14/01/2017 Reporters

From here in the World Newsroom, we send out correspondants to bring

you the best stories from across the globe.

As Barack Obama leaves the White House after eight years,

Jon Sopel looks back at his legacy as the United States first

I think his legacy to him is more important right now to paint

a picture that he did a real good job.

But, most black folks are disappointed because we feel

We report on Brazil's plans to build huge hydroelectric dams,

which could change the world's biggest rainforest for ever.

The impact of so many of these structures on the world's

greatest river system, its environment and its

Tell me what you are about to inject?

It's good cocaine, a lot of heroin and some diazepam benzodiazephine,

We get exclusive access to clinics where drug addicts can legally take

heroin and crack cocaine under medical supervision.

A visit to China's most polluted city.

We find the worst winter smog in recent years

The smog is harming my childrens' health.

David Sillitoe investigates how new technology is revealing more

What this new VR technology is offering is a chance to return

back and see what this place used to look like in the past.

Eight years ago, President Obama swept into power in an historic

election which put the first African American in the White House.

It marked a new era and the start of a period of hope for many.

But now, as he says his final farewells and his successor

Donald Trump prepares to take over, what will his legacy be?

What has he done for race relations, gun laws, health care?

Jon Sopel looks back at the domestic issues which have defined

It wasn't just the hope when Barack Obama came to office,

it was the wild expectation too, that the country's problems

would be solved at a stroke, that the first African-American

president would usher in a post-racial era,

no more black America or white America, just the United

But the lingering vestiges of that dream disappeared in the summer

of 2014 in clouds of tear gas, in a nondescript suburb of St Louis,

An unarmed black man had been shot by a white police officer.

It was a pattern that would become all too familiar.

In Charleston, South Carolina, Walter Scott had been pulled over

Footage captures the white police officer who stopped him,

shooting him in the back several times before he dies.

At his trial, which ended last month, the jury

The court therefore must declare a mistrial...

Under the symbol for the black community that

I think his legacy to him is more important right now to paint

a picture that he did a real good job in America.

But most black folks are very disappointed, because we feel

The issue of race and another of America's great intractable

social problems, gun violence, came together to horrific effect

inside this famous African-American church in Charleston.

A white supremacist, who, with his string of drug convictions,

should never have been able to purchase a gun, walked

inside a Bible study group and killed eight worshippers

Barack Obama had always seemed reluctant to define himself

as a black president, preoccupied by racial issued.

But after these shootings, that changed as he came

to Charleston and showed how he felt the community's pain.

# How sweet the sound that saved...#.

Obama's two terms in office were punctuated by the crack of gunshots.

You've dialled 911, what's the location of your emergency?

Sandy Hook School, I think there's somebody shooting in here.

And then this series of random, mass killings that started

with the slaying of 20 children and six of their teachers

The President's famously cool demeanour was gone after this.

Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad.

And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago everyday.

I refuse to act as if this is the new normal.

And this is not something I can do by myself.

Such violence, such evil is senseless.

Again and again, he wanted tougher legislation on gun control.

But he failed, to his evident consternation,

If you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I have been

most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the

United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth

in which we do not have sufficient common sense, gun safety laws.

But there have been some legislated successes.

Millions more Americans now have health insurance

than was previously the case, although Obamacare has

And the economy, which was flat on its back eight years ago,

is starting to boom, and people are spending

We have not just come back stronger from the great recession,

we have actually built an economy that's the envy the world.

And that is an important part of President Obama's legacy.

But it proved to be a voter-less recovery where it mattered.

And there will be no Democrat succeeding him in the White House,

and so one of his final acts was to make a last journey

to Capitol Hill to urge his party's lawmakers to fight off Republican

attempts to dismantle Obamacare and the rest of his domestic legacy.

To Brazil's Amazon rainforest now, where a battle is under way

between its indigenous people and big business.

The Brazilian government is defending plans to build dozens

of huge hydroelectric dams, which they say are vital to meet

But environmentalists say the plans are a disaster for the Amazon

and will result in more deforestation and global warming.

Wyre Davies has been to Belo Monte, the site of the first

of the new so-called mega-dams to assess their impact.

From the heart of the planet's greatest rainforest,

emerges one of the world's biggest civil engineering projects.

The Belo Monte dam is Brazil's answer to its growing energy needs.

