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Ten days ago, I made a journey I thought I might never make - to Harare, Zimbabwe.

Eight years ago, we had a disagreement with the then Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo; ever since, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has operated undercover in Zimbabwe.

But five months after , this week, for the first time since July 2001, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News is back in Zimbabwe - openly and legally.

Reporting undercover takes great courage and commitment. It's produced some and many .

However, it is no substitute for being able to operate transparently. Inevitably, part of the story becomes how our teams are trying to avoid being found and arrested, rather than focusing on the people of Zimbabwe.

Operating illegally and clandestinely has to be a last resort. So I'm pleased that we've been assured by the Zimbabwe government that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is not banned, and that we can resume our operations in Zimbabwe.

This week Andrew Harding became the first ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ correspondent to enter the country on an authorised assignment since 2001.

He's there to report on Zimbabwe's national "healing process".

There's clearly a lot of "healing "to do - not least between the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and the Zimbabwe government, as well as between the different factions in Zimbabwe itself.

In time, I hope we may be able to open a bureau in Harare, and we can report from Zimbabwe as we do from most other places around the world.

For now, we're pleased at being able to operate openly in Zimbabwe once again - our presence there this week, is a welcome, constructive, and important first step.

Jon Williams is the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World News Editor.

Maziar Bahari, the Iranian film-maker who worked with Jane Corbin on the Panorama film Obama and the Ayatollah that ran before last month's fateful elections, was arrested in Tehran on 21 June. His laptop and some video tapes were also taken by men who didn't identify themselves.

Reliable information is hard to come by but to the best of our knowledge he is in Evin prison and a "confession" attributed to him has been released in which he was described as a "collaborator of British and American media" who had compiled "hostile and false" reports.

Maziar, who has dual Canadian nationality, is an independent film-maker who also works for a wide range of broadcasters and publications. He wasn't working for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in the period after the elections when the country was gripped by demonstrations and widespread allegations that the election had been rigged in favour of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad .

Maziar's contributions to Panorama would themselves have caused little complaint in Tehran. He worked on a 2008 film critical of the actions of the British Army in southern Iraq and as Jane Corbin points out anyone wanting a cliched and one-sided view of Iran would be wasting their time approaching Maziar.

"When I worked with Maziar in Tehran, I was able to appreciate how an experienced Iranian film-maker and journalist sees situations in his own country which the Western media and governments do not always appreciate or understand. We went to Shiraz to film where 14 people had been killed last year in a bomb attack by an anti-government group.
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I was able to understand, through Maziar's explanations and translations of the views of people there, that while the West regards Iran as a perpetrator of terror, Iranians often see themselves as the victims of terror.
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The deputy prosecutor of Tehran showed us documents, arrest warrants from Interpol, detailing how some of those associated with the group behind the crime were believed to be living freely in the UK and US. Maziar felt this was a very important story and I am glad we covered it.
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Maziar was always very keen to explain to me the Iranian government's view of the political, social and economic situation inside the country.
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We spent equal time covering the campaigns of President Ahmadinejad and Mir Hosein Mousavi. As a journalist, Maziar was only concerned with covering the issues and views of other people, not to let any personal preference become part of the story we were covering. He was always respectful and appreciative at all times of the achievements of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the contributions made by all sectors of Iranian society."

Maziar is a film-maker in his own right, with at least 10 films to his credit, and a playwright. His movie, , was the first Iranian documentary to be aired on HBO in the US. He is active in the Iranian Documentary Film-makers Association, and has worked closely with young Iranians who aspire to be film-makers. Two years ago the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam organised a retrospective of his work.

He is also one of the few film-makers to work in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003. His films have covered subjects as varied as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and his work on the difficulties faced by journalists in Iraq has been especially well regarded.

The Harvard Film Archives had this to say about his work:

"In a country known for neorealist fiction films that focus on small events in the lives of individuals, the work of Iranian director Maziar Bahari is somewhat anomalous. Employing a traditional documentary style to explore more far-reaching cultural events, Bahari's films provide a glimpse inside contemporary Iranian culture as they reveal the human element behind the headlines and capture cultural truths through the lens of individual experience.
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Representing a new generation of young Iranian film-makers, Bahari's trenchant looks at social issues in his country have brought both controversy and international acclaim."

Sandy Smith is editor of .

Roadside bombs - improvised explosive devices - have caused the deaths of many British soldiers in Afghanistan. Senior British military figures - including the Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, and the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Richard Dannatt - , for their forces to be better equipped to face this threat.

One question that's arisen is why are they doing this in public? The chief of the defence staff has a direct line to the prime minister and presumably has been making the same calls in private, but failed to get approval for what he wants.

