This week, we take you to Azerbaijan, Chile, Philippines, Poland and China.  

First, we head to Poland where menstruation got political, after the country's female prime minster supported a bill proposing a complete ban on abortion. Soon, a Facebook event called “A Heavy Period for the Government” went up encouraging women to post detailed descriptions of their periods on the prime minister's official Facebook page. Our contributor Anna Gotowska brought us the story. 

Then we head to Chile, where our contributor Shirley Campbell told us how Afro-Chileans in the country are fighting for recognition on the census. 

On to Nagorno Karabakh, which is smoldering after clashes erupted between Azeri and Armenian forces on April 2. This story was reported by our contributor Winston Oberton.

Our Southeast Asia editor Mong Palatino introduced us to Gregorio Y. Zara, an engineer from the Philippines. Zara was the inventor of a two-way television telephone, also known as a videophone.

We end the episode with an interview with Oiwan Lam, our northeast Asia editor, about the Panama Papers. Last week's leaks exposed how the world’s elite take advantage of tax havens -- sometimes illegally. The story has been making headlines around the world -- except in China -- where web censors have been working overtime to make sure Chinese know little to nothing about the leaks.

In this episode, we featured Creative Commons licensed music from the Free Music Archive, including Please Listen Carefully by Jahzaar (http://bit.ly/2n97fFC), Halbi Gijh by Thiaz Itch (http://bit.ly/2nYfBEr, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), Mario Bava Sleeps In a Little Later Than He Expected To by Chris Zabriskie (http://bit.ly/2o2gcW4, CC BY 4.0), Can I Talk To You by Podington Bear (http://bit.ly/2nsNGLT, CC BY-NC 3.0), and At the Lab We Work and Play by Good Old Neon (http://bit.ly/2nsydeK, CC BY-NC 4.0). 

Listeners also heard Cumbia Bichera by El Remolón (http://bit.ly/2nEQhCC), used with music label Pueblo Nuevo's permission (https://pueblonuevo.cl/).

The Week That Was podcast is hosted by Global Voices News Editor Lauren Finch and Managing Editor Sahar Habib Ghazi.  Expect to hear our voices again in two weeks.

Photo used in SoundCloud thumbnail: Image of Chinese leaders mixed with an image of the Panama papers. Original images from ICIJ.

Audio Recording on Sunday afternoon

Alfaris

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