16/06/2013 Reporters

to have been seriously hurt. That is the summary for you. Now it is

Welcome to reporters. We send out correspondence to bring you the

best stories from across the globe. In this week's programme: Life away

from the front line. We meet the ordinary Syrians are trying to lead

normal lives in difficult times. What is it like their? Not very

good. It is very bad. We have come across what looks like a dead body.

A report on a stowaway from Mozambique. He got into London by

travelling on a plane like this. Ken poetry help treat dementia? We

visit a care home and were the spoken word is used to stir hidden

memories. And the kindness of strangers. The

French villages who shot of thousands of Jews from the Nazis.

- who sheltered. TRANSLATION: It was incredible that the village

acted the way it did. We start with Syria. Could this be a turning

point for the West? The prospect of Western countries arming rebel

forces appears closer than at any time in the Syrian complete. The

American Secretary of State made it his British counterpart, William

Hague, to consider options. Washington East sanctions to help

people in opposition controlled areas. -- eased sanctions. For many,

life carries on in the midst of huge suffering. Our correspondent

has more. In parts of Damascus it is easy to forget there is a war.

Maybe that is why this ice-cream shop is so packed. When so much has

been destroyed, Syrians hold on to much-loved traditions. This family

has been making ice-cream in the old city since 1895. Using the same

secret recipe for three generations. War has made real cherries too

expensive now. When they come here, they see us and we're still working.

They smile and they're happy. We're still working. We put our hoping to

ice-cream. In some neighbourhoods, other summer rituals go on as well.

Relief that one more exam is out of the way for these high school

students. In Syria, nearly one in five schools is now shut. These

teenagers are fortunate to live in a safe, government control the area.

You have no worries? They Ensay in unison - no, none at all. -- they

answer in a unity. They think the army and the President for keeping

them safe. Normal life here is no longer normal. People have had to

find ways to live with war. Even when a shell lands nearby, nobody

flinches. They hear it night and day. They do not even look up. Just

two streets away, there is no life at all. Like many neighbourhoods,

this is now a battleground. Rebel fighters are holed up here. The

government responds with overwhelming force. Imagine how

many people lived here - they're all gone. The lucky ones find

shelter and even a special place for children. This centre is one of

a handful in the City run by UNICEF. It is a way to restore some of the

joys of childhood. For this 30 new roles, she still wears her sadness.

-- this 13-year-old still wears her sadness. Her family fled. What is

it like they? Not very good. It is very bad. I asked to have their

problems. -- I ask her if there are problems. A lot of problems, she

says. Even in parts of Damascus like this, where it is peaceful

enough to still play, the impact of the war is always present. Now that

this girl and her friends have coloured in these apples, there

will be asked to write what they will do when they are all there.

The last time they do this exercise, three children wrote - we want to

grow up. She once every detail to be perfect. She has made her wish.

She has written, I want to go back to my home. She knows she has no

home to go to any more. It reads like a murder, a mystery.

It is a tale of pure human desperation. Last September, a man

in his 20s was found dead in a suburban street. He had suffered

horrendous injuries to his head and face. The had no identity papers

and no-one had reported him missing. So who was he, and how did he end

up there? Police spent six months finding an answer to the

investigation. We have been speaking to the people involved in

this remarkable and tragic story. Hello, police emergency. We are

important avenue, and we have come across what looks like a dead body.

Where do you think this is? It is outside Number 22. At approximately

7:45am I heard a thud and thought nothing of it. The next thing I

could remember was my brother telling me there was a man in the

street who was dead. He was a black man wearing a pair of speakers,

jeans and a T-shirt. He was lying face down. It was a shock,

obviously. We thought he had been murdered. That is a shock. His body

was twisted. His head had split open. What started out as a crime

scene that look like a man had been murdered, I notice they kept

looking up at the sky. The way it looked, it looked like he had

fallen from a long way. We do not know how he got into the airport,

whether he paid someone, whether he jumped over the fence, what we do

know is that he got into London by travelling on a plane like this, by

climbing into this part of the aircraft - the wheel well. He would

have done this while the plane was at the stand. He would have had to

climb up as quickly as possible along this piece of metal and into

the wheel arch and look for a space to crouch down. Nothing is known at

all about him. All this mean you is that he came on a plane from Angola.

We initially thought he was from that country. Without the second

iPhone Sim card we will have still been in the dark. The data on the

card in his pocket included information about a text message.

The interesting thing was that the text message was sent to a mobile

phone in Switzerland. The policeman on the phone told me that this

unknown person had fallen from a plane in Richmond. I do not know

what he was talking about. All of a sudden, we heard the penny drop.

There was a change in the demeanour. I told him, I know who it is.

2010 she was living in South Africa with her husband. When I lived in

Cape Town he was my garden or, he also took terror of my home.

man whose body was found after falling from the undercarriage of a

plane has been identified. He was a Mozambique National. As the plane

came in to land, these doors would have opened. The wheels would have

come back down. He would have been unable to hold on. At the point the

plane was passing over Portman Avenue, he fell. Joseph was really

nice. He was a good person. He had a soft manner. I miss him. He told

me about his childhood and how difficult it had been. There were

floods in his area. I wish he would have called me before taking the

plane. I would have told them to get out of the plane. It is the

sort of case it upsets everybody that comes into contact with it. He

had such high hopes of finding a different life. He was obviously

more optimistic than he should have been, considering the dangers.

thought, what has he done? Why did he get into the plane? Why wasn't

he more patient? We believe that when it is a time to die, it is a

time to die, no-one can prevent that from happening. The day of

your death is written before you were born. It is his resting place.

