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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is The World. Today, President Obama in Ghana. It’s his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as president. Our correspondent Laura Lynch is in the capital, Accra. Laura, we’re going to get to the nitty-gritty foreign policy stuff in a minute or two, but first, just tell me what’s going on in Accra today. I’m assuming this Obama trip is a really big deal there.

LAURA LUNCH: It is a really big deal, practically every street that you drive down, you see posters welcoming President Obama, posters with Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, and the word Aquaba, which is in the Niganayan [PH] language means welcome. And some of them also say, welcome home, which gives the sentiment that the undercurrent of this visit, is the excitement of it is all about welcoming the United States first African American President to Africa as a sitting President. There’s no doubt that people here feel a great sense of pride because of that, a great sense of connection to this President, even though they’ve had other President’s come and visit here, President Bush was here in 2008, and President Clinton before him. So, no surprise that for the people here, this s a cause for great excitement.

JEB SHARP: And, presumably there will be an awful lot of people, many Ghanaians hoping to catch a glimpse of President Obama. How prepared is the Ghanaian security operation?

LAURA LUNCH: Well, there are a few wrinkles in all of this, Jeb. What’s happened was that they were initially hoping that they were going to have an open door speech given by President Obama in Independent Square, which is where Bill Clinton gave a speech some years ago that was attended by a hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians, and others from Africa. Well, that’s not gonna happen. Now they’re saying part of the problem is the weather, and no doubt the weather here is terrible, Jeb. The rains have just been pouring down, there has been flooding, the streets have been damaged. So, that is a definite problem, but there may also be concerns about security, with a crowd that big. So, unfortunately for the Ghanaians, they’ve moved the speech indoors to a conference center that can accommodate only two thousand people. And this is supposed to be his major speech, people are wanting to see him. They’re going to be disappointed when they don’t get a chance to see him in person. The only chance that someone might get is a fleeting glimpse of a motor Kay going by, or perhaps those who might be gathered at Cape Coast, just up the coast from Accra, when he goes to see a [INDISCERNIBLE] in the afternoon. Other than that, really not much chance for any kind of personal glimpse of the President in Ghana.

JEB SHARP: Just to be clear, that much anticipated speech is scheduled for tomorrow?

LAURA LUNCH: Yes.

JEB SHARP: And for all the anticipated crowds and the buzz, give us a sense of how widespread the excitement is. I mean, do you find Obama-mania everywhere?

LAURA LUNCH: No, it’s not everywhere. It is in large part here in the city in Accra, and other parts of the country. But, today I was at a market, a market that serves some of the poorest people who are living in Accra. And some of the people there, well, they weren’t really paying any attention at all, you didn’t see Obama banner. Or as you’re about to hear in my report, there are some who have some very practical concerns that they would like President Obama to address. It’s market day in one of Accra’s poorest neighborhoods. The chicken’s cooped up inside this wired cage will be on someone’s dinner table tonight. There will be food for some, but for others here, probably not enough. 52-year-old Ebenezer Tetteh knows all about the President’s visit, and he wants Mr. Obama to tell Ghana’s leaders to cut out the corruption and the waste, including all the millions spent building a grand Presidential palace.

EBENEZER TETTEH: While we are hungry.

LAURA LUNCH: He’s telling you he’s building that brand new presidential palace, and you’re going hungry.

EBENEZER TETTEH: And we are hungry, our children can’t wait. Armed robbery is still going on.

LAURA LUNCH: Armed robbery is still going on. This is the view from the street, or given the torrential rains of the last week, the view from the muddy pathways that crisscross across slums. Corruption, mismanagement, poverty, and a host of other problems mar many people’s lives. But political analyst, Kofi Bentil thinks those matters will be drowned out by the sounds of Mr. Obama praising Ghana’s stable democracy.

KOFI BENTIL: In my mind, what President Obama is coming to do is give us a hug, and say way to go, that’s it. What are they looking for? They are looking to showcase this small country in West Africa as a model to follow.

