17/12/2016 Reporters

Now on BBC News - it's time for Reporters.

Welcome to Reporters.

I'm Philippa Thomas at the BBC's headquarters

here in London.

In this special edition of the programme, we're

looking back at some of the best reports from this year from our

network of correspondents around the world.

Coming up...

Stand off in the skies above the South China Seas.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes flies over one of the most

contested areas in the world, incurring the wrath

of the Chinese.

Our captain responded saying we're a civilian aircraft, not a military

aircraft.

It didn't make any difference whatsoever.

They just repeated that threat, we must leave

the area, over and over again.

Tiny victims of Yemen's forgotten war.

Nawal Al-Maghafi finds starving children in desperate need of aid.

A slight fever and diarrhoea.

Because they didn't have his medicine, he passed away.

We've just arrived in what's called the Prom Zone.

Under fire on Ukraine's line.

Tom Burridge and his team reach one of the conflict's most volatile

hotspots, where the fragile ceasefire has collapsed.

Make no mistakes.

It cost you your life, literally.

Ian Panell reports from Barack Obama's hometown and finds

gun crime is out of control.

And battle of the sexes.

Sahar Zand meets the Moroccan warrior women taking on and

beating the Berber men of North Africa at their own game.

GUNSHOT

The BBC went to extraordinary lengths this

year to get a rare glimpse of China's determined

expansion in the South China Sea, one of the most contested areas

anywhere in the world.

Beijing is building huge artificial islands on

the Spratly Island chain, which the Americans and others

insist are illegal.

The area is difficult to get to.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes flew in a small, civilian aircraft into

China's self-declared security zone 200 kilometres off

the coast of the Philippines.

This is what he found.

COCKEREL CROWS

It's just before dawn on the Philippine island of Palawan.

Even at this hour, it's hot, but there's

no sign here of the trouble brewing a few hundred miles out to sea.

I'm about to take off on a trip the Chinese government

has tried to stop.

As we roll down the runway, we're all tense.

No-one has tried what we're about to do.

We're now heading south-west towards a

number of Chinese-controlled atolls.

These are places where the Chinese have been doing massive land

reclamation over the last year and a half.

We want to go for two reasons, one to see what the Chinese

are doing and, secondly, to test, see if the Chinese will try to stop

us.

Because the whole of this area is, according to most countries,

international airspace.

Just 140 nautical miles from the Philippine

coast, we spot new land.

This place is called Mischief Reef.

Until a year ago, there was nothing here, just a submerged atoll.

Now, look at it!

Millions of tonnes of material have been dredged up to build this huge,

new island.

As we close to 12 nautical miles, this.

Down below, we can see a pair of Chinese Navy ships.

Our pilots are nervous.

They want to turn away.

We are a civilian aircraft flying over international

waters and yet we are being repeatedly threatened.

What we get is the Chinese sending out that message.

Foreign military aircraft, unidentified aircraft, leave this

area immediately.

Chinese and in English.

Our captain responded saying we are a civilian aircraft,

not a military aircraft.

It didn't make any difference whatsoever.

They just repeated that threat, we must

leave the area, over and over again.

Immediately.

As we fly on, the full extent of the construction is revealed.

The lagoon is teeming with ships.

A cement plant is visible on the new land.

And then, for the first time, a clear view of the new

runway China is building here.

A Chinese fighter taking off from here

could reach the Philippine coast in nine minutes.

In the last year, China has built at least seven new

islands and three new runways in the South China Sea.

One here at Mischief Reef, another at Subi Reef,

and the biggest of all at Fiery Cross.

The aim is to reinforce China's claim to the whole of the

South China Sea.

America and its allies are now responding.

Over the radio, we now hear one of them.

What we are hearing is an Australian military aircraft asserting

freedom of passage.

More than 40% of the world's trade passes through the waters below us.

China is determined to assert its control.

America and its allies say they won't let that happen.

As we have found out, it may already be too late.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, BBC News, in the South China Sea.

From the conflict in Syria to what is seen as the

forgotten war in Yemen.

The fighting there has pushed one of the poorest

countries in the Middle East to the brink of famine.

Threatening the lives of millions of people.

More than 7000 have been killed in a conflict

between the country's Huthi rebels, who overthrew the

Government last year, and a Saudi-led coalition backed

by Britain and the US.

This has left about 7 million people on the brink of famine.

Many of them, children.

Again, a warning, Nawal Al-Maghafi's report contains some

distressing images from the start.

In the villages of Yemen, it is the children who suffer most.

Wherever you go, you can see the human cost of this war.

Seven-month-old Fatima is weak and severely malnourished.

She is one of hundreds in this area alone.

Her mother, Sara, tells me she won't stop crying.

It breaks my heart, she says.

The only thing Sara can offer her child is water.

She is so malnourished herself she is unable

to breast-feed.

Dr Ashwaq Muharram took me from village to village.

