Many Syrian doctors and medical staff have fled the country as the violence there continues. Portia Walker's been talking to one of them in Turkey.
The Arab Spring has failed to take root in Algeria. This week there were elections there and Chloe Arnold's been reflecting on the public reluctance to take part in a vote about the country's future.
Hugh Sykes has been listening to opposing views about the state Pakistan's in. Some talk of its political stability; others of how it's ripe for revolution. Everyone, though, has a view about corruption there.
A UN envoy, in Cambodia this week, spoke of how firearms were increasingly being used there against human rights activists. Guy Delauney considers this in the light of growing public controversy over land issues and illegal logging.
And as the nude bathing season gets underway in Germany Stephen Evans tells a story of how cultural confusion over nakedness caused embarrassment in a Berlin gym.