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World Service,16 Jan 2014,28 mins

China Industrialisation Causes Smog

World Business Report

Available for over a year

China's rapid industrialisation causes pollution in Beijing. Churned out by the country's coal-burning power plants, factories and millions of vehicles, the amount of pollution in the capital is now many times the level considered safe by the World Health Organisation. Susannah Kroeber, an analyst with J Capital Research in Beijing tells us what everyday working life is like under these conditions. Also, the US Senate has failed to extend benefits to the long-term unemployed. We ask the American economist Irwin Stelzer why this new battleground between Republicans and Democrats is proving so controversial. In Nigeria, the government has announced plans to get more people into the housing market with the creation of a state-backed lender along similar lines to Fannie Mae in the United States. But can the target of increasing mortgages tenfold within three years be achieved? And how the rapidly increasing population of Oslo may change the centuries-old skyline of the Norwegian capital forever.

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