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Today, whatever you think of politicians, you expect that they're at least alive.

We hear of the pimp-t-politician who won a US state election in

November despite having died almost a month earlier. It's back to school in Syria for some children who've finally been able to return home.

We're in Lviv in the west of Ukraine, but where the conflict in the east never feels very far away.

And in the French capital to find out what's getting Parisians going,

Rats, there is said to be almost twice as many rodents as people in the city.

Xinjiang in Western China is home to one of the country's most distinctive

ethnic groups, the Uyghurs.

This mainly Muslim minority traces its heritage to

Turkic speaking groups to the west and has long been treated with suspicion by

the Chinese state. The Uyghurs have responded with waves of unrest

and at times with violence. Beijing brought in the troops. More recently, camps have been set up, which China says are meant to re-educate religious

extremists and help them return to normal life.

Human rights activists say up to a million Uyghurs have been sent to these internment

camps, to be brainwashed and made to swell loyalty to President Xi Jin Ping.

John Sudworth went to Xinjiang to investigate.

Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.

George Orwell wrote of the experience of living under the all-seeing eyes of Big Brother.

In the almost 70 years since the publication of 1984, many readers have pondered how much of the book's

dystopian future has become a reality. But the totalitarianism it describes is so total, such a perfect blending of old authoritarian

...