this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. this week, a look back at some of our most fascinating historical journeys. from the desert canyons ofjordan... that would be impressive if we built that today, but that was built thousands of years ago. look at it! ..to the noisy streets of paris. driving a 2cv car is not easy. driving in paris is not easy. well, now you're making me nervous! and from the majesty of lady liberty...

it stood for freedom - and for liberty to people all over the world. ..to the drama of the kenyan bush. hi! welcome to paris, where i'm soaking up the sun on the banks of the river seine. it's lovely. both the left bank and right banks of the river seine are unesco world heritage sites. the left is famous for inspiring generations of artists and intellectuals, while the right is home to the world's most—visited museum, the louvre. and with all this heritage

to soak up here, it's the perfect setting to take an amble down memory lane and revisit some of our favourite historicaljourneys. and let's begin right here in paris. in 2018, one of the classics of the french car industry turned 70. and christa managed to get behind the wheel to give it a spin. i'm definitely going to need a lesson, vincent. vincent takes guided tours around paris. now, where is the gear stick? the gear stick is there. 0k! so, you just turn that, if you want to pass the first one. and pull — this is first, 0k? then back to neutral... there? ..and push, second. second. this is very unusual. yeah, i know, it's unique. this might take... please excuse me if we bunny—hop up the street. they laugh driving a 2cv feels actually very different to any kind of modern car.

you can feel the engine under yourfoot, you know, and the noise of the car. and it's very physical. and it's not a car that goes very fast, but it's not the goal, you know? it is a very, kind of, active experience. yeah. there's no sitting back and letting the car do its work. you have to be involved. yeah, exactly. and on the left — this is the louvre museum. is there something...? i mean, do you think this is part of french identity? yes, it is, of course, yes. with the baguette and the stripes. we'll have to stop for a baguette! yeah. you're very brave, because driving a 2cv car is not easy. driving in paris is not easy. driving for the first time in a 2cv car in paris is really, really

brave for you. well, now you're making me nervous! there are no airbags, the windows aren't electric and, as for ac — let's just say it's pretty rudimentary. but for some reason, the french really seem to love the 2cv. as long as that remains the case, the car they called the "tin snail" will keep ploughing its own furrow on slow lanes everywhere. christa there at the wheel of an absolute classic, right here in paris, back in 2018. right, it's time for us to cross over to a completely different part of the world now, as we transport you from the brisk northern coastlines of europe to the dust and the sand of southern jordan. petra is one of the world's most famous archaeological sites.

carved out of the desert 2,000 years ago, it was built by a local tribe called the nabataeans. well, in 2016, i went to see efforts to protect this ancient site from the elements, and from tourists like me. this split in the rocks is called the siq, and it was the only entrance, or way in and out of the city. and it would've been heavily guarded to stop anyone from sneaking in and trying to take over. it's just breathtaking. at the end of the siq is the most famous part of petra, the treasury. an elaborate temple carved from the sandstone. just take a look around, you can see how popular this place is. it's the most visited

in all ofjordan — but having all of these people here can bring problems. the delicate rocks are easily damaged by tourists touching the monuments or walking off the designated trails, especially in places where excavations are under way. but now, there's a project aimed at getting tourists themselves involved with the conservation of the monuments, to help protect one of the most threatened sites in the whole of petra. this is the temple of winged lions, a religious complex built in around 27 ad. i'm liking your office, glenn. i like what you've done with it. no, this is a beautiful place. this is... voice—over: glenn is in charge of the site, and tells me how the problems here started in the 1970s, when the temple was first excavated.

they uncovered this cool monument, but didn't do a wonderfuljob of doing the things necessary to preserve it for future generations. whenever you excavate a monument, you have to pull a lot of the earth out of the ground in order to reveal it. and so, this earlier project dumped a lot of that earth. and so, as you'll see, we're trying to re—excavate those earlier archaeological dumps. the dumps are huge mounds of compressed earth which will take years to sort through. at the moment, there's a team of local people tackling this mammoth task. we have specialists who come and actually work and train and work with the local community, and not have them just be regular day labourers that sort of help with manual labour, but actually training them in the tangible vocational skills to help them preserve the site in the coming years. and the idea is that the locals then train tourists to help out, too. we're going to have them

working on the soil dumps, looking for pottery and coins, and other things the original excavation missed, to have the experience of actually doing archaeology for a day. i've got some skills, man. have you got a digger here, orsomething? yeah, we're ready to go. ready? woo! this is an interesting route to get down here. so, tell me what you're doing. now we sift most of this sand... ahmed and iman both grew up in petra, and have become experts at sorting through the material here. so, you're basically sieving out all the dust and looking for the valuable pieces. yes. can i have a go? i was enjoying tasting the dust, but now... voice—over: iman shows me the sort of thing they're looking for. like, normalstones, we don't need them. we don't need to keep them. yeah, that doesn't look very valuable, that one. no. so, this is part of a jar. and it's nabataean. so, that'd be the original people who lived here, the nabataea ns? yes. so, that'd be very, very old?

