• BBC coverage
• Toyota press statement
• On The World: Toyota in trouble (Jan 27)

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MARCO WERMAN: January auto sales numbers came out today in the U.S.  Most car makers saw in increase from a year ago, but not Toyota.  It suffered a 16% decline in sales last month.  Toyota stopped selling several popular models in the U.S. last week as it struggles to deal with safety concerns over faulty gas pedals.  The company hasn’t stopped selling cars in Japan, but it’s problems here in the U.S. and also in Europe continue to cause alarm back home.  Akiko Fujita reports from Tokyo.

AKIKO FUJITA: Few companies are as revered as Toyota in Japan.  Wasura University Professor Kenneth Grossman says Toyota’s reputation for high quality and it’s attention to detail embodies Japan’s identity as a nation full of craftsmen. He says that identity has helped carry Japan long after its economic boom in the 1980′s.

KENNETH GROSSMAN:  And then after the bubble burst it was one thing they could hold onto because they still manufactured quality merchandise in optics, consumer electronics and automobiles of course.

AKIKO FUJITA: So when Toyota announced last week it would stop selling and building eight of its car models in the U.S. the news raised concerns in Japan.  One newspaper questioned whether this recall would destroy the world’s trust in Japanese manufacturing.  Another said Toyota’s reputation for safety was in tatters.  The country’s top business paper even noted signs of rising anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S.  In Tokyo’s business district, Hiroshi Kawasaki says that while Toyota is a company that grabs a lot of attention, this kind of headline makes him wonder if Toyota has lost its way.  Toyota’s success story has long been a source of National pride in Japan.  Founder Kiichi Toyoda started the company in the early 1930′s after studying Ford’s plants in Michigan.  But the company’s real success came after World War II when it developed something called the Toyota production system.  The system focused on continuous improvements, or kaizen, instead of overnight success.  It called for flexibility on assembly lines and it mandated problems be fixed as soon as they were discovered so mistakes wouldn’t be repeated.  Toyota’s system was hailed as key to the car’s quality and the company’s success.  Ken Grossman says it gave the Japanese an identity they could build on.

KENNETH GROSSMAN:  It came simultaneously with the boom and the golden age where the Japanese came to pride themselves on producing good things.

AKIKO FUJITA: But Grossman says that pride and quality and efficiency may have also contributed to Toyota’s recent problems.  He says the company’s tunnel vision blinded it from its own mistakes.  News of Toyota’s problems in the U.S. and Europe come amid a growing number of complaints, accidents and recalls for all Japanese manufacturers.  The spike in complaints is partly the result of a new law that requires Japanese companies to report serious product related accidents.  Government reports also indicate the number of domestic car recalls doubled between 2004 and 2008 compared with the previous five years.  Despite those numbers, some insist Toyota’s problems wouldn’t have happened if the cars were assembled here.  This man didn’t want to give his name but said Toyota hasn’t caused any of those problems in Japan.  Toyota is still a very respected company here.  Sayoko Teraoka says I think Toyota relied too heavily on workers in the U.S.  The company should fix the problem and work hard to restore its image regardless of whose fault it is.  Toyota is working to restore that image.  In the U.S. it’s published full page ads to explain why the company halted the production of some of its models.  Toyota has announced it would begin shipping parts to dealers so it could fix a problem that caused the accelerator pedal to stick.  Next week the company plans to resume production in the U.S.  But Executive Vice President Shinichi Sasaki warned Toyota’s problems won’t end there.  In Nagoya Tuesday, Sasaki said the recalls were taking a toll on overall car sales.  He added the sales forecast is something we’re extremely worried about.  For The World, I’m Akiko Fujita in Tokyo.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• On The World: Haiti’s child slaves
• In pictures: Haiti quake aftermath

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  It was three weeks ago today that a massive earthquake struck Haiti and three weeks since the start of a massive effort to help survivors.  Some of the problems that have slowed the distribution of aid in Haiti have eased, but many survivors are still struggling to find food and shelter and the security situation remains volatile.  Today, U.N. officials said a food convoy was recently ambushed by a group of armed men.  The men were driven away by police gunfire.  The BBC’s Nick Davis is in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.  Nick, now as far as aid goes, we’ve heard this week that the U.N. and aid groups are distributing coupons, primarily to women and the elderly that they can redeem for a 55 pound bag of rice.  That’s enough to feed an average family for two weeks.  It sounds like these latest food distribution systems may be working.