I take comfort in thinking that his soul can find peace. Brazil - the

war's seventh largest economy, has long been known for crippling

inequality. The country has made huge improvements in recent years.

Poverty has been dramatically reduced. The number of resilience

living on $2 per day has been halved. Malnutrition has fallen

over similar levels. Our It may boast one of the largest

economy in the world but Brazil still has a hugely unequal society.

Things are changing. The fight against poverty and malnutrition

here starts right at the beginning. But also fear is kept warm by end

incubator and light therapy treats her neonatal jaundice. She is also

fed calorie rich breast milk through a tube of but it is not

from her mother. Like thousands of premature babies in Brazil, Sophia

is kept alive things to donated milk. A small army of mothers give

their surplus milk as part of a scheme in which generations of

women have been encouraged to participate for the good of society.

There are now 200 human milk bakes across Brazil. -- milk banks across

Brazil. The largest and most successful programme of its kind in

the world. We have seen the rates of breast-feeding go up. The

Brazilian government made at bees health policies -- made it these

health policies. They had been are doing it campaigns and supporting

human milk banks. The main focus is on making sure that children from

poorer backgrounds are fed well. At school and at home. Brazil wants to

go way beyond keeping people out of poverty. Children need education,

health, food - to become citizens and workers and students, to become

whatever they want. The family allowance is the main -- main

pillar of the government effort to improve the purchasing power of

poor families. Through it, this woman gets �100 each month but to

qualify, her children must attend We buy rice, beans, and a fair

everyone says the father who gets about 25% on top of his minimum

wage through the allowance. No sugar and lots of vegetables at a

citizen's' kitchen. Feeding people of all ages good food. -- citizens

kitchen. The Brazilian success in dealing with malnutrition is

because all these elements work together. This is not just a

standard soup kitchen. It is part of a structured programme but these

feel they are subsidised and healthy meals twice per day. It all

comes down to basics. Better fed healthy people contribute more to a

country's well-being. Malnutrition does the opposite, costing lives

Can poetry help treat dementia? It affects about 35 million people

around the world and it is a condition without a cure. Doctors

believe that people with dementia can benefit from being reminded of

things from their past in what is known as reminiscence therapy. We

have been to a British fare home where the spoken word is being used

to stir the memories of its residents. -- care home.

I wandered lonely, as a cloud... Familiar words, poems learned of a

heart by a ?I ? heart by a resurfacing, offering a fleeting

glimpse of a life before dementia. Miriam, do you remember the first

time that you read that on yourself? I was about ten years old.

I read it with my English teacher. He was very good. I was little

cloud or... At this care home, all of the residents have dementia.

They are regularly read poetry as part of reminiscence therapy. A

very special recital today from a former poet Laureate Sir Andrew

motion who knows how powerful poultry can be. I caught this

morning, morning's Minihan and then off, often forced on swing as it

escapes heels... I always thought that poetry is the primitive thing.

It has been proved especially by the way in which we respond to

things when we are young. Children who respond to poetry respond

because they... As a species, we take a pleasure in its rhythms and

sounds. There are over 800,000 people in the UK living with

dementia and one in three of them - - one in three of people over 65

will develop it. Without a cure, it is the knowledge that Thurton --

certain therapies will help. People with dementia often struggle

to make connections on a daily basis. They may not know how to

wash or eat or dress. They know how to make those well-worn connections

and can get back their dignity and independence and sense of person

that people are struggling to find. Staff and carers have noticed that

words can trigger recollections. is astonishing. They remember not

just the pondered where they were when they heard it and they will

light up as they have a happy memory and become proud and

relieved that they found an anchor in what is otherwise a bewildering

world. As idle as a painted ship, a pond on a painted ocean. It can be

difficult for those with dementia but these familiar words are

providing a comforting glance into A pensive mood... What is the mist

of solitude and then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the

It is a small village high in the mountains of eastern France and

during World War II, the villagers kept an extraordinary secret which

helped save many lives. The people took enormous risks in a -- in

sheltering from the Nazis of thousands of children. There is now

to be a museum to on what the villagers did. We went there to

meet some of those who owed their lives to the kindness and courage

It is a steady climb up the altar rail well to the cult of villages

of eastern France. -- Auld railway. It is a beautiful landscape. A

community is honoured for its part in a remarkable rescue effort.

These two were brought here as children, spirited away from

another journey, a journey which took Jewish families to their

deaths in the concentration camps. At least 1,000 children were

brought here, spending the war hidden in the village or on an

TRANSLATION: If someone had talked, it would have been all over. It was

incredible that the village act like this. I had friends who were

not Jewish but Catholic or Protestant and they knew I was

The hands of welcome and friendship were extended across the plateau

but the Protestant community which had originally settled here to

escape persecution took the lead it. That spirit burns as brightly as a

bit here, especially when the surviving children gathered to hear

the old songs, to tell their stories and to remember the

families to risk everything to Born here while his parents were in

hiding, a Jewish film-maker went on to document the wartime secret.

always thought that religious people were a little bigoted,

narrow-minded, so secured in there but least but they would not leave

it in a stranger. The opposite was true here. Visitors enter the

village are absorbed by the beauty and tranquillity. At last, they are

in here about the acts of kindness that left so many a win so much.

They saved our lives. That is what it meant and we are always - we