From Our Own Correspondent Folgen

South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma has been charged with a string of crimes including corruption, racketeering and money-laundering. He denies all allegations of wrongdoing and earlier this week didn’t attend his trial saying he was too sick. But photos posted on social media suggest otherwise and Andrew Harding says its South Africans who are really sick - sick of Zuma’s excuses. A self-described ''Asian man who's good at math”, Andrew Yang is a very long-shot for the White House. But self deprecating humour aside, the Chinese American entrepreneur and candidate for the Democratic party has lasted longer in the contest than many expected. He broke down in tears last week in Iowa, saying that campaigning for the last two years had been “the journey of my life.” Among the audience were some curious students from mainland China. Some 360,000 Chinese students now study in the US but what are they learning about the American way of voting, asked Zhaoyin Feng, the BBC’s Mandarin correspondent in Washington. In celebration of the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution next Tuesday, there will be mass rallies across the country and fiery speeches about the Great Satan – the demonising epithet for the United States. This year long simmering tensions with America reached boiling point after the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. But this hostility isn’t just between countries. The government in Tehran has plenty of Iranian critics as well, both inside and outside the country. And some of them didn’t just live through the revolution – they once longed for it to happen. - Supported its aims. - Even took part in it themselves. Sadeq Sabah who was head of the BBC Persian service for some years, has his own memories of dangerous days in 1979 and afterwards.The flow of grisly headlines coming from Mexico has been almost constant in recent weeks. A group of Mormon mothers and children were murdered at the end of last year, this week four boys were shot dead in an amusement arcade and the bodies of two conservationists were found in a Monarch butterfly sanctuary in the west of the country. But many simply vanish in Mexico’s violent drug war. With no body or any clear sign as to what happened to them, families are left desperate for information. Will Grant was reminded of meeting one such family following a different breed of criminal abduction. Will Grant. In the early 1990s there were newspaper headlines comparing Sicily’s capital Palermo to Beirut. Following the killings of two high profile anti mafia judges in 1992, the government dispatched the army to contain what by that point had become an all-out war against the Italian state. The buildings in Palermo fared little better than residents. Palaces and villas were neglected while the mafia built concrete tower blocks in the suburbs. But recently the historic centre was declared a world heritage site and one man has helped to bring Palermo back from the brink says Dany Mitzman.

In Brittany there’s been some concern about how the UK’s long goodbye to the European Union will affect it’s fishing fleets. Last weekend France reminded Britain that the UK exports most of its fish production to EU countries. Post-Brexit negotiations about fishing rights, security arrangements and a host of other issues promise to be far from straight forward. But Julia Langdon finds many people in the historic port of St Malo are not that bothered about what’s just happened on the other side of the channel. They have – as it were - other fish to fry. Two guards who worked at a prison in Yaroslavl, north east of Moscow, were jailed last month for abusing an inmate. Despite official claims that Russian penitentiaries are cleaning up their act, prisoners, their relatives and human rights activists tell a very different story. Oleg Boldyrev investigated another recent case.The Naga, a Tibeto-Burman people made up of dozens of different tribes, inhabit the mountainous borderlands of India and Myanmar. Administered by the British from the middle of the 19th century until after WW2, at least 200,000 Naga have since died fighting for an independent homeland. Although an official ceasefire was signed in 1997, there’s still sporadic fighting between the Indian Army and Naga rebel groups. Antonia Bolingbroke Kent sensed the tension in a remote village straddling the Indo-Myanmar border.In a small village in western Cameroon a martial arts academy has become a Mecca for local youth. With a judo area, boxing ring and top quality instructors it is a hive of activity in an otherwise sleepy rural community. Zak Brophy was made to sweat for the story when he visited but as a reward his boxing coach took him to meet his dad. A spate of deadly bear attacks in Romania has raised fears that the number of Europe's largest protected carnivore is getting out of hand. Fatal encounters between bears and humans have become disturbingly common. Many believe the steep increase in the bear population is down to a 2016 ban on trophy hunting by environmentalists. But Jeremy Bristow discovered that the bears are far from the only danger in Romania’s forests.

Much thought this week on borders, on nationality and how we get on with our neighbours even at the commemorations to mark the liberation of Auschwitz. The Nazis murdered 1.1 million people at the death camp - ninety per cent of them Jews, but also Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and people from the Roma and Sinti minorities. Two hundred survivors and world leaders from 60 countries. United in remembering but, 75 years on says Adam Easton, the anniversary was overshadowed by disagreements between Russia and Poland about their respective roles in World War II. The bushfires , fuelled in a large part by the relentless drought, have brought the climate change debate to the fore in Australia. But the prime minister – a big supporter of the fossil fuel industry – has refused to make any changes to the government’s climate policy. This week the state of New South Wales said it would open an independent inquiry into the on-going fires to examine both the causes and how the state responded to them. Shaimaa Khalil met people from a once thriving tourist town on the coast which went up in flames on New Year’s Eve. Politicians in Ireland are making their final pitches before voters head to the polls next Thursday. For generations two centrist parties - Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil - have dominated the country’s politics and, in recent years, the two have been in an uneasy alliance. Fine Gael’s leader Leo Varadkar, of Indian heritage and openly gay, has been something of a poster boy for the new Ireland. While his government has won plaudits from some corners overseas, particularly for its handling of Brexit, it is facing growing criticism at home. Ireland’s political scene is fast fragmenting, says Kieran Cooke.Many think of Antarctica as a vast empty expanse of snow and ice, punctuated by the odd penguin or polar explorer. But actually the world’s southernmost continent is home to 75 research stations run by 30 countries. Justin Rowlatt was there for tow months with a team of British and American scientists reporting on the most complex scientific field project in Antarctic history. But thanks to a storm, he spent a bit longer than planned at the US research station, McMurdo and discovered the delights and the drawbacks of life in the world’s coldest town.Jordan has one of the highest levels of water scarcity in the world. A warming planet and population growth are making the problem worse. But increasing numbers of women there are picking up pliers, spanners and drain rods and taking matters into their own hands. In the capital Amman, Charlie Faulkner met the country’s first female plumber.