10/09/2016 Reporters

Hello. Welcome to Reporters.

From here in the BBC newsroom, we send out correspondents

to bring you the best stories from across the globe.

Life and death on the lost streets of Chicago.

It's like you can't make no mistakes.

It could cost you your life, literally.

Ian Pannell reports from Barack Obama's former home town,

where gun attacks have hit a 20 year high.

In reality, most gun crime in America actually does not happen

in the the massacres that garner large-scale media attention,

but they take place in isolated spots like this in

Paul Adams visits the far right haven where Hitler salutes

and Fascist songs are said to be part of everyday life.

If neo-Nazism has a home in this part of eastern Germany, this is it.

A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's

Ben Moore finds out why the jail cell where Oscar Wilde spent many

months has been opened to the public for the first time

And moving ice from the Alps to Antarctica.

Victoria Gill joins scientists racing against the clock

to save samples from the world's shrinking glaciers.

That is an ice core coming up from about 30 metres depth.

The team will cut it, move it into this tent and then

store it in their ice cave, which is their mountain freezer.

Hello, we start with evidence of a startling rise in levels

of gun violence in parts of the United States.

That includes President Obama's political home of Chicago.

Killings in the city have hit a 20 year high.

A deadly summer of violence, ending with multiple murders over

last week's Labor Day holiday, has brought this year's death toll

Most of the victims and indeed the killers are young black men.

Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway spent a week

in Chicago and found a world where gangs and guns rule.

DISPATCHER: A 15-year-old male shot in the neck.

I'm going to need a wagon with a body bag also.

It is one of America's dirty secrets.

Welcome to the Chicago they do not want you to see.

In a city where some live in peace and prosperity, others

# It was crazy growing up where I was raised.

CTC Duwop is a rapper, a promoter and a gang member.

He is also a father and an Iraq war veteran.

When I am passing through certain neighbourhoods, if there is already

a heightened alert of violence in that neighbourhood, tension,

you have got to hurry up and get from point A to point B.

You can't be cruising through neighbourhoods that

Nine times out of ten, they probably do not recognise

the car you are in at the time and they can mistake

you for a shooter from one of the rival gangs

It could cost you your life, literally.

Many in the gang are still at high school.

Strict gun laws have made no difference here.

The last day without a shooting or murder was February 2015.

The sad fact is that for some a life of drugs and violence has now

The real tragedy about Chicago is just how common

In reality, most gun crime in America actually does not happen

in the massacres that garner large-scale media attention,

but they take place in isolated spots like this in inner-city

More often than not, the victims are young,

black and their cases are largely ignored.

The violence swirls around west and southside Chicago.

A few weeks ago six-year-old Takara Morgan was wounded

Some say they are forced into a life of violence, but even those

who do not walk that path, like Takara, are still affected.

How common is the shooting around here?

Every day. Every day?

Childhood ends early on the southside.

A party on Duwop's block commemorates his best friend

The residents meet to remember and also to forget.

The police authority do not like exactly what we do

We actually do not like the way that we live.

But when you are pushed into a way of life, when you're forced

into a way of life, how else can you live?

Even though we love the 'hood, outside looking in, it looks

like we glorify the 'hood, we want to be out of the 'hood.

That is why we work so hard at showing our potential.

We want to leave this place, for good.

Duwop's family home is now abandoned, a place to record a music

video, and a place where drug addicts go to get high.

Here in my neighbourhood, they start young, man.

When you read the news, that is the age frame, they are all

We have got to teach the kids how to defend themselves.

It is senseless violence at the end of the day, but what do you do

Would you rather be caught with protection or without?

We had a lot of guns, but I have never seen

Bo Deal is a rapper from the westside, now the most

He is a member of the Vice Lords gang.

He has been in prison and even he is shocked by what is happening.

It is like somebody dropped off crates of guns in everybody's hood.

I think that lots of guys need to die in order to make it better.

I think some of these BLEEP need to be killed and knocked off,

to get them out of the way, to make it a better place.

