4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
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The wedding banquet put on hold by protests and emergency legislation in Hong Kong. Helier Cheung describes how she had to tell 300 guests the party was off.
It's 250 years since Captain Cook first set foot in New Zealand and the first time the Maori encountered Europeans. That anniversary is being marked this month and this week a replica of Cook's ship, the Endeavour, docked in the small city of Gisborne. But the anniversary has not been universally welcomed, as Colin Peacock reports.
Uganda has had the same man in charge, Yoweri Museveni, since 1986. Challengers for the office of president have come and gone and Mr Museveni has twice changed the rules - on the number of presidential terms and on the maximum presidential age - to ensure his longevity. But now a new challenger has appeared, in the form of a former pop star. Sally Hayden has been on the road with Bobi Wine.
Bear Island - some 250 miles off the northern coast of Norway - is home to a few hardy souls who staff the weather station there. Legend says it got its name from a polar bear spotted swimming nearby in the Barents Sea. But David Baillie says these majestic creatures are few and far between now.
More than 14,000 people in Britain have reached the grand age of 100. One of the perks of this achievement is the traditional message of congratulation from the Queen. In France there are even more centenarians but no similar tradition, no message from the president. Well, not until Nicola Carslaw stepped in.
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0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
0:04.7 | Hello, today, a major anniversary in New Zealand to mark the arrival of Captain Cook, |
0:10.8 | but not everybody's celebrating. |
0:13.7 | The politics of headgear, why one particular item has been banned in Uganda. |
0:19.4 | We're on Bear Island in the Arctic, today, sadly, something of a misnomer. And we celebrate a milestone |
0:26.5 | birthday in France with a message from the President. But first the crisis in |
0:31.8 | Hong Kong, where anti-government protests first broke out in June. |
0:36.0 | They were prompted initially by the introduction of draft legislation that would have allowed extradition to mainland China. |
0:43.1 | Although that bill was later withdrawn, |
0:45.4 | the damage was done. |
0:46.9 | There are now weekly demonstrations, |
0:48.9 | driven largely by the anger, |
0:50.6 | at what the protesters see as a heavy-handed response by the police. |
0:55.0 | The government of Hong Kong upped the ante last week by introducing an emergency law |
1:00.0 | banning protesters from wearing face masks. The timing could not have been less convenient for Heliachung. |
1:07.0 | October the 4th was meant to be the day I celebrated my wedding. Unfortunately, the Hong Kong government had other ideas. |
1:16.4 | Hong Kong wedding banquets are big family focused events. |
1:20.1 | You normally invite a lot of people. |
1:22.6 | We had more than 300 guests and a 12-course dinner planned. |
1:26.8 | We'd set the date before the political crisis began, |
1:29.9 | but even as protests became a weekly occurrence, we planned to proceed. |
1:35.0 | Hong Kongers have a can-do attitude, and weddings are considered so important that people |
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