The death toll in Syria
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2013
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As global leaders remain divided on whether to carry out a military strike against Syria in response to the apparent use of chemical weapons against its people, Tim Harford looks at the different claims made about how many people have been killed. And, apparently, it's a fact that if there's one thing that's worse for you than drinking, scoffing bacon sandwiches and smoking 80 unfiltered cigarettes a day, it's being left-handed. Left-handers die on average several years earlier than right-handers. Or do they? Tim gets to the bottom of a sinister statistic. This edition was first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:03.0 | For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, |
| 0:07.0 | go to BBCWorldService.com slash podcasts. |
| 0:13.0 | This is the short edition of Morales, |
| 0:15.0 | first broadcast on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:19.0 | Hello and welcome to More or Less, |
| 0:21.0 | the program which looks at the numbers in the news and in life. |
| 0:25.0 | I'm Tim Halford. |
| 0:26.0 | This week, can it be true that... |
| 0:28.0 | Right-handed people live on average nine years longer than left-handed people? |
| 0:33.0 | But first, the all-consuming subject of the war in Syria |
| 0:37.0 | and the prospect of Western intervention after a chemical weapons attack to the east of Damascus. |
| 0:42.0 | How many people were killed by this attack? |
| 0:45.0 | The US government says 1,429, including 426 children. |
| 0:51.0 | France, which has committed itself to joining the US in military action, |
| 0:56.0 | says 281 people died. |
| 0:59.0 | The British Foreign Office hasn't given an official number at all. |
| 1:02.0 | But the Joint Intelligence Committee says that at least 350 people were killed. |
| 1:07.0 | And Moscow says it's ludicrous to say that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons at all. |
| 1:12.0 | All very puzzling. |
| 1:14.0 | I called up Kelly Greenhill, a professor of political science at Tufts University in the US, |
| 1:19.0 | and co-author of a book about the politics of crime and conflict statistics |
... |
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