NICK DAVIS: It’s really clear as you walk around that you can see much more aid, much more food, much more water on the streets of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding provinces.  There are still places where food isn’t really as available as it should be, but even so, earlier on today I went up to one camp and just took a walk around.  Not only were there proper tents up, not only were people actually cooking, but you’ll see the bags of rice, now sometimes being transported around by any means necessary.  I saw some guys jumping on the back of a very small motor bike, less than 50cc, and they were hauling around this huge bag of rice.  I noticed they were going around to family members and friends and just distributing what little rice they have to them.  But they were nearly falling off the bike as they were trying to ride off to the next place with it.

MARCO WERMAN: Where are the people in the greatest need?  We’ve heard that nearly half a million people have fled the capital instead of going to resettlement camps.  Is that a good sign that pressure will ease on aid in the cities?  Or is it a bad sign that pressure is just going to increase in the country now?

NICK DAVIS: Well that’s one of the things that seem to have been mentioned in some of the places further north.  There seems to be a regional split in terms of aid clearly.  Places outside of region haven’t been as badly affected.  People are moving there and they’re saying where is the aid to help us?  I was in a place called St. Mark’s, which is one of the areas which was unaffected, about two hours drive north of Port-au-Prince, and people there, even U.N. policemen were saying to me, we need support.  Our facilities are being swamped by the amount of people who have suddenly descended on our city, on our town.

MARCO WERMAN: What about Haitian’s faith in their own government right now Nick?  We’ve heard reports this week of how one memorial service turned into an anti-government protest.

NICK DAVIS: In many respects some of this falls out of the fact that as far as they’re concerned their government has been quite quiet.  They’re seeing pronouncements from international leaders; they’re seeing the U.N. coming out in force.  They just feel their government has been very silent.  There is also an issue about corruption.  This government as far as many people would say, is probably the best government that the Haitian people have had in quite a long time.  It’s really been trying to clamp down on corruption, but even so, people still feel that corruption has been endemic in this country for such a long time that with all of these billions of aid pledged by the international community that some of it will eventually just disappear into the pockets of some of their leaders.  That’s what people are saying not only here, but also in the Haitian – - in the United States as well.

MARCO WERMAN: The BBC’s Nick Davis in Port-au-Prince.  Nick, very good to hear from you again, thank you.

NICK DAVIS: No problem Marco.

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• Voice of America article
• mcdonalds.com
• CBC video archive: McDonalds in Moscow

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MARCO WERMAN: Twenty years ago Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union.  Mikhael Gorbachev was still in power.  But the Berlin wall had just come down and things were changing fast.  At that pivotal moment, in the bleakness of a Russian winter, a bright new sign appeared in Moscow.  It was the Golden Arches of McDonald’s.  That was exactly 20 years ago this week.  Analyst Masha Lipman was then, and still is, a resident of Moscow.  Masha what was it like when McDonald’s arrived there?

MASHA LIPMAN: It was indeed a sensation.  It will be remembered that the year 1990 was the year of acute shortages.  The Soviet economy was for all practical purposes falling apart.  Amidst this grim environment there appeared this shining place and people rushed, they rushed there because this was something very new.  There were very long lines.  People were waiting in the cold for one hour or even longer and when they got in, one of the things that struck me, and I remember it to this day was how the employees were able to keep the place clean.  That was one of the things that impressed us.

MARCO WERMAN: Right, and it wasn’t just about, of course, what the place looked like, it was about the burgers and the fries.  To help us remember why a McDonald’s was so different, here’s an excerpt from a news report by Canadian Broadcasting’s Don Murray from opening day back in 1990 where he spoke to the first customers.

DON MURRAY:  Their verdict on the feast was mixed.  I don’t like it at all, he says, it’s not Russian.  This woman doesn’t know what she just ate, but she said it was unusual and delicious.  We’re all hungry in this city, she says, we need more of these places.  There’s nothing in our stores or restaurants.

MARCO WERMAN: Nothing in the stores and restaurants.  Masha Lipman, that last voice as you know, was a vivid reminder of just how difficult life in Moscow was back then.  How hard was it just to get food in 1990?

