13/09/2012

Available for over a year

Thomas Fessy, the BBC's West Africa correspondent, flew into The Gambia to ask questions about a recent spate of executions. But he was detained and then thrown out of the country. It's left him asking: what have the authorities there got to hide? Iraqi police and army officers have been accused of taking part in a murderous campaign of persecution against the country's gay community. Natalia Antelava meets one senior official who reckons there are only about ten homosexuals in the whole country and, he tells her "they need to change." John Laurenson's in a vast shanty town on the edge of Madrid hearing stories from people who've lost everything in the economic crisis. One resourceful resident tells him: "Necessity makes you smarter than ten lawyers put together." The man who looked after the sacred crocodiles in the Ivory Coast is not doing the job any longer. John James tells us about his very last day at work. And Kathy Flower, who lives in a village in the French Pyrenees, finds that the mayor plays a significant part in French community life. And she tells us it helps if he or she is a dab hand with the sledgehammer!