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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. This is The World. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was in Nigeria today. This is a key stop for Clinton during her 11-day tour of Africa. Key for a number of reasons. Nigeria is considered a leader among African nations so it’s an important place for Mrs. Clinton to deliver her central message for the trip promoting good governance and democracy throughout Africa. Nigeria is also the fifth largest oil supplier to the United States. It’s also a place where there is frequent unrest. And then there’s this diplomatic challenge. Some Nigerians took offense last month after President Obama visited nearby Ghana but skipped their country. The BBC’s Caroline Duffield is in the Nigerian capital Abuja. She says it all made for a very delicate mission for Secretary Clinton.

CAROLINE DUFFIELD: People have been saying you know how she speaks to the Nigerian government will really set the tone for how the rest of the international community talks to Nigeria right now. A lot of diplomats, a lot of high-profile government figures in Abuja are very worried about the state of Nigeria, that there’s a perception here that there are more signs of deterioration then there are progress in Nigeria’s democracy. And so Hilary Clinton is very much walking a bit of a tight rope in that she’s clearly here to deliver a message about corruption, about good governance, about transparency, and about electoral reform. And she also is obviously is trying to sooth ruffled feelings as well.

WERMAN: I mean Obama is seen as the first US president with real ties to Africa. I’m wondering if this carries over to Mrs. Clinton because she is his Secretary of State. What’s the tone of the meetings been like in Nigeria so far?

DUFFIELD: Well so far we’ve only heard about what’s been happening with the foreign minister who she met this morning. And also with senior senators and ministers and a lot of people I spoke to who were in the meeting with her came out rather surprised and relieved. One senior senator said to me, “It was lovely. It was a pleasure. It was like meeting an old family friend.” And when we saw all the press conferences and things she had to say she went out of her way to express great appreciation for Nigeria. She went out of the way so that Nigeria was a friend and ally, an important country, that America needs a strong energy relationship with. Albeit she did deliver her strong message that Nigeria needs to sort out its problems with corruption. This is an issue that taints life here. See she delivered quite a clear, albeit gentle, message about that. And she also said it was very necessary for Nigeria to embark on a proper process of electoral reform by the 2011 elections. So it was a muted message but it was clear and it was there. What she says in private may be rather stronger.

WERMAN: Secretary Clinton also praised President Yar’Adua for aiming to strike an amnesty with rebels in the Niger Delta where a lot of oil reserves are located. And as you say she’s also distanced herself from the leadership in Nigeria with these messages about corruption. That being the main issue – corruption in Nigeria – what can the US actually do to stem corruption in Nigeria?

DUFFIELD: That’s interesting. Sort of a lot of Nigerians do want to see America deliver a strong clear message to their own government. There’s a huge amount of money missing from this country. Political leaders, state governors, former military leaders, have taken huge amounts of Nigeria’s oil revenue out of the country and taken it aboard. Much of it is thought to be held in Swiss Banks. And people in the opposition would like to see the international community take a very robust line with helping them to track down money that is owed to Nigeria that should come back to this country. The other thing that they want to see of course is investment. And this goes back to Barack Obama’s comments in Ghana. The president said you know no country, no businessman, wants to invest in a country where the government routinely skims 20% off the top. And that is a situation that oil companies face in Nigeria right now. So that needs a whole change in culture in this country. And how do you change this issue of corruption that is a rot in the system in virtually every bank and virtually every public body and virtually every sector of the economy in this country.

WERMAN: Caroline you mentioned the dynamic of oil in Nigeria but there are any number of countries in Africa that suffer from corruption to a large degree. Why should corruption in Nigeria matter more than anywhere else? Is it simply the fact that Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa? It’s a matter of scale?

DUFFIELD: I think that’s certainly a part of it but I think also the sheer amount of money to be made in Nigeria is stunning. The problems in the Niger Delta are really fueled by this illegal oil bunkering industry. You have militant groups tapping into oil pipes and basically stealing crude oil. The problem is that the oil that is stolen benefits directly many senior political figures in this country and it is hard to see the incentive that anyone in this country has for bringing about peace and for ending this cycle of corruption in this country that makes so many people so rich.

