Crossing Continents Folgen

An unholy spat is stirring the Sangha, Thailand's top Buddhist authority - who will become the next Supreme Patriarch, Thailand's most senior monk? Meanwhile, allegations of 'cheque-book Buddhism', cronyism and corruption abound - including allegations about tax-evasion on an imported vintage Mercedes car. In Thailand, where the majority of the population profess Buddhism, seeking ordination isn't unusual. But salacious stories about monks who commit serious crimes - everything from sex offences to wildlife trafficking - continue to shock. Watching quietly from the side-lines is the Venerable Dhammananda - female, and a Buddhist monk since 2003. Although the Sangha bars women from ordination, there are now around 100 bhikkhunis, as female monastics are known, in Thailand. And their growing acceptance by some Buddhist believers might partly be explained by a widespread disillusionment with the behaviour of some male monks. For Crossing Continents, Linda Pressly explores the rifts and sexual politics challenging Thai Buddhism and its devotees.

Lucy Ash asks why thousands of angry Romanian shepherds recently stormed the parliament in Bucharest. Sparked by an amendment to Romania's hunting law, the unprecedented protest was over plans to limit numbers of sheepdogs and restrict grazing rights. The increasing size of flocks is leading to growing conflict with both hunters and conservationists over land use. Romania has an influential hunting lobby - around two thirds of MPs are hunters - and they accuse shepherds dogs of scaring off or sometimes even killing their quarry. They also claim overgrazing is damaging the natural habitat of the deer, the boar and other wild animals they hunt. Environmental campaigners are concerned that winter grazing by ever larger flocks is having a catastrophic effect on biodiversity. At heart this is an argument about what the countryside is for. Is its main purpose an economic one? Is it primarily for leisure? Or should it be about the people who live there? Shepherds insist the law is an attack on centuries of sheep-rearing and their culture and traditions.

After the terror attacks in Paris, the world's attention turned to an inner-city district of the Belgian capital, Brussels, where several of the attackers came from. Molenbeek has been notorious for many years as a breeding-ground for Islamist extremism - and the Belgian government vowed to "clean it up". But do the authorities really have any plan to prevent the radicalisation of young Belgians? Tim Whewell has been travelling back and forth to Brussels since the Paris attacks to talk to local people as they hold up a mirror to themselves and search for explanations - and attempt to have a dialogue with a sometimes dysfunctional state. Lode Desmet producing.