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

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The Fifth Floor: Iran's Forgotten Province

Documentaries

An Iranian shepherd and his flock in Iran's drought-affected south eastern Sistan Baluchistan province.

24/06/2016 GMT

Iran's Forgotten Province

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, Iran's Forgotten Province

Rare insights into life in Iran's impoverished Sistan Baluchistan province

Stories from Sistan Baluchistan, Mar Mar Aye, the Russian dream, understanding South Africa, and women in news in Bangladesh. With David Amanor.

The remote and impoverished province of Sistan Baluchistan is usually in the Iranian news for negative reasons - drug smuggling, rebel groups, or acute deprivation. But a story of courage and self-sacrifice recently caught the public imagination.  BBC Persian's Negin Shiraghaei tells us about a Baluch teacher who died trying to save his students when part of his school collapsed; why this struck such a chord in Iran; and how it links to her own family history.

Mar Mar Aye
Legendary Burmese singer Mar Mar Aye will be 75 this year, and she has been performing since she was 8. She went into exile in the late 1990s and became politically active. Now her situation is very different. We hear about her life and her long-lasting appeal from Zeyar Phyo and Maung Maung Than of BBC Burmese. 

Russian Dream
Projecting a glamorous, wealthy lifestyle is arguably what social media is all about, but journalist Tatyana Movshevich was recently struck by the discord between her Russian friends' real lives and their opulent online personas.  She calls it the Russian dream, and argues that its roots go far back into Russian folklore.

Reporting South Africa
With violent protests in Pretoria, bitter divisions within the African National Congress, and the unsettling impact of high unemployment, the BBC's Milton Nkosi reflects on the challenges of reporting in South Africa today and the changes he has lived through. 

Women in news in Bangladesh 
Nurjahan Begum, editor of Bangladesh's first women's magazine "Begum" for 65 years, died recently aged 91. It was a pioneering magazine that created a female readership for the first time, provided a rare outlet for women writers, and inspired a future generation of women to enter journalism. To mark her death, BBC Bangla looked at the role of women in journalism today. Shahnaz Parveen from BBC Bangla tells us more.

And Fifi Haroon's pick of the world wide web.

(Photo: An Iranian shepherd and his flock in Iran's drought-affected south-eastern Sistan Baluchistan province.
Credit: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images)

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