Mozambique’s new president, Daniel Chapo, has been sworn in, after winning a violently disputed election held in October last year. Many people have been killed in clashes with the police and the opposition is still calling for protests. So what next for Mozambique under President Daniel Chapo?
How will the China-based online giant Temu, now operating in Nigeria, affect similar local companies?
Also in the podcast, we hear from the Kenyan woman who spent eight years in a Malaysian prison – more than three of them on death row – after being convicted for trafficking drugs, but was released when an appeals court accepted she was an ‘innocent carrier’.
Presenter: Audrey Brown
Producers: Yvette Twagiramariya, Stephania Okereke, and Sunita Nahar in London. Frenny Jowi was in Nairobi
Senior Producer: Patricia Whitehorne
Technical Producer: Gabriel O'Regan
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi
Dozens of survivors and dead pulled from an abandoned South African gold mine
How Russia is expanding its partnership in Africa's nuclear sector
And ice hockey gains popularity in Kenya.
Presenter: Audrey Brown
Producers: Victor Sylver, Nyasha Michelle, Priya Sippy and Sunita Nahar
Senior Producer: Paul Bakibinga
Technical Producer: Chris Kouzaris
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi .
Kenya's high court has struck down a law that criminalised the act of attempting suicide. We hear from one of the petitioners who brought the challenge, on why the judge's ruling is important.
Also in the podcast, we revisit the dumpsite in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, that collapsed and killed more than 30 people last August. How is the city managing its waste problem?
And a shop owner tells us about the devastating impact of a fire at one of the biggest open air markets in Ghana, and efforts to rebuild the area.
Presenter: Audrey Brown
Producers: Yvette Twagiramariya, Bella Hassan and Sunita Nahar in London. Frenny Jowi was in Nairobi
Senior Producer: Patricia Whitehorne
Technical Producer: Gabriel O'Regan
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) pulls out of the largest free hospital in Sudan’s capital Khartoum.
Fears over a cargo of explosive fertiliser in a harbour in Ivory Coast
And who are the Baye Fall muslims in Senegal?
Presenter: Audrey Brown
Producers: Amie Liebovitz and Nyasha Michelle in London and Blessing Aderogba in Lagos.
Senior Producer : Paul Bakibinga
Technical Producer: Francesca Dunne
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi
Donald Trump has repeated his desire to control Greenland as a matter of national security, targeting Russian and Chinese interest in the Arctic. Competition is heating up over shipping routes and stores of natural resources.
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 World Service. For more, go to bbcworldservice.com/globalstory or search for The Global Story wherever you got this podcast.
We meet a Texas woman whose donated breastmilk helped thousands of premature babies. Also: surviving thirteen days alone in Australia's mountains; a chess playing NBA star; and appealing for friends to tackle loneliness.
In the past stout beer has been touted for its supposed health benefits. Is there any truth to those claims - and what happens if you take the alcohol out?
CrowdScience listener Aengus pondered these questions down at the pub, after noticing most of his friends were drinking non-alcoholic beers. He wondered how the non-alcoholic stuff is made – what’s taken out and what’s added in – and whether the final product is better for you than the alcoholic version.
It’s a question that takes us to Belgium, home to the experimental brewery of a global drinks company which takes the growing market for alcohol-free beer very seriously. David De Schutter, head of research and development, shows host Marnie Chesterton how to take alcohol out of beer without spoiling the flavour.
We also find our way to a yeast lab in Leuven, Belgium where Kevin Verstrepen and his team have found another way to make alcohol-free beer with the help of industrious microbes: yeast varieties that brew beer without producing any alcohol in the first place. And how do they compare to the alcoholic versions? We discuss the importance of aromas in our perception of beer’s taste.
So should listener Aengus stick to non-alcoholic stout? We speak to scientist Tim Stockwell about the health drawbacks of alcohol, even in moderation. And gut microbiome researcher Cláudia Marques fills us in on her delicious pilot study, which looked at the effects of both non-alcoholic and alcoholic beers on our digestive tract.
Along the way, Marnie taste-tests what's on the market, and asks the experts why this particular grocery shelf has become so much bigger and more flavourful in recent years.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton
Producer: Sam Baker
Editor: Cathy Edwards
Production co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano
Technical producers: Giles Aspen, Andrew Garratt and Donald MacDonald
(Image: Close-up of waitress holding craft beer at bar, Brazil Credit: FG Trade via Getty Images)
Benin forces have suffered heavy losses in an attack which the military chief described as 'a heavy blow'. The assault happened at one of Benin's most well-equipped military positions. So who was behind the attack and what does it tell us about Benin's security preparedness?
Also in the podcast, after São Tomé and Príncipe's president fired the prime minister accusing him of failing in his job, are political tensions on the verge of being ignited in the central African island nation?
And why is the South African government not able to provide better reliable water and sanitation? We hear from the deputy minister responsible for Water and Sanitation.
Presenter: Audrey Brown
Producers: Yvette Twagiramariya, Amie Liebowitz and Sunita Nahar in London
Senior Producer: Patricia Whitehorne
Technical Producer: Frank McWeeny
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi
Team Unexpected have been digging into their mind palaces to pull on the scientific research that has stuck with them most over the past year.
We hear from Professor John Parnell, geologist at the University of Aberdeen, about the role of plankton in forming ancient mountains.
How ocean bubbles play a role in climate regulation with bubble physicist Dr Helen Czerski from University College London. Would you know how to measure the size of a bubble?
We also participate in some memory sports with Jonas von Essen who is a two-time world memory champion. He helps us construct a mind palace in order to memorise really long strings of digits.
Plus we look into the backstory of the human buttocks with science journalist and reporter Heather Radke. She answers the question ‘why do we humans have such large behinds?’
And we hear from Professor Andre Isaacs at the College of the Holy Cross who has filled his chemistry lab with music and dance in order to change perceptions about who can be a scientist.
That, plus many more Unexpected Elements.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton
Producer: Jonathan Blackwell and Harrison Lewis with Imaan Moin and Alice Lipscombe-Southwell
H5N1 bird flu is still spreading across farms in the USA and this week claimed its first human life in North America - an elderly patient in Louisiana infected by backyard poultry. But last week, Sonja Olsen, Associate Director for Preparedness and Response in the CDC’s flu division, and her colleague Shikha Garg, published new analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine summarizing the human cases and epidemiology so far.
A lab study underscoring a suspected link between the virus responsible for cold sores, and Alzheimers, the most common form of dementia, has been published in Science Signalling this week. The study, by Dana Cairns of Tufts University, looks at whether repetitive brain trauma – another risk factor - adds to the evidence that latent herpes simplex can be involved.
Song Lin, a chemist at Cornell University who has won prizes for pioneering the use of electrical currents to drive chemical reactions rather than heat, has teamed up with Cornell micro engineer Paul McEuen to power up a new kind of chemistry and invent another kind of SPECS – an acronym for Small Photoelectronics for Electrochemical Synthesis. They outlined their first generation device and the promises it brings in Nature this week.
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Alex Mansfield
Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth
(Photo: Chickens eating feed. Credit: San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images)