Students of history will know this tension is nothing new. During World War II, the country's most senior soldier, Field Marshall Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, had a stormy relationship with his Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

At one point, Churchill told his chief military assistant, General Ismay, that Alan Brooke hated him. When this was reported to Alan Brooke he said:

"I don't hate him. I love him. But the first time I tell him that I agree with him when I don't will be the time to get rid of me, for then I can be no more use to him."

In other words, he saw it as his job to argue with the prime minister when he thought he was wrong - and apparently he often did as he thought Churchill tried to interfere unhelpfully in military decision-making.

But little was known of this at the time, what we do know is mainly from memoirs published after the war in question was over. Whereas in today's more transparent times, military leaders talk to the media more often and are prepared to use the media to lobby for what they want.

Some argue that in a democracy where elected civilian politicians are meant to be paramount, the military should not publically question their civilian masters. Others argue that senior officers also have a responsibility to the people under their command and sometimes that responsibility outweighs their duty to the unwritten constitutional convention that they don't contradict ministers in public.

We've had this discussion on The World Tonight with , head of the international security programme at Chatham House and a former officer in the Royal Tank Regiment, and the former defence minister .

But with both politicians and senior military officers using the media to put their case, it's clear the media has an equal responsibility to put both their arguments under the same rigorous scrutiny, even though the tone of this needs to be sensitive to the families and comrades of soldiers who have been killed or injured on the battlefield.

Alistair Burnett is the editor of The World Tonight.

The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ College of Journalism has this week made available a document called the Future of Journalism.

It's a collection of papers discussing the changes to news in a digital age from a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ media conference that took place late last year.

In The End of Fortress Journalism, I've written about how journalists are having to reassess how they work. Some people (including , , and ) have been kind enough to tweet and blog about it.

I'd be interested to hear your views on what I've written. There's an excerpt below, and you can download the collection (The Future of Journalism [359Kb PDF]).

Most journalists have grown up with a fortress mindset. They have lived and worked in proud institutions with thick walls. Their daily knightly task has been simple: to battle journalists from other fortresses. But the fortresses are crumbling and courtly jousts with fellow journalists are no longer impressing the crowds. The end of fortress journalism is deeply unsettling for us and requires a profound change in the mindset and culture of journalism.
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Fortress journalism has been wonderful. Powerful, long-established institutions provided the perfect base for strong journalism. The major news organisations could nurture skills, underwrite risk and afford expensive journalism. The competition with other news organisations inspired great journalism and if the journalist got into trouble - legally, physically or with the authorities - the news organisation would protect and support. It has been familiar and comfortable for the journalist.
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But that world is rapidly being eroded. The themes are familiar. Economic pressures - whether in the public or private sectors - are making the costs of the fortresses unsustainable. Each week brings news of redundancies and closures. The legacy costs of buildings, printing presses, studios and all the other structural supports of the fortress are proving too costly for the revenues that can now be generated.

If this all sounds a bit grim I can make no apology, but I do think - and mention in the paper - that there are some reasons for optimism. Do let me know what you think.

Peter Horrocks is the director of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service.

We're told his work experience document is the talk of Wall Street, Tokyo and the City.

Matthew Robson's spell at Morgan Stanley led to him penning a report "How Teenagers Consume Media" which makes some and want that desire to burn brightly for future generations.

In short - he's talked to 300 youngsters and come to the following conclusions: teenagers don't listen to radio, don't go to the cinema after 15, Twitter is for old folks, newspapers are toast and they don't pay for music.

Well, up to a point Matthew.

It's clearly interesting to hear from people actually in this age bracket but is this really borne out by the facts?

Before we think this undoubtedly thought provoking and intelligent work is on the scale of a Charlie Eppes breakthrough moment (OK, without the Maths) ... it's time for a reality check.

We at Newsbeat on Radio 1 and Revealed on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Switch - have done a great deal of hard headed research on all this. Some of it is well founded - some of it good opinionated stuff - but all of it is worth a second glance before it passes off as "The Truth About Teenagers".

Let's take Radio. It's true than the non-visual aspects of radio is less appealing for younger teenagers than 20-somethings. That's why Radio 1 is increasingly visualised - at the moment we are running Zane Lowe and Chris Moyles "in vision" live streamed.

Radio listening among youngest teenagers is declining - but still holding up - and not every teenager is like every other teenager. For example if you want to check out new music and don't want to rely entirely on your mate's dodgy taste - Zane's show is a must.

But after you've established that you like Speech Debelle or stumbled across Wax Fang what next?

In the old days it was off down to the generic music store and parting with £11.99 for the CD. No more. Pirated tracks, Limewire and Pirate Bay have all moved into the history of file sharing - now it's good old YouTube that's the big player in the new music second listen and research stage. .

