大象传媒

Fear behind the public facade: growing fear of possible nuclear catastrophe in Tokyo.
We go out to a gun shop to discover just how easy it is to get armed in California.
And there's a story from Pakistan about a snow leopard that's forgotten what snow's like.

How much more can survivors of Japan's disaster endure? They wander through once-familiar neighbourhoods that are now no more than wastelands. They search for homes that exist only in their memories. And they've been going in fear of what the unfolding nuclear disaster might mean - uncertain of the safety of the air they breathe. Rupert Wingfield-Hayes has spent days reporting on the plight of the survivors, and considers what it takes to cope with adversity on this overwhelming scale.

It was a tiny event. A bit of routine local politics: a Congresswoman taking questions at a supermarket in Arizona. But suddenly a gunman opened fire. When the shooting was over six people were dead, and the Congresswoman, Gabrielle Gifford, was wounded in the head and fighting for her life. In recent years America has become disturbingly prone to these sort insane, murderous outbursts. Each is followed by periods of national soul-searching. And two months on from the bloodshed in Arizona, David Willis been looking at the impact it's had on America's attitudes towards guns.

The study of linguistics is littered with dead languages - tongues that have fallen silent. Some will have failed to evolve - failed to keep up with a changing world and faded into irrelevance. They'll have been swamped by other, more dynamic, more widely-spoken languages. Hundreds of smaller ones are struggling right now, and in danger of extinction. But Hannah Barnes has been talking to lovers of Hebrew who are determined to ensure that it remains as up to date as it can possibly be.

The mountains of Asia - like the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush - are home to a magnificent animal, the snow leopard. But all across its range it's under pressure and endangered. It has less and less room to roam, and poachers hunt it for its beautiful fur. It's believed that there are fewer than six thousand snow leopards in the wild. And Mohammad Hanif has been touched by the miseries of one that is in captivity.