麻豆约拍

Insight, wit and analysis from 麻豆约拍 correspondents around the world. In this edition:

With every passing day, the conflict in Libya feels more and more like a civil war. Michael Buchanan says finds that many people in the streets of Benghazi are still giddy with delight at their new found freedom...

While the extraordinary events in Libya are consuming the world's attention, other stories are being rather overshadowed - like the tensions in the West African state of Ivory Coast, which is being pulled apart by political violence. In the capital, Abidjan, John James has been watching the country's descent into chaos.

Cuba promises tourists that they'll find a land of sun, sea and salsa. But behind the image there's a shabbier reality of meagre salaries and high prices. Decades of old-fashioned, Soviet-style centralised economic planning are failing. But now Cuba's communist government is trying to implement radical, capitalist-style reform, sacking thousands of State employees and encouraging them to start working for themselves instead. Polly Hope sized up their chances.

Foreign correspondents often deal with experts and analysts, but sometimes it's the more ordinary (or unexpected) interviewees who really help them grasp the feel of a story. Daniel Sandford had exactly one of those experiences as he tuned into the tales of his driver in Ukraine.

Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a huge metropolis and an extremely tough town to get by in. But Jonny Hogg has been spending time with a group of musicians who've managed to play their way out of the city's poverty and grab the world's attention.