MASHA LIPMAN: Well it was basically hunting for food.  You had to be always on the alert so if you went by a street and saw a line, you would find out what was on sale and probably stop and forget about your other doings and wait to get at least something.  Even things as basic as milk.

MARCO WERMAN: The other thing that was certainly new and different about McDonald’s in Moscow in 1990 was the customer service.  Here’s another excerpt from Don Murray’s story from 1990.

DON MURRAY:  I spilled my milkshake, he says, and I thought they’d bawl me out.  Instead, they gave me another one.  All of the staff have been taught to smile relentlessly, all the time.

MARCO WERMAN: Masha Lipman what was so unusual about the staff at this new McDonald’s smiling in 1990?

MASHA LIPMAN: The grim faces and rude manners of Soviet sales people were proverbial.  I think at the time McDonald’s had this hiring policy in which they tried to pick only those people who had not had the experience of working in the Soviet catering system or the Soviet food stores.  People who smiled naturally.  You were met with a real crowd of young people behind the counter and all of them were smiling at you.

MARCO WERMAN: When was the last time you went to McDonald’s?

MASHA LIPMAN: Not too long ago.  I sometimes do.  It’s fast.  You know, when you have some things to do in the morning outside of my office and then going back to the office, I sometimes drop by and get something to eat there very quickly just because it’s so fast.  The McDonald’s that I have in mind is the same first McDonald’s.  Actually I’m sitting here in my office, it’s within two minutes from where I sit.

MARCO WERMAN: One in five meals in the United States is a fast food meal.  That leads here to obesity.  Are people in Russia 20 years after the opening of the first McDonald’s looking with more scrutiny at this restaurant that at first seemed so magical?

MASHA LIPMAN: Well at first it did.  And also there is the anti-American sentiment which is quite substantial in Russia.  And, of course, it’s common to say that McDonald’s is poor quality and McDonald’s is using a lot of fat.  McDonald’s is not good for you.  It’s unhealthy food.  But I guess no matter how people may grumble, they still think it’s convenient, it’s cheap and they do use it.

MARCO WERMAN: Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center reflecting on the arrival of McDonald’s in Moscow 20 years ago this week.  Thank you Masha.

MASHA LIPMAN: My pleasure.

MARCO WERMAN: And thanks to CBC’s Don Murray for that blast from the past.  You can check out his original story via our website, the world dot org.

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• Report on pre-Columbian geometric earthworks (pdf)
• Antiquity Journal
• geoglifos.com (Portuguese)

Researchers think they may have found the remnants of one.

They’ve discovered a vast network of earthworks… or geoglyphs… in a stretch of the Amazon in far western Brazil, near Peru and Bolivia.

We’re looking for the name of the Brazilian state where the ancient formations were found.

It borders Peru and Bolivia… and is mostly covered by the Amazon rainforest.

The answer is Acre.

And it’s where researchers have found new evidence of an ancient culture.

Here’s more from The World’s Marina Giovannelli:

Download MP3

This audio slideshow was produced by Alex Gallafent:

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  President Obama wants to repeal “don’t’ ask, don’t tell”, the policy that bans homosexuals from serving openly in the military.  Nearly 11,000 troops have been dismissed under the controversial policy since it was established in 1993.  Repealing the policy would require Congressional action.  Today the administration’s top military commanders went to Capital Hill to make the case.  The World’s Katie Clark has our story.

KATIE CLARK: In prepared remarks to member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen declared today that gay men and women should be allowed to serve openly in uniform because it’s the right thing to do.

ADMIRAL MIKE MULLEN: No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.  For me, personally, it comes down to integrity, theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.

KATIE CLARK: Admiral Mullen went on to say that he is confident the military can handle the policy change despite any practical obstacles to lifting the ban.  But Arizona Senator John McCain wasn’t convinced.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: There are patriotic and well-meaning Americans on each side of this debate.  I have heard their many passionate concerns.  Ultimately, though, numerous military leaders tell me that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is working and that we should not change it now.  I agree.

KATIE CLARK: Also testifying today before the committee was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.  He noted that until “don’t ask, don’t tell” is repealed more can and should be done under the existing policy to protect servicemen and women from being disciplined.

ROBERT GATES: We can raise the bar on what constitutes credible information to initiate an inquiry.  We can raise the bar on what constitutes a reliable person and on whose word an inquiry can be initiated.  Overall we can reduce the instances in which a service member who is trying to serve the country honorably is outed by a third person with a motive to harm the service member.

