You have downloaded from our own correspondent. This edition is the latest one broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

And here to introduce it is Kate A.D.

Hello. Today the most politically charged place in China at the most sensitive moment in the political

calendar and the politicians are doing their very best to say nothing at all that's

newsworthy.

An ancient city on the banks of the Indus River in Pakistan being slowly

destroyed by neglect and a lack of interest. There's delight, surprisingly even

some beauty when we visit the tax authorities in the Malian capital Bamako.

And no phone signal, no Wi-Fi, no hurry.

We find the Gautier way of life clinging on with surprising tenacity in a remote valley in

Chilean Patagonia. The jihadis from Islamic State have been involved in a series of pitched battles this week in both Iraq and Syria.

In Iraq they're fighting government troops which are trying to retake the town of

Tikrit, the birthplace of the former dictator Saddam Hussein.

In northeastern Syria they face Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

Here the IS militants, supported by tanks and heavy weapons,

are trying to regain control of territory they lost

earlier this year. Scores of people are reported to have been killed. The Kurds

have had help from American airstrikes and on the ground they've been joined by a number of foreign

fighters some are British and has Quentin Somerville's been learning have little if

any military experience.

Can you not show my face? The young man asked as we stood in the Kurdish hospital in Syria.

I don't want my mum knowing I've been shot. I'll call him Sam. He's from the south of England and in his early 20s.

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