The Documentary

Dr Irena Bradley and Kelly Latimore are both iconographers taking the ancient tradition of iconography into the 21st Century. Both interpret their icons very differently. Irena is more traditional in her approach - creating an icon is an act of worship and to bring in the faithful who look at them in the presence of God. However Kelly’s approach maybe considered more modern, painting images that reflect modern day social injustices within biblical settings. Nastaran Tavakoli-Far hears from both of them. What drives them to do what they do and do they see their work as inspired by god? She brings them together to hear how they relate to and interpret one another’s work.

The battle to keep the peace between people and elephants in northern Botswana. The earth’s largest land mammal, the elephant, is an endangered species. Poaching, habitat loss and disease have decimated elephant populations. But not in Botswana, which has the world’s biggest population of elephants. In the north of the country, in the area around the remarkable Okavango Delta (the world’s largest inland delta), elephant numbers are growing and they outnumber people. This can pose serious problems for the human population, particularly local subsistence farmers. A crop raid by elephants can destroy a family’s annual food supply overnight. Elephants also pose a risk to life in their daily commute between their feeding grounds and their water sources. John Murphy travels to the top of the Okavango Delta, to see what efforts are being made to keep both people and elephants safe, and to persuade locals that these giant animals are an asset not a liability. He also explores threats from further afield to this green

"A flood of disinformation has erupted across social media in the online propaganda battle that’s being waged alongside the physical conflict between Israel and Hamas.Everything from video game clips falsely presented as genuine combat footage, to the outright denial of civilian deaths, have been deployed to try to skew the online narrative and warp public perceptions.BBC Verify’s Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh examine the trends in this alternative war over the Middle East with the help of Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, the independent investigative organisation."

In the mountainous east of Nepal many communities are dependent on tea. The nitrogen-rich soil of the high-elevation estates allow tea bushes to produce a unique flavour, but the picking has to be done by hand. Phanindra Dahal talks to farmers, factory managers, tea estate supervisors and leaders in the business to find out how this small nation is looking to compete globally and the challenges they are up against. One challenge is a complex relationship with its neighbour, India.

Claudia Piñeiro is a multi-award winning novelist, with many of her books being adapted for television. She's one of Argentina's most translated writers, as well as being a popular screenwriter and playwright. The BBC's Andrea Kidd joins Claudia in her apartment in Buenos Aires, as she works on her latest, as yet, untitled novel. It follows the story of two step-sisters, one a radio journalist, the other an escort, both unaware of the other's existence, until a dramatic incident brings their lives together. But was it an accident or something more sinister?

A bonus episode from The Global Story podcast. Is #Me Too finally exploding in French cinema?. The Global Story brings you one big story every weekday, making sense of the news with our experts around the world. Insights you can trust, from the BBC, with Katya Adler. For more, go to bbcworldservice.com/globalstory or search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Russian authorities have announced the death of one of the country’s most significant opposition leaders Alexey Navalny in a remote penal colony in the Arctic Circle. Stephen Sackur spoke to him in Moscow in 2017 about the risks involved in being a prominent critic of President Putin.

It is two years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war has claimed tens of thousands of lives, left millions of Ukrainians as refugees, and wrought much destruction. When your home is invaded and everything is shattered and turned upside down, what happens to your life? Host James Reynolds hears from three women in Ukraine who, despite the dangers of war, chose to have a baby. At the start of the war, millions of women and children escaped to safety abroad. With the passing of time, some have decided to return. Three of those women come together to discuss their decisions to go back home.

The Bengal Famine, particularly the experiences of people in the rural areas who suffered the most, is not well remembered today. There is no memorial, museum, or plaque to the victims or survivors anywhere in the world.One man has made it his life’s work to record their testimonies with paper and pen. Kavita hears from him, and tries to understand more about why the three million people who perished aren’t better remembered or memorialised in India, Bangladesh and Britain.Presenter: Kavita Puri Series producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Emma Rippon Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore Production coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Sabine Schereck Original music: Felix TaylorWith thanks to Dr Janam Mukherjee and Professor Joya Chatterji

Kavita Puri discovers a set of cassette tapes containing rare interviews with Indian civil servants who were on the ground across Bengal during the famine, shedding new light on colonial responsibility. And as the need for relief in Bengal becomes ever greater, more pressure is put on the British government from India’s new Viceroy. He asks for more food imports. Could the War Cabinet and Prime Minister Winston Churchill have done more to help alleviate the famine in the middle of the war? Presenter: Kavita Puri Series producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Emma Rippon Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore Production co-ordinators: Maria Ogundele and Sabine Schereck Original music: Felix TaylorWith thanks to Dr Janam Mukherjee and Professor Joya ChatterjiInterviews conducted by Lance Brennan courtesy of University of CambridgeInterviews with GS Khosla courtesy of University of Cambridge