KATIE CLARK: How best to integrate gays into the armed services, or whether that’s even desirable, is a familiar discussion to retired Lieutenant Commander Craig Jones.  Jones was serving in the British Royal Navy when the ban on homosexuality in the British military was lifted in 2000.

CRAIG JONES: There was a great deal of – - in the U.K. prior to the lifting of the ban which is very similar to the situation that you’re experiencing in the U.S. at the moment.  However, frankly, when the rhetoric died down and people realized that the case to stop the lifting of the ban had been lost, everybody turned their attention to something else.

KATIE CLARK: Jones notes that gay Britain’s are serving on the front lines alongside Americans all over the world at this point and no one bats an eye.  Nathaniel Frank is author of Unfriendly Fire, How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America.  He says 25 countries now let gays serve openly including Canada, Australia and Israel.

NATHANIEL FRANK:  Combat tested militaries, and in almost all the cases the change did not come from the military, it came from the civilian sector, because militaries tend not to offer this up as a new policy of their own will.  So they have to be made to do it and when they’re made to do it, they find that it is what almost all of them called a non-event.

KATIE CLARK: But these other countries weren’t engaged in two wars at the time as the United States currently is.  The Obama administration seems to be taking that into consideration and treading cautiously.  Secretary Gates announced today that his chief legal advisor and the head of U.S. Army forces in Europe will lead a review into how to go about lifting the ban on openly gay military personnel.  That review is expected to take up to a year.  For The World, this is Katie Clark.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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MARCO WERMAN: Susan Helper is a Professor of Economics at Case Western University.  She studies the global automotive industry.  Professor Helper, as we’ve just heard Toyota’s image is all about high quality and trustworthiness.  Does the current recall pose a kind of identity crisis for Toyota?

SUSAN HELPER: It does.  It’s not necessarily an insurmountable one.  Toyota’s new CEO has argued that the company needs to go back to basics and so this will reinforce the strategy they’ve already implemented.  So if they can solve this problem, they don’t need to fundamentally change what they’re doing, they need to go back to some things that they used to do in the past.  So if they can solve these problems, it could be something that they can get done with relatively quickly.

MARCO WERMAN: At the heart of the current recall is a faulty accelerator pedal supplied to Toyota by a company in Indiana called CTS.  In this global economy, Susan, when a car company designs a vehicle and its parts, but does not manufacture all those parts, how does it maintain quality control?

SUSAN HELPER: Well particularly in Toyota’s case, the way it has done so is by long term relations, very close supervision of the supplier by Toyota.  There will be Toyota people visiting the plant very frequently.  There will be people from the supplier that spend a lot of time at Toyota’s design and engineering centers to make sure their quality problems are identified and resolved quite quickly.  So the system I think is inherently not at fault.  The problem is when the system is stressed by a combination of fast expansion, model proliferation, a move away from mechanical and into electronic parts, all these things may just mean that there are too many potential issues that arise and are difficult to assign root causes to and make any kind of production system very difficult to operate.  It could be that that has led them to a breaking point now.  It could also be that they were just unlucky.

MARCO WERMAN: And is it at a breaking point now, do you think, because the Toyota model of high quality craftsmanship and continuous improvement is maybe essentially at odds with a global business model?

SUSAN HELPER: I don’t think that’s true, that it’s at odds with a global business model.  I think it suggests some ways that one has to expand.  That one may need to expand more slowly.  Toyota has been extremely worried about competition from low cost auto companies in Korea and China.  It could be that by focusing so much on their low cost competition that they took out some content that they should not have done and are thus suffering at the middle end and the higher end.  So I don’t think that the global business model is a problem and I think Toyota’s operations in the U.S. are generally quite high quality.  It may mean that they need to slow the expansion, slow down the number of models.  But as far as a fundamental change in the direction of the company, I don’t think that’s necessary.

MARCO WERMAN: Susan, you said earlier this faulty accelerator episode could actually be surmountable.  I am wondering what does Toyota need to do to turn this around?

