Today in China, some of the young rich can be seen driving $600,000 cars.

China - The Ka-Ching! Dynasty

Reporter: Stephen McDonell

In China they’re setting blistering speed records. From the go-fast, rich kids quickly amassing stables of super-cars to the developers building sky-scraping hotels – start to finish – in just 14 days. One local rich list estimates China has almost a million millionaires, 600 billionaires and the numbers keep growing at a staggering rate. Private jets are flying out of showroom hangers at mach 1. The economic transformation of China has been electrifying, but with Europe teetering and the U.S. plodding can the biggest tiger of all keep on roaring? The super-rich you’ll meet in our 2012 return certainly think so.

Around the World and Back Again

Latest Program Transcripts

Tuesday, 22 November 2011

2011 Around the World and Back Again

- Around the World and Back Again

The secret agents had been buzzing around China Correspondent Stephen McDonell so intrusively he knew he had to make them a part of the story but the moment he made that decision they vanished. What did he do to ensure they’d come rushing back into view to star in his story? What happened when Mark Corcoran found himself in Egypt’s Tahrir Square and at the centre of one of 2011's biggest stories and began to lose his voice? When Japan shook, Mark Willacy was on assignment in Japan’s south far from his young family in a shaking, shuddering Tokyo. How did they cope? All the answers ahead as we take you behind some of the year’s assignments.

Beginning in Wall Street N.Y. the social economic movement Occupy now has active support right across the world.

Europe - Going Rogue

Banking used to be the very model of prudence. Now much of it resembles an extreme sport where the line between risk and recklessness has been wiped out. As the Occupy movement moves in on major cities around the world, we meet some of the extreme players who crashed and burned mountains of other people's money, and ask are rogue traders really maverick loners or products of a system that’s thrown away the rule book?

Worker in asbestos factory near Ahmedabad scoops up armfuls of raw asbestos.

India - Toxic Trade

There’s no doubt asbestos is a dirty, deadly word. In Australia the scandals of Wittenoom and the long-running James Hardie saga have ensured a widespread awareness that asbestos kills often slowly and painfully. In a career uncovering the health hazards of asbestos, reporter Matt Peacock might have thought he’d seen it all. Then he went to India. In a global investigation, we expose a shocking trade and follow the dusty trail from the sub-continent back to another nation readily exporting the stuff it considers too dangerous for locals. Canada.

With over 50 new political parties, the upcoming round of elections draw many candidates to Tahrir Square each week hoping to influence the voters.

Egypt - Revolution Hijacked

Just nine months ago, Egyptians were celebrating their revolution and savouring their sweet victory. Hundreds of thousands of protesters camping in Cairo’s Tahrir Square stared down the 30-year dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak. Foreign Correspondent was there for the moment of triumph as he was forced from power. But was it really a victory or has the revolution been hijacked? We return to Tahrir Square, and the charismatic woman at the centre of our story, Salma el Tarzi, to find out what happened next.

Crowds cheered in the streets as news spread that Gaddafi had been killed.

Libya - The Homecoming

With their country finally liberated from the Gaddafi regime, thousands of Libyans who fled decades ago in fear of their lives are at last free to come home. We accompany the prominent opposition figure Mansour El Kikhia on his emotional journey from the United States, where he campaigned against Gaddafi for 33 years, to his home city of Benghazi, where the revolution that eventually overthrew the regime began, and on to Tripoli, where a transitional government is taking its first tentative steps in remaking the country.

Describing themselves as fundamentalist Mormons, many polygamous families have been disowned by their church.

USA - The Mormon Moment

Who would have thought that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would ever become this hip? There’s a multi award-winning Broadway blockbuster based on Mormon missionaries, two TV series featuring polygamous families, a slick new advertising campaign aiming to demystify the religion and two Presidential candidates who also happen to be of the faith. It all adds up to what’s being called “a Mormon moment”. But popular culture success may not be enough to overcome the deep suspicions many Americans still harbour towards what some regard as a heretical, secretive cult. Is America really ready to vote for a Mormon President?

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Producer's Notes

31/01/2012

Out of the Vault

Re-visit some of our ever-popular Foreign Correspondent postcards. This week in "Bangladesh Otters" Dominique Schwartz discovers fishing techniques on the Ganges can be a bit hit and miss.

17/02/2010

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