Defining the Decade - Part one

A midget street thug on a kiddy bike. Incompetent thieves who resort to stealing air-conditioning units. A woman too drunk to notice a police car heading towards her with all lights flashing. These are just some of the criminals and junkies, the faithful and forlorn encountered by one police officer cruising the streets of one Midwestern US city. But this policeman has an eye for the weird, an overdeveloped sense of humour and a talent for narrative. Which is why Officer Jay Chiarito-Mazarrella created a cult following for his “Street Story” podcasts, vivid vignettes of his work for the Tulsa Police Department. In “24 Hours in Tulsa,” we hear the best of the Street Stories, giving us a fresh, funny and sometimes downright scary insight into policing from the horse's mouth.

Twenty years ago, on November 9th, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. The greatest symbol of the Cold War, which many never dreamt they would see disappear, was overwhelmed by people power. This momentous event precipitated largely peaceful revolutions across Eastern Europe as people shook off 40 years of communism. The BBC’s World Affairs Editor John Simpson, experienced it at first hand. He was in the thick of the action for the gun battles in Bucharest, Romania. Taking Romania as an example, John looks are the re-integration of Central and Eastern Europe into Europe as a whole and asks how well has the process has been managed.

The Canadian city of Vancouver is routinely named as one of the best communities in the world in which to live. But the city, which is to host the 2010 Winter Olympics in the coming weeks, is fast developing another reputation: one built on illicit drugs and guns. Bill Law reports for Assignment on the youngsters in the city who are exploiting legal loopholes to build a multi-billion dollar industry.

Back in the year 2000, the world's leaders did not seem to be troubled by the notion of global warming, so what has changed? Edward Stourton tries to make sense of a decade in which history has been put on fast forward.

What have been the defining moments of the decade? Edward Stourton explores Google's mighty impact on the internet and finds a world of complex moral and legal pitfalls beneath the promise.

Nick Baker is on a mission to connect people, stories and places via internet cafe. Via Kenya and France he finds a remarkable story in Benin of a young man for whom a single search changed his life.

It's estimated that up to one million people were killed during communism in Eastern Europe, but there's no clear figure for those imprisoned, persecuted or spied on. While few have been put on trial for those crimes, most countries have started to open their secret police archives and some have limited the participation of former communists and informers to public office. The whole issue of what to do about the past - forget, forgive, confront - is a live and contentious in Eastern Europe. All the countries have taken different approaches. So how successful are these different approaches? In this two part series our European affairs correspondent Oana Lungescu, one of many Romanians who looked for their own secret police files, investigates.

Until recently, little Latvia appeared to have a rosy future. It was the fastest growing economy in Europe. But now that boom looks like a mirage. No country in the EU has been worse hit by the global recession. Its economy has been in freefall, property prices have collapsed, unemployment has been rising rapidly. Six months ago, Assignment visited several Latvians from various walks of life to see how they were affected by the crisis – now the programme returns to find out how these same individuals are coping as the recession deepens.

Nick Baker is on a mission to connect people, stories and places via the internet. His journey takes him to New York, China and London.

Quentin Peel, International Affairs editor of the Financial Times, looks at the communist regimes and movements orphaned by the collapse of the governments of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. In Programme Two Quentin looks at the new self-proclaimed "radical" governments in Latin America, such as Venezuela and Bolivia, which draw inspiration from that key "orphan of 1989", Cuba.