Today on The World: Why the Pentagon is asking a PR firm to rate the work of reporters embedded with US military forces; we hear about the violence and chaos that have made Somalia the prime example of a failed state. Plus, why IKEA customers in China spend so much time in the store — but seldom buy anything.

Iran’s Supreme Leader is raising doubts about allegations that the U-S and Britain were behind the street protests that rocked the country after June elections. The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

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KATY CLARK:  I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad may be the official president of Iran… But the violent protests that followed his re-election in June continue to reverberate.  Ahmedinejad and other hardliners have claimed the U.S. and Britain played a direct role in the protests that paralyzed the country. Now Iran’s supreme leader is raising doubts about that claim.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

LAURA LYNCH: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei chose an audience of students to reveal his latest thoughts on the protests that swept through Iran after the election.  Khameini sent a message to those who suggest the opposition leaders were guided by Western nations.

AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI: I am not accusing the involved people of being foreign agents, such as agents of the U.S. or Britain.  I’m not making such a claim because such a thing has not been proven to me.  I can’t make a claim about something that hasn’t been proven.

LAURA LYNCH: One of the people who went to the streets, he asked to be called Akbar, says Khamenei is saying what those in the opposition already know.

AKBAR: There was never absolutely no outside influence whatsoever.  I was on the streets day after day.  This was Iran; this was the public, this was discontentment, in all its aspects appearing that this is what is so alarming for the government as a leader.  This is an internal issue where the public is outraged by what is happening.

LAURA LYNCH: Khamenei has been struggling to maintain his once-iron grip on power in Iran.  Before the election, no one dared question him.  He stayed above the political fray.  But in the tumult that followed the vote, Khamenei openly backed President Ahmedinejad.  Now the supreme leader is facing more and more open criticism.  The most recent comes from Iran’s most senior dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hoeseein Ali Montazeri – he has labeled  Khameini’s Iran a dictatorship.  Trita Parsi of the Iranian American Council says Khameini has good reason to try to mollify the opposition.

TRITA PARSI: First and foremost is the fact that the factional infighting in Iran has reached such a tremendously bitter level that it’s actually a risk to the system as a whole, and at some level I think Khamenei is interested in trying to reduce the escalation.  On the other hand, he’s also eager to rebuild his credibility as someone that is standing above party politics, something that he used to be viewed as but after the way that he handled the elction crisis and the election fraud, he has lost much of that credibility, if not all of it

LAURA LYNCH: Khameini’s comments also come in the midst of trials of dozens of activists and politicians who have made statements in court that foreign agents were involved in creating unrest.  Rights groups say the confessions were coerced and the trials tainted. Shaul Bakash is professor of Middle Eastern Studies at George Mason University in Virginia

SHAUL BAKASH: He has had to respond in some way to the harsh criticism in Iran of the show trials that are taking place at the moment and the attempt to accuse also the leaders of the political parties opposed to the present government.  But at the same time he seems to be saying that something untoward took place in Iran with the cooperation of Iranians.  He doesn’t specifiy who in the troubles that followed the elections.

LAURA LYNCH: And indeed Khameini also spoke about the involvement of Iran’s enemies, as he called them, and he condemned opposition leaders for publicly claiming that those in jail have been abused.   Bakash says the mixed signals mean little will actually change in the coming days and weeks.

SHAUL BAKASH: So it’s not at all clear to me that this message will bring to an end the trial that is now underway in Tehran of several of the leaders of the two opposition political parties.

LAURA LYNCH: If Khameini is hoping to bring the opposition back into line, he may have more work to do.  For his part, Akbar  thinks the Supreme Leader has lost too much authority, it will be almost impossible for him to hold on to power

SHAUL BAKASH: I think it’s too little, too late to diffuse what is going on.  He’s against the walls.  There is this massive opposition within the clerical establishment against him, within the bazaar and within the populate.

