The Documentary

Every year, Cyprus carries out thousands of weddings for couples from across the Middle East. The Mediterranean island promotes itself as the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, but its popularity as a wedding destination is much more prosaic - it offers civil marriages.

BBC World Service drives across the United States to find out why Americans seem more divided than ever.

Can you learn to code if you’ve spent your life studying religious texts? Can you be part of the fast-paced, secular world of technology and startups if you’re from a conservative religious community? Israel has been called the "Startup Nation", with a flourishing technology sector playing a big role in the country’s economy. But one group who haven’t traditionally been involved are ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as Haredim. They often live apart from mainstream Israeli society and adhere to strict religious laws covering everything from diet to dress and technology. Many men don’t work or serve in the army, spending their lives studying the Torah, subsidised by the government. It’s a way of life that leaves many Haredim in poverty, and other Israelis resenting picking up the tab. But in recent years, the ultra-orthodox have been increasingly joining the high-tech world, working in big international tech companies and founding their own startups. David Baker travels to Israel to meet the new breed of high tech Ha

Peter White explores Nairobi through the sounds of the African city. He listens to local radio, he takes in the sounds of restaurants, travel systems and the voices of the locals. In Nairobi he finds a city struggling to reconcile expansion and commercialisation with the hit and miss access to disabled facilities and the worries about safety around the city.

What does it take for someone to turn their back on their religious upbringing? What effect does that decision ultimately have on them and those around them? We explore the personal journeys of three people who walked away from their faiths and redefined their morality in a world without God.

The United States is in the throes of a heroin and opiate epidemic. For Crossing Continents, India Rakusen travels to Lorain County, in the state of Ohio, where addiction has become part of everyday life. West of the city of Cleveland, Avon Lake is a wealthy suburb – its large, expensive properties back onto the shores of Lake Eerie, and wild deer frolic on neat lawns. But behind this façade, there is a crisis. Many families have felt the damaging impact of addiction. And across Lorain County, opiates – pharmaceutical and street heroin - have killed twice as many people in the first six months of 2016 alone, as died in the whole of 2015.Producer Linda Pressly.

Google dominates internet searching across most parts of the globe. The algorithm which produces its search results is highly secret and always changing. But however good the algorithm, however carefully crafted to give us what Google thinks we actually want, is it really healthy for one search engine, and one company, to have so much impact?

Catherine Carr travels to the refugee camps in northern France known as The Jungle. The journeys people have undertaken to get there are epic, and their onward passage is uncertain. Where are they going? Their answers to that simple question reveal the rhythms of life in limbo and describe past lives and future hopes.

Kanishk Tharoor goes on the murky trail of the missing Genie of Nimrud – a huge, 3,000-year-old carved figure that once protected a palace; the Winged-Bull of Nineveh, an Assyrian sculpture that guarded the gates of one of the most fabled cities in antiquity; and a looted Sumerian seal stolen in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

After the last elections in Russia, mass protests against vote-rigging led to clashes in the centre of Moscow. The events on Bolotnaya Square were the biggest challenge President Putin has ever faced to his rule. Four years on, several demonstrators are still serving long prison sentences, the laws on protesting have been tightened and the arrests continue. As Russia gears up for parliamentary elections in September, Sarah Rainsford talks to some of those caught up in the Bolotnaya protests, and asks what their stories tell us about Putin’s Russia today. Producer: Mark Savage

When tanks rolled into Moscow on 19 August 1991 during a dramatic anti-Perestroika coup by Soviet hard-liners, the USSR’s state-controlled airwaves offered a curious response - a continuous loop of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. We trace the strange and elaborate pas de deux between Tchaikovsky’s ballet classic and the Russian psyche – revealing how a work, considered a flop upon its premiere, emerged as a powerful instrument of Soviet propaganda, and later – a soundtrack that failed to disguise impending political turmoil.

Philip Dodd looks at the impact that mass tourism on cruise liners can have. He talks to the people who benefit from the arrival of the huge new ships, and those who are unhappy about the environmental impact.

"Archaeology is supposed to be fun and interesting and apolitical and those are the reasons I love it, but none of this is now." Archaeologists like Jesse Casana have lived and worked on sites throughout Syria for years. He describes his feelings about the fate of friends and colleagues left behind. The excavation at Tell Qarqur that he oversaw before the war has now been bulldozed, but he says, "It seems like a fairly small concern compared to the human tragedy unfolding before our eyes."Tell Qarqur is not the only monument of archaeological interest that has been destroyed. The statue of an 11th Century Arabic poet, atheist and vegetarian, al-Ma'arri, was decapitated Islamic militants in 2013. And Aleppo, thought to be the oldest city in the world, is now in ruins. Its sights are remembered fondly by the people who lived there including the elegant, 1000 year old mineret of the Great Mosque destroyed in April 2013. Picture: A Syrian rebel fighter points to destruction in the Great Mosque complex, Aleppo,

