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From Our Own Correspondent: Yemen and Italy

Yemen and Italy

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Yemen and Italy

Pascale Harter hears from Portia Walker and Alan Johnston about local heroes and villains.

Insight and wit from writers around the world. Today, two notorious towns: Portia Walker reflects on change and danger in Sanaa; Alan Johnston notes that Corleone's produced both heroes and villains.

Insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents, journalists and writers from around the world. In this edition, Pascale Harter presents despatches from two of the world's most notoriously violent places.

"After the revolution, everyone will have their own agenda"
Yemen is being dragged further into violence and uncertainty by a spate of bombings and shootings which Al Qaeda says it carried out. And the country's experience is proving a salutary lesson that political change isn't everything. People power did oust a dictator here. There have been elections. 

Portia Walker was in the capital, Sana'a, during the mass protests last year. And she argues the current instability is not what Yemenis imagined when they demonstrated for regime change.

Local hero - in a town full of villains
The town of Corleone in Sicily is soaked in mafia associations. Perhaps even saturated with them, after its depiction in the "Godfather" series of books and films. But it was and is home to some good guys, too. Alan Johnston tells the story of the gangsters and heroes  - real and imagined - who have emerged  from this one small town to become the stuff of legend.

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