The USA, Iraq, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Mali

Pascale Harter presents stories from around the world.

In the USA Owen Bennett Jones has met the descendants of immigrant farmers now struggling to make a living. Surviving on subsidies, they are now looking to diversify their business in an unusual way.

Prashant Rao has met an Iraqi athlete who had a dream to go to London to compete in the Paralympics. Against all the odds, he made it, winning a medal. On his return home he was expecting a hero’s welcome, but things did not turn out that way.

Addis Ababa is turning into a cosmopolitan African capital, with cupcakes, pizza and dancing thrown in. But Mary Harper wonders what lies beneath the surface in Ethiopia.

In Bangladesh, David Hulme meets a family making the most of slum life. They prefer it to life in the countryside, but even benefits can have their downside.

More than six months after a coup and Islamist take-over of the north in Mali, there seems no realistic prospect of a resolution to the crisis. Celeste Hicks recently went to Bamako to find out how the country’s famous musicians are dealing with the crisis..

While NASA is busy exploring the surface of Mars with its Curiosity Rover, engineers let correspondent Richard Hollingham drive one in the lab yard in California.