WERMAN: The BBC’s Caroline Duffield in Abuja Nigeria’s capital. Thank you so much for your time.

DUFFIELD: You’re welcome.

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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: Yesterday Hillary Clinton was in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She traveled east to a war zone to speak out against rampant sexual violence there. But she also focused on the causes of the conflict. That includes Congo’s lucrative minerals trade. Armed groups in the east fight to control the mines and then use the proceeds to fund their operations. The World’s Jeb Sharp reports.

JEB SHARP: Congo’s mineral wealth is legendary. Its mines supply some of the most valuable metals in the world including tungsten, tin, and coltan. And the United Nations as well as advocacy groups have long documented the way the trade in minerals there fuels the conflict in the eastern part of the country. Colin Thomas-Jensen is with the advocacy group Enough.

COLIN THOMAS JENSEN: The lack of state authority coupled with abundant natural wealth in Congo allows armed groups to control mines, to control taxation routes, and to make tons of money. And in the case of eastern Congo we estimate that armed groups make anywhere from $100 to $180 million last year from taxation and trade in illegal minerals.

SHARP: And Thomas-Jensen says there’s a good chance that some of those minerals are ending up in your cell phone.

THOMAS-JENSEN: Every time your cell phone vibrates the vibration is helped and caused by a little piece of tungsten. That’s what tungsten’s used for. Tin is used for solder to hold electronic parts together. And coltan, or tantalum, is a critical element in cell phone batteries.

SHARP: So when Hillary Clinton called on the international community yesterday to start looking at steps to try to prevent the mineral wealth of the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence advocacy groups were heartened. Amy Barry is with the group Global Witness in London.

AMY BARRY: Even before she arrived, Secretary Clinton’s choice of countries was important. We were struck by the fact that a number of countries that she visited were effected in one way or another by what’s known as the resource curse. So when did she did speak about the issue of minerals, mineral wealth in the DRC, as an underlying driver of the conflict, that was something that we do see a form of progress.

SHARP: Global Witness has been documenting the problem of so-called conflict minerals for a long time. The group put out a new report on Congo just last month. According to Barry the report showed that all the armed groups in eastern Congo, including the national army, are involved in the mines. And yet the issue is rarely discussed in coverage of the conflict she says.

AMY BARRY: Often the focus of press reports or political dialogue on the conflict in the DRC is around political differences between the groups of between the countries, Rwanda and the DRC for example, or ethnic divisions. In actual fact Global Witness has been saying for a long time that the underlying economic drivers, this vast natural resources wealth, is something that really must be addressed if the conflict is going to come to an end.

SHARP: As for those steps Clinton mentioned, Barry says companies buying, trading, and processing minerals as well as end users like computer and cell phone manufacturers should find out where their minerals are coming from. She says governments can take steps to make sure that happens as well as help the government of the DRC take back control of the industry inside its own borders. And of course consumers themselves can put pressure on both governments and companies. Again, Colin Thomas-Jensen of Enough.

THOMAS-JENSEN: The best way to put pressure on any industry is through consumers and I think what we’re starting to see, and it’s early yet, what we’re starting to see in the United States is a growing number of people who are aware of the situation in eastern Congo, appalled by it and who are learning about this connection between the trade and conflict minerals and consumer electronics. The minerals that are fueling this war are components, are critical elements of cell phones, laptops, mp3 players.

SHARP: What Thomas-Jensen doesn’t want is for companies to simply pull up stakes and take their trade elsewhere as some companies have already done. The idea isn’t to boycott minerals from eastern Congo, or have a moratorium on mining there; that only hurts the Congolese. What advocates do want is for companies to make sure any minerals they do buy aren’t passing through tainted hands, much as the diamond industry learned to avoid the so-called blood diamonds from West Africa that once fueled conflict there. For The World, I’m Jeb Sharp.