LAURA LUNCH: Still, the president has made it clear, America has strategic and economic interests in Ghana and across Africa. Gaby Asare Otchere-Darko knows what that really means.

GABY OTCHERE-DARKO: We have something they want, they have something we want. Lets sit down and talk.

LAURA LUNCH: Otchere-Darko is a lawyer and a political consultant for Ghana’s main opposition party. The recent oil discovery in the seabed off the country’s coast could provide the United States with an alternative to the middle east, but only if the region is stable. Otchere-Darko says that’s where America’s interest in Africa’s energy potential dovetails with its desire to establish a military presence on the continent.

GABY OTCHERE-DARKO: America wants oil, we have oil. America has a strong military power, and I really can’t see America invading any African country, but it can help us enhance our capacity to defend ourselves among ourselves, and against, you know, these sort of hard-line selfish militants who may be within our midst. So, I think really, this American interests don’t necessarily have to contradict African interest.

LAURA LUNCH: The United States military created Africa Command, or Africom in 2007. Its stated mission is to help Africa succeed, but so far, Africom is African in name only. It’s based in Germany, since there aren’t any African nations willing to play host.

Ghana is an attractive candidate precisely because of its stability and it’s newfound oil. But Kofi Bentil says, Ghanaians aren’t interested.

KOFI BENTIL: We don’t like Africom, we don’t want a situation where the US has a huge foothold in Ghana. We think it has the potential of destabilizing us. Much as we would like to help the Americans, we know what happens when you have a huge American base in your country. The Americans simply attract trouble, so I think that if they put a huge base here, we’ll have to up our security a hundred times and there’ll be a collateral damage to us.

LAURA LUNCH: Gaby Otchere-Darko disagrees. He thinks Mr. Obama might try to sell Africom as a way to win the battle against the drug lords who are turning the region into a hub for smugglers.

GABY OTCHERE-DARKO: How Africom would work is if there is a strong partnership element. And if it goes beyond what may be seen as American interest. The drug war, for instance, is affecting African countries, but it’s also of mutual concern for Africans, Europeans, and Americans. If there’s one area that Africom can support us, I think that will help Africom.

LAURA LUNCH: It’s unlikely there will be any big pronouncements about Africom or oil during the president’s brief visit. Instead, Mr. Obama’s public remarks are likely to focus more on the need for African nations to mend their ways, end dictatorship, clean up corruption and help people help themselves. Kofi Bentil knows Ghana will be held up as the shining example, and he’ll welcome the attention, but that won’t last forever.

KOFI BENTIL: Unfortunately for me, I know that after two, three days of the euphoria, we’re going to go back to the same old Ghana, and we’re going to have to solve our problems looking hard and thinking, you know, properly about how to deal with them.

LAURA LUNCH: American Presidents, Clinton, Bush and now Obama have all come calling on Ghana in recent years, using it as a platform for preaching the virtues of democracy and economic reform. Still, little has changed across the continent, many regimes are unstable, many elections flawed and even here in Ghana, many can’t afford to feed themselves. For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in Accra.

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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JEB SHARP: Ghana is in West Africa, its neighbor to the north is Burkina Faso, keep going north on the map, and you’ll find Mali, Mauritania and Algeria. Officials say those three countries have all reported an increase in activity by a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda. The group is known as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. It recently claimed responsibility for the killing of a British hostage in Mali and an American aid worker in Mauritania. Reporter Eric Schmitt has written about the group for the New York Times. Eric, this group’s been around for a while but it sounds as if they’re really stepping up a tax. How do counter terrorism officials characterize the group?

ERIC SCHMITT: Well, this was a group that originated in Algeria in the early 90′s fighting against the government in Algiers. But in the last couple of years, it has branched out and formed an alliance in North Africa with al Qaeda, and they’re taking advantage of a couple things. One is, the Algerian security forces have driven them out of and put a lot of pressure on them in Algeria. So they’re looking for new places to set up a station areas, and we help pay for their operations. And also, prove to kind of the terrorist community, not only in the region, but to the world, that they’re a serious player.