SUSAN HELPER: Well Toyota first needs to really figure out what the problem is and convince the public that they have a complete solution.  Right now there are these lingering reports of problems that don’t have to do with the two causes they’ve identified.  They need to demonstrate as well as they can that that’s in fact not the case, that they’ve found the problem.  I think it’s too soon to tell to know if this is an episode that’s going to permanently damage Toyota.  I mean I think there are credible estimates that this could end up costing Toyota a billion dollars once we’re all through with this.  That could be.  But Toyota is a very large company with a very long history.  So I think we don’t know if this is blip, perhaps a focusing event that causes Toyota to really return to basics, or it could be the start of a kind of falling apart.  But I definitely would bet on the former, that it’s more of a short term thing that Toyota can fix.

MARCO WERMAN: Professor Susan Helper is the Chair of Economic at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management.  Thank you very much.

SUSAN HELPER: Thank you.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad recently announced that he plans to build institutions and prepare for an independent statehood whether or not peace talks progress.  One project is already getting underway.  Construction crews have broken ground on what’s believed to be the first Palestinian planned community in the West Bank.  Daniel Estrin reports from the site of the future city of Rawabi.

DANIEL ESTRIN: Just a few weeks ago this view overlooking the West Bank hills was serene and empty.  Now backhoes pierce the rocky ground.  For Amir Dajani, Deputy Director of the Bayti Real Estate Company, it’s music to the ears.

AMIR DAJANI: Wow, this is massive.  You see, one is breaking the stone and the other one is collecting it on the side.

DANIEL ESTRIN: Dajani expects work crews to lay the foundations by April.  He estimates that by 2013 the new city of Rawabi could welcome its first residents.  The head of the project is Bashar Masri.  He’s a Palestinian entrepreneur who built housing developments in other Arab countries when the Palestinian uprising broke out a decade ago.  But a couple of years ago as the violence in the West Bank began to abate, Masri decided to build back home.  He sits at a lemon colored glass desk in his office in Ramallah.  He can’t resist taking one more call before we talk.  He shuts the window shutters with a small remote control.  His slick office sets the tone for his future city.  Functional, state of the art, and a little bit cool.

BASHAR MASRI: The Palestinian yuppies I think is more of a description of the Rawabi initial inhabitant.

DANIEL ESTRIN: Masri’s idea is to attract young, upwardly mobile families who want to own a home away from the chaos of crowded cities like Ramallah or Nablus.

BASHAR MASRI: We’re going after people who have jobs.  They studied in English as well as Arabic.  Quite a few of them have traveled.  Most of them have Facebook and they understand a different type of world than their parents did.  Those people would like to live what they see as the modern life.

DANIEL ESTRIN: The blueprints promise a pedestrian only city center with banks, shops and cafes, surrounded by town houses and apartment buildings to house up to 40,000 residents.  There are playgrounds, nature trails, a small hospital, a few mosques, a church, a movie theater and the developers are planning some additional features unheard of in West Bank cities, like a recycling program and homeowner associations.  The Qatari government is bankrolling this $700,000,000.00 venture.  But mounting a project like this in the West Bank requires patience.  Part of the land selected for the city belonged to 2,700 different Palestinian landowners living all over the world.  It took Masri about two years to persuade them to sell.

BASHAR MASRI: I recall having to wait three months because a lady who sold us her land lives in Basra and at the time there was a military operation there.  There was fighting there basically and couldn’t get the papers out.

DANIEL ESTRIN: It’s also been a challenge to figure out what the new city should look like.  Many potential buyers have made it clear that they don’t want Rawabi to resemble a West Bank Jewish settlement.

BASHAR MASRI: Well what the heck does a settlement look like?  Settlements are mostly Palestinian-like homes, but they are built in an organized way.  This is the difference.  And on top of the mountain.  Well, we’re on top of the mountain.  As far as organized, yes, it will be organized.  I can’t shoot myself in the foot because the settlements are organized; I’m not going to build an organized city.

DANIEL ESTRIN: Masri says Rawabi will be a mix of different looking buildings.  Say a four story building right next to a seven story one.  The layout will look like a modern version of the kind of close-knit neighborhood where Masri grew up.

BASHAR MASRI: Is that a western style?  Absolutely it is.  Is it an old Palestinian culture?  You bet it is.

DANIEL ESTRIN: The enterprise excited Rami Nasrallah, a Palestinian urban planner.  He says the Palestinians are naturally skeptical about promises of a better life.  But he’s banking on the success of Rawabi.

RAMI NASRALLAH:  So this is one of the first steps to build a viable democratic Palestine.  It means that the Palestinians are now engaged in a process of creating a new space of hope.

