BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

Today, a raid by mask gunman on a TV station during a live broadcast in Ecuador

has thrust the country into the spotlight amid spiraling instability in recent weeks.

Across the frosty fields in Germany's east, tractors have been lined up in protest, but it's not just the farmers who are angry.

In Georgia, in the Caucasus, we hear how one family is trying to revive the tea industry

that dwindled in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And we travel on the whoosh train in Indonesia,

one of the latest Chinese funded projects in the country, but does it live up to the hype?

First, it was an election which China cast as a choice between war and peace. Western leaders

nervously watched elections in Taiwan last weekend after China had

progressively ramped up its rhetoric and its military presence around the island.

In the end, Taiwanese voters chose the pro-sovereignity candidate, William Lye, as their president,

continuing its divergence from China.

It was the third consecutive time his party, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, had won the presidency, beating the opposition Kuomintang, which is seen as friendlier to Beijing.

Rupert Wingfield Hayes reflects on what has led to this point.

There is something very special about elections in Taiwan.

The rallies felt more like carnivals than election events, with people singing and cheering

and waving banners.

On voting day I stood outside an elementary school polling station in a Taipei suburb

and watched as whole families came together,

often three or even four generations, small children holding their parents' hands

being led into the voting booths and shown how to put a mark on a ballot paper.

...