Foreign Correspondent

If they stay they face intimidation, violence even death. If they go they put their lives and life savings in the hands of people smugglers, run the gauntlet of naval patrols and the perils of the sea itself. They are the Tamils of Sri Lanka and many of them are choosing to take the high water over the hell at home. For some it’s a case of if at first you don’t succeed, try again.

It’s a lifetime. Short, urgent and definitive. One hour to save those who can be saved – soldiers, civilians and the enemy critically wounded in the war in Afghanistan. Another defining feature – the surgeons, medics and patients are very young. Welcome to M.A.S.H. 2010 or to update another long-running American TV show – Gen Y Hospital.

How does a deeply personal spiritual offering from India’s poor to their Gods suddenly become a super-expensive, must-have style accessory in the haute salons of Europe, Asia, USA and Australia. Fire up the Benz, cue the hip-hop track and set the GPS for a collision course with faith, fashion and truckloads of money.

A 7 year old Ethiopian girl is portrayed as destitute and in grave danger. She is in fact 13 and has been well cared for much to the surprise of her adopting family. Then there are the children told they’re just visiting a foreign land who are in fact on a one way ticket. This is the powerful next instalment of Foreign Correspondent’s investigation of international adoption in Ethiopia and the United States that began with 2009’s Fly Away Children.

They imagined a breathtaking future-world, burned billions of dollars to summon it out of the sand and hundreds of thousands of expats and investors stampeded into Dubai for a piece of the action. But when the sands suddenly shifted it wasn’t going to be quite so easy getting out.

It’s thought a single, fluffy pillow killed a Hamas operative in Dubai. But it took 27 secret agents with pilfered passports and a bag of disguises to administer it. We investigate the incredible case of overkill and over-exposure that’s astonished even the most hard-boiled of spies.

The dominant face of the United States has long been white. Soon, when the nation looks in the mirror it will see a tanned, smiling Latin American face looking back. In a relatively short space of time a downtrodden minority will become a majority - restless and assertive.

When it comes to stem cells, mainstream scientists in the UK and America tell us their potential is both exciting and unlimited. But, they hasten to add, treatments for most illnesses are still years away and more research needs to happen. For Wilma Clarke, there is no doubt. Her three-year-old daughter, Dakota, born with a rare condition that left her almost blind and suffering from balance problems, can see things that she could not see before.

It’s not Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya or Somalia. But it is - arguably - the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. That’s one reason we know so little about a massacre in November 2009 that claimed the lives of more than 30 reporters. Now, Foreign Correspondent investigates.

Beware, Greeks bearing debts! Olympus-sized debts that would give Hercules a double-hernia and that threaten to swamp the nation like some modern day Atlantis. Sink or survive there’s plenty of pain ahead in the land of fakelaki. What?

In fashion conscious France it’s much more than a simple case of what not to wear. It’s a case of what should be illegal to wear. The push is on to outlaw cover-all Islamic dress in public places.

Before Haiti there was Aceh - a catastrophic natural event claiming tens of thousands of lives, destroying towns and villages and drawing enormous global sympathy and billions in aid. What is life like now for those traumatised survivors in this historically divided place?

Is the Chinese economy a bubble that’s about to burst, taking Australia down with it? Stephen McDonell looks for answers all over this vast country ... from young Beijing rock stars to the owners of the tallest building in China, and the lonely residents of a brand new ghost town in Inner Mongolia.

Few in the world had heard of it and very few could get close to pronouncing its rolling, rambling tongue-twister of a name. And yet - suddenly and spectacularly – a volcano called Eyjafjallajokull impacted millions of lives and blew away billions of dollars. But did the greatest aviation grounding since WW2 really have to happen?

Not so long ago it was thought worry and stress triggered the chronic pain of stomach ulcers. So how would yesterday’s doctors have reacted to scores of peaceful, meditating Tibetan monks rolling up to the surgery complaining of crippling pain. Thankfully, new medical science has sorted it all out. Oh and a dedicated team of Australian helpers.

They say they wanted to blow the lid on Japan’s super-sensitive whaling program. They were sure they’d found the red-hot evidence. But when they took their find to the authorities they were arrested and charged with crimes that could put them away for 10 years. What was in the box?

It’s perched on a perilous fault-line but California can’t blame the San Andreas for this big black bottomless pit. It’s a frightening financial hole engulfing the most populous state in the USA and there seems no way to fill it. Time to think outside the square. Or, just out of it.

So, you’re in a highly sensitive job working on a top secret project but something’s not right. In fact you think it’s very, very wrong. Go public and you risk your job, perhaps jail – maybe even your life. Stay silent and many other lives may be endangered or life-savings imperilled and malignant corruption festers. What do you do? Hurry – time is ticking!

Suddenly, explosively, the world began to bleed and a devastating stain began to spread. Why did it happen and where will it end? This is the story of cheap mistakes and an almighty mess told by the men who escaped with their lives and people of the gulf coast who’ve lost their livelihoods.

Both legs blown away by a mine, he sat on a chair outside his family's house and watched the world go by. This was his hopeless lot for five long, bleak years until a life-altering chain of events. He now walks tall, is second-in-charge of the clinic that helped him and feels like he is standing on the sky. Out of strife, a story to ignite the human spirit.

