You're listening to a download from the BBC, this is from our own correspondent.

You can hear the version of the program we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site

at BBC online.

But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Adi.

Today the void of understanding between different generations in southern China.

The baffling art of spirit possession in Burma.

We're in the jungles of the southern Philippines with the Morrow Islamic

Liberation Front and Berlin a great city to experience by bike as long as you wear a

helmet. 50 years ago this week the world came closer to nuclear war than it had ever before or has done since.

Soviet missiles placed in Cuba put President John F. Kennedy's White House eyeball to

eyeball with Soviet Premier Christoph's Kremlin. In the end, war was

averted when the Russians agreed to remove the warheads from Cuba in exchange

for a guarantee that the United States would not invade the Communist Island.

To this day Cuba continues to stand isolated from the United States, despite the fact that it

lies just 90 miles from its shores. But slowly and

surely the wheels of change are whirring on the island. The ailing Fidel Castro has long

passed the reins of power onto his brother.

Five decades on from that week in October 1962 when the eyes of the world were turned on Cuba,

Will Grant finds that its slow transition

still fuels rumors and makes headlines. I arrived in Cuba at an interesting time.

The perpetual rumor mill about Fidel Castro's health had been in overdrive for weeks.

He hadn't been seen in public since Pope Benedict came to the island in March, nor had he congratulated his friend and ally Ugo Chavez on his

...