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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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: Diamonds are big news in Britain this week. The country’s biggest jewelry heist has netted thieves about $65 million worth of glittering broaches, earrings, and necklaces. The theft took place in broad daylight on a busy London street. New images of the brazen robbery have just been released. The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

LAURA LYNCH: A passerby with a cell phone recorded the chaotic sound and images of the crime on one of London’s swankiest shopping streets. Two men emerged from Graff’s jewelers clutching guns and a female employee.

[SOUND CLIP OF GUNSHOT]

A shot fired into the ground stirred more panic as the bandits made their getaway leaving their hostage behind unharmed. The robbery appears to have been well planned – the target carefully chosen.

[MUSIC]

Graff’s website is all about celebrating glitz and glamour. Lush orchestral music is laid over images of what it says are the most fabulous jewels in the world and they adorn some of the world’s most famous women – TV’s Opera Winfrey, heiress Paris Hilton, and British actress Emma Thompson to name a few. So Graff’s wouldn’t just welcome anyone into its shop off the street would it? Former Scotland Yard Detective Peter Bleksley says yes it just might.

PETER BLEKSLEY: Unlike some other shops that are at the high end of the retail market this shop does not exclusively do its viewings by appointment. That’s what some other shops do. If you want to go in there you’ve got to make an appointment. Your identity will be checked and they use that as additional security measures.

LYNCH: The two robbers strolled into Graff’s last Thursday afternoon their faces clearly captured on security cameras. Once inside they pulled out their guns and threatened the staff. They then began plucking jewels out of display cases. Within minutes they were out the door and into what police say were a series of getaway cars. While one man has been arrested there’s no suggestion police have recovered the loot. Bleksley senses many people are quietly admiring the robbers and their ability to pull it off.

BLEKSLEY: It serves only to aggravate me really. I mean the media and films such as Ocean’s 11 and the Italian Job and the list – all those sort of jobs you know that glamorize the honest blaggard if you will. Well really that’s just frankly ridiculous and if any of us want to ask the poor female employee who was taken hostage in effect, dragged out onto the street, and a gunshot was let off in very close proximity to her… If anybody would like to ask her this morning just how glamorous she feels it was. I would be very interested.

LYNCH: Neither or anyone else at Graff’s is saying much of anything today. Police call this the biggest jewelry heist in British history. The second biggest? At the same store just six years ago. The company won’t reveal whether it’s learned a lesson and is changing its security procedures in order to ensure it hangs on to what remains of it precious gems. For The World I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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.

Click here to watch a video of the Afghan National Water Polo Team

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. US Marines today launched an assault on a Taliban-held village in southern Afghanistan. The assault was part of a larger effort to secure as much of the country as possible ahead of presidential elections on August 20^th. Nearly everything that happens in Afghanistan right now is happening with those elections in mind. But there’s another selection process taking place that many Afghans are not aware of. Afghan sports officials are busy choosing the 30 members of the country’s national water polo team. They hope the team can be ready to compete in the 2016 Olympic Games. The World’s Aaron Schachter reports.

AARON SCHACHTER: About 50 boys and young men splash around in a pool that would probably be dwarfed by one in your average Beverly Hills backyard. Afghanistan’s national water polo team used to practice here until it ran out of money to hire the pool for two hours each afternoon.

ROHULLAH MAROUF: [SPEAKING DARI]

TRANSLATOR: When we first founded the water polo team we didn’t have a swimming pool so a lot of people were making fun of us – what are you talking about? A water polo team without a swimming pool? You guys don’t have a pool and you have established this team of water polo. What kind of message you are sending to the people?

SCHACHTER: That’s Rohullah Marouf, president of the Afghan Swimming Federation. I suggest that perhaps his job doesn’t keep him very busy.

MAROUF: [LAUGHS AND SPEAKING IN DARI]

TRANSLATOR: For eight years I was the secretary general of the Karate Federation of Afghanistan. We didn’t have anything. We basically start from the scratch. And now the karate Federation is one of the best among the federations within the Afghan Olympics. So we are now again starting from the scratch and I’m optimistic.

