An Executive Order from the White House

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After an aborted missile strike, Washington insiders are scratching their heads over the President's modus operandi on Iran. Barbara Plett Usher looks at the new normal of the Trump administration. Vladimir Putin has cancelled Russian flights to Georgia after anti-Russian protests in Tbilisi, a move which will heavily impact the country's tourism industry. Rayhan Demytrie assesses the impact of President Putin's warnings on Russians holidaying there. The Armenian community was once a thriving hub in India's Chennai, running trading companies, shipping lines, coal mines and real estate developments, but their numbers have dwindled since then. Andrew Whitehead attends a service in the eighteenth-century Armenian church in the city attended by those that remain. Rocket attacks on foreign oil companies' compounds in southern Iraq may have grabbed headlines, but the citizen's of Basra are more concerned about power cuts, rubbish strewn streets and job shortages. Years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Lizzie Porter finds not much has improved for the local population in the region. The Netherlands has long touted its green credentials, but, thanks to its coal-fired power stations, it is in fact one of Europe's biggest carbon emitters. The capital, Amsterdam, is positioning itself as a new hub for green businesses, and David Baker went to find out.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:05.0	Today, tourists often like to think they're above politics, that nothing political should interfere with their halls.
0:12.0	But Russian holidaymakers are about to bump into such problems in Georgia.
0:17.0	In India we have echoes of travelers who came to settle from Armenia, and in southern Iraq a glimpse of life in the once thriving
0:26.2	port of Basra, hot and now somewhat flyblown.
0:31.2	Nobody's quite sure what happens in the White House these days when there's a crisis,
0:36.0	with tensions at an all-time high between the US and Iran, and a US drone shot down and
0:41.6	retaliation only avoided at the last minute. Many in the
0:45.0	American Congress are wondering what exactly is President Trump's strategy.
0:49.2	Barbara Plet Usher has been trying to find out.
0:52.3	Is the President of the United States Barbara Pletch Usher has been trying to find out.
0:53.4	Is the President of the United States bouncing off the walls
0:56.4	in different directions from one moment to the next
0:59.0	when it comes to Iran?
1:01.1	This is how one Democratic senator described his standard operating procedure to me.
1:05.2	It's a threat to our national security, she said. To be fair, Mr. Trump did consult
1:11.1	congressional leaders about whether to take retaliatory strikes after Iran
1:14.9	shot down that unmanned U.S. drone last week.
1:18.1	He got a lot of input from both sides of the aisle, one Republican senator who was present
1:22.4	told me. The president also heard from the
1:23.0	I'll one Republican senator who was present told me. The president also heard from his generals and his national security advisors in a weighty day of deliberations.
1:29.0	And according to the New York Times,
	...

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