JEB SHARP: Can you give any sense of the growth or strength over time? I think some people will remember the 2007 attack in Algiers, killed 41 people and it was in part an attack on the United Nations. Can you give us a sense, sort of since then?

ERIC SCHMITT: Yeah, that was kind of, if you will, their break out moment, uh, where they were really trying to demonstrate their [INDISCERNIBLE] on an international scale. There was a little bit of a dip in their activities, but in the last six weeks or so, as you’ve chronicled, they’ve been

responsible for a number of incidents around the region. And the big concern that kind of tours and officials have is they could spread to Europe, where the Algerian community there has traditionally had support, financial support, and logistic support for the original group.

JEB SHARP: Is there any evidence of a strong Europe connection? I mean, or that they are actually behind anything in Europe yet?

ERIC SCHMITT: Not yet. It’s, again, it’s primarily financial and logistical support that they provide for the group back home. One thing that officials particularly in France, Italy and Germany are watching is, if those cells could turn, as they, operational, and conduct attacks in Europe itself. That hasn’t happened yet, but it’s something that officials in Europe and the United States because of the American interest in Europe, are watching quite closely.

JEB SHARP: I gather there’s some evidence, or at least some concern that al Qaeda types from North Africa who’ve been fighting in Iraq are now returning home. And I wonder if there’s a relationship between Iraq stabilizing, or hopefully stabilizing, in this region, destabilizing in some sense.

ERIC SCHMITT: There is. The concern is that even if they’re in small numbers, they bring back with them some very deadly skills, whether it’s in bomb making, ambushes. But any kind of skill like that that they learned in Iraq, fighting against US and allied forces there, they can bring back is operators in these countries, but also as trainers in setting up small training camps. Some of the desert areas of these countries that don’t have a strong militaries or securities services. Places like Mauritania and Mali, they’re quite poor countries. And where they can operate with somewhat impunity.

JEB SHARP: And finally, I guess, what’s the strategy? You quote an army commander who talks about the green berets, sort of redoubling efforts to train folks there to fight these terrorists in their own backyards. Is that effective? Is that the way to go? What are people talking about.

ERIC SCHMITT: Yes, there’s several strategies. One is that the American government has come in, and not only is providing economic assistance and other kind of aid to these governments, but army special forces are coming in to train the militaries of some of these countries in counter and assurgency tactics and techniques. They’re also sharing information intelligence with these countries, and they’re trying to act as a go between among many of these countries in the region, who traditionally have not cooperated that closely on security matters to bond together against this common thread. So the US has helped sponsor conferences in training, so these countries themselves can work together, share equipment, share intelligence, share even operations to combat this threat.

JEB SHARP: Okay, I think we’ll leave it there for today. Thanks so much. Eric Schmitt is reporter for the New York Times.

ERIC SCHMITT: You’re welcome.

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.

View pictures from the shooting incident in 1993

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is The World. The early 1990′s were a tumultuous time in Russia. Russian lawmakers were testing the limits of the Kremlin’s power, when President Boris Yeltsin abruptly dissolved parliament in October of 1993. Yeltsin’s power-grab sent angry protesters into the streets, a handful of the demonstrators were armed. They’d squared off against Yeltsin’s elite troops outside Moscow’s central television towers when fighting broke out. The BBC’s Robert Parsons was there.

ROBERT PARSONS: We’re having to run now, the government forces, government armored personnel carriers are smashing down the barriers. We’re only forced, and we’re on fire.  Having to take cover by a lake near the television station.

JEB SHARP: Also caught up in the melee was Otto Pohl, then a 24-year-old photojournalist working for the New York Times. A bullet from Yeltin’s troops grazed Pohl’s skull, another punctured his lung, but he survived. And he recently returned to Russia to try to find the man who shot him. Otto, take us back to that moment in 1993, set us down in that crowd outside Moscow’s central TV towers.