SCHACHTER: The thing is karate can be done just about anywhere. Water polo needs a slightly more specific playing surface. Marouf estimates there are 30 swimming pools in all of Afghanistan, a country of just under 25 million people and not a single indoor facility. It’s a luxury to say the least to fill swimming pools when so many in the country don’t have clean water to drink. But Marouf is right when he talks about overcoming odds. Afghan Rohullah Nikpai won a bronze metal in Tai Kwon Do at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The Afghan water polo team began last summer after that win with 30 guys under the tutelage of an American coach. Marouf says 200 people will show up for the next set of tryouts but not many people here know the team exists.

Did you know that there’s an Afghan water polo team? Do you even know what water polo is?

MOHAMMED NASIR: No.

SCHACHTER: How old are you?

NASIR: I am 23 years old.

SCHACHTER: Do you swim?

NASIR: Yes a little.

SCHACHTER; Mohammed Nasir is a broad-shouldered kid who I offer up as a promising member of the new team. Rohullah Marouf says a lot of kids like him who splash around in a pool think they’d be good at water polo. It takes more dedication than most are willing to give. Regular practice, when it happens, is 10 hours a week in Kabul. Five of the best current team members live eight hours away. And there’s no pay and no glory – at least not for the foreseeable future. But there is potentially immediate perk. The idea is for the athletes who win spots on the team at this month’s tryouts to head to California in the fall for training assuming the team can find the expense money and secure visas. For The World I’m Aaron Schachter, Kabul, Afghanistan.

WERMAN: You can see a short video featuring Afghanistan’s water polo wannabes at The World dot org.

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: More poolside news now. An amusement park in the UK has taken a bold step in the interest of public decency. It’s banned skimpy swimwear, particularly the Speedo-style for men. You know the itsy bitsy ones. Here’s The World’s Alex Gallafent.

ALEX GALLAFENT: The amusement park in question is Alton Towers. And I asked Morwenna Angove, the sales and marketing director at Alton Towers, to give me the skinny on their new policy.

MORWENNA ANGOVE: [LAUGHS] I like the fun. Okay the skinny is we have a fantastic water park here at the resort and with the great weather we’ve been experiencing over the last week or so it had come to light through our lifeguards that a number of ladies and gentlemen were wearing quite skimpy swimwear. Most of our guests are families and particularly in the water park they are younger families and we were getting an increasing amount of feedback saying that they felt some of the swimwear being worn by other guests was inappropriate. So we took the step on Monday to ban tight trunks and thong booty strings in the water park. Certainly for the [INAUDIBLE] period of the summer holidays [INAUDIBLE] young families.

GALLAFENT: How do you determine whether or not trunks are tight or too tight? I mean presumably some trunks are righter on some individuals and looser on others.

ANGOVE: Yeah it’s tight and skimpy. And we’ve put the team in the water park through some role model training so they’ve got a very good idea now of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

GALLAFENT: It may sound prudish but Ms. Angove assured me it was all business. If paying guests don’t want to see a waterlog display of personal assets then they shouldn’t have to. And that’s not all.

ANGOVE: A number of complaints that we had would you believe related to excess genital hair being on display.

GALLAFENT: Heavens.

ANGOVE: So we are actually offering complimentary bikini area waxing for gentlemen. If they wish to take us up on that they can.

GALLAFENT: Goodness me.

ANGOVE: Have you ever had it done?

GALLAFENT: Elsewhere skimpy swimming attire is de rigueur – mandatory in fact. In France it’s long swimming shorts that are banned. But only in public pools. The thinking is that board shorts and the like are more prone to picking up sand, dust, and other matter then more skimpy swimwear. That disturbs the water quality. So in France Speedos rule. But why stop there? Apart from the reasonable complaint that further discussion of the matter only makes more concrete in the mind those dignity defying images. One more place. The amusement park Alton Towers says that tight swimwear is “more suited to Spain that Staffordshire.” Staffordshire is more or less in the middle of England. So for our final destination we turn to Christina Ortiz who works at Casa de Campo, a public swimming pool in Madrid.

CHRISTINA ORTIZ: You can wear Speedos of you can wear shorts. You can wear I mean even a tanga if you want to.

GALLAFENT: A tanga is, I think, a type of thong worn by women and men. So really what Ortiz is saying is that in Spain anything goes.