Each time we saw the same thing.

Yemen has always been desperately poor.

The war has made things worse.

It is not just the villages that are struggling.

This war has forced 600 hospitals to close down.

Lack of supplies has pushed this central

hospital to the brink.

Children are the most affected by malnutrition.

Here, hunger has left 1.5 million children starving.

This is a four-year-old child.

His grandfather brought him here with

fever and diarrhoea.

Malnutrition has meant his immune system is not

able to fight a simple infection.

Severe shortage of medicine means the antibiotic

he needs is not available.

TRANSLATION: The antibiotics we have will not treat

the type of bacteria he is suffering from.

All we can do is provide health care with the supplies we have.

The hospital is overwhelmed with children.

In some cases, malnutrition has turned into outright starvation.

Salim is eight years old.

Once able to play and talk to his brothers and sisters,

his mother says, although he is alive, it is as if he is no

longer here.

TRANSLATION: I never imagined I would ever see

a child like this in Yemen.

This boy is starving.

It scares me that it may be the beginning of a famine.

The four-year-old's grandfather tells us his condition has taken

a turn for the worse.

He just had fever and diarrhoea.

Because they do not have his medicine, he passed away.

Back in the village, Ashwaq has some good news.

After six days of phone calls and negotiations, Ashwaq

managed to import his life-saving milk.

TRANSLATION: You have made me so happy and filled our

home with happiness.

I hope I can do the same for you.

Poverty has always affected Yemen but now there's a risk of losing

an entire generation.

Nawal Al-Maghafi, BBC News, Hudaydah, Yemen.

From Yemen's forgotten war to what has become Europe's

forgotten conflict in Ukraine.

Tensions escalated there as Europe struggled over whether to

maintain sanctions on Russia, following its military intervention

in the region.

At the height of the crisis, Tom Burridge and his team

travelled with the Ukrainian military to one of the most volatile

parts of the front line on the edge of the town of Adivka.

He sent us this report.

Venture into this industrial area, known as the Prom Zone, on the

edge of a small Ukrainian city, and this is the reality almost every

night.

It is really close.

Go towards that wall.

OK, so we've literally just arrived in what's

called the Prom Zone.

You can tell why they call it hot.

This perpetual war zone has been largely forgotten.

After two and a bit years, and countless diplomatic

meetings, Russia and the West have failed to deliver peace.

Lethal warfare here sometimes feels mundane and monotonous.

So, five, maybe ten minutes after we arrived here in the

so-called Prom Zone, and sniper fire, the crack of machine guns,

the soldiers here say probably RPGs, rocket-propelled grenades.

Essentially, it is welcome to the Prom Zone.

Our walk through the industrial zone feels

like it will never end.

The soldier we're with chooses to walk but I prefer

to run right now.

Just right out in the open.

We made it.

That was intense.

We reach a building where we will spend the night.

Fighting these Ukrainian troops is a militia which

controls two tiny, unrecognised Russian-backed republics.

21-year-old Dema says he will die for land

which he says is part of Ukraine.

The next day, on a hillside near by, we are shown the Ukrainian

military's defences.

This impressive network of trenches speaks of how

Ukraine has been digging in for months.

The country hasn't lost territory to the rebels in well over a year.

For that, Ukraine can claim some success.

Any success has come at a cost.

In Adivka, the front line town held by Ukraine, we meet Victor.

His wife was killed and his grandson disabled, both by shelling.

Eastern Ukraine is a deprived region,

invisible are bitter divisions.

The conflict has become one of attrition, which world

powers have been unable, or unwilling, to end.

Tom Burridge, BBC News, in Adivka, eastern Ukraine.

Now to evidence of a startling rise in

levels of gun violence in parts of the United States, including

President Obama's political home, Chicago.

Killings in the city have reached a 20-year high.

A deadly summer of violence brought this year's death toll to 500.

Most of the victims and their 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.

Here, in my neighbourhood, they start young, man.

When you read the news headlines, that's the age frame they are dying

from gun battles.

We've got to teach the kids how to defend themselves.

It is senseless violence at the end of the day but it is like,

what do you do when you're caught in that moment?

You'd rather be caught with protection than without protection.

I've never seen so many guns.

Like, we had a lot of guns.

But, I've never seen so many guns like now.

Bodiel is a rapper from the west side, now the most violent part of

Chicago.

He is in the Vice Lords Gang.

He's been in prison and even he's shocked by what's happening.

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

It seemed like it was designed to lose.

I think a lot of guys need to die in order to

make it better.

I think some of these BEEP need to get killed and get

knocked off and get them out of the way to make it a better place

because some of them...

We've been stood here for five minutes.

I've seen two police cars, one ambulance go by.

It ain't safe over here at all.

Suddenly we were told to leave the area as Bodiel

and his gang sped off.

Hello.

Hey, what just happened?

Why did we have to leave so quickly?

Because there's a war.

