KaBULL

Jim Al-Khalili: I know that of all the things wrong in the world, such trivialities shouldn't bug me, but who's told all TV journalists to start mispronouncing Kābul (long a) as KaBULL? Gah!

John Simpson: What about Northern Island (a favourite of weather forecasters)? Or RE-search? Just about everyone pronounces the ‘j’ in ‘Beijing’ like the ‘s’ in ‘pleasure’. It ought to be like the ‘j’ in ‘just’. Good luck persuading anyone of that, though.

Jim's not wrong, and if you tune into Today or watch BBC reporters you'll hear many manglings of words like 'Taliban', and even 'Pakistan'.