OTTO POHL: Well, the protest had been going on for about two weeks, and so, it had taken on this sort of odd air of, almost a combination of street carnival, everybody out, people gawking, a lot of old babushki. But at the same time, riot troops in the background, and a few people had been killed. So there was definitely real edge to things.

JEB SHARP: And what triggered the shooting in that particular incident?

OTTO POHL: What happened was that one of the protestors, and there was a few armed protestors among the crowd, I’m gonna say, maybe 20 among several thousand protestors. And one of them had a rocket propeller grenade, a bazooka. And they fired that, I believe, into the TV tower, killing one of the soldiers that had taken up station inside. And in response they just opened fire.

JEB SHARP: Really opened fire, I mean, not just sort of one volley of fire, but it sounds like a lot shooting. You were hit, how were you saved?

OTTO POHL: The shooting went on for several hours, tanks ultimately rolled into the area. The moment that bazooka exploded, I hit the deck along with most of the other people. Everybody was either scared and fell down, or was literally blown over by the explosion. And the gunfire went over my head for up to two hours. And then, there was actually a man named Mike Duncan, an American, who crawled up to me to try to pull me out, and I’d been watching him pull out other people. He crawl up to me and was trying to pull me out, saying, oh, we’ll get you out safely, when I was hit. And then he got really concerned, you know, I’m sort of breathing through my chest with a sucking chest wound. And he’s saying, I will save you, just don’t pass out on me. He starts counting, he says one, I say two, he says three, I say four. We get to about twenty and then he stopped talking after another volley of fire. And I kind of lifted my head up and I saw that he had been hit through the head. But fortunately, other people who I still don’t know who they were, I have a photo of them, but don’t know who they were, but came and pulled me out.

JEB SHARP: And just to be clear, your would be rescuer, Mike Duncan died?

OTTO POHL: Yes.

JEB SHARP: And then you decide much, much later, in 2007, just two years ago, you’re gonna return on a personal mission to find out who shot you. Did you find that out? What happened?

OTTO POHL: As you might imagine, asking questions like that in Russia, not that popular these days. But I was able to find the commander leading the troops that night, and he was fortunately very amenable to my search. In fact, said, “Oh, you must be the guy who’s camera we found.” So, there was an immediate, almost nostalgic bond that we formed, and he then in turn introduced me to a bunch of the soldiers, including one who had been right inside the building where Mike and I had lain in front of, and who remembered us. He was like, “Oh, were you the one who was wearing the baseball hat?” And it was Mike. And he’s also the one, I should add, who wouldn’t let us leave. We kept asking between volleys of gunfire if we could leave and, you know, he kept yelling back at us and sort of shooting in our direction.

JEB SHARP: It’s jarring to read. At first you have this surge of anger upon coming across these men, and then, as you say, you end up hanging out with them in an almost nostalgic atmosphere. You say you’re sort of sharing a drink and examining photographs. And, I guess I wanna know more about how you shifted from the quest to find the people, the person, the anger, and then the kind of almost acceptance that you were all in it together.

OTTO POHL: There is an absolute element of anger there. On the other hand, I think also meeting him, or meeting them, ’cause I can’t say this was the guy who definitely shot me. But, at the same time there was a real sense of, here’s one of the very few people on this earth who can understand what that night was like. And he was 26 years old, he was young, he was scared, it was his first firefight. On some banal level, he didn’t mean it personally. And I’ve told the story so many times throughout the years, and for everybody else, they kind of look at me with this sort of slack jaw, slight non-comprehension. But here’s a guy I can talk to, and he remembers the sites and the smells and the moments, we share that bond, as silly as that sounds.

JEB SHARP: And how does Russia remember this incident? I mean, was there any justice done in the sense of consequences for security forces shooting unarmed protestors? Or how is viewed, remembered, situated?

OTTO POHL: Essentially they haven’t dealt with it at all. There is a very small remembrance service every October at the square where the victim’s parents and relatives show up. But, the investigation was shut down about a half year after the shooting, everybody got amnesty, the people who did the shooting, the military leaders they all got medals. And, at this point, the country just moved on, and not in a healthy way, but in a way of just brushing everything under the rug. Again, I think it says a lot about the lack of civil society in Russia today.