ORTIZ: I mean you have to cover your sexual parts but even the girls can do topless.

GALLAFENT: In public swimming pools?

ORTIZ: Yeah.

GALLAFENT: Wow. And how often does that happen?

ORTIZ: All the time. People are used to it and I think, yeah, we’re more comfortable with the body than in other countries.

GALLAFENT: Americans take note. Next time you pack your bags for Europe you’ll need Speedos, board shorts, or in England a full-body wet suit and if you wouldn’t mind awfully. For The World I’m Alex Gallafent.

WERMAN: Now that’s what I call coverage. So do you Speedo or do you prefer shall we say a bit more coverage? It’s a kind of variation on the boxers versus briefs question. What’s your experience with the great Speedo debate? Just visit The World dot org and join our discussion on appropriate swimwear. Again that’s at The World dot org.

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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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. Rio Tinto is a mining conglomerate with operations and customers everywhere in the world. China is a veracious customer of minerals from just about everywhere in the world. The two are tangled in a case involving industrial espionage and corruption. For more than a month four Rio Tinto employees had been detained in China under investigation for stealing state secrets. Today they were formally charged with lesser offenses, bribery, and stealing commercial secrets. As The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports from Beijing the case has worried foreign investors in China.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: No one ever said it was easy to invest in China. The World Bank’s Doing Business project ranks China 83^rd out 181 economies in terms of its regulatory environment for business. But Arthur Kroeber, who heads the Dragonomics economic consulting firm in Beijing, says up until the Rio Tinto case foreign investors in China did feel they could take certain things for granted.

ARTHUR KROEBER: China has been quite effective in creating a predictable environment for businesses to operate in. In other words sometimes there are legal grey areas but you don’t have capricious changes of the environment from one moment to the next. You don’t tend to have expropriations and things like that. So even though there’s problems in the legal environment predictability of the policy environment has been pretty much a given for a long time.

MAGISTAD: And then came the detention in early July of Rio Tinto’s chief negotiator in Shanghai. Chinese-born Australian citizen Stern Hu and three of his Chinese coworkers. The detention came shortly after Rio Tinto pulled out of a deal that would have given a Chinese state-owned aluminum company a major stake in its operations.

KROEBER: And people were beginning to ask definitely, has China turned into Russia which is a place where there is no predictability and there’s a much lower sense of security of your investments?

MAGISTAD: The immediate question for observers was had laws been broken or was this act of revenge because of a business deal gone sour? Only the Chinese prosecutor’s office knows for sure and it’s not talking. Nor have the detained Rio Tinto employees been able to see a lawyer because of the state secret charges against them up until today. The head of Rio Tinto’s iron ore group, Sam Walsh, expressed some relief today to Australia’s ABC television that at least the charges against his employees have been downgraded from one that potentially carries the death penalty.

SAM WALSH: I think that reflects what we’ve been saying all along – that we don’t in fact believe that there’s any evidence of wrongdoing. We believe that we have a code of conduct and that our employees have followed that.

MAGISTAD: Some members of the Chinese government seem to hope the downgraded charges, even though they still carry a maximum potential sentence of seven years in a Chinese prison, will help make tensions go away. Vice Minister of Commerce Fu Ziying spoke at a news conference today.

FU ZIYING: [SPEAKING CHINESE]

TRANSLATOR: The case showed the government’s determination to create a competitive, open, and fair market environment in China. I think this isolated case should not hurt the healthy development of Sino-Australian trade ties.

MAGISTAD: But it may anyway. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made it clear last month that this case could indeed effect China’s reputation as a trade partner in Australia and beyond.

KEVIN RUDD: A range of foreign governments and corporations will be watching this case with interest and be watching it very closely and they’ll be drawing their own conclusions as to how it is conducted.

MAGISTAD: China’s initial response was to say the Australian government should stop meddling in the case. But yesterday the US State Department spokesman said American businesses are watching closely too. While no big investors are pulling out of China just yet some say this case means new ones coming in will have to think a little harder about the risks of doing business here. For The World I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

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: In Brazil it’s the host of a popular TV crime show who is in trouble with the authorities. The show is a sort of America’s Most Wanted meets reality TV. It covers crimes in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. The host under investigation for allegedly ordering some of the very crimes his program featured. The BBC’s Gary Duffy has been covering this story from Sao Paolo. Gary who is this TV host and what exactly has he been accused of?

