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Counting the Costs

14/01/2017 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Counting the Costs

Air in China, coal in Norwegian Svalbard, democracy in DR Congo and Cuba's year of shocks

Stories of the smog that's choking China, new ways to make a living in Norway's Svalbard islands, the D R Congo's appetite for democracy and a year of historic surprises in Cuba

Pascale Harter introduces tales of natural resources and human resilience from correspondents around the world. In this edition:

John Sudworth's been living in China for years, and well knows why air pollution's such a pressing concern for its people; but this winter's exceptionally thick pall of smog over Beijing now has him diving for the duct tape.

Thomas Fessy returns to Kinshasa to find the DRC's capital on edge, as this vast and often-exploited country waits to see whether its promised elections will ever be held - and where President Joseph Kabila will go. 

Phoebe Smith visits Norway's far-flung Svalbard archipelago, a string of islands inside the Arctic Circle where the longstanding coal-mining industry is dying off, but there are new opportunities to make a living in other ways.

And Will Grant in Havana reflects on what the much-trumpeted changes in Cuba during the past few years really mean to the average citizen - like the fifty-something fisherman he recently met casting a line from the city's Malecon seawall.

Photo: A boy wears a mask as he walks along road in Beijing on January 5, 2017. (WANG ZHAO/AFP/Getty Images)

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