We've been stood here for five minutes, I have seen two police

Yes, it is not safe over here at all.

Suddenly we were told to leave the area as Bo Deal

Hey, Duwop, what happened, why did we have

There is a war around, the two gangs.

That is why people are getting shot in that area.

Somebody got shot a couple of blocks up.

More people have been killed here since 2001 than US deaths

To be honest, I have got a son that is seven and a daughter

I have not taught neither one of them how to ride a bike yet.

The environment they live in is not safe.

It is hard when you do not really have help.

I feel like this is a never-ending cycle, there is no way out

We are just trying to cope with this BLEEP.

With so many guns and so little control, the murders will rise,

Well, from Chicago's gang wars to the rise of the far

The north-eastern town of Jamel is being called a neo-Nazi village

after it became a haven for extreme right wing supporters.

Locals say some people greet each other with "Heil Hitler" salutes

But as Paul Adams reports from Jamel, the village's original

That gentleman who did not want to talk to us,

He is the main driving force behind this community.

He is a very famous, notorious right-wing

He recently spent four years in jail for possession of a firearm.

He is regarded by the police as pretty dangerous.

He is a member of a very violent scene.

We have to look at him in a very concrete way.

If neo-Nazism has a home in this part of eastern Germany,

this is it, the community of Jamel, a tiny place, just a few

dozen people live here, but they have come here

to forge their own separate, distinct community which follows

You see that sign there, "To Braunau am Inn",

that is Hitler's birthplace in Austria.

This is a place that just overtly celebrates Adolf Hitler.

We have just spoken to a lady, she did not want to be

She says that there are gatherings here involving senior right-wing

figures from around Germany, they have parties, they play Nazi

She has heard people saying "Heil Hitler" and she has seen

Next door to Sven Kruger's far-right stronghold, a couple

from the opposite side of the political spectrum,

organisers for the past ten years of an antifascist music festival

# Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high.

One of Germany's biggest hip-hop bands has made a surprise visit

They are sort of Germany's Beastie Boys and they really

Part of the fun to me, there are people living over

Somehow they live with the delusion that they are sort of like the voice

Their thinking is totally wrong and they have an awful

Paul Adams reporting from what some are calling the home of neo-

Now, there can be few people who have witnessed the brutality

of the so-called Islamic State more than the Yazidis of northern Iraq.

Men were butchered in their thousands, women kidnapped

Many children were also taken and forced to enrol in the strict

BBC Persian's Nafiseh Kohnevard met one of them, a girl who said

she was also forced to make bombs for the militants.

It says, if there is a war, it is not our fault.

They are lyrics many of these children understand all too well.

Like Selda, just eight years old, she was held by the so-called

She was one of hundreds of Yazidi children trained

At the same time, Selda's mother was forced to take courses on how

Eventually mother and daughter managed to flee, yet she still feels

trapped in the nightmare that they left behind.

She may now be free but thousands of other children are not.

They are being trained for a world and a life which is not their own.

After the Olympics, the Paralympics got underway this week in Brazil.

The Rio games followed the London Paralympics of four years

ago, an event which many disabled people felt had a very positive

But research for the charity Scope suggests that just 20%

feel their lives have improved since 2012,

our disability affairs editor looks at the London

The Paralympics in 2012 was the most successful games ever.

Paralympians were held as heroes and the impact on disability

We hear a lot about legacy but what does the Paralympics

really mean to these wheelchair basketball players?

It lifted a lot of stigma from disabled sports.

A lot of the public realise just how difficult and how much training goes

People don't feel that they have to hold a door for you.

It doesn't mean that they can't do the same everyday things that

In the build-up to Rio this advert has been watched by millions

but the disability charity Scope is not confident on it

having a lasting impact on all disabled people.

Four years on from 2012, only 20% felt that their lives had improved.

We need to think about a lasting change, the unemployment gap has

We still need, to see lots of progress on the built

We haven't even scratched the surface on people with hidden

impairments that we don't even need to think about.