JEB SHARP: And back to your own story, and your own quest here, did you actually end up having any kind of epiphany? I mean, you said you went seeking truth and resolution, and didn’t necessarily find it. How have you come to think about what happened to you and the fact of going back?

OTTO POHL: What happened to me was just a thread in the entire fabric. In a way there’s four more questions that I have right now. I guess you always set out looking for the sibyl, sort of the moment where everything becomes clear, and usually on these kind of journeys it ends up being more complex.

JEB SHARP: Freelance journalist, Otto Phol, is based in Bozeman, Montana. His piece Hunting Down the Man Who Shot Me is in the latest issue of Men’s Journal. For a link go to our website. Otto, thanks again for sharing the story.

OTTO POHL: Thanks so much.

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Which books would you like to see on the Five Foot Shelf? Post your answer here…

Unrest in western China

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH, Boston. China’s Xinhua news agency now says 184 people were killed during riots in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region in the past week. And, it says most of those killed were Han Chinese. Up to now, it’s been reporting 156 deaths and did not give ethnic breakdowns. And, the government re-imposed a nighttime curfew in Urumqi. And the World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports that a small disturbance around one of the city’s mosques may have brought the curfew.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Most mosques in Urumqi were closed today.  In front of one of them was a sign that read:  Because of the recent situation, and for the security of the Muslim masses and the mosques, and so as not to give opportunity to the violent terrorists, the local government has decided that today’s prayers will not be held in the mosques, but should be held in people’s homes.  We hope the Muslim masses will understand, and tell each other.”  Near this particular mosque, a group of young Uighers said they did not understand, and did accept the edict.

[SOUND CLIP OF UIGHERS TALKING ALL AT ONCE]

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: They said they’d go to the mosque at prayer time regardless, even though it was padlocked shut. They might not have gotten in, but at the White Mosque, near Urumqi’s old bazaar, Muslims arriving with their prayer rugs did argue their way in.  After prayers, they hung out in clusters.  Foreign journalists, some with video cameras, interviewed some of them, including an emotional young Uigher woman.

UIGHER WOMAN: Our people are afraid, all the time, all the time might die, every time.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: As she grew more emotional, the crowd grew, and became emotional too.

UIGHER WOMAN: Our people, two hundred, two hundred Uighers people die.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: They started shouting out their grievances about how Uighers have been treated in recent days.  They said Uighers have been killed in retaliation for the riots last Sunday, but no one talks about that. The government just blames the Uighers for everything. By now, about 50 people had gathered in a loud and emotional cluster, and hundreds more were looking on, so were the police.  They lined up within view of the crowd, and the crowd started to move on down the sidewalk.    But as they went, they pumped their fists in the air and shouted, “Free our relatives!  Free the innocent people!” That lasted about five minutes, before heavily armed military police arrived. They pointed their guns at the demonstrators and at everyone nearby, and told them to crouch on the ground.

[SOUND CLIP OF A MAN YELLING]

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: The commander was particularly annoyed to see foreign journalists, including me. Following a distance behind the group, he told me to clear out, complaining about foreign journalists causing trouble.  At least two foreign journalists were detained.  More police and military vehicles arrived, a helicopter hovered overhead.  Police punched and kicked some of the demonstrators, and piled them into police vans.  And within a couple of hours, a government that had said just yesterday that it had everything under control, decided to re-impose an overnight curfew. The heavy reaction to this seemingly small event shows how much on edge Urumqi still is.  Many Uighers and Han Chinese say they’re still afraid, and some are still angry. But many on both sides say they’d like nothing better than for Urumqi to be peaceful again. Some Uigher shop owners told me today, they don’t mind the police presence if it helps everyone calm down. But one of them also said, “My heart is broken. It will be very difficult to recover from this.”  For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Urumqi.

