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Weekend Edition: Dangerous Enthusiasms

With stories on Australia's economy, Liberian entrepreneurs, acid attacks in Cambodia, the drinking cultures of Russia and Angola ... and the hunt for a Sultan's heart in Hungary.

James Fletcher gauges how Australia's economy is really doing - through the unusual measure of motorbike sales in Queensland. Tamasin Ford reflects on how the inexhaustible energy of Liberia's young entrepreneurs is often held back by bribery - and high electricity prices. Near Phnom Penh, Alice Cuddy attends an unexpectedly high-spirited gathering - of survivors of acid attacks, which in Cambodia are not just committed against women for reasons of 'honour', but can spring from political vendettas or neighbourhood brawls. In Moscow, the government's trying to bring down alcohol consumption by banning sales of the hard stuff from kiosks - so they're going out of business, changing the face of the city, as Martin Vennard finds. In Luanda, Daniel Metcalfe sees the opposite: in this eye-wateringly expensive city, hard drinking is one of the few things the destitute and the wealthy often have in common. And in the Zselic region of Hungary, Nick Thorpe hunts for the real burial place of a historic relic: the heart of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. But it's not easy to unearth the truth in a landscape where "each fold of history seems to conceal another".

Presenter: Pascale Harter
Producer: Polly Hope

Available now

25 minutes

Last on

Sun 15 Sep 2013 22:06GMT

Broadcasts

  • Sat 14 Sep 2013 08:06GMT
  • Sun 15 Sep 2013 02:06GMT
  • Sun 15 Sep 2013 22:06GMT