麻豆约拍

Pascale Harter introduces dispatches from China's border with Russia and North Korea, the Ukrainian city of Kherson, Panama's shanty towns and a music festival in Lithuania.

This week Pyongyang and Moscow ratified a new mutual defence treaty, after reports that North Korea had sent troops to back up Russia's military in the war on Ukraine. But North Korea's biggest global diplomatic and economic backer has always been China. So how does Beijing feel about the newly burgeoning relationship between its two internationally sanctioned allies? Laura Bicker travelled to the tri-border village of Fangchuan for a rare glimpse into North Korea.

Drone warfare has become routine in Ukraine - with both Ukrainian and Russian forces using them for reconnaissance and on the battlefield. But now there's growing evidence that Russian drones are also targeting Ukrainian civilians, especially in the city of Kherson. Yogita Limaye spoke to people in the city living with a new kind of threat from the air.

Panama is one of the world's wettest countries - with a healthy annual rainfall and a long rainy season where it pours down every afternoon. Yet hundreds of thousands of people there still don't have access to piped water at home - especially if they live in informal settlements. Jane Chambers explains why so many households still aren't connected.

And Simon Broughton explores Lithuania's pagan heritage at the Black-Horned Moon - a music and cultural festival on an island in the Baltic where revellers wear their runes on their T-shirts, drink their beer from goat horns, and pay tribute to the old gods at pre-Christian altars.

Producer: Polly Hope
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Production Co-ordinator: Katie Morrison
Image: Picture shows the flags of Russia (L), China (C) and North Korea (R) on a viewing tower on the border between the three countries in Hunchun, China's northeast Jilin province. Writing reads: 鈥淩ussia, China, North Korea border memorial鈥� Credit: GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images