BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

Hello, amid the ever-present threat of a Chinese invasion,

we hear how the Taiwanese are growing fearful of the encroaching threat to their personal freedoms.

We're in the Netherlands where we hear from the daughter of a couple who chose to die together as they both battled with chronic illness.

The Pacific Island of Van Watu may be a huge draw for tourist hordes, but young people are leaving in droves. What do locals make of it?

But first, the appearance of the US journalist Evan Gerschkovich, behind a glass enclosure ahead of his trial in a Russian

court was a chilling sight.

The proceedings which are taking place in the city of Yekaterinburg, some 1100 miles east of Moscow,

will be conducted behind closed doors.

He's just one of many journalists who went to Russia to report on the country as Vladimir Putin's

clump down on media freedoms intensified.

He was detained on March 29th, 2023 on grounds of espionage,

while, as his newspaper described it, doing his job as a journalist.

His detention accelerated the exodus of Western media which began

after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Steve Rosenberg was in Yacaturoremberg as the trial began.

On the streets of Yacatrenburg, on the surface everything looks normal.

I can see men playing chess, people queuing at an ice cream kiosk, while the city's old

rickety red trams trundle by with their familiar comforting rumble and rhythm. It's a similar picture in so many Russian towns and cities right now, the appearance of

normality in a country where what is happening is far from normal. And there is nothing normal about what is normal.

And there is nothing normal about what is happening at the regional courthouse.

In the dock, 32-year-old American journalist Evan Gershovic.

Evan is well known to foreign journalists in Moscow, a talented reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

...