This is the BBC.

Hello, today, just the thing for the new year, a swift trip around the world,

and first up a cliff face by ladder to view rural poverty in China. Then to the streets of Tehran, but viewed

from afar. We float along a Vietnamese river and get a rowing lesson without hands and visit a former slave port in Tanzania.

Maybe no longer daily in the news but checkpoints and bunkers and constant violence are part of life in Eastern Ukraine.

The war between Ukrainian government and Russian-backed separatists has become the longest continuously

violent conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

More than 10,000 people have been killed since it began in 2014 and there seems no end in sight.

A ceasefire deal was signed in Minsk almost three years ago, but it's

regularly violated, and Russian officers recently withdrew from the centre monitoring the fragile

truce.

Moscow has warned of major bloodshed,

after the Trump administration agreed to provide Ukraine

with anti-tank missiles and sniper rifles. Some fear that this could create an incentive for Russia to move quickly this winter

before the new weapons arrive. Lucy Ash found morale was low when she went to visit the Ukrainian army.

The soldier pulls back a grimy curtain to reveal an even grimy shower tray

and a length of rubber tubing.

We rigged this up a few days ago, he says.

At least it's somewhere to wash.

His unit is camped out in a former hospital,

a maze of filthy, freezing corridors. Every window has been smashed. A few

jagged shards of glass remain here and there, like teeth in a decrepit mouth.

...