Business Daily Folgen

The property market in some US cities has still not recovered from the 2008 meltdown, while others may be seeing the return of risky subprime lending.Vishala Sri-Pathma travels to Slavic Village in Cleveland, Ohio, which became a by-word for the mass repossessions that followed the bursting of the housing bubble a decade ago. In the nearby Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, where property prices remain 70% below their peak and many houses are still boarded up, Anita Gardner has set up a community group to help residents with housing problems.Meanwhile on the other side of the nation, Austin in Texas is the fastest growing city in the US, thanks to an oil and tech boom. But Edward Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute explains why there are fears that the loosely regulated federal housing loans that are fuelling this boom could be the next subprime crisis in the making.(Picture: A resident walks past a boarded up building in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood in Cleveland, Ohio; Credit: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

Five years ago, Cyprus was in crisis. An international bail-out worth over ten billion dollars saved the economy from meltdown, but also cemented the Mediterranean country’s ties to wealthy Russians. Many of them received a slice of Cypriot banks for cash seized from their accounts to help fund the rescue plan. A controversial and lucrative investment-for-passport scheme has also attracted Russian money - as well as new EU scrutiny.While many banks have ditched their Russian clients and authorities have implemented a new system of stringent checks, Ivana Davidovic travels to the port of Limassol to investigate whether Cyprus has really cleaned up its act.(Picture: Yachts line the marina in Limassol, Cyprus; Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

The history of the spice trade, and the human misery behind it, is explored by Katie Prescott.Katie travels to the spice island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, where cloves, turmeric, nutmeg and vanilla are still grown to this day. But it also supported a trade in African slaves who worked the spice plantations, as Katie discovers at what was once the local slave market.Food historian Monica Askay recounts the cultural importance that these spices gained in Europe and the other markets where they ended up, while Rahul Tandon how they came to define Indian cuisine.(Picture: Spices; Credit: Whitestorm/Getty Images)