LAURA LYNCH: Khameini isn’t showing signs of stepping down, but the divisions within Iran aren’t going away; neither are the challenges to the once unquestioned Supreme Leader.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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The military newspaper “Stars & Stripes” reports that the Pentagon has asked a public relations firm to profile journalists embedded with U.S. forces and rate the tone of their coverage. Anchor Katy Clark finds out more from “Stars and Stripes” editor Howard Witt.

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KATY CLARK: For many news organizations, including this one, covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan means sometimes sending reporters to be embedded with U.S. military forces.  It turns out that those reporters are being reported on themselves.  The Pentagon has hired a Washington-based public relations firm to profile the work of journalists seeking embed assignments.  These profiles examine the work of individual reporters, and they evaluate them on the basis of whether they’re positive, negative or neutral stories.  Stars and Stripes broke this story and Howard Witt is an editor there.  Howard, in my own experience covering the military, I mean, I’ve just come to expect some kind of screening is par for the course.  Does this vetting process we’re talking about here go beyond straightforward due diligence?

HOWARD WITT: Well, it does appear to.  It’s certainly the case that the Pentagon would say that they’re just doing ordinary screening, but in fact, the real question is what are they doing with this information?  They’re not merely reviewing the work of reporters and rating it according to how positive it is towards the military, but they also are getting advise from this Renden Group that they’ve contracted with as to how to use that information to basically shape the embeds, the information that they’re going to give reporters access to try to basically manipulate the outcome of their stories.

KATY CLARK: And the Renden Group, this PR firm we mentioned has a bit of a controversial track record, doesn’t it?

HOWARD WITT: It does indeed.  That was the group that helped establish an Iraqi opposition group in the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003.  The group is called the Iraqi National Congress.  That group ended up supplying a lot of the information which subsequently turned out to be false regarding the alleged weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was supposedly hiding and which gave the Bush administration a lot of its pretext for launching the invasion.

KATY CLARK: So Howard, the implication here is that the Pentagon might be influencing coverage of the military and its conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. Have you found evidence of that?

HOWARD WITT: Well, we have first-hand evidence of what happens if you don’t write stories that please the military.  We ourselves had a reporter named Heath Druesen [ph] who was refused permission to embed with an Army unit in Mosul, Iraq several months ago.  And the stated reason was because he was not writing stories that were highlighting positive good news that the Army wanted highlighted.

KATY CLARK: So was he eventually able to go?  Were you able to work that out or send another –

HOWARD WITT: No.  We sent him elsewhere, but this particular unit he was not able to join this unit despite our strong protests over this

KATY CLARK: So what has the Pentagon response been to your reporting here.

HOWARD WITT: Well, today they continue to insist that they’re not making any nefarious use of these profiles, but they are at least acknowledging that they exists, kind of a frenzy was set off among the Pentagon reports today.  They’re all demanding their own profiles because they want to see what the Pentagon has been anything about them, and the Pentagon is now conceding, apparently, that they are going to re-examine this whole thing.  So we’ll have to see where it goes.

KATY CLARK: I find this odd because the idea of an embed was designed initially to improve news coverage in the first place and this is changing the way your news organization is covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

HOWARD WITT: Well, you’re exactly right.  And in fact, when these embeds were originally invented under the Bush administration, under previous secretary Rumsfeld, they were explicitly described by the Pentagon as not being subject to any kind of interference in the type of coverage or the tone of coverage.  It was strictly to facilitate U.S. reporters to cover the on the ground action of the U.S. Armed Forces.  But something happened between then and now, apparently, where the military seems to be treating these now somewhat differently.

KATY CLARK: Do you know when this type of screening of reporters first began?

HOWARD WITT: We don’t know when it first began, although we have seen some of these profiles dating back at least to October of last year.  There’s suggestions that it’s been going on a lot longer than that, but we don’t know for sure.

KATY CLARK: I understand that you’ve actually seen some of these files that the Pentagon has on reports.  What’s in them?

