has decided to remove president jacob zuma as head of state. long beset by allegations of corruption, he has faced mounting calls to end his second term. the party has the authority to order him to step down, though he might yet refuse. the north korean leader has described south korea as "very impressive" and declared he wants to build on the atmosphere of reconciliation, surrounding the winter olympics. kimjung—on has been briefed by a delegation of senior officials, including his sister, who've just returned to pyongyang, from the south. the international charity, oxfam, is under more pressure with the revelation that some of its staff in haiti and chad sexually exploited people they were sent to help. the british government has given them until the end of the week to explain how it will make sure such abuses never happen again. now on bbc news, the travel show. this week on the show...

on the run... in central mexico. this experience tonight is one of the craziest things i've done on this planet. wild and rugged scottish holidays. and painting a picture of denmark. skagen has special colours and has a special light. we are starting this week right in the middle of mexico, in the state of hidalgo, just two hours‘ drive north of mexico city. the landscape is exactly what you might expect. the sheer cliffs and prickly cactus are so abundant it's almost cartoonish. wow. this particular area is gorgeous. central mexico is incredibly beautiful and it's hard to imagine why anybody would want to leave. but they did. this is ixmiquilpan, now a bustling friendly place to pick up some lunch.

butjust a couple of decades ago people say it looked like a ghost town. they were leaving for the united states in sizeable numbers, as they were from many towns and villages across mexico. in the crook of this ravine, a group of recently returned illegal immigrants decided they wanted to solve the problem on their own, years before any talk of a border wall. they wanted to convince their children and grandchildren that they'll have a better life here in mexico and to warn them about the dangers of crossing. the notorious crowning glory of the park was the brutal night walk, which allows tourists to experience what it's like to illegally cross the us border, albeit a fake one. their hope? that it would be a deterrent. we're told to meet

inside the main gate. this is the real deal. and even though these guys are playing a part, they really mean business. the guy yelling at the top of his lungs is a coyote. that's what you call somebody who brings you across the border. he's taking his character extremely seriously. he is yelling out orders to our group. already my heart is beating so fast. they are trying to make this as realistic as possible. breaking in... listen to him. breaking into the usa. i think i'm going to have to start going. firstly, we are alljumping

on the back of a pickup truck. i have no idea where we're going. he's not giving us any tips. she is saying this is her second time doing the border crossing. she's not very scared, however this guy right here, his first time, i'm pretty scared. we are going to all cross, or attempt to cross, the border they've created for us tonight. i have to watch my step. hold on. this is intense. there's gunshots, sirens, this bridge is totally not stable

and there's people crawling on the ground. i don't even know what's going on, but the group is slowly... i went through! you 0k? yeah. unsure footing i can kind of deal with. screaming. but things get much scarier when you're forced to the ground by these very authentic looking armed bandits. gunshot. i'm actually afraid to make too much noise. i don't want him to come back. normally you would welcome the arrival of the police with open

arms, but our coyote tells us to run. run. s... .. ”hm: don't move! do you think people coming here and experiencing this, it works and makes them want to stay in mexico? the whole point of this park is to show people the hardships and the work that goes into a border crossing and tonight's been a perfect example of that so far. look at this. this is... i have a cactus stuck in the bottom of my shoe. look at that!

it went all the way through the side of my shoe. this is the moment, this is the moment... ..when we can hopefully cross the border. our coyote is stressing out. we're waiting for the next truck. as soon as it comes we're jumping straight in the back. they're coming! the sirens are off in the distance. the number of illegal migrants being arrested at the border is coming down significantly. us border patrol said it stopped 44% fewer last year than in 2016, but the journey still kills hundreds annually. here at eco parque they are hoping it will end up saving many of those lives. it has certainly given the guests here tonight pause for thought. that was seriously one of the most difficult things i have done in my life.

however, if you are planning to come to this area here's our guide to some of the things you can see and do in and around mexico city. top of our list would be the street food. you will see tacos, quesadillas and tortas on every corner. it's all incredibly cheap and delicious though, to be on the safe side, make sure whatever you're eating is made fresh in front of you. and if you're feeling really brave, head to sanjuan market and try a handful of crunchy scorpions or grasshoppers. the frida kahlo museum is in the pretty southern suburb of coyoacan. it's where the artist was born and lived alongside her husband, diego rivera. inside you'll find collections of work from both of them. some rooms have been left in the same state they were in when the house became a museum in the 1950s. our tip is to get there early to beat the long queues. this is an incredibly popular attraction.