GARY DUFFY: Well the man in question is called Wallace Souza and essentially he is a politician and a TV host. He’s been elected at least three times to the local state assembly in the state of Amazonas. Quite a popular figure. At least a couple of times he was elected with the most votes in the state. He presents this kind of show which is not untypical of what you see about crime on Brazilian television. Reporters going right to the scene – quite sort of graphic accounts of crimes and murders and violence. And he was the presenter back in the studio giving a very trenchant, aggressive denunciation of crime and violence in Brazilian society. But now the police are alleging that in fact he and his son were actually ordering killings and he’s suspected of being involved in at least five killings that were reported on his program. And the police were questioning why television crews were arriving so quickly at the scene of some of these incidents.

WERMAN: Is there any hard evidence to link Wallace Souza to these murders?

DUFFY: You know certainly he is saying that there’s not any substantial evidence to back the allegations that are being made by the police, no. The police did do a search of his house and said they found more than $150,000 in various currencies and they also found some ammunition that was of restricted category that was not only I think restricted to the people like the police or the military and as well as that a list of high caliber weapons sort of written down on a bit of paper. What he’s saying essentially that these allegations are completely absurd. That why would this program, which is so popular, have to do something like this in order to boost its ratings?

WERMAN: And where’s Wallace Souza now? I mean he’s a lawmaker. Is he still acting as a legislator?

DUFFY: Yes he is. The program itself is discontinued but there’s kind of a byproduct of after the military dictatorship in Brazil there was a very liberal constitution and one of the things they did I think to protect lawmakers is that they have a kind of immunity. So currently he has immunity from arrest. That situation potentially can change I suppose if the state assembly were to consider the matter. But at the moment his son has been arrested. His son also protesting his innocence. But Wallace is at the moment still a free man.

WERMAN: An ironic situation considering Wallace Souza began his career as a law enforcement officer.

DUFFY: Yes he was at one stage involved in the police and very proudly boasts of that here when he said once when I became a police officer in 1979 bandits or criminals weren’t allied in this city. No way he said. But he was according to the police version of events again fired for involvement in scams involving fuel theft and pension fraud. So yes it is certainly a turnaround in events if he’s under suspicion now of being involved in organizing killings.

WERMAN: The BBC’s Gary Duffy in Sao Paolo. Gary thank you for speaking with us.

DUFFY: You’re very 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.

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MARCO WERMAN: These are tough economic times and a lot of companies are struggling to cope. But our next story is about a business that’s doing quite well. Our focus is Rosetta Stone, the makers of language-learning software. They offer a very old product but it’s delivered in a very modern way. The World’s Jason Margolis took a linguistic test drive.

JASON MARGOLIS: For six years I slogged through Spanish classes. I’m sad to report that today my Spanish is pretty rudimentary. So the folks at Rosetta Stone suggested a refresher course.

[SOUND CLIP OF SPANISH WORDS]

DUANE SIDER: Hola.

MARGOLIS: That last voice belongs to Duane Sider, Rosetta Stone’s director of learning. He gives me a tutorial of the product.

[SOUND CLIP OF SPANISH WORDS]

MARGOLIS: The software program starts by introducing some simple vocabulary. Colorful photos pop up on the screen and we’re supposed to match the picture with the spoken word. The program also has us repeat words into a microphone to practice pronunciation. In a matter of minutes we’re stringing together very basic sentences.

[SOUND CLIP OF SPANISH WORDS]

MARGOLIS: This was easy for someone with my Spanish background and pretty fun. The software is a thousand times more engaging than the audio tapes I was forced to listen to during language lab in college. Even the hardest levels were actually enjoyable. Rosetta Stone rejects the drill-and-kill approach, memorizing lists of lists of vocab. It also downplays studying grammar. Instead says Duane Sider the software uses an immersion technique trying to mimic the way we acquire language as children.