Lucy has a hidden disability, a neurological condition which means

that she is unable to walk and is in constant pain.

Her husband James is also disabled but as an amputee, his

For Lucy, high-profile sporting events haven't had

There is already a view amongst able-bodied people that

really people like me if we tried a bit harder,

we could be like James, like my husband.

James is the archetypal person with disability because you can see

If you are a visibly disabled man and you can run around a bit,

if you have a football and you can kick it a bit and run up a flight

of stairs, the impression is well good for you.

That could be much more different for disability that is invisible

They think they have reason to doubt it.

It is hoped that real change will come when there

is an understanding that there are some who find sport and life

Poets and playwrights get their inspiration in some

unusual places sometimes, Oscar Wilde for example wrote one

of his best-known works in prison while serving time for gross

indecency after his victorian affair with a fellow writer was exposed.

While it will always be linked with incarceration,

it is Reading Jail, it will now form a centrepiece within this Victorian

building as it opens to the public for the first time.

A day in prison in which one does not weep, is a day

Oscar Wilde, back in residence in jail, somebody will be the first

It is a tough gig, 50,000 words and I'm reading it without a break,

a straight 4.5 hours and also I'm in this room.

This used to be the prison chapel of Reading jail,

Every Sunday for two months, actors like Ray Fiennes,

Ben Wishaw and Maxine Peake will perform here.

The very cell door that he languished behind

It is part of an installation taking over the entire prison that includes

specially commissioned work from renowned artists like Steve

McQueen and Ai Wei Wei exploring separation and confinement.

The first exhibit is the prison itself, it is a very powerful

setting in which all sorts of ideas and things to do with confinement

and separation, and repression, but also celebration and joy come

together within this very kind of, this quite impressive place.

Oscar Wilde's original cell remains, the very place that De Profundis

was written in 1887 and where one of the British literary

I feel it feels like a privilege to be here but for many people

for the hundreds of years it was anything but a privilege.

Here we are, we are in a space where he spent 22 out of 24 hours

Since the prison closed in 2013 it has been subject to government

U-turns on whether it should be sold or mothballed.

Despite the rich history and indeed fame of this place,

the public have not been able to wander these corridors

This art installation will run until the end of October,

when once again Reading prison will be put on lockdown.

STUDIO: Well it is a race against time for scientists

working the French Alps, they are trying to extract samples

from some of the world's most rapidly shrinking glaciers.

Temperatures in some of the Alps have risen by 1.5 degrees

in the last decade and scientists hope that samples could include

We travel to the French Alps to join them.

Approaching a very high altitude, this team of scientists is living

The cause: climate change is heating and changing the ice

So the team wants to rescue the information that is locked deep

Snowfalls will collect all of the impurities

in the atmosphere and these will be deposited on the glacier.

All of this information they have stored, it is like pages in a book,

so when you go through this book you can get all of this information.

This is a frozen library, tiny air bubbles locked

inside the glacial ice is a record of our past atmosphere and climate.

That is coming up from about 30 metres depth, they will cut it

and move it into this tent and they will store

it in their ice cave, a mountain freezer.

So precious are the samples that the team has dug

To have a storeroom that will keep them cold but they wwill

Six months and then they are ready to go.

This is the beginning of a very long journey for these ice cores,

they will be stored in France for two years but their ultimate

destination is the world's most reliable freezer, Antarctica.

The idea of getting ice, transporting it to Antarctica

could sound very silly but it makes a lot of sense for us.

The main thing is to be able to store these ice cores

for decades to centuries, we put them in the best position

Many of these glaciers all over the world are changing

This ambitious archive aims to preserve particles,

bubbles and even bacteria trapped in the deepest and oldest ice

allowing future scientists to track the planet's past atmosphere

and climate and help predict the future.

STUDIO: Some beautiful pictures and a fascinating story,

That is it from Reporters this week, so from me, goodbye for now.