HOWARD WITT: Well, they contain — they all are kind of similar form.  They have kind of a bar graph or a pie chart, which looks at the stories that reporters did and rates them according to whether they are “positive, negative or neutral.”  And then there’s a whole narrative secants for each person in which the Renden folks described the tenor of that reporter’s coverage, whether it’s been positive or negative or neutral, and make recommendations as to the ways to what they neutralize negative reporting.

KATY CLARK: Howard Will is an editor at Stars and Stripes. He spoke with us from Washington. Thank you.

HOWARD WITT: My pleasure.

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After the death of a prominent Russian poet, The World’s Alex Gallafent reports on the changing shape of Russia’s national anthem.

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KATY CLARK:  You could say that poet Sergei Mikhalkov was embedded in Russian history.  Mikhlakov died today in Moscow at the age of 96.  He was best known for writing lyrics for this tune.  It’s the national anthem of Russia.  It was also the anthem of the old Soviet Union.  Mikhalkov wrote different lyrics for each.  The World’s Alex Gallafent has more.

ALEX GALLAFENT: The story of Russia’s national anthem doesn’t begin with Sergei Mikhalkov.  For that, we go back to this:  God Save the Tsar was Russia’s national anthem from the early 1830s.  The words are kind of what you’d expect.  ‘God save the noble Tsar!  Long may he live,’ et cetera, et cetera, standard stuff.  And it worked fine – until 1917, when revolution entered the bloodstream.  By 1922, a workers’ anthem was in the throats of Russians: The Internationale.  “No one will grant us deliverance”, rang the words.  “Not god, nor Tsar, nor hero.”  But a hero figure due did emerge, at least in Soviet propaganda: Josef Stalin, and the hero needed an anthem.  The Hymn of the Bolshevik Party was written in 1939.  Its words praised the Party of Lenin, the party of Stalin, wise party of Bolsheviks.  But Stalin commissioned new lyrics from the late Sergei Mikhalkov.  The new anthem was unveiled in 1944.  Here it is in an English translation recorded the following year.  And yes, this is the American Paul Robeson singing – a longtime supporter of the Soviet experiment.  Stalin’s cult of personality made a name-check necessary, but when he died in 1953, the Soviet Union began to de-Stalinize the country.  That included the national anthem.  For the next couple of decades, the Soviet Union did without lyrics, but in 1977, Sergei Mikhalkov popped up again.  This time he left Stalin out and focused on Lenin.  Now the refrain referred to the Party of Lenin, the strength of our peoples and Communism’s triumph.  That’s how it stayed until the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s.  Boris Yeltsin scrapped the old anthem, replacing it with a tune by the 19th century composer Mikhail Glinka.  Yeltsin held a competition for lyrics.  Here’s the winner:  Save your breath.  Yeltsin was out of power before

the words had been officially unveiled.  Vladimir Putin took over; he brought back the old tune, and for a third time, the state turned to Sergei Mikhalkov for new lyrics.  The current refrain goes, “Be glorious, our free Fatherland, long lasting union of brotherly peoples, common wisdom given by our forebears.  Be glorious, our country, we are proud of you!”  National anthems are meant to sound like they’ve existed for all of time; they’re bits of musical mythology.  But old tunes have a habit of cropping up in strange places.  Take the one we started with, God Save the Tsar.  Over here the tune has another home:

The University of Pennsylvania.  For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent.

KATY CLARK: This is PRI.

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Singapore is laying the foundation for a future economy based on science. It’s sending its own citizens abroad for a top education, and enticing some the world’s best minds in science to its shores. Reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro has more.

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KATY CLARK:  I’m Katy Clark and this is The World.  Singapore has long been a fierce economic competitor.  The tiny island nation in Southeast Asia has grown wealthy as a center of manufacturing and finance.  Now it’s laying the foundation for a future economy based on science.  Singapore is harvesting young talent from other Asian countries and it’s buying first-class education from American and European universities.  This might be a good strategy for Singapore, but for the young scientists forming this new workforce, the situation is a bit more complicated.  Ari Daniel Shapiro traveled to Singapore and brings us this story.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Lee Yun Hom Ching [ph] grew up in Eastern China.  She loved science as a girl and she decided to major in biology in college.  She did well.  Three months into her freshman year a foreign delegation showed up.

