Hi there you're about to hear from our own correspondent a download from the BBC.

We make editions of the programme for both the BBC World Service and Radio 4 and this is the

latest Radio 4 broadcast as ever it's introduced by Kate Aide.

Today the man in a pickup truck who takes NATO's orders to the rebel fighters in Libya.

We hear how the Chinese have bought up a town in Laos and paid its residence to go elsewhere.

There's a picnic under the palms for the last Russian women in Algiers.

And the windy island in the North Atlantic, where the men are hardy, the sheep are hardier,

and there may just be puffins for lunch.

But first, the G8 Club of some of the world's richest nations has ended its annual summit with a pledge of aid for Egypt

and Tunisia and an unexpectedly tough statement on Libya.

The global influence of the G8 club has been questioned in recent years as its

financial clout has been usurped by the larger G20 grouping. But as Bridget

Kendall's been finding out in the French Seaside Resort of Deauville where this year summit was held,

the glory days of the G8 may not be over yet.

With a Gaelic shrug and a dogged refusal to be talked round, the local bus driver deposited us out of town at the far end of

the promenade, slammed his doors shut and departed.

Despondently, I and my fellow hacks gripped our cases and laptops looked along the famous boardwalk

and wondered how far it was to walk back into the town centre and to the G8 press centre.

The wide sands stretched down to the gray Normandy sea, gaudy striped windbreakers

tugged at gusts of breeze. Walking past us off the beach, a small boy with spade and fishing net stared at us as though we were aliens.

High on the hillside above was a panoramic display of the picturesque architecture of this part of the French coast which

it's so proud of, impossibly tall and thin villas, half-timbered, tiled and turreted, with

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