Documentaries

In this two-part investigation, Matt McGrath sets out to expose corruption, drug use and cover-ups at the highest levels in sport.

In May violence against African immigrants exploded across South Africa. Two months on thousands are still displaced, living in camps and shelters. Robert Walker travels to one of the townships in Johannesburg where the attacks started and asks whether the violence could happen again.

Jill McGivering explores whether China is doing enough to provide healthcare to 1.3 billion people and what it can learn from the struggles of the developed world.

Russell Fuller follows the difficult journeys of six hopefuls from around the world in the run up to the Beijing Olympics.

In this two-part investigation, Matt McGrath sets out to expose corruption, drug use and cover-ups at the highest levels in sport.

An undercover BBC investigation has exposed how young African footballers are being defrauded by conmen posing as talent scouts from English Premiership clubs. Victims are duped into parting with thousands of pounds in the false belief that they are paying an official fee for a trial to play with their favourite teams. Gavin Lee reports from Nigeria for Assignment.

Part One: Jill McGivering compares two very different free health systems in the developed world: the British NHS and that of the US state of Massachusetts.

In the second part of this series, Kate Clark reports from those provinces where an opium ban is in force, but farmers are feeling the pressure.

The dynamics of the old world and the new world are changing and the balance of economic systems is shifting. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times asks leading economists how important is the American financial cycle to the rest of the world now?

In a multi billion dollar deal China has promised to rebuild DR Congo's crumbling infrastructure in exchange for a valuable slice of Congo's vast mineral wealth. nnWhat's being called the Contract of the Century was negotiated in secret and has left some people in the country wondering who stands to benefit most from the deal - for Assignment Tim Whewell travels to the DR Congo to find out.

China says hosting the Olympics has accelerated national reforms, technological advances and greater freedoms overall but Gerry Northam investigates claims that life has gotten worse for China's poor.

Kate Clark gains rare access to the fight against the Afghan opium trade and asks how effective attempts to control it have been.

Campaigners for improving maternal health have been lobbying the G8 to get the topic on the agenda for the next meeting in Japan. In programme two of the series Health for All, Uduak Amimo asks is there enough political will to combat maternal mortality?

As the world counts down to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Gerry Northam investigates China's claims of 'vigorous growth in the public practice of religion' but he discovers people are still being persecuted and oppressed for practising religion.

In the third part of this series, Audrey Brown travels to Atteridgeville, a township outside the capital, Pretoria, to explore what really lay behind the recent attacks by South Africans on foreigners.

Is health for all a fact or just fiction? Helen Sharp asks if the world has the will, people and money to deliver basic good health to everyone.

This week's Assignment tells the story of the Burmese cyclone through the eyes and ears of the few BBC journalists who managed to get into the country after the disaster. Hear the story of the cyclone unfold told by those who witnessed it first hand. That's Reporting The Cyclone, from Assignment this week.

In 1998, a truck bomb exploded outside the American embassy in Nairobi. Over 200 people died and thousands were injured. It features an extraordinary interview with the FBI agent who tracked down and questioned a suspected al-Qaeda bomber. It was Osama Bin Laden's first major strike in his jihad against America.

In the second part of this series, Audrey Brown travels to South Africa to explore how privilege and access to resources is increasingly being seen as an issue of colour.

Sheila Dillon reports on the work of restaurateurs, farmers, fishermen and activists to restore the culinary heritage of a devastated city.

Baseball may be the United States' national sport - but this year, 2008, almost half of all its professional players come from overseas - and some 40 per cent of them from the Dominican Republic, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti. For Assignment David Goldblatt visits Haiti to report on what has become a significant export industry for this country of nine million people.

In the third part of this series, Peter Taylor investigates The Paris Plot, the hijacking of a plane in Algiers on its way to Paris; a plan to use a plane as a weapon of mass destruction.

Fourteen years after liberation and 60 years since the beginning of what was then 'apartheid', Audrey Brown explores and uncovers the extent to which race still plays a part in everyday life for those living in South Africa.

More than 30 years after the end of the Vietnam War, Bomb Hunters, tells the stories of the people living in Xieng Khuang in Laos and how they survive in a land still littered with unexploded ordnance.

The new mayor of Rome Gianni Alemanno was once a so-called neo-fascist - a supporter of anti-democratic, right wing radicalism. And his election has come at a time of mounting ethnic tension in Italy. As Christian Fraser now discovers in Assignment, there are fears that Rome could be about to suffer the return of hard right, authoritarian rule.

In the second part of this series, Peter Taylor investigates how two events in 1987 contributed to the beginnings of the road to peace in Northern Ireland.

The powerful story of a young Iranian woman called Leila, sold into prostitution at the age of nine by her own family and sentenced to hang aged 18.

Argentinian film director, writer and tango enthusiast, Edgardo Cozarinsky, talks to artists, dancers, novelists and other Argentinians about why psychotherapy and tango have such a pervasive hold on the Argentine mind and soul.

The town of Auroville in southern India was built in 1968 on the basis of a utopian ideal - that a community could live in peace and harmony without having to worry about food and shelter. nnBut forty years on there are unsettling allegations of abuse emerging from the City of Dawn. For Assignment Rachel Wright visits Auroville and tells the disturbing story of a dream gone wrong.

In the first part of this series, Peter Taylor reveals how events unfolded in the 1976 hijacking of an Air France plane on a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris which ends with a bid to rescue hostages from Idi Amin's Uganda