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JEB SHARP: Gardner Bovingdon is an expert on the politics of western China. He’s a professor at Indiana University, and he says that China’s harsh response in Urumqi, tends to make matters worse than they already are.

GARDNER BOVINGTON: Certainly human rights organizations and Uigher organizations internationally, have turned this into a public relations nightmare for China. At the same time, I think it’s right to say that China’s heavy handed tactics, responding to protests not by sitting down with protestors and asking, inquiring to the sources of the protest, and trying to think of ways of resolving them peacefully, but rather bring in the military and police, clamp down, try to freeze news sources and so forth, I think in these ways it is not helping itself.

JEB SHARP: Why does China react the way it does? What is it specifically afraid of?

GARDNER BOVINGTON: First of all, I would say habit. The Chinese government is accustomed to responding to open protest, and organized descent with clampdowns. Second, I think the Chinese communist party is really worried about the kinds of popular insurgencies that built into regime toppling movements, such as we saw in the so-called color revolutions, Georgia, Ukraine, Kirguistan, and so forth.

JEB SHARP: How real or realistic are those fears, how legitimate?

GARDNER BOVINGTON: I would say, when it comes to burgeoning democratic organizations in the country, and human rights organizations, and to the labor elopement in China, I think this is a legitimate concern. But I think it’s not accidental, but Ouighers and Tibetans are called minorities in China. They constitute very small parts of the population, and they are easily contained by a very large Chinese force of police and military. So, I don’t think that there is serious worry in Beijing, that a Ouigher protest or a Tibetan protest is actually going to cause major political problems inside the country. I think it’s mostly about PR inside the country.

JEB SHARP: And, ultimately is the struggle to keep minority populations in check more ideological, or is it about resources in the territories they inhabit?

GARDNER BOVINGTON: I don’t think there’s a single State in the world that would willingly part with territory it claims. I think that’s important to state, and more countries in the world are very concerned about energy right now. Jiujiang is both a source of energy in itself for China, it’s also a conduit for energy coming from central Asia. So, resources are a consideration. But I think ideology is also an important issue. The Chinese government does not want to be seen as a repressive State that treats its culturally distinct minorities badly, and I think Chinese high officials regard such criticisms as bumps in the road on its quest to become an internationally recognized world leader, both in terms of its economic might, and in terms of its sort whirl of force in the world.

JEB SHARP: Gardner Bovington is a professor in the department of central Eurasian studies at Indiana University, he joined us from Taiwan. Thanks so much for talking to us.

GARDNER BOVINGTON: Thank you very much.

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JEB SHARP: The gambling industry is not immune from the current economic downturn. Gamblers are holding back. Casino revenues in Las Vegas, for example, have fallen for 17 straight months. But there’s at least one group of gamblers who seem to be bucking the trend, Asian Americans. The World’s Jason Margolis has our story.

JASON MARGOLIS: On any given day in Boston, about 50 buses depart from predominantly Asian neighborhoods.  Their destination, one of two casino resorts in Connecticut.

[SOUND CLIP OF AN ASIAN WOMAN SPEAKING]

JASON MARGOLIS: On the bus I took leaving from Boston’s Chinatown one morning, an old Chinese woman sits across the aisle from me. She looks through her horoscope book and assures me we’ll both be lucky today, our fortunes look good.  I’m the year of the Ox. She was born in the year of the dragon, 1928. For many Americans, a few hours spent gambling is a pleasure of adulthood.  For some Asian Americans, gambling is a path to adulthood.

TIMOTHY FONG: If you don’t gamble it’s seen as almost, well, you’re not quite willing to take a risk, therefore you’re not quite an adult yet.

JASON MARGOLIS: Psychiatrist Timothy Fong co-directs UCLA’s Gambling Studies Program.  He says in many Asian-American communities, dominoes, dice, and cards are part of the cultural DNA. People gamble at weddings, New Years and banquets.   For many Asians, gambling is a way to test destiny.

TIMOTHY FONG: To see what the ancestors have in store for us, or what the gods have pre-determined for us.

