BBC World Service Documentary Archive Podcasts

Sue Armstrong looks at the Malawi's growing dependence on tobacco growing. She also asks whether cigarette manufacturers are trying to take advantage of poor regulation to build up new markets in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world, as smoking has declined in developed countries.

President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia is one of West Africa's longest serving leaders. He's maintained a firm grip on power since taking over in a military coup in 1994. He professes to have invented a cure for Aids and has declared himself a hero of agriculture and development. He's also a man who likes to celebrate his birthday in style. Ed Butler was in Gambia for the party.

In 1989, Appapillai Amirthalingam - the most prominent political figure of the Tamil community - was assassinated at his home in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Twenty years on, the Tamil Tigers have been defeated by the military. Appapillai's wife and son travel back to their homeland in search of his legacy in an attempt to understand what the future holds for Sri Lanka's Tamil people.

It is claimed that thousands of people of Haitian descent are suffering systematic discrimination by authorities in the Dominican Republic. Brian King meets the local lawyers who are fighting individual cases of injustice.

Sue Armstrong investigates the growing pressure on developing countries as tobacco companies battle for new smokers. Poorer tobacco growing countries like Malawi are becoming ever more dependent on tobacco as a regular income. But how do they resolve the dilemma between health and wealth?

Money sent home by migrant workers provides a lifeline for millions of the world's poorest people. In this Assignment programme we hear from Honduran migrant workers in the US and from their impoverished families back home. Vera Frankl presents.

"Why doesn't grandad smile?" Meena Baktash takes a personal look at the Kabul of her youth. What has war done to a city that was once so beautiful and a people so vibrant? After decades of conflict, what is left aside from a feeling of nostalgia?

Despite an official ban and regular crack downs the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has gone from strength to strength. The the BBC's Arabic affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi investigates the secret of its endurance and its global reach.

Guru, boffin, eccentric and genius, Gerry Wells is obsessed with radio - tinkering with, building and repairing them. It is a fixation that has got him into trouble with the law, but ultimately radio has been his saviour.

Sweden has garnered respect around the world for the welcome it offered to thousands of Iraqi refugees after the invasion of 2003. It's taken more Iraqis than any other country in Europe - indeed one small town outside Stockholm, Södertälje, has taken more than the United States. But 3,000 of those refugees are now living in hiding. Their applications for permanent residency have been denied and they face deportation if they are arrested. Tim Mansel reports from Sweden on why the government has decided it's safe to send these people home.

"No taxi driver in Cairo knows how to find the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood. The brothers may be everywhere but the organisation is nowhere to be seen." The BBC's Magdi Abdelhadi investigates Egypt's oldest Islamist organisation.

Singer Sami Yusuf is one of the biggest superstars in the Muslim world. He's eyeing up success in the mainstream market, but how can he compete in an industry that makes its profit from outrageous stars like Lady Gaga?

How do you train someone to love their country? Two years ago Russia and Georgia fought a brief war over the little known territory of South Ossetia. Russia sent its tanks deep into Georgian territory. In Georgia, the war led to an outbreak of patriotic fervour. In this week’s Assignment, Tom Esslemont has been to visit a government-run “patriotic” summer camp - where young Georgians learn to develop a sense of national pride.

In this two part series, the BBC takes a look at the intellectuals - or Lenin's ‘useful idiots’ - who have praised tyrants, and rewritten history. How was it that so many supposedly intelligent people were manipulated by dictators over the 20th Century into saying good things about bad regimes?

"They teach you how to steal and they teach you how to kill and they teach you to do things which normal people don't do." Security Correspondent Gordon Corera reveals the story behind Israel's secret service.

Korea's overseas adoption programme began in the 1950s as the impoverished government's answer to the masses of mixed-race orphans from the Korean war. All told, around 200,000 Korean children have been adopted overseas over the past 60 years. About 300 of them have since returned to live in Korea – and many are now involved in trying to change the adoption laws. In this programme, the BBC's Ellen Otzen meets Jane Trenka and Suki Leith, both of whom were adopted by American families, to explore the impact foreign adoption has had on them.

Days before Rwanda's presidential election, the government has issued a strongly worded statement denying any involvement in the killing of political opponents. Rob Walker has been investigating the allegations for Assignment.

“That’s what my role was. I was taken around and shown things as a useful idiot.” – Doris Lessing In this two part series, the BBC takes a look at the intellectuals - or Lenin's ‘useful idiots’ - who have praised tyrants, and rewritten history. How was it that so many supposedly intelligent people were manipulated by dictators over the 20th Century into saying good things about bad regimes?

"This culture inhibits the evolution of new ideas," says Professor Guosong Liu of the deferntial culture of China. Will this deferential culture keep China behind the West in the race to create the next big thing? Michael Robinson looks at whether the political model which has delivered China's fantastic economic growth over the last 30 years is the same model that will deliver growth over the next 30 years.

London Bridge has served as a crossing, a shopping district, a housing settlement and a platform for the grotesque display of criminal's heads. It crosses the river Thames. How did it end up in Arizona?