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From Our Own Correspondent

A change of pace in the White House

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News Commentary, News

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

President Biden’s administration has plenty to do – and has gone about doing it at a less hectic pace than its predecessor. The Democrats say their plans are all about ‘rebuilding America’ with proposals for huge infrastructure projects as well as social care reform. Senior Republicans have called it “the most socialist agenda” Congress has ever voted on. Anthony Zurcher has been feeling a different mood in DC.

The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh last year cost Armenia dear, in territory and lives. A truce deal, backed by Russia, was meant to get all prisoners of war back home. But Armenia says around 200 of its citizens are still in captivity. Rayhan Demytrie reports. Nick Thorpe, the BBC’s correspondent in Budapest, is no stranger to the River Danube. He’s travelled its length twice, has written a book and made a series of documentary films on it. But this week, he met his match - a hardy couple of adventurers who've been paddling upstream for weeks, only leaving the water to sleep.

The buzz over the Eurovision Song Contest is a little quieter this year in Rotterdam – though we can still expect blaring power ballads. Singing indoors is a high-risk activity these days. Covid restrictions don't make the easiest conditions for a festival of unity. But Steve Rosenberg’s enthusiasm is undampened. The work of Claude Monet is deeply rooted in nature. For him, plants and landscapes weren’t simply pretty things to be observed, but the core of his inspiration. From 1883, at his home in Giverny in Normandy, he cultivated specific views to contemplate. His gardens are usually a major visitor attraction but languished unseen through much of 2020. As they got ready for a limited reopening, Christine Finn had an early look.

Producer: Polly Hope

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts

0:05.4

Today unfinished business, the ongoing friction between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the treatment

0:12.0

of alleged prisoners of war.

0:14.4

And most of us would prefer to sail down the Danube in something large and comfortable

0:19.4

we hear about kayaking up the river.

0:23.0

Its Eurovision song contest time again, will you share our correspondence lifelong passion

0:29.0

for television song fest, or maybe I heard you groan.

0:33.5

And it is spring, regardless of the weather, and we have a spring reverie from a French

0:38.2

garden which shaped and was shaped by Claude Monet's vision.

0:44.6

First to Washington, under different tempo in the US capital, President Biden's administration

0:50.3

has plenty to do, but to be done in a style very different from the last four years.

0:56.1

It's all about rebuilding America, say the Democrats, quite literally in some cases

1:01.2

with plans for huge infrastructure projects, transport systems and dams.

1:07.0

There's talk of mending the social fabric with measures to reform social care for elderly

1:12.3

Americans, but not everyone's convinced, a leading Republican described it as the most

1:18.2

socialist agenda Congress has ever seen.

1:22.0

Another accused Mr. Biden of a radical leftward shift.

1:26.0

To some observers, the new style is sedate, but ambitious, and in Ezerka has been testing

1:32.7

the mood.

1:34.4

On Friday I did something I hadn't done in more than a year.

1:38.2

I walked into the White House press room without a mask on.

1:42.3

The day before the US Centers for Disease Control had issued new guidance, allowing the

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