yeah. wow. that's 2,000 years old. 2,000 years old? let's see if i can find any treasures. 0k, stand back. let the... let the master get to work. is that cool? yeah. let's look. that's stone. i'm terrible, i can't find anything! well, i might not be having much luck — but over the last few years, they've found all sorts here. painted pottery, coins, lamps and decorations from the temple. now, as more pieces are retrieved and catalogued, it's hoped we can learn more about the everyday lives of the people who built this incredible city more than 2,000 years ago. oh, wow, that brought back some lovely memories of pushing

around that ancient city — even though it was a little bit bumpy on my wheels — and imagining what that beautiful place must�*ve looked like all of those years ago. right. do not go anywhere, because we've got loads more still to come, including... ..the secrets of lady liberty, and the new museum sitting at her feet. now, for the piece de resistance. the original torch. wow! it stood up there from 1886 to 1984. and how punk helped bring down the berlin wall. so, make sure you don't go away. now, just behind me is the iconic notre dame. sadly, we can't take you inside because it's still undergoing repairs after that devastating fire back in 2019.

so, why don't we take you somewhere completely different, like kenya? we're off on safari, in memory of one of history's most famous lions. elsa was made a star in the movie born free, which hit the big screens in 1966. it was based on a book byjoy adamson about her and her husband george's attempt to rescue an orphaned lion cub and train it for life in the wild. so, back in 2015, we sent henry, our very own hollywood movie star, to meru national park to find out more. this park is virtually unchanged since george and joy were here. really lucky, because we've come across a lioness and her cub. they've just feasted, so this is the moment where they get really lazy.

they've nestled just below a lovely tree for some shade. this kind of... ..reminds you of what elsa would've been doing here in meru national park. george had this lovely call. never had to shout. just gently called him "boy, boy". "hey, boy! "boy! "come, boy!" voice-over: of course, - joy and george needed helpers - and one of those wasjonny baxendale, george's godson. he helped return the born free lions to the wild, but used to come back out to their favourite haunts for regular visits. you neverfelt in danger at all? never. no? they were relaxed. there was no tension, there was no issues. we knew very well that, you know, they would walk up to us and greet us in the most amazing way. the pair used to sit under this tamarind tree with warm beers. it doesn't take long for the memories to come flooding back. just being with him,

and being able to work with him and see how he absolutely handled his lions and how relaxed he was. and he had this amazing rapport with his environment. he was totally in harmony with his environment. and this is the born free country. this is where it all happened. this is where elsa was found, and this is where elsa died. memories of elsa the lion, from back in 2015. what a cool story that was. ok, it's time to go from the plains of africa to the razzmatazz of new york — and one old lady who's been watching over the city for well over a century. the statue of liberty has dominated new york harbor

since 1886 — a gift from the people of france. well, in 2019, a brand—new museum in her honour opened. so, lucy got the early ferry to liberty island to be among the first to check it out. there are three primary areas of the museum. people come in, they'll go into the immersive theatre, then they'll move on to the engagement gallery, which is where we're standing right now, and the engagement gallery is primarily the history of the statue of liberty, its beginning, and then how it became the symbol of america. and now, it's used in every sort of thing that you can think of.

in 1885, it was shipped in 350 individual pieces over to new york, where it was reassembled and unveiled to the american public the next year. and then, you finish with the inspiration gallery. now, for the piece de resistance — the original torch. the torch! the original torch. wow! stood up there from 1886 to 1984. talk to me about how difficult it was to get the torch in here. well, it — i didn't have to do it. laughs. but it was —

it was quite a task. yeah. people worked for about two weeks from 3pm in the afternoon till 3am at night and they had this carrier that they laid the face on its back and then, put the torch on it and it all worked quite well. and here it is. martin and his team have been in charge of conserving the torch and cleaning it up. well, today is the last day. it's sort of the clean—down from the top down and so, as they're finishing up the lighting fixtures inside, myjob is then the final clean—down of everything that falls down. it'sjust a simple cotton cloth, just trying to get the heavy things out. just getting rid of that dirt. yeah, like with any cleaning job, it's never done. i think it's really quite impressive just how much detail there is on something that really wasn't designed to be

seen close up. you know, just the detail is so intricate, it's... it's pretty amazing how it all comes together, huh? part to part, piece to piece and then, all of a sudden, you've got a torch. yeah! it's so iconic. and you think about its history and how it stood for freedom and for liberty to people all over the world. it really is a remarkable piece of work. and the museum is free to all visitors of liberty island. lucy on liberty island in 2019. now, to one of my personal historical highlights on a trip to germany in that same year.