Colonial authorities wanted to censor the famine. They were worried that Britain’s wartime enemies - the Germans and the Japanese - would use it as propaganda against them.But as more and more starving people arrive in cities across Bengal, it becomes harder to suppress. Indian writers, photographers and artists document the humanitarian catastrophe, but it was risky, as the censor forbade mention of the famine. A British journalist and editor of the English language Statesman newspaper, in Calcutta, decides to challenge the censor and begins publishing photographs and scathing editorials about what was really going on in Bengal. It shocks the world. In London, the BBC reports on “famine conditions” and, as we uncover, the British government tries to pressurise the broadcaster to tone down its coverage.Presenter: Kavita Puri Series producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Emma Rippon Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore Production coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Sabine Schereck Original music: Felix TaylorWith thanks t

A boy decides how much rice he can give from a cigarette tin to hungry people. A Christian missionary sets up a makeshift relief hospital. A small child watches through the gates of his house in Calcutta as emaciated women clutching children ask for food. As the food crisis deepens, shocking testimonies from the countryside show the extent of starvation. Many thousands of hungry people begin moving from the rural areas towards the cities.Indians - including children - are forced into life-or-death decisions.Presenter: Kavita Puri Series producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Emma Rippon Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore Production coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Sabine Schereck Original music: Felix TaylorWith thanks to Dr Janam Mukherjee, Professor Joya Chatterji and Dr Diya Gupta.Interview with Alan McLeod courtesy of the University of Cambridge

During the Second World War, at least three million Indian people, who were British subjects, died in the Bengal Famine. It was one of the largest losses of civilian life on the Allied side. But there is no memorial to them anywhere in the world - not even a plaque. Can three million people disappear from public memory?From the creator and presenter of the award-winning series Three Pounds in my Pocket and Partition Voices, this is the story of the Bengal Famine of 1943. For the first time it is told by those who were there - farmers and fishermen, artists and writers, colonial British and everyday citizens. Nearly all of the testimony in the series has never been broadcast before. Eighty years on, those who lived through it are a vanishing generation. Time is running out to record their memories.We begin in 1942. As the Japanese sweep through South East Asia, Calcutta (now Kolkata) is inundated with hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers from all over the world. Fear of a Japanese invasion of British India

For centuries, the Judaeo-Spanish language of Ladino was spoken in the vibrant streets of Thessaloniki. But today, it is a language on the verge of fading away, its echoes becoming fainter with each passing generation. Journalist and language enthusiast Sophia Smith Galer heads to the city to find out what happened to Ladino, and where its traces may still be found today - hearing from the teachers, community members and even singers who do not want Greece to forget one of their linguistic jewels.

Journalists in Pakistan say they’re under threat of abduction and even of being killed if they criticise the state authorities. Whoever is in power, legal action against journalists who’ve spoken out against the authorities is nothing new. Press freedom campaigners say that in 12 months 140 journalists were threatened or attacked with some saying that democracy itself is under attack. For Assignment Mobeen Azhar hears the allegations made by those who say they’ve been targeted to shut them up - allegations which the authorities deny.Archive: AAJ News, May 2023 GNN, February 2023, Naya Daur February 2022, GEO TV October 2022

In Malaysian Borneo, indigenous people have struggled for land rights against companies and the state. Using new mapping technology, communities in Borneo’s rainforests are racing to prove their claims. We explore how technology and social media are being used and misused to shift the balance of power.

As the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, Oleg Boldyrev reports on how ordinary Russians are dealing with life in a country at war with its close neighbour. Are there new economic and social challenges, and what do we know of attitudes to the invasion? We talk to Russians across the country to gauge the mood.Photo by ANATOLY MALTSEV/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock (14329432c) People stand at a bus stop near an image depicting St. Isaac's Cathedral (back) on a sunny day in St. Petersburg, Russia, 02 February 2024. Temperatures in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, reached minus two degrees Celsius on the day.

Vik Muniz says he owes his artistic career to being shot as a young man, not because he had an epiphany about the meaning of his life, but because he won enough compensation from the accident to move to New York and kick-start his career in the art world. He is now probably one of Brazil’s most successful visual artists and his pieces can range from tiny specs that are photographed by microscopes to giant landscapes captured from helicopters. He is known for working with unconventional materials; some of his most famous works have been created out of sugar, chocolate and a plate of left over spaghetti. Andrea Kennedy went to New York to meet him as he prepared for an exhibition full of illusions.

Radio can be a lifeline for women: a place to speak out in safety; a place to find their voices. We hear from women taking to the air and making waves in the cracks left by the Taliban in Afghanistan; in Fiji's scattered archipelago threatened by climate change; in the migrant farmworker community of the Yakima Valley in North America's Pacific north-west; and in the Ecuadorean Amazon, where indigenous women are coming together to save their land from pollution and destruction by oil companies.

Putin’s re-election is certain, but there is still a lot at stake for the Kremlin. We look into the efforts aimed at achieving unequivocal victory in what seems to be the most oppressive election in Russia for two decades. What are the stories state media can and cannot touch, how much of a headache does dissent from the mothers and wives of soldiers pose to the authorities and does Putin really have body doubles? We have the answers. Producer: Kriszta Satori Presenter: Krassi Twigg Editor: Judy King Twitter handle of contributors: @VitalyBBC, @jen_mon1, @oivshina Original music: Pete Cunningham Sound engineer: Martin Appleby