My Blog

Changing China seen from the 'hard seats' of a train By Angus Foster BBC News, Beijing Travelling with a cheap rail ticket provides a snapshot of any country's underbelly. Doing it twice at an interval of 26 years, in a country like China, provides a fascinating snapshot of the country's rapid development. Sixteen hours sitting bolt upright on a train gives you a bit of time to reflect on how much a country has changed. It had started to go wrong when I got to the ticket booth in China's capital Beijing and found a queue snaking round the corner. It was the lead-up to the mid-autumn holiday and half the city was headed for distant homes. When I asked for a ticket to Wuhan, an all-night journey south, the young sales girl snorted her derision. Tickets were sold out for the next three days. Continue reading the main story “Half of China's population still lives in the co...

Heriberto Lazcano: The fall of a Mexican drug lord By Will Grant BBC News Heriberto Lazcano, the leader of Los Zetas, one of the Mexico's most feared and brutal drugs gangs, was killed this week in a shoot-out with the Mexican marines. This news was not a major surprise to Mexico-watchers - but then something strange happened. The life of a drug lord is generally pretty short. The world's most notorious was probably "El Patron" - the Colombian cocaine baron, Pablo Escobar, who died aged 44, barefoot, bloated and riddled with bullets on a rooftop in Medellin. Most do not rise that high in the drugs trade, though, nor live that long to tell the tale. We receive constant reports from the Mexican attorney general's office of supposed lieutenants and middle-ranking soldiers from gangs like the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas who have been murdered by their enemies or...

Fears and hopes in Turkish town scarred by Syria conflict By James Reynolds BBC News, Akcakale, Turkey-Syria border   Akcakale border crossing between is now shut Continue reading the main story On the road facing the Syrian border, a single Turkish army tank sits behind a mound of earth. Its sights point across 100 metres of scrubland towards the border. The town of Akcakale has felt some of the effects of its neighbour's conflict. It has been hit several times by shells fired from across the border. Muhittin Kaydi can see Syria from his front garden. He used to work as a money changer at the nearby border post.   Muhittin Kaydi says his children are now scared to play outside But that post is now closed, and Mr Kaydi has lost his job. He finds it hard to reassure seven children that their home is safe. "I tell them to calm down," he says, "but every time a door slams,...

Cuban missile crisis: The other, secret one By Joe Matthews Journalist How the second missile crisis unfolded Continue reading the main story Contrary to popular belief, the Cuban missile crisis did not end with the agreement between the US and Soviet Union in October, 1962. Unknown to the US at the time, there were 100 other nuclear weapons also in the hands of Cuba, sparking a frantic - and ingenious - Russian mission to recover them. In November 2011, aware that the 50th anniversary of the most dangerous few weeks in history was less than a year away, my Russian colleague Pasha Shilov and I came across several new accounts that changed our perspective on the Cuban missile crisis and how much we thought we knew about it. Growing up in Berkshire, England, through the nuclear paranoia of the 1980s, ...