Striving for Clarity
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kate Adie introduces correspondents' stories from around the world. John Sudworth is doing his best to tape up the windows of his Beijing flat as he tries to protect his family from the city's dangerous smog. Thomas Fessy remembers his days in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, fondly. But now the dancing in this lively city is more mechanical and there's anxiety that a full-blown insurgency may be about to break out once again. Phoebe Smith is in one of the coldest inhabited places on earth, Svalbard, where the miners have been packing up their picks but new opportunities are opening up. The battle between fact, fiction and "truth" is being fought in the American media. Robert Colls says it's increasingly difficult to tell one from the other. And we have the story of a cat called Django from Will Grant in Havana, Cuba, where being a pet owner is an expensive business; but if you don't do it, who will?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:03.0 | Thank you for listening to this podcast of From Our Own Correspondent. |
| 0:07.0 | This edition was broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday the 14th of January 2017 and it's introduced by Kate Aide. |
| 0:15.8 | Hello, today we're in warmer climes grabbing a cold drink amid music and |
| 0:20.9 | politics then to the freezing far north to Sfalbard and new ways of making |
| 0:26.0 | a living in the snow. |
| 0:28.0 | What's a fact? |
| 0:29.0 | What's truth? |
| 0:29.9 | The Americans are wrestling with fakes and fiction. And you think owning a pet is a |
| 0:34.8 | challenge some days? Then try Cuba with our correspondent and his cat. |
| 0:40.5 | Air pollution is now a political issue and even with falling levels in this country the government |
| 0:46.6 | estimates 40,000 people die earlier each year because of it. |
| 0:51.3 | But China is much, much worse. By the 3rd of January, at least 24 huge Chinese |
| 0:56.8 | cities issued their first red alert of the year, amidst thick choking smog, and John |
| 1:02.3 | Sudworth's family have to live with it. |
| 1:05.0 | Having already taped most of my windows shut I've now started on the air conditioning vents. |
| 1:12.0 | The aim is simple, to close off every access point through which the toxic outside |
| 1:17.6 | air leaks into our Beijing home. |
| 1:21.2 | Even our double glazing doesn't keep out the smog. The most dangerous constituent, particulate matter |
| 1:27.4 | smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter or PM 2.5 as it's known, finds a way through the tiniest of gaps where the windows close. |
| 1:37.0 | So the only solution there is duct tape. |
| 1:40.0 | It's like a reenactment of a 1970's government information film on surviving a nuclear |
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