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Pascale Harter introduces Â鶹Éç journalists’ stories from Mexico, Uzbekistan, Cambodia and Lithuania.

Genaro García Luna, the man who once headed Mexico’s fight against narcotraffickers, was recently found guilty of working WITH the drug cartels in a courtroom in New York City. Will Grant, who’s covered the drug wars across South and Central America, reflects on what the trial process and the evidence revealed about how far criminal cartels have infiltrated and influenced Mexican crime-fighting agencies.

So much of Cambodia’s cultural heritage was destroyed or looted during the Khmer Rouge era that it’s hard to know how much was lost. But we do know that much was smuggled out of the country and sold on to collectors abroad. Celia Hatton describes how one hoard of golden antiquities from the Angkorian civilisation was rediscovered – and how it made its way back to Phnom Penh.

Uzbekistan is one of the world’s major exporters of gas – so why did so many people have to shiver through the past winter in its capital, Tashkent? Ibrat Safo describes the ways its residents had to find around serious energy shortages, which left flats unheated, buildings unlit, and gas pressure so low that it took an hour to boil enough water to make tea.

And in Lithuania, Lucy Ash hears about what’s being celebrated in the capital as Vilnius marks 700 years since its foundation and how the country’s defiantly different spirit endures.

Producer: Polly Hope
Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross