Hello, this is a download of From Our Own Correspondent.

We make one edition of the programme for the BBC World Service,

but this is the one broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

Here to introduce it, Kate Adi.

Hello, and in today's programme as darker day as I can remember, the Governor of Arizona's

comment after 19 men died battling a forest fire.

It was once the leafy art deco capital of the Belgian Congo. Today

Kinshasa is the fastest growing city in Africa, law and orders fast collapsing there too. We hear how President Assad's neighbour and and high in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia, our man joins a choir and takes part in a musical

tradition that's thousands of years old.

More than 3,000 people gathered at a high school football stadium in the town of Prescott, Arizona,

on Tuesday to mourn the loss of 19 firefighters. The authorities promise a preliminary report into how it could have happened within days,

but already it's clear that the men's escape routes were cut off when violent gusts of wind fanned the blaze.

David Schuchman's been finding out how these men and their colleagues have been trying to contain a whole series of wildfires during a heat wave in America's

southwest which has sent temperatures soaring.

The road from Prescott to Yarnell would in normal times be a joy to drive along.

It winds through wooded hills, each turn offering a new vista,

the slopes rich in pine and shrub.

And the blue skies stretch away on a scale

that to European eyes is spectacular.

I realize I risk sounding like a spokesman for the Arizona

Tourist Board, but this is exhilarating country and as we made our way through it

it was easy to forget for a moment why we'd come.

...