You're listening to a download from the BBC, this is from our own correspondent.

You can hear the version of the program we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site

at BBC online.

But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Aide.

Hello. Today China is transforming farmers into workers and shoppers and villagers into cities. President Putin turns... and In Northern Norway its lashings of homebrew and strange dancing to Greek

midsummer, and despite our correspondence attempts to find out,

the secret of Mali's Shalots remains, well, secret. Yemen is the poorest Arab country. Since

March it's been bombed daily by a coalition of some of the richest Arab

countries led by Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis began their operation when the rebel hoothes looked set to take the strategically

important port city of Aiden.

But as our Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen explains, the Saudi action

is as much to do with regional geopolitics as it is to do with the hooties.

The good thing about Yemen was that people there, at least the ones I met, were remarkably

friendly.

Of course, I didn't meet anyone who wanted to kidnap me.

That might have been because we travelled about with around a dozen armed men, security that we arranged through local connections.

Our hotel had a high wall around it, a big gate, and spiked tire rippers to stop anyone who tried to drive in without permission.

On our corridor we had a couple of men with guns.

Going around with armed men is not the ideal way to report.

But we reckon that the alternative was not risking the trip or getting into big trouble.

The night before the BBC team arrived in Sangh,

...