DANIEL ESTRIN: But like many new projects in the West Bank, Rawabi still faces hurdles.  Masri is waiting for Israeli approval to build the planned access road to the city which would cut through Israeli controlled land.  And he’s also asked Israel to provide Rawabi with access to water.  No final word on that either.  But Masir isn’t sitting around waiting.  Just as Prime Minister Fayyad wants to prepare for statehood regardless of peace talks, Masri’s backhoes continue chipping away at the hilltop.  For The World, I’m Daniel Estrin, the site of the future city of Rawabi in the West Bank.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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MARCO WERMAN: A new campaign to lose weight is just getting off the ground in Finland.  It’s not a fancy new diet or exercise regime.  Instead, for every two pounds overweight volunteers shed, $20.00 will go to fund education for children in Nepal.  Sounds like a clever way to support a good cause and get fit at the same time.  Finnish reporter Heli Keskinen is following the story.  She’s in Tempere outside of the capital Helsinki.  Heli, tell us how this campaign got started.  Who came up with the idea?

HELI KESKINEN: Well this one Finnish person, who doesn’t want to give out his name.  He is ready to donate ten million Euros to Nepal.  He challenged Finnish church and also the National Institute for Health to participate on this campaign.  So they are together challenging Finnish people to lose weight and raise money for Nepal.

MARCO WERMAN: And so what kind of people are stepping up to get on the scale?  Are these volunteers clearly overweight?

HELI KESKINEN: Well not everyone.  That’s funny because the donator wants the people who participate to be over 18 years old.  They have to be overweight people.  But, more than that, you can be any shape or size you want to be.  I talked with one lady, who said that she’s been planning to lose weight for a long, long time, but she didn’t find the motivation for it and this campaign gave her a reason to do it.  At the same time, she loses weight and is feeling better about herself, but also she can help children in Nepal with this weight loss.

MARCO WERMAN: So was the possibility to help less fortunate people out by losing weight, it seems like a pretty good motivator.

HELI KESKINEN: Yeah, and that’s why she wanted to start this.  And without this reason, she didn’t believe that she could ever step up and lose weight by herself.  This was also, her colleagues were supporting her.  They all got together and they all decided to go together.

MARCO WERMAN: It’s a really smart plan.  It shows just how much conspicuous consumption actually shows up on our bodies and we can give that away to help less fortunate people.  How much could this program potentially raise, Heli?

HELI KESKINEN: Well we don’t know yet, but its one kilogram, which is a little over two pounds, the donor gives 15 Euros.  And lots of people are coming to this to just lose one or two pounds.  And then there are people who want to lose like 20 pounds.  And the donor is ready to give all the way up to 10 million Euros.  We don’t know how much teams can lose weight, we’ll just see.

MARCO WERMAN: Reporter Heli Keskinen in Tempere, Finland where a campaign to shed pounds and help children in Nepal is underway.  Thanks very much for speaking with us Heli.

HELI KESKINEN: Thank you.

MARCO WERMAN: This is PRI.

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MARCO WERMAN: Ukraine holds its Presidential run off this weekend and the two remaining candidates are a study in contrasts.  Victor Yanukovich is a burly former Communist Party boss.  His opponent is the current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.  She’s five foot two and favors designer dresses and high heels.  She’s also believed to be one of the richest people in Ukraine.  Brigid McCarthy has her story.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is probably the most recognizable symbol of Ukraine. She’s risen to the top in a part of the world where women are rarely seen in politics.  One of her campaign posters shows her curled up with a baby tiger with the caption “Tiger Yulia”.  She’s ferocious one moment, kittenish the next.  Here she is in a video Christmas card she sent to the nation a few weeks ago.  She begins, “my darlings”, but she also once attacked an opponent in Parliament with her stiletto heel.  The 49-year-old Yulia Tymoshenko doesn’t hide her femininity, she flaunts it and uses it as a weapon.  Welcome to feminism, Slavic style.  Martin Nunn is a British public relations executive who’s worked here for nearly 20 years.  He says one way to understand the Tymoshenko phenomenon is that Ukrainians are used to strong women.  They have the Soviets partly to thank for that.

