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Kate Adie introduces insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents and writers.

Kate Adie introduces insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents, journalists and writers telling stories from around the world.

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From Our Own Correspondent: Taking on the ruler of Belarus

01/08/2020

Taking on the ruler of Belarus

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Taking on the ruler of Belarus

Stories from Australia, Florida, Laos, France and the presidential election in Belarus.

Stories from Australia, Florida, Laos, France and on the woman taking on long-term ruler President Lukashenko in the presidential election in Belarus. With Kate Adie.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya had nothing to do with politics until recently, and has now become the main opposition candidate for the presidential election in Belarus on the 9th of August. She became a candidate when her husband, a leading opposition leader, was suddenly jailed.   Jean Mackenzie was able to meet her, and the  other women taking on President Lukashenko who has ruled for 26 years. 
In Australia, relations with its main trading partner China are the worst they've been for decades, over issues ranging from the coronavirus to tariffs on beef and barley. And Australians of Chinese descent are increasingly becoming the victims of racist abuse. Frances Mao, Chinese-Australian herself, reports from Sydney. 
Florida has reported a record high daily death toll from Covid-19, and governor Ron DeSantis has been under pressure to toughen up restrictions. There is no state-wide  requirement to wear masks, but individual cities like Miami have imposed them. Attitudes to the virus remain quite divided, as Tamara Gil has been discovering in Miami.
Laos was neutral in the Vietnam war, but was heavily bombed by the Americans anyway,  as their North Vietnamese enemies ran supply routes to American-backed South Vietnam via the country. Unexploded ordinance from that time are blighting lives in Laos decades later, as Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent found out.
If a common language divides Britain and America, as they say, then how much more does a separate language divide Britain and France? The single word postilion or postillon in French sheds quite a lot of light on what makes these countries so different, says Hugh Schofield in Paris, who is fluent in both languages.

Presenter: Kate Adie
Producer: Arlene Gregorius

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