JASON MARGOLIS: Mix this cultural predisposition with more and more places to gamble. Then add in the recession, well what recession?  Asian Americans are still heading for the casinos. There’s no precise data on how Asian-American gambling habits may have changed in recent months.  But anecdotally, Chinatown buses in American cities are almost always filled to capacity.  In Boston, it’s best to book your ticket three days in advance.

[SOUND OF CASINO MACHINES]

JASON MARGOLIS: It takes close to an hour to walk through the sprawling Foxwoods casino. Its Web site claims it’s the biggest casino in the world.  Less than 10 miles away, there’s another casino almost as large. Marketing to Asians at these casinos is big business.  The Web sites are in English and Chinese. One section of the Foxwoods casino is dedicated entirely to Asian games, dominoes, Pai Gow Poker, and a dice game called Sic Bo. At the Sic Bo table, people born in countries like Vietnam, South Korea, and China are lined three and four deep, body to body, quietly straining forward to watch the action. Most of the people are in their 60′s or older. Just beyond the tables, some people are taking a break from the action in a noodle bar. They smoke cigarettes and read Asian newspapers. I strike up a conversation with Mr. Chen, who asks me not to use his first name.  He says he started coming here from Queens, New York after he got laid off as a driver.

MR. CHEN: Now I lost my job, I laid off, I may come two or three times a week. [LAUGHS] Because nothing to do in the house.

JASON MARGOLIS: Like many people here, Mr. Chen says he doesn’t actually come to gamble. If you take the bus, the casino gives you a $15 meal coupon and another $40 to play with at the tables.  A lot of people, like Mr. Chen, sell their coupons, at a discount, and go home with a few extra dollars in their pockets. Sometimes though, Mr. Chen says he’ll lay down a bet.

MR. CHEN: Yes, but I can gamble once or twice. I let you know, on Saturday I win 300 dollars. [LAUGHS]

JASON MARGOLIS: Another man I meet at the noodle bar, Ching-Wah Teng, comes to the casino three or four times a week from New York.  He works in construction, but he has little work these days.

CHING-WAH TENG: [SPEAKS IN CANTONESE]

JASON MARGOLIS: He says he comes to the casino to earn money. He’s been coming since last September and says he’s won enough money to feed himself.

CHING-WAH TENG:  [SPEAKS IN CANTONESE]

JASON MARGOLIS: As Ching-Wah Teng tells it, he only plays for an hour or so, using his coupons.  He spends the next five hours waiting for the bus ride home, chatting with new friends at the noodle bar. He says, if you play the whole day, inevitably, you’ll lose. He says he’s seen people lose a 1000 or 2000 dollars in a day. That’s no longer a fun day out.

CHIEN-CHI HUANG: Here we are in Chinatown right by the gate.

JASON MARGOLIS: Chien-Chi Huang works in Boston for the state-funded Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling.

CHIEN-CHI HUANG: See through the window here, you see the whole wall of the lottery.

JASON MARGOLIS: Inside a small grocery market, rolls of 40 different types of lottery tickets cascade down from the wall behind the cashier. In 43 states, there’s a lottery.  In 48, some form of gambling is allowed.  For most states, gambling revenues make up a small percentage of the state coiffeurs.  But as other tax revenues are down, states are depending more and more on gambling revenues. Those revenues are less reliable today. Industry insiders estimate that gambling receipts nationwide are down 20 to 30 percent. But people who are close to Asian American gamblers, don’t see this. Chien-Chi Huang says immigrants are still coming here from Asia. And like those before them, they gamble.

CHIEN-CHI HUANG: Here when they come to the new country, you know, you have all kinds of stress, like, you have to deal with, and plus the language and cultural barriers. So it’s very natural for them to turn to gambling as a way to escape, to seek excitement, to be entertained.

JASON MARGOLIS: Still, you might think that as people have less disposable income during a recession, at some point they’d be forced to slow down.  Not so, says Timothy Fong at UCLA who works with a lot of Asian American gambling addicts. He says even if gambling addicts have less money to play with, they’re still playing.