He’s a Hummer-driving bachelor with a soft-spot for saccharine R&B love songs, living the high life in Tokyo. And yet there he was on the World Cup centre-stage bawling his eyes out for his beloved North Korea and its so-called Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il. Where on earth does Jong Tae Se come from? Well, prepare to enter the detached and – for some – deluded world of the Zainichi.

Prepare to enter the real Washington DC and prepare to have your illusions shattered. It’s where the powerless live. Neglected, poor, black and waiting impatiently for Obama’s promise. But they’ve got one thing that raises the roof, shakes the foundations and makes them forget about being forgotten. It’s called Go Go.

The world’s car manufacturers are shifting gear and heading for greener pastures. They're designing, building and selling more and more hybrids and electric vehicles and that means they need more and more of a very precious metal for their batteries. But where's The Big Celldorado? A remote, beautiful and vast salt pan high in the Bolivian Andes. Problems? You bet!

Who does Frank Bainimarama think he is? Well, the Fijian ruler will tell you he's the difference between order and political mayhem. Don't get him wrong - he's all for democracy as long as it fits his military's model. And don't call him a dictator! He's simply a well intentioned leader who's abolished the constitution, rules by decree and decides what news is fit to publish. The strongman's opened his doors to Foreign Correspondent and we're walking in.

They’re the daughters of the rubble, the sons of the dust. They’re the little children who somehow survived the devastating cataclysm that shattered and crushed one of the world’s poorest countries – Haiti. Some were already orphans, many more would be made so by the earthquake. The epic quake brought an unimaginable toll and while the outside world tried to help, what could possibly be done for the smallest and most vulnerable?

Is it possible to defuse a terrorist? Can a violent extremist be disarmed, mellowed and transformed into an upright citizen who values human life and religious diversity? These are some of the profound and perplexing questions confronting authorities in Indonesia as they face rampant recidivism among terrorists. Jihadis do their time only to head out of their prison cell and back into a terrorist cell.

It’s a place that sends a shiver down a nation’s spine, chills its soul and has a people in absolutely no doubt that history does repeat and that lightning indeed strikes twice, in one place. A place called Katyn. It was in this starkly striking forest that 22,000 of Poland’s leading lights were brutally snuffed out. Close by, 70 years later a plane carrying Poland’s contemporary leadership slammed into the ground. Old suspicions, entrenched animosity and of course conspiracy theories rise up in the smoke.

The world demands answers and here they are, in the most revealing examination to date of the deadly mid-year melee on the Mediterranean. Come aboard the Mavi Marmara as it sails toward Gaza and meet the leaders of the flotilla aiming to bust Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian strip. Come inside Israel’s top secret naval commando units, hear first person accounts from both sides and witness what really unfolded that fateful, bloody night at sea.

The world demands answers and here they are, in the most revealing examination to date of the deadly mid-year melee on the Mediterranean. Come aboard the Mavi Marmara as it sails toward Gaza and meet the leaders of the flotilla aiming to bust Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian strip. Come inside Israel’s top secret naval commando units, hear first person accounts from both sides and witness what really unfolded that fateful, bloody night at sea.

They’ve fooled their families and friends, duped hard-bitten veteran soldiers and somehow managed to grow and prosper under the radar of America’s sophisticated military machine. They are the legion of liars and cheats who have fabricated service in the frontlines of war – particularly Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a despicable phenomenon called Stolen Valour. It’s boomed since 9/11 and it’s infuriating those who really have put their lives on the line and appalling those who’ve lost loved ones in battle.

Golf instructor. Sailing adventurer. Eagles fan. War Criminal? In Australia he went by the name of Daniel Snedden. In Serbia he’s known simply as Captain Dragan and he’s feted as a war hero. In neighbouring Croatia he’s despised and accused of heinous crimes. As Dragan Vasiljkovic fights his extradition from Australia down to the wire, Foreign Correspondent examines the case for and against, through the accounts of his accusers and the vehement denials of his supporters.

They can almost hear the crackle and boom of economic development to the north and south and now little Laos wants a piece of the action. The ramshackle communist backwater doesn’t have much – but it does have a good stretch of the mighty Mekong River and so Laos is planning to build dozens of dams and sell hydro-electricity to a hungry neighbourhood. Can the river they call Mother cope?

He was a Lost Boy with an incredible story, if only someone could help him tell it to the world. And then as Sudan survivor Valentino Deng found himself in a new and very foreign land he also happened to find acclaimed author Dave Eggers. The result was a searing and moving book that became a publishing sensation and catapulted Deng into the celebrity spotlight. But after ‘What Is The What’, what happened next?

This time America’s hunters aren’t prepared to be very, very quiet. There’s an ornery critter roaming the wilds of the west that they say is devouring native animals and farm stock and they warn it’s only a matter of time before a human is attacked and killed. So they’re cussin’ and hollerin’ for the right to hunt down the predator but conservationists and the law won’t let ‘em. For now, the big wild wolf is protected. So, will they take the law into their own hands?

These are just a small grab-bag of scenes from a nation stunning the world with the scale and speed of its economic development and trying very hard to keep a lid on the grubby consequences. They’re scenes China’s authorities are not keen for you to see.