MARTIN NUNN:  In the Soviet era, women were expected to drive the buses, clean the streets, drive the tanks, clear the rubbish, do everything.  There was no gender difference.  However, women also had to look after the children, run their homes, do the cooking, etc., etc.  Consequently, during that period, Ukraine became very much a matriarchal society.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: And the post-Soviet state of Ukraine still is; unofficially at least.

MARTIN NUNN:  The women do the work here.  Look at my office, 70% of my staff are women.  Why?  Because they do a better job.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: Still, most of the bosses are men.  Ukrainian women seem to accept that.  They have a saying, “mean are the head, but women are the neck”.  But not Yulia, she’s both.  Ievgeniia Kononenko is a writer and scholar at the Ukrainian Center of Cultural Studies.  She says Tymoshenko appeals to Ukraine’s complicated electorate in powerful subliminal ways.  Take her signature wrap around braid; it’s the traditional hairdo of married Ukrainian women.

IEVGENIIA KONONENKO:  And of course it’s not only just national style, it’s even religious style.  It’s like a halo around the head.  It’s just the style of Ukrainian icon, its style of God’s mother.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: And there’s one more thing.

IEVGENIIA KONONENKO:  Of course her beauty attracts electors as well.  We can hear then just in private conversation that okay, maybe she’s bad woman but she’s so beautiful.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: But there’s another side to Yulia Tymoshenko.  Underneath the glamour, she’s essentially a product of the Soviet era.  She was raised by a single mother in Eastern Ukraine’s Russian speaking industrial region.  When she was 19 she married the son of a Communist Party boss.  She was trained as an economist before running for a seat in new independent Ukraine’s Parliament in 1996.

IEVGENIIA KONONENKO:  People hated her in the beginning of her career.  She was a woman who steals gas and everything.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: While in government, Tymoshenko also ran a shadowy business that resold cheap Russian gas to Ukrainian enterprises.  It made her fabulously wealthy and Ukraine’s first female oligarch.  Her nickname was “the gas princess”.  Freelance journalist Yuri Lukanov says the size of her fortune remains shrouded in mystery.

YURI LUKANOV:  This isn’t the United States.  It’s Ukraine.  They illegally send their money to offshore zones and so this is why nobody is able to say but I think it’s over a billion dollars.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: Yulia Tymoshenko started to attract a national following in politics by railing against the country’s oligarchs and corrupt politicians.  She grew more popular still when she joined forces with the pro-western reformist leader Victor Yushchenko.  Together, they were the hero and heroine of the Orange Revolution in 2004.  Dmitriy Chekalkin is a former Ukrainian diplomat who was also the master of ceremonies at the wedding of Tymoshenko’s daughter.  He says Yulia Tymoshenko is extremely charismatic, not just before a crowd, but in person too.

DMITRIY CHEKALKIN:  I watched her on many occasions negotiating, speaking in private, so she’s very talented negotiator.  She can really make people fall in love with her.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: Martin Carr saw another side of Yulia Tymoshenko when he did public relations for her in 2007.

MARTIN CARR:   The first meeting I was warned, she will try to stare you down.  I thought it was a bit strange, but what actually happened in the meeting was that Mrs. Tymoshenko, when I started talking, stared me down, literally.  She stares at you.  And she’s looking into you.  Now, if you blink or turn away, then she knows she’s won.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: Carr says Tymoshenko’s leadership style is pure Soviet.  She has to be in control of everything.  Journalist Yuri Lukanov says her manner of governing hearkens back to the Soviet Commissars in another way.  Russians and Ukrainians even have a special term for it.

YURI LUKANOV:  In the Ukrainian language – - .

BRIGID MCCARTHY: Roughly translated, it means manual mode, or ruling by hand.  It’s basically government by decree.  Take last fall’s swine flu outbreak, Tymoshenko used her powers as Prime Minister to cancel all schools and public gatherings for an unprecedented three weeks.  But she did almost nothing to prepare the country for a likely outbreak.  Journalist Yuri Lukanov says Tymoshenko has never articulated a coherent political program or vision for the country.

YURI LUKANOV:  I believe that power is the largest love of her life.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: But how she would use that added power if she wins Sunday’s Presidential election is anyone’s guess.

YURI LUKANOV:  If she loses, she won’t be a peaceful woman.

BRIGID MCCARTHY: But if she loses, Yulia Tymoshenko will still be the second most powerful political figure in Europe’s second largest country.  For The World, I’m Brigid McCarthy in Kiev, Ukraine.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.