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From Our Own Correspondent: Swiss bedbugs and Italian trotting races

05/04/2013

Swiss bedbugs and Italian trotting races

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Swiss bedbugs and Italian trotting races

Switzerland gets itchy about national service and Rome's chariot races run out of time.

Imogen Foulkes on a plague of bedbugs in Swiss barracks making some question national service and Alan Johnston is at the last of Rome's chariot races at the Tor di Valle track.

Pascale Harter introduces insight and wit from reporters, writers and correspondents around the world. In this edition, two tales from Europe. Imogen Foulkes describes the enemy advance threatening Switzerland's young soldiers: insidious, morale-sapping and near-invisible, the bedbug is on the march. In a country so proud of its national service, could the spectre of infestation put even the proudest Swiss matriarch off the tradition? Alan Johnston is at the Tor di Valle track watching the last Roman chariot race - or at least the last of its once-famous 'trotting' circuit, fallen on hard times.

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