirty one years ago, in 1984, Ruth Coker Burks was visiting a friend in hospital in her home state of Arkansas in the United States. By chance, she found out that one of the state's first AIDS patients was being treated there. His family wouldn't look after him, so Ruth took it upon herself to care for him even though she had no medical training. And over the years, she's done the same for nearly a thousand people - often burying them herself in her family cemetery.

L-R
(Photo Credit: Albie Sachs. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)
(Photo: Sergey Ananov. Credit: Sergey Ananov)

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