From Our Own Correspondent Folgen

In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from journalists and writers around the United Kingdom. This month we hear Sima Kotecha's triumphant tale of finally managing to pay off her student loans - except debt can prove a stubborn companion. Lesley Curwen visits a part of Lancashire she has long known which finds itself once more at the centre of media attention. The Fylde coastal plain is where the energy company Cuadrilla has just resumed fracking activities amidst much controversy. But away from the site itself what, she wonders, do local people make of all that's happening? From what claims to be the site of the solution to the UK's future energy needs to one that used to argue the same: Sellafield. On his visit, Theo Leggett sees plenty of rust and weeds at the Cumbrian nuclear plant but also discovers that in this part of northern England which has long struggled for economic take-off there are burgeoning hopes for the future... maybe. With BBC Children in Need's annual fundraising extravaganza just around the corner, Alison Holt tells the story of one teenager in Wales who is coping with an especially demanding medical diagnosis - growing up as HIV-positive - and how one organisation supported by listeners' and viewers' donations seeks to help him and his family. And we travel to Kent with Christine Finn as she unearths a coals-to-Newcastle story about how a lavender farming boom there has - quelle horreur! - managed to succeed in cornering the lucrative French perfume market. But for how long?Producer: Simon Coates

Fuel shortages are nothing to worry about, says the government in Zimbabwe - just bumps in the road on the way to a better future. Andrew Harding reflects on whether President Mnangagwa and Zanu PF will be able to deliver on their promise of a new dawn for the country. Kate Adie introduces this and other stories from correspondents around the world. John Sweeney is in Malta a year on from the assassination of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia; “if you’re a trouble-making reporter, it’s time to be afraid,” he concludes. Jemima Kelly is in Kaliningrad to learn more about Bitcoin mining – a place she finds very much open for business, whatever that business is. Andrew Whitehead stumbles across the rapidly expanding Korean community of Chennai, which claims to be the biggest concentration of expats in the port city. And Jenny Hill enjoys an evening at the opera, but what can Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde tell us about the fate of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.Producer: Joe Kent

The women who regard their days with the jihadist group as the first time they'd had any kind of female empowerment and the men who saw it as a chance to escape poverty and gain access to money and guns. Colin Freeman reports from Maiduguri in Nigeria. Kate Adie introduces this and other stories from correspondents around the world. Harriet Noble meets the ‘rental sisters’ trying to coax reclusive young Japanese men back into society. There are up to a million ‘hikikomori’ who go for years without speaking to those around them or even leaving their bedrooms. Jane Labous hears of the stigma of childlessness in Senegal – for both men and women. Bob Dickinson explains why plans to make South America’s biggest ski resort even bigger have provoked a backlash amongst some residents of Barciloche in Argentina. And in supposedly liberal Lebanon, Lizzie Porter meets a cleric who was forced from his job for posting videos of himself online playing the piano in his traditional robes.