I'd agree with Matthew about Twitter: our evidence suggests teenagers Tweet less than any other group though as with the Facebook v Bebo battle of two or three years ago that may change. We're watching keenly.

He usually chats to male friends while battling terrorists on "Call of Duty" - social networking sites and mobile chats are for girls - and of course, cost is key for the cash strapped teenager.

On mobiles - some certainly have cutting edge technology but there are still plenty of basic hand-me-downs - cause of much embarrassment with friends. We are in a recession after all and not every parent has the deep pocket to fork out on the MP3 and top end web browsing experience.

So - last word to the teenagers themselves who checked out Matthew's work experience for me. One said he thought that teenagers not going to the cinema was a load of rubbish ...and added: "he doesn't sound like an ordinary teenager".

Rod McKenzie is editor of and 1Xtra News.

With low pressure remaining the dominant force of our weather this week and the heat-wave of late June now seeming a distant memory, the question many people are asking is where has the summer gone?

The latest Monthly Outlook from ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather shows increasing confidence that by the end of July and into early August we will see a return to warmer and more settled summer weather.

It is expected that the Azores high will build northwards and become more dominant. This will result in above-average levels of sunshine for the time of year and a rise in temperatures.

There is still a possibility of some further rainfall at times but it should be much drier than of late.

So why have we moved into a spell of unsettled weather with heavy showers, many of which have been thundery and accompanied by gusty, squally winds? The answer is the "jet stream".

The jet stream plays a fundamental role in our weather and its position can cause significant variations in our weather.

Over the last few days the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather team have been using the jet stream graphic to explain how this is affecting our current weather pattern.

³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ broadcast meteorologist John Hammond says:

"The jet stream graphic introduces a broader meteorological context to the 'poor' weather we are experiencing.
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The viewer is given a clear, shorthand explanation of why our summer has 'deserted us'. In essence because the jet is unusually far south its attendant wet and windy low pressure systems are being dragged across the UK.
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Normally they should be much further north at this time of year, allowing high pressure to settle the weather down.
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Until the jet migrates northwards again, high pressure and warm sunshine will be rare and fleeting."

You can find out more about how jet streams were first identified and what they are here on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather site.

During the last week the jet stream has taken a more southerly track across the Atlantic than is normal for this time of year. As a result, we are seeing a conveyor belt of low pressure systems making their way across the UK. Each of these has brought an intensification of showery activity and windy conditions with sunny spells in between. In the short term this looks likely to continue.

Like many of the additional graphics we use to help tell the weather story, such as the Atlantic pressure chart, the jet stream will not be used every day. However, when it helps tell the weather story and explains why we are experiencing one weather type or another then you are likely to see it used on our television broadcasts.

There has been some . I would urge viewers and critics before rushing to judgement.

Politics Pen is not a finely politically calibrated panel like Question Time or Any Questions. It does not need to be because we are trying to do something different.

However, Sir Digby Jones never joined the Labour party and was part of the "government of all talents". .

Left wing Labour luvvie? Really? Greg Dyke was a Labour donor, then a Lib Dem donor and is now working for the Tories chairing their review on creative technology.

Deborah Mattinson is employed by the Labour party - but her contributions to the Pen are not from a party political point of view - she is a pollster telling us what the likely public reaction would be to the ideas proposed.

Matthew Taylor is a former Labour strategist, but like all the panel, he understands the idea of the Pen is to make engaging TV and at the same time illuminate the issues and pressures that decision makers have to consider in choosing policy. It is not about expressing political views.

I note that those who accuse us of bias do not point to anything that's actually been said or happened in the Pen. Indeed the majority of those who have pitched have argued for spending cuts, hardly a left wing agenda.

We will be running the Politics Pen again later this year. If you have views on what you would like to cut . We may ask you to pitch it in the Pen.

Peter Rippon is the editor of .

Hello. Here's an update on the recent changes in access to the UK and international front pages of the website which have been the subject of several previous posts (10 June, 15 June and 19 June) and lots of comments and queries.

There are two main things to say:

First, the project team has gone through your feedback over the past week and given replies to specific queries, which are further down this post. They have also compiled a Help page of FAQs which will cover many of the questions you've asked and pull all the answers together in one place.

Second, while we understand the annoyance and frustration many of you feel about the removal of the option to switch between UK and international versions of the site, we won't be restoring it at this point in the site's development. Why? Please read on:

We're working on other ways to open up the range of choices about what you can read and watch, wherever you are on the site, as part of an overall review of the site's design, including both index and story pages.

But, for now, after considering all the options and all your feedback, the separation of editions based on IP addresses really does still look to us like the most viable approach to a whole set of technical, design and editorial challenges which we face as we develop the website and improve it for both UK and international audiences.