Mired in controversy and allegations of corruption,

the $18 billion dam partially blocks the Xingu, a major Amazon tributary

and has flooded thousands of acres of rainforest.

The local fishing has been decimated and thousands of riverside

dwellers or riberenos, have lost their land

and their livelihoods, forced into a completely

We get angry, says this man, showing us his now

We see these corporations making millions from what used

to be ours, he says, and we can't even use

Building the dam brought hundreds of jobs to the riverside town

of Altamira, but it also led to increasing deforestation

and the permanent loss of many low-lying islands.

Supporters of hydropower admit mistakes were made.

But they say the rivers and their energy are

I would definitely defend the presence of Hydro S1

key technology in our portfolio of technologies.

In the developed part of the world, almost 70% of the hydro potential

In Brazil, almost 70% of our hydro potential has not been explored yet.

Brazil says it wants to build at least 50 hydroelectric

The government is saying it is clean, sustainable energy.

But the impact of so many of these structures on the world's

greatest river system, its environment and its people,

Next in line for development, the Tapajos.

Described as the most beautiful river in the Amazon region and home

The plan to build several dams along its length

would transform this wide, shallow river into a

But it would flood forests and islands used

Tribal chiefs say they will resist any attempts to build

TRANSLATION: The government always comes here with its lies.

There's not one place where a dam has been built that has turned out

These tattooed warriors of the Amazon are taking on powerful

business and political interest that want to weaken environmental

legislation and fast-track the construction of hydroelectric dams.

Clean energy and the promise of jobs versus the rights

And whether to exploit or to protect this fragile ecosystem.

Wyre Davies, BBC News, in the Amazon.

Now, when it comes to stopping deaths from drug overdoses,

are fix rooms or consumption rooms the answer?

They are places where users can legally inject hard drugs

like cocaine and heroin under medical supervision

There have been repeated calls for them to be

We went to Denmark to spend a day inside a fix room

and we need to warn you, this report shows illegal

drug-taking, including scenes with addicts injecting which some

viewers may find uncomfortable to watch.

This is Copenhagen's seedy red light district,

It's home to one of the city's so-called fix rooms,

a place where users can legally take class A drugs safely under

supervision and without the fear of prosecution.

There's calls to introduce them back in the UK,

so I'm spending the day here to see how they work.

It's 8am and inside, users have already turned up.

My name is Elliott and I am 25, almost 26 years old.

Tell me what you are about to inject?

It is good cocaine, a lot of heroin and some diaz benzos just to make

Elliott is originally from Sweden, he's homeless and will beg,

He injects so often, it's difficult to find a vein.

Let's see, alert, euphoric and relaxed.

This place opened three years ago, funded by

There's always a nurse here to supervise the users.

When the users come, the only thing they have to bring

themselves is the drug they are going to consume.

Everything else we give to them for free.

This is just an example, we give to them the needles,

Of course, the main thing is to save lives and to prevent

Elliott is one of about 500 users who will come here today.

It's a safe place to take things and when I take something

that is really strong, I'd turn to the nurse

that is sitting by the computer and I'd tell them, listen up,

I'm going to take this strong dose, so they know what to expect

Some people would say that having a facility like this is encouraging

It's a very hard life to be a drug addict in this environment.

It's a very busy life, people are working to get

We don't make people's lives more easy, but it gives people a place

But the fix room is clearly not a treatment facility

And many people like the users I've met here today will come in and out

of the fix room and go back to their difficult and sometimes

China is in the midst of its worst winter smog in recent years.

More than half of all of its cities are experiencing high

Visibility in Beijing was reduced to less than 200 metres this week,

increasing use of coal and current weather conditions have left a cloud

of pollution over 3000 kilometres long across northern

John Sudworth has travelled to the worst polluted city in China

Somewhere, underneath this murky gloom is a city

And, for the unfortunate residents of this city, this is normal.

For the past 30 days, the average air quality

in this city has measured as hazardous on the official scale.

You can smell, even taste the coal dust in the air, the grim,

tangible reality of this country's model of economic growth.

And people have no choice but to live, eat and sleep in this

It's like living under a cloud, this noodle seller tells me.

The smog is harming my children's health.

Of course I want to leave, this man says, but I can't

afford to, and anyway, the whole country is polluted.

200 miles away, the pollution literally rolled into

A toxic mix of coal dust from power stations and car exhaust,

the smog now regularly blankets a huge swathe of northern China.

And it's believed to cause more than a million

TRANSLATION: As a lung cancer doctor, I have seen an increase

in patients in recent years, especially from heavily

And when the smog gets worse, we see more kids with asthma.

Public concern has forced the Chinese government

to begin investing heavily in renewable energy.

Those working in the sector believe China can clean up its air,

just as wealthier, more developed economies at once had to.

I am pretty positive for China's future.

Actually, they don't need that much time for the science research.

They don't need that much time to develop relevant technologies.

So I think a lot of things are more ripe for us

Those solutions can't come fast enough for this city.

Fossil fuels may have lifted China's economy to ever greater heights,

The former war correspondence, Claire Hollingworth,

who reported the outbreak of the Second World War, died this

She was the first journalist to report on the build-up of German

She went on to witness some of the most significant events

Our world affairs editor John Simpson knew Claire Hollingworth

and he's been looking back at her life and achievements.

This is a national programme from London.

Germany has invaded Poland and has bombed many towns.

It was Claire Hollingworth's first story.

Three days earlier, she had spotted the build-up of German armour,

I drove along a valley and there was a tarpaulin up

to prevent you looking down into the valley.

And suddenly a gust of wind blew the tarpaulin

I looked down into the valley and there were scores,

That set the pattern for her long career, scoop after scoop.

It was Claire Hollingworth who broke the news of Kim Philby's

defection to Russia, though her newspaper, the Guardian,

fearing a libel suit, wouldn't use it at first.

In Vietnam, she was a fearless war correspondence.

I am really passionately interested in war and if one

is passionately interested in war, one can't help like being in it.

Despite her bad eyesight and slight build, she was remarkably tough

and used her aunty-ish appearance to great effect.

Once in East Berlin, she spotted a brand-new Soviet tank.

The crew had wandered off, so she clambered onto it and got

a look at the speedometer and the petrol gauge.

The Russian soldiers came running back, furious.

She said innocently, she was just trying to work out how

The next day, her paper led on the new tank's speed and range.

She was a pioneer, she led the way for all the tens of thousands

of women journalists who are now working all over the world,

And I think she was almost fearless and absolutely

She remained a journalist into her 90s and last year

in Hong Kong, where she lived, her friends celebrated

Claire Hollingworth had been a remarkable witness

Finally, there are many questions surrounding the ancient stones

But might sound help in the search for answers?

New technology is helping to recreate some of the strange

acoustics of the mystical English site from thousands of years ago.

Much of the stone circle has been lost over the years,

but as David Sillitoe reports, the technology can even help us

experience what the original prehistoric site might

People have been coming here for at least 5000 years.

So we are walking in the feet of history.

When the wind blows, some people say they hear a strange hum.

Thomas Hardy wrote about it in Tess of the d'Urbevilles.

And Dr Rupert Till is convinced the sound of Stonehenge

You here between each beat a little echo as the sound leaves

you, hits the stone and comes back to you here.

The problem, this is just a fragment of the sound people would have

So this is the front door of Stonehenge we are

We are coming into the central space.

It does change a bit as you walk through, doesn't it?

It does, you get the feeling of being enclosed within a space.

And that's with most of the stones, well many

That's right, so what we're looking at today is the ruin of Stonehenge.

Many of the stones have been taken away from the site,

many have fallen down, lots have been eroded

So it would have been a completely different,

What this new VR technology is offering is a possibility,

a chance to return back and see and also hear what this place used

We've kind of reconstructed it by rebuilding Stonehenge digitally

and then using architectural software to reconstruct

the acoustics of the space, as it would have been

So how different is the old sound to the sound we have today?

If I tap this drum now, you hear a little bit of an echo.

When all the stones are put in place, a much more

powerful sense of enclosure, a slight reverberation,

more echo and it changes more as you walk around.

And the reason he is convinced ancient people were interested

in sound is because of his work in caves in Spain.

Hundreds of metres underground, they found ancient instruments

and human marks on certain stalactites will stop

So today, it's just ruin beside a busy road.

This, a chance to say goodbye to the 21st-century and experience

That's all from Reporters for this week.

Rrom me, James Menendez, goodbye for now.

Hello. It has been another chilly day today. Some of us will remain

that way but for others it will get milder, due to this cloud that is

pushing in off of the Atlantic. The rain will push into the West of

Scotland initially. Further East, an icy start within