Crossing Continents Folgen

The Christmas tree industry is worth almost a billion pounds a year in Europe alone. Most of the ones around us now, covered in baubles and tinsel didn't start life in the UK or even Scandinavia, but in one small village, in the mountains of Georgia close to the border with Russia. Angus Crawford travels to the small town of Ambrolauri in the shadow of the Caucasus mountains. There men risk their lives climbing the big firs to harvest the seeds of Abies Nordmanniana, the Nordman pine. More than forty million are sold in Europe every year. The harvesters are paid little and many are given no safety equipment. If they fall they may be injured or killed. The pine cones they gather are sold abroad and it's foreign companies that make profits from growing and selling the crop. Meanwhile Georgia's villages are dying. Families can't make enough money from farming and move away. Most of those who remain have to live on less than three pounds a day. But things are changing. One Danish firm is working with local people to put more of the profits from the business back into their hands. They pay their workers above the market rate, process the seed locally and for every tree sold abroad money is sent back for development projects. There's talk of starting nurseries near Ambrolauri to feed growing markets in Eastern Europe and bring more foreign capital into the country. Money that Georgia desperately needs. Its economy is still only 60% of what it was in Soviet times, and it now imports eighty per cent of its food. The rusting hulks of abandoned factories litter the countryside. But now some Georgians are asking if the pine cone trade can provide a model of how to breathe new life into their country's crumbling economy.

Russia's police are out of control. They are often referred to as "werewolves in epaulettes" because so many officers prey on the public rather than protect them. Even Prime Minister Vladimir Putin complains about the lawlessness of the country's law enforcers. He once said upstanding citizens cross to the other side of the street as soon as they see a man in uniform. The crimes police commit range from bribe taking to kidnapping, drug trafficking, torture and murder. This brutality is accompanied by corruption. Illegal raids of businesses by police are commonplace as well as the subsequent jailing of their owners on false charges. Victims of police abuse are often helpless in a system of cover-ups long established in the law enforcement forces. Earlier this year, a group of six young men in Primorye, the remote Maritime region of Russia's Far East, decided to fight back. They declared a guerrilla war against the police with the sole purpose of killing as many cops as they could. Their attacks have included shooting of traffic policemen on roads, raiding a village police station and stabbing to death the officer on duty. Bare-chested and brandishing pistols, the 'Primorsky Partisans' posted videos on the internet to explain the motives behind their actions. This summer the gang's exploits gripped the Russian public's imagination. Many people in the Far East and beyond supported them: a poll on Ekho Moskvy radio indicated that 60-75 percent of listeners sympathised with the "young Robin Hoods" and would offer them help. In June the authorities launched a manhunt with tanks and helicopters. Eventually two members of the group died in a shoot-out with police while the rest were captured and are now behind bars awaiting trial. The local government of the Maritime Region is jittery about the case and is reluctant to comment. Local police and the prosecutor's office dismiss them as gangsters. Lucy Ash visits Kirovskiy, the home village of the young men, to investigate what drove the men to act in such an extreme way. Producer: Ibrat Jumaboyev.

Millions of people die on our roads each year. Hundreds of children are killed as they try to get to school each day. Road deaths threaten to overtake malaria and HIV in how many lives they take around the world, particularly in poorer countries. Sheena McDonald visits some of the world's most dangerous roads in Kenya and Costa Rica to find out why the death toll in developing countries is rising, when the solutions to road accidents are so simple. Kenya's poor record improves and then falls again as new transport ministers come and go; while Costa Rica struggles to implement the road safety plan it so confidently launched over 5 years ago. When there's not much money, should reducing road deaths be a priority? The Millennium Development Goals push countries to work hard to improve the mortality rates for children under 5, but there are no goals to stop those same children being knocked down when they start school. Sheena McDonald, who was nearly killed by a speeding police car just over 10 years ago, visits accident blackspots, meets victims and people campaigning for better road safety and challenges those in power who don't believe it's important enough. Producer: Kirsten Lass.