The two gangs around as.

That's why so many people get shot in the area.

Sombody got shot a couple of blocks up.

More people have been killed here since

2001 than US deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

And yet, there's almost no outcry.

Do you worry about your kids?

I do.

To be honest, I've got a son that's seven and

a daughter that's four.

I haven't taught neither one of them how to ride

a bike yet.

The environment they live in is not safe.

I miss you.

I miss you too.

I love you.

I love you, dadda.

OK, baby.

I'm just trying to change the cycle.

It's hard when you don't really have help, you know what I'm saying?

It's like, we've put in a weird position,

you know what I'm saying, because...

Cut real quick.

This BEEP don't end.

It's a never-ending cycle, man.

We're human, man.

Rest in peace to both of my parents.

It's real.

Right.

With so many guns and so little control,

the murders will rise.

Rarely solved and barely noticed.

This may sound like the stuff of science fiction

movies but American researchers broke new ground this year by trying

to grow human organs inside pigs.

The research uses a pioneering technique known as gene editing,

which enables DNA to be altered simply and quickly.

Some believe it could provide the answer to the

organ transplant crisis.

As Fergus Walsh explains, it also raises many ethical issues.

You are watching two species being mixed.

Human stem cells are being injected into a

one-day-old pig embryo.

You can see them travelling down the tube.

This biologist in California is trying to grow a human pancreas

inside a pig.

Our hope is that this pig embryo will develop normally but

the pancreas will be made almost exclusively out of human cells.

So then that pancreas could be compatible with a patient

for transplantation.

The technique is known as gene editing.

It uses molecular scissors to delete the DNA

instructions in the pig embryo to create a pancreas.

The ambition is the human cells will fill the void

and grow a human pancreas instead.

The same technique might enable other organs to be grown

for transplant.

The BBC's Panorama was allowed to film the sows which

were pregnant with human pig embryos, known as chimeras.

If human stem cells were taken from a

patient, the transplant organs could be tissue matched,

reducing the risk of rejection.

This research raises profound ethical

concerns, crucially just how human are the piglets developing inside

this sow?

It's such a sensitive area that the chimeric embryos will

not be permitted to go to term but be removed for tissue analysis

after 28 days gestation, when they're about

a centimetre long.

Crucially, they'll check whether the pig's

developing brain gains human-like qualities.

Another pioneer in this field told me this question has yet

to be resolved.

With every organ we try to make, be it kidney, liver

or lung, we will look at what's happening in the brain.

If we find that it's too humanlike, we won't

let those foetuses be born.

Organisations campaigning for an end to factory farming are dismayed

by the thought of organ farms.

I'm nervous about opening up a new source of animal suffering.

Let's first get many more people to donate organs.

If then there is still a shortage, we can consider using pigs

but on the basis that we eat less meat, so there's no overall increase

in the number of pigs being used for human purposes.

7000 people in the UK are on the transplant waiting list.

Hundreds die each year before a donor can be found.

Patient trials, involving gene-edited pig organs, are

still some way off.

Fergus Walsh, BBC News.

Finally, for centuries, the Berber men of North Africa have

proved their worth in the dangerous macho sport of Fantasia,

where teams of riders charge together, firing

their rifles in unison.

Now, for the first time, female riders have been taking

them on.

Sahar Zand has been to meet the Moroccan women warriors beating

the men at their own game.

Fantasia, a centuries-old Moroccan tradition.

A way for Berber men to show off their masculinity, horsemanship and

warfare.

But, in recent years, all woman troops are taking the rein,

challenging the tradition.

This is the leader of an all-female troupe.

Today they are the only women competing in this regional Fantasia.

By doing Fantasia, how different do you think the

image you're giving out to the world to what they think a normal Arab

or Moroccan girl should be or is?

Before starting to do Fantasia, I said that women were just

cooking, keeping the house.

Now, also women ride a horse.

Other people see power girls.

I never saw girls do it.

Did you not think maybe you can't do it because

no other girl has ever done it before?

A challenge.

When you first started Fantasia, how did men react to you?

No they respect us.

Did they not respect you before?

Saying bad words, like, "You are just women.

Your place is not here.

Your places is your

house or your children."

In other words, have the bed eyes.

That sounds horrible.

Did that not put you off?

No.

That gives you power to continue.

How did you find the girls in your troop?

I search good girls.

The girls who want to ride for Fantasia, not for taking photos.

Before we go into the arena, we are praying to God to bless us.

In Fantasia, maybe it's your last day.

Before we go, we always kiss each other.

For good luck?

Yeah.

Of course, for good luck.

Thank you.

I am nervous for them.

My heart is beating.

The aim is for the whole team to charge and shoot

simultaneously.

The winners are announced and the girls won.

Sahar Zand, BBC News, Morocco.

That's all from this special edition of

Reporters, looking back at some of the best reports from this year.

From me, Philippa Thomas, goodbye for now.

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