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 Aide.

Hello, in this program, Hungarians achieve something magnificent as old foes bury their differences

and the swollen river Danube is kept within its banks. The cherries are harvested in the

Golan Heights while the bitter conflict in Syria rages on in the valley below.

Croatia prepares to join the European Union, but the ethnic tensions which

took it to war in the 1990s are far from buried. And at the zoo, donkeys were painted like zebras.

It's an example of how the people of Gaza get creative

to overcome adversity.

The river Danube has broken all records sweeping through Central Europe this week,

causing widespread destruction and some 20 deaths. Rivers across the region overflowed.

The Elba, the Vlatava and the Danube were all affected.

Tens of thousands of people had to leave their homes.

Extensive damage was reported in Central and Southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria and Slovakia.

But Nick Thorpe tells us there were size of relief in the Hungarian capital Budapest.

When the level of the Danube finally started to fall back after reaching a record height on Monday.

It all began as a sort of political beauty contest, the Prime Minister of Hungary, Victor Orban, like a British bulldog, striding purposefully

down the dikes, followed by a gaggle of flustered aides and press poodles.

Two former Prime Ministers, Ferrant Georgian and Gordon Bainai, not to mention the socialist hopeful

Attila Mestahazi, were also out insured sleeves on the flood barriers, slinging white sandbags

...