TIMOTHY FONG: They know they’re never going to win money, but they’re not attracted to it by the money. They’re attracted to it by the action, the scenery, the getting away from it all, the escape. The sights and sounds, the actual smell of the cards and the feel of the chips. If you have a gambling addiction problem, you’re always going to be in a recession. So whether the economy is doing better or worse, it almost doesn’t matter.

[SOUND CLIP FROM THE BUS TERMINAL]

JASON MARGOLIS: After a day at the tables in Connecticut, it’s time to take the two-hour bus ride back to Boston’s Chinatown. On board, we’re all still buzzing from the adrenalin rush.  Some of us swap stories about our day. Other people are quieter and downcast. I spot the old Chinese woman who told me at the beginning of the day that we’d have good luck.  I tell her I lost $40 and ask what happened?

[SOUND CLIP OF AN ASIAN WOMAN SPEAKING]

JASON MARGOLIS: She buries her nose in her horoscope book to find out.  Then she asks me about the location of my bedroom. I tell her it’s at the back of the apartment. Ah, that’s a problem, she says. She recommends changing rooms and also rotating my office furniture 180 degrees.  That should help, she says. As for her good fortune at the tables? She lost $200. For the World, I’m Jason Margolis.

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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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is the World. Cell phones are at the center of a brewing media scandal in Britain. The News of The World, a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, has allegedly been hacking into thousands of celebrity cell phones. The claims have been made by London’s Guardian newspaper. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow, singer George Michael, even London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, are said to be on the list of victims. The scandal is generating a lot of press on both sides of the Atlantic. We wondered how this sort of hacking is done. Our technology correspondent Clark Boyd joins me here in the studio. So Clark, you wanna get into my cell phone, get my phone messages, how do you do it?

CLARK BOYD: Well, I could just, first of all, do something like steal your cell phone. [LAUGHS] That would be one of the easiest ways to do it. Of course, that’s not really what you would consider hacking. Another thing I could do is more complicated and more costly, and gets into lots of gray legal territory, and that would be to wire tap, to actually intercept your phone calls. The other thing I could do is approach the cell phone provider, the company that provides your cell phone service, and somehow strike some kind of deal with them to get your messages, or intercept those phone calls.

JEB SHARP: And which of those is it in this case?

CLARK BOYD: Well Jeb, people are calling this hacking, but it’s really a case of hacking. And I think the best way I’ve heard it described so far is, by a private investigator named Ian Withers. And he’s the former head of the world association of private investigators. Here’s a little clip.

IAN WITHERS: What we’re talking about here is people that are phoning a mobile number, and getting through to the message desk, the voicemail. And where those people have not put their own pin number in, they’re able to access on the standard default pin number, the messages that have been left. That in effect is what has been happening.

JEB SHARP: And we should point out Clark, that it’s the allegation is that people like him have been doing this.

CLARK BOYD: (OVERLAPPING) That’s right.

JEB SHARP: (OVERLAPPING) They’re private investigators.

CLARK BOYD: (OVERLAPPING) Exactly, that the news of the world has private investigators who have been calling celebrities, keeping them on the line. And then somebody else calls that cell phone number of the celebrity, goes into their voicemail, and because the celebrity or whoever hasn’t changed that pin number to get into that voicemail, they put in the default that’s give out by the provider, and they’re in there listening to celebrity cell phone messages.

JEB SHARP: So, the lesson is go change your pin code, is it that simple?

CLARK BOYD: [LAUGHS] Yes, absolutely.

JEB SHARP: So just to be clear, when I get my voicemail on my phone right now, I don’t even put in a pin. So what’s the best way to change your pin?

CLARK BOYD: Well, depends on your service provider, but I would either contact them by phone, or go up on their website and they will walk you through the steps that you need to take, to actually change that access code for your voicemail. That would be the easiest way to do it.

JEB SHARP: The World’s technology correspondent, Clark Boyd, thanks so much.

CLARK BOYD: You’re welcome Jeb.

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.