³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

The programme began looking at the situatino in Nepal where protesters against King Gyanendra are clashed with police in the capital of Kathmandu.

Here are a couple of comments that came in after we came off air. We had this anonymous text message:

I think people here in nepal are used to being suppressed by bureaucrats, history repeats itself .

And this e-mail from Pravin Sharma Kafle Kathmandu:

As the minister told, if only the King of Nepal Gyanendra had any concerns to resolve the current political problem, he would not have been visiting places and living a leisure life at this high time of Nepali political history. King Gyanendra really does not have any accountability for the people and the nation. In that sense, the protest is right to overthrow the aristocratic and explicable monarchy.

And Manoj Bhusal had this to say from Kathmandu:

The king asked three years time to bring country back in track. At first ,like many fed up Nepalese, I also thougt, may be the King should be given a chance. But more than one year after the royal proclamation, things are only getting worse. The King, as opposed to the hopes of many nepalese, has done nothing to their aspiration of peace. All he does is meaningless visits to the temples sacrifing the animals and doing celebrity visits signing the autographs. King Gayanandra needs to understand signing the autograph does not bring peace.

And we spent much of the programme looking at Iraq. Covering Iraq is difficult. As our correspondent, Jon Leyne, said during the programme, the security situation does not allow him to report as he would like.

Occasionally, we spend a day focusing on Iraq to get beyond the politics and violence and help you understand what day to day life is like in Iraq.

Michael Arhi sent us this comment via text message:

I think the moment the problem is not Americans but Iraqis.Why are they killing themselves? There is know way Saddam will come back to power.

We also had this anonymous text message comment:

Western style democracy will never workin Iraq. Perhaps, if we understood ourselves, the World would be a much safer place.

Saqib Kakvi Lusaka sent this text message from Zambia:

Attacking religous targets gain nothing but more violence

We also asked our listeners in the US what they made of the story of two former New York police detectives who moonlighted as mafia hit men. We asked if you thought this was an isolated incident or part of a larger problem of police corruption in the US.

Here are just a couple e-mails we received.

We had this e-mail from a former policeman who asked to remain anonymous:

As a former Detective-Lieutenant (Gold Shield) with a private detective agency, I saw this firsthand. On more than one occasion I had to choose between my career and my life. You take a typical cop, with a pending divorce, a girlfriend, child support and alimony, and essentially forced to pay for two households; and these men soon have their hands out to anyone.
Once they get a taste of money, they soon find that they will do anything to protect that new stream of income, no matter how repugnant the new tasks are that are asked of them.
Money is like a drug, and a large amount of cash that rescues you from the brink makes you beholden to the worst of criminals.
My career ended when I chose to fight that corruption, and all I got was a screwdriver in my knee. One person can not make a difference without losing their own life and career.

And Christian Covington in New York has this to say:

The conviction of the Mafia cops is unsurprising and is symptomatic of the lack of transparency and accountability in the New York Police Department. The police only have to assert a claim of justifiable homicide, no matter how ridiculous the circumstances, and their claim will be accepted. A recent example is the tale of a man who died in police custody: his family allege that he was beaten while the police say that he died from ulcers and AIDS. Of course, this does not explain the man's broken ribs and ruptured spleen. There is not even a hint of an investigation of this death; compare this to the independent investigation of the deMenezes shooting in London last year.

Thanks for all of the comments and helping us have a great end to the week. See you on Monday!