In the Colombian capital of Bogota, Lucy Ash meets two people who fear they will never be able to return to their homes. They both come from Choco, which is one of the poorest provinces and most violent parts of the country. Maria, an Afro-Colombian mother of four, fled her town after she was abducted and brutally attacked by paramilitaries. Plinio was trying to help members of his indigenous community go back to their farms when he received death threats from a splinter group of left wing guerrilla (the ELN) and his friend was assassinated.Their stories illustrate a nationwide trauma – the government may be on the brink of a historic peace deal with the FARC rebels, but Colombia has even more internally displaced people than Syria. More than 200,000 have been killed and seven million driven off their land during half a century of war. Lucy travels down the River Baudo to meet people uprooted from their jungle villages in violent clashes earlier this year and finds that Latin America’s longest insurgency is f

The story of the premature babies in incubators on display in amusement park on Coney Island, and how the man who put them there, Martin Couney, changed attitudes to premature babies and saved countless lives.At Coney Island amusement park between 1903 and 1943 there was an extraordinary exhibit: tiny, premature babies. 'Dr Martin Couney's infant incubator’ facility was staffed by nurses in starched white uniforms and if you paid a quarter, you could see the babies in their incubators. Journalist Claire Prentice has been following the story and tracked down some of those babies, now in their 70s, 80s and 90s, who were put in the show. She discovers how Dr Couney brought the incubator to prominence in the USA through World's Fairs and amusement parks, and explores how a man who was shunned by the medical establishment changed attitudes to premature babies and saved countless lives.Image: Coney Island amusement park in 1904, Credit: Getty Images

China is a huge new market for the cruise industry. Philip Dodd cruises across the South China Sea to find out how the Chinese have taken to life on board ship. Boarding in Shanghai Philip meets the passengers and crew who will sail the coast of China down to Hong Kong. The Chinese want different things from a cruise from Westerners – they don’t want to sit in the sun. What they do want though is more of a sense of community on board. Ships are now being fitted especially for the Chinese market with these requirements in mind. As well as Asia, Philip looks to see if there is an appetite for cruising on the continent of Africa. He’ll be talking to the market specialists in South Africa where the numbers are on the rise.Picture: Cruise ship in Hong Kong, Credit: Philip Dodd

In May 2015, the Syrian city of Palmyra was captured by the forces of the so-called Islamic State. Few of the group's excesses have won as much attention as their ravaging of the city. They have waged a campaign of violence against the local population, and they systematically destroyed many of the city's great monuments, including the 2,000 year old Temple of Bel; the Lion of al-Lat, an ancient sculpture of a protective spirit; and the nearby shrine of Mar Elian in the Syrian desert that was beloved by both Christian and Muslim communities for hundreds of years. The three-part series, the Museum of Lost Objects, traces the histories of ten lost treasures through the stories of people who knew and loved them. From sculptures and shrines to tombs and temples, we explore how these ancient treasures have remained present in the lives of Iraqis and Syrians right up to this grim modern era of destruction. What you’ll hear is a recreation of sorts: these places and objects reimagined through local legends, historie

Playing war-games in the woods has become an ever-more popular pastime in Poland as thousands of young people join paramilitary groups to defend their country against possible invasion. Others – so-called “preppers” - are building bunkers and storing food supplies so their families can survive any disaster. Now the government plans to recruit such enthusiasts into a state-run volunteer defence force – to counter a possible Russian threat. But are the authorities stoking fear – and creating an amateur force that’s no use in 21st Century warfare? Tim Whewell reports from the forests of north-eastern Poland, close to the Russian border. Producer: Estelle Doyle

Poet Adélia Prado has shunned the spotlight since her discovery in 1976 – then a 40-year-old mother of five. Her literary career was launched by Brazil's foremost modern poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, with the announcement that St Francis was dictating verses to a housewife in the backwaters of the interior state of Minas Gerais. She writes about the transcendent in ordinary life, of how the human experience is both mystical and carnal. Now aged 80, her sensual, devout, sometimes provocative poetry is read and admired around the world. In the company of her long-time translator and fellow poet Ellen Doré Watson, Adélia Prado invites us into her home to talk about her life and work.Picture: Adelia Prado, Credit: Eve Streeter

The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution declares that anyone born on US soil "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is an American citizen. It was intended to give freed slaves guaranteed citizenship in the wake of the 1861-65 Civil War. But today, it also means the children of illegal immigrants to the US automatically become American citizens. This places it right at the heart of the huge controversy over immigration. Adam Smith, historian of 19th Century America, travels to Washington DC and North Carolina to find out.