From Our Own Correspondent - 08/05/2010

Disturbing reports from inside an American jail in Afghanistan. A glimpse of Baghdad's past, and gentler, happier times in Iraq. History repeats itself in Albania as hunger strikers take to the streets. How cultural differences continue to divide Hong Kong from the rest of China and secrets from India's summer of love When President Obama came to power, his first act was to order the closure of the notorious prison at Guantanamo Bay. And the jail in Cuba is being gradually wound down. But there's increasing focus now on the controversial US detention facilities at the Bagram airbase, in Afghanistan. Hundreds of suspected Taliban or Al Qaeda militants are held there, and the Americans have built a new prison to house them. Very few outsiders have had access to the jail. But after pressing for it for a year, Hilary Anderson has at last been given permission to get in and look around.. Hilary Anderson there..and you can hear more about what she saw at Bagram in "Crossing Continents", here on the World Service from Thursday. "We are the innocent victims of vicious politics." The words there of a witness to yet another bomb attack recently in Baghdad. He said he'd just counted twenty-five bodies. The bombers struck several times that day, and altogether nearly sixty people were killed. Iraq's long drawn out agony is far from over. But Gabriel Gatehouse says that despite all the nagging fear and uncertainty, there is at least one corner of the city where it's still possible to relax, and remember much better days.. For several months now, there's been rising tension in Albania. The opposition Socialists refuse to accept last year's election result. They've been mounting regular demonstrations, and they've boycotted parliament -- paralysing political life. None of this is good for a former-Communist country that hopes to establish its democratic credentials, and be embraced by the European Union.. In the streets of the capital, Tirana, Mark Lowen has been watching the crisis escalate.. Back on July the first, 1997, British rule in Hong Kong finally ended. On the stroke of midnight the Union Jack was lowered. Fireworks lit a stormy sky, and the territory was formally handed over to China. But now..thirteen years on.to what extent has Hong Kong really been absorbed into the motherland.? And how much of its old, distinctive spirit has endured.? Michael Bristow has been walking the dividing line between what remain two very different societies.. And it's high summer in India. Veteran correspondent Mark Tully's often asked how he copes with the heat of an Indian summer. His answer's perhaps not entirely what you were expecting ...