it'd been exactly 30 years since the fall of the berlin wall — the structure that had divided notjust a city, but families, nations and superpowers. stretching over 80 miles, it was built to separate the communist east and the capitalist west. but i was there to find out how, amongst other things, an energetic underground punk scene helped to bring about its demise. chaos was the frontman for wutanfall, one of the scene's top bands.

east germany's secret police, the stasi, regularly targeted defiant anti—authoritarian punks. 0n multiple occasions, chaos was imprisoned and brutally beaten.

back then, the intense scrutiny of the stasi meant that gigs often had to be held in the unlikeliest of locations. this is the place? church organ plays. wow. this is pretty spectacular. yeah, it's a church. laughs. i can't imagine hundreds of punks coming to a church for a concert. yeah, but hundreds of beer. chuckles.

punk music plays. what was the vibe and energy like in here? when you think about those times — those difficult times during the gdr period where you were intimidated by the stasi and the problems that you had amongst the people in the streets — would you do it again?

punk music plays. don't you just love that? history told to us by people who were there, actually making things happen. right, coming up next time — the story of a magnificent mount. mont saint—michel, in northern france, is celebrating its millennium. i often compare the mont saint—michel as being the jewel and the bay the box, so, that's the jewel and the box — you've got it all. nice! i head there to take a peek behind the scenes and find out how things have changed there in all those years. until then, you can follow us on social media. we're in all the usual places, along with lots of other great travel content from around the bbc. see you soon. bye—bye.

hello. it's quite mild out there and that's how it's going to stay over the next few days. but with that comes a lot of cloud and occasional outbreaks of rain. and that's what we've got in the headline for thursday. so here's the satellite picture and you can see this thick cloud streaming in from a south—westerly direction. you can see the weather fronts here, a broad area of rain—bearing cloud and that mild current of air all the way from the azores, wrapping around the low pressure, and we've got those weather fronts pushing through. so the forecast through the early hours shows that heavier rain across more northern parts of the country. rain, dribs and drabs, elsewhere and very mild in the morning, about 10 in the south and also in northern ireland. still a little on the chilly

side in northern scotland, around two degrees, where, earlier on, we had some snow across the highlands. so the forecast for thursday shows that heavier rain making its journey further north. there will be some rain also around other western parts of the country, but also sunny spells developing in northern ireland, but also heavy showers, possibly some thunderstorms, too. one or two glimmers of brightness possible also in east anglia and the south—east. mild, up to 15 degrees in some spots, but still chilly in stornoway, 7 degrees, and about 5 degrees in the northern isles. now, that low pressure is still with us on friday. in fact, multiple areas of low pressure and weather fronts sweeping across the country. it won't be raining all the time. in fact, on friday, from the morning onwards, you can see that rain is quite showery out towards the west. also a spell of showery rain for the extreme south—east and also east anglia. there will be some sunny spells, so certainly not raining all the time. temperatures every bit as mild, if not milder, 15 or even 16 celsius. still that colder air sitting in the north and the north—west

of scotland, around 8 degrees or so. into the weekend, a very undulating pattern in ourjet stream. and when we see these big ridges in the jet stream, that means that milder air is still streaming in from the southern climes. and you can see that mild air engulfing many parts of western europe and even reaching central parts of europe as well. so the outlook into next week shows those temperatures into double figures, in fact, hovering around 1a, 15 degrees. but with that, a lot of cloud, outbreaks of rain, but sunny spells from time to time, too. bye— bye.

welcome to bbc news. i'm lisa—marie misztak. our top stories: the race is on to recover the wreckage of an american surveillance drone. credit suisse plans to borrow more than $50 billion to shore up its finances after shares hit rock bottom on wednesday. three people charged over an indonesian football stadium disaster await their fate. a political shake—up in the netherlands — the farmer—citizen movement could win provincial elections. and we meet the afghan orchestra trying to keep traditional music alive after the taliban takeover.