the same advice goes for chapultepec castle. it gets crowded in the high season but is well worth a look. the beautiful 18th—century building started life as a retreat for aztec rulers and sits in the world's largest urban park. and while you're there, check out the voladores, a mesoamerican ceremony in which four or five men perform suspended from the top of a 30 metre pole. and xochimilco is the unesco listed canal district a short distance outside the city. rent a colourful trajinera boat and take in the gardens and wildlife. on saturday the place comes alive and becomes kind of a floating party district. it's quite a sight. first, though, high—speed rail should be arriving shortly in saudi arabia.

after some teething problems, the link between mecca and medina across the arabian desert should open in march. spanish—built trains will cover the 270 miles between the two holy cities in about two hours. helen is already looking forward to christmas — the place, not the day. christmas island, a beautiful coral atoll in the heart of the world's biggest ocean, is the only isle in the republic of kiribati who has an international air link. it's a stop on the way between honolulu and fiji. there are many ways to reach honolulu from the uk with a single change of planes at a mainland us airport, but you will need to make sure you are there at noon on a tuesday when the only flight of the week takes off for the 3—hour flight south to christmas island. next, kelly is seeking a different kind of island escape. the hebrides, the islands off

the west coast of scotland comprise raw, elemental landscapes with a dramatic seashore punctuated by pretty ports and superb beaches. agreed, the weather is not always clement and the mediterranean is rather warmer than the north atlantic, but when the sun shines, the western isles have few rivals for sheer beauty. while the outer hebrides have a compelling character, for a family, the one island that's likely to be just right is the inner hebridean island of mull. it's easy to reach, just an hour on the caledonian macbrayne ferry from the handsome seaside town of oban. in terms of timing, the later you can go in august,

the better, for a wider choice of accommodation and fewer crowds. bill fearnley—whittingstall is also stepping on board, taking a river cruise on the danube. he wants to know: a river cruise is a superb way to experience the cities and landscapes of central europe, and the danube is my favourite waterway. tipping on european river cruises is different from ocean cruising — there's no intense pressure and you could leave nothing at the end of the cruise, but the cruise lines offer recommendations and they tend to be quite similar. 12 euros per person per day for the ship staff, plus two or three euros per person per day for the cruise director. were i paying a handsome amount for a danube cruise, i'd probably tip the staff, but leave the cruise director to negotiate his or her own fees

direct with the company. whether you're contemplating a trip to the nation next door or the ends of the earth, i'm here to help. so email your questions to: and i'll do my very best to find you an answer. from me, simon calder, the global guru, bye for now and see you next time. finally, we're off to skagen, the most northerly town in denmark. it's possibly best known for hosting a colony of scandinavian artists called the skagen painters who worked here chiefly in the 19th century. and, more than a century later, their influence still lives on. one of my favourite paintings is this one, ps kroyer‘s midsummer painting of the bonfire at stjohn‘s night, and it's adding together a lot

of the things that these skagen painters and the colony was all about, really, because it shows us the artists and the local fishermen together in the same painting. actually, we still this day today are celebrating stjohn‘s night in the same way as we see on the painting. back in the 1870s and 1880s, the skagen painters started coming here. they were from denmark, norway, sweden, great britain, and at this time, travelling was part of the education of becoming an artist. they found a fishermen‘s village on the top of denmark where these two oceans meet each other. this touch that the artists made on this town, i think,

is very important to skagen today. so this is going to be a sketch for a bigger painting in my studio. that's the idea. it's a beautiful place because you can see all around, you have both seasides and you have the houses of skagen which are quite important, especially with the colours, the yellow, the red, the white. most of our paintings are from the period 1870-1920, ‘25, ‘30. but that's when the artist colony was really alive. they would come back

nearly every summer. the artists met at broendums hotel, mainly, and there's this social connection between the people, the locals and the artists, was very important. i usually say it all began here at broendums hotel. it's a very historical place, we want to keep that special atmosphere because it's what the people want to see when they come here. degn broendum, who was the owner of the hotel at the time, said to the artists that they don't have to pay anything for staying here, they could just give him the pictures. it was here that all the artists were having big dinners, playing cards, have a lot of discussions about paintings and so on. this is my drug,

you know, i have to paint. i need it every day to have my life, i cannot live without painting. it gives me the speed of being alive. we have a lot of paintings focusing on the fishermen, and that was like a core motif for most of the skagen painters, because that was what they met, these ha rd—working local fishermen, living and dying from the sea. more than 100 years back, this town was more or less a very small town, where the fishermen landed their catches on the beach, beaching the smaller boats.

