Libyan pets
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2012
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does a chaotic pet market have to tell us about Libya's transition from dictatorship to democracy? Kevin Connolly's been finding out. Refineries. Miles and miles of pipeline. Hundreds of workers from overseas. Antonia Quirke's learned they are all coming to a remote corner of Mozambique now there's been a huge gas find there. Drug-related violence is a major issue in the Mexican presidential election campaign, which has just got underway. Will Grant's in the capital city where even news of the most gruesome happenings now seems to cause little surprise or horror. Jonathan Fryer's been meeting a family hugely respected in Togo. Over the generations they've become known for producing twins -- regarded as particularly special in this part of west Africa. And how on earth did a man from the high Himalayas come to be serving Jewish culinary specialities in a store in Manhattan? The answer to that one comes from Reggie Nadelson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello this download from the BBC is the latest edition of the Radio 4 program from our own correspondent. |
| 0:05.7 | It's introduced by Kate Adi. |
| 0:08.1 | Today fewer than 20 dead. It hardly makes the news in Mexico, but the country's violent drug wars are set to play a key part in the coming election. |
| 0:18.0 | An African grey parrots struck dumb as Libya's new leaders fail to impose law and order. A massive gas find off the coast of |
| 0:26.5 | Mozambique, it means life on 32 palm-fringed islands will never be the same again. |
| 0:31.4 | And in the mangrove swamps of southern Togo, there are |
| 0:34.7 | twins who never die. They only go out for a walk in the forest. Candidates in the Mexican |
| 0:41.2 | presidential election in July yesterday launched their campaigns each calling for an end to violence |
| 0:46.9 | During the years the current president Felipe Calderon has been in power more than 50,000 people have lost their lives in drug-related bloodshed. |
| 0:55.8 | The contest to succeed him will be a fierce one, and Will Grant says the candidates know that |
| 1:00.7 | Mexican voters are looking to them to take on the country's ruthless drug |
| 1:04.6 | gangs. The stories are gruesome and frequent. In January 15 bodies were dumped on a |
| 1:11.2 | petrol station forecourt in the state of Michoacan. |
| 1:14.8 | Two weeks ago, ten severed heads were left outside a slaughterhouse in the neighboring state |
| 1:19.6 | of Guerrero. |
| 1:20.8 | The next day, gunman shot dead 12 policemen in an ambush as they searched for the perpetrators. |
| 1:27.0 | Not to mention the countless individual murders and double homicides that are so common they barely cause a ripple on the evening news. |
| 1:35.0 | Undoubtedly Mexicans are still affected by the tales of extreme violence |
| 1:39.0 | emerging from different corners of the country, |
| 1:42.0 | but perhaps because I haven't been here long, I'm |
| 1:44.4 | surprised how quickly they fade from the local media or how little people speak of |
| 1:49.2 | them. After more than six years of such brutality, fatigue is setting in. |
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