LEE YUN HOM CHING: The Ministry of Education in Singapore went to my local university and recruited about 30 plus students.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Lee Yun was one of them.

LEE YUN HOM CHING: They provide us with a scholarship, basically asking us to come to Singapore.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Lee Yun got a full scholarship to complete her undergraduate degree in Singapore.  She then got another scholarship to do her PhD here.  Now she’s working in a lab in Singapore’s vast Biopolis research complex.  Biopolis is a collection of nine buildings linked by zigzagging glass walkways.  The labs are clean, stocked with state-of-the-art equipment.  It’s a first-rate operation and Singapore needs first-rate talent to staff it.  Since 2001 Singapore has been scouting for the best science students across Asia, like Lee Yun, and luring them here.  It’s part of a national initiative called A-Star or the Agency for Science, Technology and Research.  A-Star’s goal is to catapult Singapore to the forefront of scientific research.  And A-Star isn’t just attracting foreign talent to Singapore; it’s also sending Singaporeans overseas to study at top Western universities.

HO HUN KIT: It’s probably the most exciting phase of my life.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Ho Hun Kit [ph] received an A-Star scholarship to do and his PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle.  He felt a certain patriotic pride, going abroad to hone his skills and then coming home to benefit Singapore.

HO HUN KIT: Life sciences is the next big thing for Singapore.  Being a small country with limited resources, limited space we have to invest in industries that doesn’t take up so much space.  Things that are human capital intensive.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Experts say this plan is smart for Singapore.  Christian Kettles [ph] is with the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School.

CHRISTIAN KETTLES: They really only can succeed as a very small society if they’re very heavily integrated in the global science community.  And that’s exactly where this program fits in.  Attracting other people, leveraging the human resources that they have internally, but really bringing them in touch with foreign universities rather than kind of creating a little bubble in Singapore and trying to do it all on their own.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And yet, for this plan to work the students Singapore trains have to stay in Singapore.  The government doesn’t want to cultivate young scientists only to lose them to other countries.  So the scholars are required to work in Singapore for up to six years after graduating.  For Singaporean, Ho Hun Kit, returning home after his studies in Seattle was no big deal.

HO HUN KIT: My roots are still here, and I would — as a Singaporean I would also like to contribute to the country.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: But for Li Hun Hom Ching, the Chinese student recruited to Singapore, the sacrifice was far greater.  In exchange for her PhD scholarship, she had to forfeit her Chinese citizenship and become Singaporean.

LEE YUN HOM CHING: I can still clearly remember the day that I went to the Chinese Embassy and surrendered my passport.  I have some struggling in my heart, because it’s my home country.  It’s like my parents.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Some Singaporeans criticize the scholarship program, saying it puts too many demands on its students, forcing them to work long hours and to live a cloistered life.  In fact, some speculate the pressure may have contributed to two recent scandals.  In one, an A-Star scholar committed suicide; he jumped from the ninth floor of a building after a young woman rejected him.  In the second, a female scholar studying for a PhD in Sweden was arrested for public nudity in Singapore.  She was caught streaking during Chinese New Year.  One disgruntled student told me that the A-Star program asks a lot of its scholars, but doesn’t provide much support for those who speak out or think differently.  I contacted the A-Star program on several occasions to talk about its scholarships, but officials declined to be interviewed.  Still, many young scientists say their involvement with Singapore’s scholarship program has been worthwhile.  Even Li Yun Hom Ching says she’s grateful for the educational and financial support she’s received, despite having to forfeit her Chinese citizenship.

LEE YUN HOM CHING: Some of my friends were saying that you are forfeiting your nationality for something material.  Right, but I will say that if you were in my position you would do the same.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And a lot of young people are doing the same; it’s been eight years since Singapore’s scholarship program began and it’s having no problem filling its slots.  145 new scholarships were awarded just last month.  For The World, I’m Ari Daniel Shapiro, Singapore.