i can't help feeling a lot of respect for the fishermen and the circumstances they had to work under. in 1907, the construction of the port was finished, which meant a whole new opportunity. since the past 13 years — or 14 years, actually — we have been the largest fishing port in denmark. when it's working out well within the port area and for the businesses in the port, it's working out very well for the town of skagen too. that's the way it's always been. but i like very much to paint big and heavy. being a painter in skagen today is not as it were, of course, but it's still the same energy and still the same colour,

attitude that i use, because skagen has special colours, and has a special light. you can actually come into the museums, look at these paintings, and you can go outside and you can find these different motifs that you see on the canvas. i think the fact that there was an artist colony here plays a very important role in putting skagen on the map. the people of skagen in denmark, bringing this week's show to an end. coming up next week — we'll be on board africa's freedom railway, a vital artery connecting zambia's copper belt region to the tanzanian coast for over a0 years. we placed seven lions, chasing a zebra, it was like a movie! but this was real!

finding what the future holds for this now creaking train line. and in the meantime, if you would like to join our adventures on the road, you can follow us on social media. but for now from myself and the rest of the travel show team in mexico, it's adios. hello. tuesday's weather is a wet, windy, and for some of us, rather wintry tale. the culprit — an area of low pressure swinging in from the atlantic that will bring some disruptive snow to the northern half of the uk.

some wet and windy conditions further south. so here it is — this weather front pushing in from the west. a low—pressure centre to the north. the low itself will keep the winds up right the way across the british isles. the worst of the snow will be through the morning in time for the rush hour, sadly, across scotland with 5—10 centimetres possible across the highlands. but a good few centimetres possible through the central belt, making for a dangerous rush hour. for northern ireland, perhaps the worst of the snow pulling away by 8am, but not i think before we've had some significant accumulations. snow for the pennines and the higher ground of wales too. but even to lower levels for a while, even possible across the midlands. then further south, we've got some heavy rain and some strong winds. so for the morning, a very messy picture. keep up to date with the travel on your bbc local radio station. this is the way the day then pans out. this whole weather front

will push its way eastwards, clearer skies will follow on from the west, but some wintry showers for scotland and northern ireland. so you can see scotland clears considerably as the day goes by. but that threat of something a little bit wintry across the midlands through the mid afternoon is mostly rain by the time that front gets into eastern england in the second part of the day. still a chilly story wherever you are, even with some sunshine. highs ofjust 4 or 5 degrees. this weather front away to the east through tuesday evening, overnight into wednesday, clear skies again after that falling snow and all the moisture lying around, a widespread frost developing. ice a big risk for first thing on wednesday. you can see, we're talking about quite a widespread frost for first thing wednesday, and quite a hard frost as well. towards the west, though, notice the blue easing somewhat by the end of the night. that's because we'll see a weather front approaching, trying to bring in some cloud, which will lift the temperatures, but of course, it's bumping into all that cold air, so again, snow a potential problem for scotland, i think, parts of northern england and wales. behind the weather front, some milder air coming in, so turning back to rain

across northern ireland and wales as the day goes on. temperatures in double figures for cardiff and plymouth through the afternoon. that weather system, again, well, that moves through pretty quickly off into the continent for the small hours of thursday. then we're still left with a low—pressure centre driving our weather for the remainder of the week. it will keep some showers pushing into scotland and northern ireland, and some of them could be wintry for a time. but generally, things look a little milder by the end of the week. a very warm welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to our viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is mike embley. our top stories: the governing anc tells south african president jacob zuma "you are being removed as head of state." north korea's leader speaks of a "warm climate of reconciliation" with the south after a delegation returns from the winter olympics. a special report on the people — including thousands of children — fleeing the violence in the democratic republic of congo. and dodging the dogs in india: fear on the streets where thousands die every yearfrom rabies bites.