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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

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The Fifth Floor: The Names Behind the Numbers

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Numbered headstones

13/05/2016 GMT

The Names Behind the Numbers

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, The Names Behind the Numbers

Telling the stories of the unidentified migrants buried in Turkey, Greece and Italy

Marked by a number: the unidentified migrants buried in Europe; Venezuela meltdown; Ethiopian roadtrip

This week Firuz Rahimi of BBC Afghan is working on a report about the unidentified migrants who have died at sea trying to cross the Mediterranean.  He has been to Greece, Turkey and Afghanistan to trace the families behind headstones sometimes marked only with numbers.  It was an experience that has changed his outlook on the migrant story.

Venezuela meltdown 
Things are getting hot in Venezuela, there are water shortages, an energy crisis, soaring prices, and cuts in the working week. The opposition has been out on the streets of the capital mobilising dissent to try to oust President Nicolas Maduro.  There have been rubber bullets and teargas this week. Can things get any worse? Daniel Pardo is BBC Mundo's watchman in Caracas.

Ethiopian Road Trip 
BBC Africa's Hewete Haileselassie takes us on a mountainous drive from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to the northern border with Eritrea, through villages untouched by the trappings of modern life. She tells us what she discovered about her origins and the country itself.

My Cultural Revolution
Yuwen Wu of BBC Chinese was nine years old when the Cultural Revolution started in 1966. For the 50th anniversary, she has created an online gallery of 10 objects which sum up that time - from the famous Little Red Book of Chairman Mao, to the 'big-character posters' denouncing officials and teachers. Yuwen shares memories of a world turned upside-down.

Digital Palmyra 
As a gesture of defiance against the destruction at Palymra carried out by so-called  Islamic State, experts have launched a project to digitally preserve heritage sites, objects and artefacts. Two BBC Arabic journalists following the story are Reda El Mawy, who is also a trained archaeologist, and Kindah Shair. They explain how the project works.

And Fifi Haroon's pick of the worldwide web.

Photo: A Turkish graveyard for unidentified migrants, headstones marked with number.
Credit: BBC

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