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Scientists in Canada whose research in surviving cold water is aimed saving lives have learned that the CIA used their work to develop an interrogation technique. The World’s Carol Hills has details.

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KATY CLARK:  Canada has a scientific feather in its cap. That cold northern country boasts several world-renowned experts in surviving cold temperatures.  Their groundbreaking research has improved the odds of survival for people like sailors, fishermen and those who happen to drive off of bridges into frigid water.  So it came as some surprise to one of those experts that his research has been used by the CIA to develop an interrogation technique.  The World’s Carol Hills reports.

CAROL HILLS: The report released this week by the Justice Department showed that in 2003, CIA officers began using a technique called ‘water dousing’. Not to be confused with water-boarding which is essentially controlled drowning, water dousing involves laying a detainee on a plastic sheet and pouring cold water over him for 10 to 15 minutes.  According to the report, an interrogator believed this was an effective technique, and sent a cable back to CIA headquarters requesting guidelines.  The return cable explained that a detainee, quote, “must be placed on a towel or sheet, may not be placed naked on the bare cement floor, and the air temperature must exceed 65 degrees,” if the detainee isn’t dried off immediately.  Gordon Geezbrecht is a thermophysiology professor at the University of Manitoba.  Yesterday he received an email from a colleague about how the report showed that the CIA had consulted Geezbrecht’s published research in developing the idea of water dousing

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: That was yesterday and today I’ve got a copy of this Red Cross, international Red Cross report, that actually interviews former detainees who actually report that some of these techniques were used on them.  So it became, it moved from theoretical to actual.

CAROL HILLS: His reaction:

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: It is a bit disturbing, for sure.

CAROL HILLS: Geezbrecht knows what it’s like to be immersed in cold water; he’s rendered himself hypothermic more than 40 times in his career.  His most famous immersion was on the David Letterman show in 2004, when he was plunged into a vat of ice water for 15 minutes.  Since then he’s been known as Dr. Popsicle.

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: We were able to take a two or three-hour experiment and condense it into one hour on national television and tell people that yes, cold water is dangerous, but you can survive it as long as you don’t panic.

CAROL HILLS: What he’s demonstrated, on Letterman and in his experiments, is that people can survive longer than they think in cold water.  He calls it the one-ten-one principle.

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: In ice water you have one minute to get your breathing under control, so don’t panic, and you have about ten minutes of meaningful movement, so you have time to figure out what to do to get out.  But then you do have to get moving, and you have an hour or more, one hour or more before you become unconscious due to hypothermia.

CAROL HILLS: But he says he meant his advice to be used to save people, not interrogate them.  For The World, I’m Carol Hills.

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Anchor Katy Clark speaks with Robert Draper, author of an article on Somalia that appears in the September issue of the National Geographic Magazine. Draper travelled to Somalia to document the violence and chaos that have plagued the country for nearly two decades.

Pictures from Mogadishu for this story at nationalgeographic.com

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KATY CLARK:  I’m Katy Clark and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  It’s hard to imagine that things could get worse in Somalia.  The country has been engulfed by violence for almost two decades.  It’s had no working government since 1991.  Now, according to the United Nations, Somalia is looking at its biggest humanitarian crisis.  The U.N. estimates that more than half the country’s population needs food aid or other assistance.  U.N. officials also say that the number of Somalian refugees has risen by more than 40 percent since January.  Meanwhile, a weak transitional government is battling militant groups like Al-Shabaab for control of the country.  Robert Draper traveled throughout Somalia for an article that appears in the September issue of National Geographic.  In the capitol Mogadishu, Draper met an 18-year old fisherman named Mohammad.

