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From Our Own Correspondent: Syria and Kiribati

10/07/2013

Syria and Kiribati

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Syria and Kiribati

News of war from a house in Damascus; concrete traces of the Cold War on Christmas Island

Diana Darke hears tidings of Syria's civil war from the caretaker of her home in Damascus; John Pickford finds concrete reminders of the Cold War still visible on Christmas Island

Pascale Harter introduces personal insights, experiences and analysis from writers, reporters and journalists all over the world. In this edition, there are two stories of the destruction which war can take on the environment, both natural and man-made. Diana Darke hears tidings of Syria's civil war from the caretaker of her home in Damascus: they must meet in Lebanon, for safety's sake, and his news of how the country's "silent majority" of civilians are faring is not good. On the other side of the world, on remote Christmas Island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, John Pickford stumbles upon some still-visible concrete reminders of the Cold War. Infamously, this coral atoll was a test site for British atomic weapons during the 1950s, and there's still controversy over what impact these experiments had on the islands - and on the British servicemen who witnessed them.

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