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Afghanistan's Saur Revolution: 40th Anniversary

Memories of revolution; street cricket in India; Benin mangrove forests; Belgrade's disappearing statue; Venezuelan banknotes; Moscow landfill hazards. With David Amanor

Forty years ago the Afghan Communist party overthrew President Mohammad Daoud. Abdullah Shadan from ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Afghan Service was a journalist at the state broadcaster at the time, and watched events unfold.

Indian Street Cricket
This month ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Tamil staged a tournament to celebrate the street cricketers of Tamil Nadu. Finalists came together to fight it out in Chennai, umpired by cricket fan Vivek Anand of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Tamil with commentary by Parag Phatak of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Marathi.

Small head, big outcry: Belgrade's statue problem
A bronze bust of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin caused outrage and ridicule in Belgrade. The tiny head on a huge plinth was invisible from street level, and swiftly disappeared, as Jelena Maksimovic of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Serbian explains.

Bolivar handbags
ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Mundo's Boris Miranda returned from Colombia's border with Venezuela with an interesting souvenir: a handbag made from Venezuelan bolivares. It seems it's more profitable to make handicrafts from bolivares than to spend them.

Benin's mangrove voodoo
Conservationists have called on a voodoo deity to help protect mangrove forests in Benin, where voodoo is an official state religion. ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Afrique's Franck Noudofinin explains why the protection of the nightwatchman deity Zangbeto is so effective.

Moscow's controversial landfill sites
ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Russian's Nataliya Zotova has been reporting from a huge landfill site at Volokolamsk near Moscow, which local people say is making them ill. She describes the physical effects of being near the tip, and encounters a football playing turkey on its perimeter.

Image: Afghan communist supporters in Kabul 1979
Credit: S.SOBOLEV/AFP/Getty Images

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50 minutes

Last on

Fri 27 Apr 2018 17:06GMT

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  • Fri 27 Apr 2018 11:06GMT
  • Fri 27 Apr 2018 15:06GMT
  • Fri 27 Apr 2018 17:06GMT