SIDER: Being completely surrounded by the language that you are learning – and for an adult it means not using your first language or languages to supply the meaning – but rather in the way that you learned your first language, to use the context, the context of images and the context of the world around you.

MARGOLIS: This learning philosophy is catching on. Rosetta Stone’s sales are booming. The company recently reported an 18% jump in quarterly revenues from last year. Business was going so well that despite the worst recession in two generations the company went public in April.

TOM ADAMS: We were feeling good about the business and so we said okay let’s go.

MARGOLIS: That’s Rosetta Stone’s CEO Tom Adams.

ADAMS: We’ve added an office in London, one in Tokyo. This year we’re adding an office in Germany and one in Korea.

MARGOLIS: There’s a simple reason why Rosetta Stone is bucking the economy says investment banker Ed Meehan with Arcady Bay Partners: The education business thrives during times of recession.

ED MEEHAN: You have more people saying gee things aren’t going well maybe I should become a nurse, maybe I should get my four-year degree in accounting, maybe I want to learn a trade.

MARGOLIS: Or perhaps a new language. Besides selling to individuals Rosetta Stone also contracts with some 10,000 schools, the US government, and the army. Those contracts are about as recession proof as you can get. Analysts say effective marketing got Rosetta Stone to this point surpassing long-time US market leader Berlitz. Georgetown linguistics professor Alison Mackey says you can hardly walk through a suburban mall these days without being accosted by a Rosetta Stone representative.

ALISON MACKEY: The marketing is very slick and the product is very nicely designed.

MARGOLIS: But is it better than other similar products? Mackey can’t say.

MACKEY: So far controlled experimental studies which have pretests and posttests have not been done. So we don’t know yet too much about the actual claims for learning.

MARGOLIS: Many language teachers grumble about Rosetta Stone and other computer-based training programs. They say a computer is a poor substitute for a real person who can answer questions. Rosetta Stone has recently begun offering online chatting and coaching with native speakers. I wanted to try out more than just Spanish the Rosetta Stone way. I chose Russian. I don’t speak a word of Russian.

[SOUND CLIP OF RUSSIAN WORDS]

Now this was a challenge. Much of the time I felt like I was blindly guessing at the meaning of words, which by the way appeared on screen in Cyrillic script. I was learning something though.

[SOUND CLIP OF RUSSIAN WORDS]

A few days after my lesson that word – debechka – had stuck in my brain. It means girl. Still studying beginning Russian is frustrating and hard. Not nearly as enjoyable as a Spanish refresher. When I told linguistics professor Alison Mackey about my experience she wasn’t surprised. She says there’s a range of language learners from holistic to analytical. Holistic learners thrive in an e=immersion setting, analytical people like lists and rules. I’m one of those people.

MACKEY: You enjoyed the Spanish because you already knew some of it and you had a framework with which to understand what it was you were being presented with. But with zero beginning Russian with a complete immersion method – maybe not the best tool for you.

MARGOLIS: Mackey says the best way to learn a new language is the same as it’s always been – go live in a place where that language is spoken. If you can supplement that with classroom learning, all the better. For those who can’t afford to move to a new country there have never been so many new ways to learn a language. For example there are countless language podcasts – many available for free. And despite her concerns for Rosetta Stone Mackey isn’t dismissing the product.

MACKEY: I’m not saying don’t use it all together. I’m saying if you really wanted to learn Russian take a class, get a textbook, listen to some iPod broadcasts from people who are teaching Russian, look at some vocab lists, and use the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is one of a number of important tools in the learner’s tool box.

MARGOLIS: So when Rosetta Stone CEO Tom Adams says something like this…

ADAMS: It’s changing the way people learn languages.

MARGOLIS: It may be a bit of a stretch. But if sales are anything to go by Rosetta Stone has got a lot of people excited about language learning and maybe even practicing their new skills. For those who do plunk down a few hundred dollars for the Rosetta Stone software it may be a bit like joining a gym – once you’ve made the down payment you become more committed to getting in shape and getting your money’s wroth, perhaps. For The World I’m Jason Margolis.

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