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The Bigger Picture

21/04/2018 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, The Bigger Picture

Dramatic human stories from Western Sahara, Myanmar, Guinea Bissau and south India

"Life ticks on" in Western Sahara; reporters on trial in Myanmar; Guinea Bissau's cocaine trade; the film-star politicians who go from box-office to ballot box in south India

Shaimaa Khalil presents stories from reporters, correspondents and writers around the world. In this edition:

Nicola Kelly spends time near Tindouf, in Algeria, with Saharawi families who're still haunted by memories of their homes in Western Sahara - and still hoping for an end to their exile. The dispute over Western Sahara has lasted for more than forty years and pulled in Spain, Mauritania and Morocco, as well as local people. It's a cause taken up by various international backers. But will it ever be resolved?

Nick Beake has just arrived in Yangon as the BBC's Myanmar correspondent - and his first big story there involves getting uncomfortably close to the action during the trial of two journalists accused of espionage, for their use of classified documents as they tried to uncover the truth about a massacre of Rohingya people in the country's northwest. 

Lorraine Mallinder gets into bad company on the streets of Bissau, capital of Guinea Bissau - as she's offered some large and lucrative drug deals. A few years back this small and impoverished West African country was discussed as a possible "narco state", where cocaine traffic was about to corrupt the entire system. Since then there has been international intervention to stop the trade - but Lorraine found plenty of evidence that it's still flourishing.

And Andrew Whitehead, in Chennai, ponders the intimate link between film stardom and political power in south India. The Tamil-language film industry doesn't only keep audiences riveted across the region: it's also a hotbed of aspiring politicians, two of whom are now set for a dramatic battle for voters.

Image: A Sahrawi refugee woman walks amid the rubble of which were destroyed during heavy rain last year at the Samara refugee camp, west of the Algerian city of Tindouf in the disputed territory of Western Sahara, on March 4, 2016. / (FAROUK BATICHE/AFP/Getty Images)

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