From Our Own Correspondent - 14/08/2010

We hear from Kate Clark the story of two of the aid workers who were killed recently in Afghanistan - of their bloody-minded courage and dedication to the country; Emma Thomas discovers how the drug-related violence in Mexico has spread far across the country; Alan Little reports on the convergence of religion and nationalism at a pilgrimage site in the hills of Bosnia; and Chris Bockman explains why grown men dress up as pigs and squeal in the French Pyrenees. The murder of ten members of a Christian charity group last week in north-western Afghanistan has highlighted just how insecure the country is and how the unwritten rules of conflict have been torn up. The team, which was bringing medical help to remote communities, included Dan Terry and Tom Little, who had worked in Afghanistan for thirty years. Kate Clark knew them both well. Since Felipe Calderon became President of Mexico three and a half years ago and vowed to wipe out the drug cartels which controlled the trafficking routes into the United States, twenty-eight thousand people have been killed. Emma Thomas has seen for herself just how far the worsening violence is blighting the lives of Mexicans. The Swedish government is tightening up its refugee policy, including sending some Iraqis back home. The news of more than two hundred killings in Iraq in the past two weeks, is extremely worrying for those asylum-seekers who fear that they will be forced to return to Iraq, as Tim Mansel reports. The Bosnian war ended fifteen years ago. But the peace did little to quell nationalist feelings. For the Bosnian Croats, their Catholic religion has been an important part of their identity. Allan Little has been to the town of Medjugorje, near the Croatian border, which is now an important pilgrimmage site for catholics in the area and across the world, to investigate the political sensitivities surrounding the town. In the depths of France, Chris Bockman reports on the peculiar festival of pig squealing.