Here are the main reasons again:

• we have an unusual requirement when it comes to developing the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ website: it carries advertising internationally but not in the UK, and we have to build and design for both these situations simultaneously

• the site carries advertising internationally so that UK licence fee payers don't cover international costs

• some content on the site is available in the UK but not internationally, notably certain rights-restricted video

• up to now, we have had: a UK edition without ads, a UK edition with ads, an international edition with ads and an international edition without ads, all in addition to some content which is visible in the UK but not internationally

• managing all those combinations within our existing design framework had become impractical as well as expensive and, critically, had started to affect our ability to find the best ways of improving a whole range of other things in the months ahead

Your frank comments over the last few weeks have given us a lot to think about. We are making some immediate changes to the international-facing site, such as the addition of specific UK content like the on the international business pages and a broader selection of UK and international topics to the .

We're also investigating whether we can introduce the postcode local personalisation box onto the UK index of the international edition.

But although the UK and world headlines are all there on both versions of the site, we now know how much many of you miss the ability to choose which front page to look at. That's something we are taking on board as we look at how we continue to develop the site.

Now here are some more of your specific queries answered, and the project team which have answered them is busy working on a full FAQs page incorporating these and all the others, which will be available soon.

In the meantime, if you have specific questions which we haven't answered yet, please send them to this Help inbox, which the team will monitor, so that they can reply and add any new replies to the rest, and make them easy to find in one place: SiteVersionsFeedback@bbc.co.uk

Local UK content

User andyrocky in Denver, Colorado, wrote that the UK News page provided him with a valuable link to his old home, and wanted to see the weather and local news in Birmingham, as well as Aston Villa headlines.

We are still investigating whether the personalisation box, which is on the UK front page, can be added to the international version of the site. In the meantime, comprehensive local news for regions around the country is available in and subsections of , , and .

News of Aston Villa and other English and Scottish clubs is available in the .

The allow you to search for a town in the UK by name or postcode and to set the location as a default forecast.

UK-based users seeing the international version

We have resolved many of the problems experienced by users in the UK using the AOL browser who were being served the wrong edition. AOL has provided the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ with a range of proxies used by its subscribers and we now recognise those users as being UK-based.

Some UK users, however, are occasionally routed via proxies outside this range. This is outside our control and appears to occur only within the AOL browser - not on other browsers. This should not mean that users outside the UK will see the UK version, which was a concern raised in the 19 June post. However, the routing policy used by AOL is within its control alone.

Some ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News category pages are not appearing to AOL users even though they can see the UK edition. We are working with AOL to determine whether this is a caching issue within the AOL browser.

UK-based users seeing the international version at work

Many e-mailers and blog commenters said that they worked for companies in the UK but were seeing the international version of the site in their offices. This is because companies route their internet traffic through servers outside the UK.

It is not possible for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ to distinguish which users within a company are based within the UK and which are outside, and although those affected will be able to access the same stories as before, employees of companies who use international servers will continue to see the international version of our news pages. Users on international proxies, which make up less than 1% of overall usage, should not be served advertising, and anyone seeing advertising in the UK should contact us using this form.

Users in the UK who are used to seeing the international version

Some users pointed out that there are many people in the UK who preferred to view the International version of the site.

The offers a global view of international events and breaking news, as well as subsections containing news from various world regions. Users in the UK will still be able to access those, and we will continue to reflect international news as part of our overall front page coverage on the UK version of the site.

Isle of Man

Ckinlay wrote from the Isle Of Man that IP detection forced him to see the UK version of the site. Residents of the Isle of Man, as payers of the licence fee, are served the same content seen by the residents on the mainland.

Blackberry users

We are working on a solution for some Blackberry users in the UK who have been seeing the international site because of the way their devices connect to the internet.

Pre-roll ads on video

User jacksonkelsie commented on the video summary which is available to the international audience, saying that an advertising lead of between 15 and 30 seconds defeated the point of a quick and convenient one-minute summary.

Pre-roll advertisements are shown on our on-demand video to fund the cost of distributing it to our international audience, but we are investigating the best way to improve the user experience around our video internationally and hope to make the advertisements less intrusive by doing things like limiting the number of times ads are shown and working with advertisers to supply shorter content.

Why we are using GeoIP

In order to ensure that people in the UK do not see advertising, we have to use . Without it, we don't know where ads should be visible and where they shouldn't. The same applies to video and other rights-restricted content.

Generally, GeoIP is a reliable way of determining a user's country, but there are occasions where it doesn't work properly and these we have to address, case by case, with our GeoIP provider. Our interpretation of GeoIP errs on the side of caution to avoid showing ads to UK audiences.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the .