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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 president and the hostage-taker

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24/07/2020 GMT

The president and the hostage-taker

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, The president and the hostage-taker

A president, a hostage-taker, and likes for animal rights: one shift with BBC Ukrainian

A president, a hostage-taker, and likes for animal rights: one shift with BBC Ukrainian.

There's hot debate in Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelensky helped secure the release of a busload of hostages by complying with the hostage-taker's bizarre demands.  Irena Taranyuk of BBC Ukrainian has been following the story.

Birdwatching in lockdown Kathmandu
For Shreejana Shrestha of BBC Nepali, lockdown in the capital Kathmandu brought an unexpected new interest.  She's become an avid birdwatcher.  She tells us about the many beautiful and unusual birds she's been able to see and hear in the quieter and cleaner city. 

Cathedral, museum, mosque: Hagia Sophia
The first Friday prayers have been said at Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, after a court ruling ended its museum status.  It was built as a cathedral 1500 years ago, became a mosque after the Ottoman conquest, and in the 1930s became a museum.  Now it's a mosque again, as BBC Turkish journalist and Istanbul resident Esra Yalcinalp reports. 

Iran's defiant women singers 
Women are banned from singing solo in Iran, and during the past two years at least a dozen have been sentenced to prison for singing in public.  BBC World Service Women's Affairs reporter Faranak Amidi tells the story of two singers who faced prison for making music.

Notable banknotes 
One side-effect of the Covid-19 pandemic has been a big increase in digital payments. Is it the start of a long goodbye to familiar banknotes?  It seemed a good moment to revisit some tales of unusual and surprising banknotes we collected on the Fifth Floor a few years back.   

(Photo: Hostage bus Lutsk, Ukraine. Credit:  Markiian Lyseiko/EPA)

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