When drug kingpin Pablo Escobar died in 1993 having built a billion dollar cocaine empire, he left behind a zoo. While his rhinos, giraffes, elephants and kangaroos were re-housed, the hippos were left in Escobar’s abandoned ranch in the Colombian countryside.

In 2007 they started turning up 100 kilometres away, frightening fishermen. Vet Carlos Valderrama was called in to tackle the problem. He describes to Josephine McDermott his experience of the first ever castration of a hippo in the wild.

BBC World Service – Witness History, Castrating Pablo Escobar’s hippos

At a war crimes tribunal in 2009, Rob Hamill came face-to-face with Khmer Rouge commander, Comrade Duch, who was responsible for killing his brother.

Listen here. 

THURSDAY 18th MAY:  THE FALL OF SHANGHAI

In 1937, Japanese forces entered Shanghai – spelling the end of a period when the Chinese city had been a thriving commercial centre governed by international powers and known as the “Paris of the East”.  Under the Japanese occupation, local people in Shanghai endured starvation and brutal treatment; while foreigners scrambled to escape as their lifestyle of servants and glamourous parties slowly disappeared. Josephine McDermott speaks to Liliane Willens, who lived through the Japanese invasion and occupation.

Witness History – Shanghai at War – BBC Sounds

In the 1980s, the minority Uyghur community in China staged some of the first protests against the all-powerful Communist Party. The Uyghurs were demanding that the Chinese government keep its promises to protect their culture and grant them political autonomy in Xinjiang region. In 1989, many Uyghur students enthusiastically supported the pro-democracy demonstrations centred on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. One of them was Aziz Isa Elkun, who talks to Josephine McDermott.

Witness History – Fighting for Uyghur rights in China – BBC Sounds

Listen:

Witness History – The Australian women who protested against the Vietnam war – BBC Sounds

Eleven-year-old Sky Brown is smashing the skateboarding world and beating adults much older than her.

From episode one of My World.

Watch here.

(25/1/20)

An exclusive on the acne drug Roaccutane. The parents of young people who have killed themselves and some patients with loss of libido are calling for the NHS not to prescribe it.

Manufacturer Roche said “millions of patients worldwide have benefited from taking the drug”.

The majority of those who take the drug have a positive experience.

Watch in full here.

Read article here.

(17 May, 2019)

“Emma” froze her eggs nine-and-a-half years ago.

She has been in a relationship for six months but, facing the loss of her frozen eggs in July, is now having to choose whether or not to ask her partner to fertilise them, or to fertilise them using a sperm donor.

Watch interview here.

(18 April, 2019)

Women who freeze their eggs should be allowed to keep them for longer than 10 years, fertility experts are telling the government.

Legislation says frozen eggs must be destroyed after this time, unless a medical condition has left the woman prematurely infertile.

Experts told the Victoria Derbyshire programme that the limit was arbitrary and had not kept up with technology.

The government has said an extension “would be a significant policy change”.

Continue reading here.

(21 January 2019)