From Our Own Correspondent - 21/11/2009

Kate Adie introduces BBC foreign correspondents with the stories behind the headlines. You couldn't make it up! Hugh Sykes, who is just back from Kabul, says the story of the linkage between the Taleban, Afghanistan and Pakistan would sound far-fetched even in a novel. He adds that the Americans and British are supporting a country, Pakistan, which has elements who are supporting the movement that's killing British and American troops. 'It's déjà vu all over again!' Jeremy Bowen quotes an American baseball star as he looks at the building of settlements on occupied land in Jerusalem - one of the issues dogging President Obama as he tries, with little apparent success, to make progress down the path towards Middle East peace. A lighter look at Jerusalem, and in particular at living in within the city's old walls, comes from Heather Sharp. She conjures up the characters in her neighbourhood: the cats, the smells and the noises in this labyrinth of ancient stone alleyways. 'A town as shrouded in layers of forgetting and denial as it is in wet leaves and November mists.' That's the view of Tim Whewell, who has been to the Polish town of Radzilow, the scene of a massacre of Jews, burned to death, in 1941. His account centres on a local man determined to uncover the truth about who exactly was responsible, however painful and shameful that truth might be. The scientists were once very excited about Java Man. When his bones were uncovered in Indonesia they were convinced he was the 'missing link' between the apes and mankind. But then another so-called missing link was discovered. And then another. Christine Finn has been to the riverbank in Indonesia where Java Man, now the forgotten hero of science, was found amid great excitement.