ROBERT DRAPER: When I came to Mogadishu, Katy, I was interested in finding some kids who were like Mohammad, who considering that there had been 18 years essentially without a government, had no idea of what a government is supposed to do, had no idea what law and order are supposed to be and feel like.  And I met Mohammad while wandering through this abandoned lighthouse in the Hammer Wayne district of old Mogadishu.  And as you mentioned, he was an 18 year old fisherman, basically the only member of his family who is working because his father was incapacitated by a mortar blast and he feeds his family.  When he doesn’t catch fish they don’t eat.  And though fishing itself is not a dangerous pass time, taking the fish to market is.  The Bakaara market where he often sells fish was repeatedly shelled when we were there and Mohammad talked to us about wandering through the area and seeing bodies strewn all over the street and having nightmares as a result.  He stopped going to school because his closest friend was killed and a lot of his other classmates joined Al-Shabaab and Al-Shabaab tried to recruit Mohammad.  They offered him a lot of money, at least by Somali standards, something like $100 per month.  And that would be a huge bounty for his family and his family earnestly debated the pros and cons of whether or not he should join.  And ultimately their decision to say to Mohammad, “Don’t join, stay as a fisherman,” was not based on morality, was not based on an antipathy towards Al-Shabaab and what they were doing, but instead on the concern that Mohammad might be imprisoned by the government or killed as a result of being a militant Muslim.  And then they would have no one to feed their family at all.

KATY CLARK:  Where does Al-Shabaab get that $100 to offer to a young man like Mohammad?

ROBERT DRAPER: Through all sorts of illegal trading, through drugs, through the selling of Contract [ph], through — presumably through other extremist Muslim organizations, perhaps through al Qaeda, we’re not sure.  But what we also heard is that they give you a hundred up front and then promise you that they will give you a hundred every month.  But then after a while say to you if you are a young soldier for Al Shabaab that if you’re fighting for a holy cause, you should not want money, you should not expect the money.  And so after a while the money stops being given.

KATY CLARK:  The United Nations reporting this week that one in five children in Somalia is acutely malnourished.   And you talk about Mohammad, no schooling.  I wonder what that means for the future of the country if you have this whole generation that is struggling with hunger and lack of education and no idea what a civil society is like.

ROBERT DRAPER: Well that’s right.  I mean you have instead children who like Mohammad, don’t know what a law is, literally don’t know what it is, have no sense of what a government is supposed to do since the government in Somalia does not provide basic services of water or electricity.  That’s always provided by clans.  But instead a generation that knows what an amplified explosive device sounds like versus a mortar blast.  Then you have kind of a culture that’s rigged for self destruction, on top of the basic health calamity that you described.  I searched for anything that would look like a solution while I was there.  What I heard over and over was that a missed opportunity came in 2006 when the Islamic courts, an Islamic group took over from Ethiopia.  They were largely moderate Islamists but the Bush administration believed that because one of its leaders had made sympathetic comments about al Qaeda that they were essentially an offshoot of al Qaeda and therefore refused to recognize them, refused to negotiate with them.  Then the Islamic courts ultimately fell prey to their own militia group, which was Al-Shabaab.  Had we maybe been more tolerant, more willing to engage with the moderate aspects of the Islamic courts, then maybe things would not be so bad as they are now.

KATY CLARK:  We hear from time to time concerns that al Qaeda will be moving into the lawless situation there, moving into the area that’s the lawless situation of Somalia.  Did you come across any evidence of that?

ROBERT DRAPER: I did not, no.  And that’s an ongoing concern but, you know, Katy, I think the tragedy to all of this is during the time of the Cold War, the argument has been made that many African nations were kind of used as pawns on this chess board that the USSR and the Western powers such as the U.S. were playing on.  And certainly Somalia was one of them.  Then after the end of the Cold War, African nations were largely ignored by the U.S. and other countries.  There were some humanitarian efforts but the level of engagement definitely decreased.  Nowadays, in the wake of September 11th, the tendency from our government has been to view African nations strictly through the prism of whether or not they are with us or against us, as the phrase goes, in the War on Terror.  And that has certainly been the prism through which Somalia has largely been seen.  And so while it’s a salient question to ask, and would be certainly a nightmare scenario if a caliphate were to emerge in the horn of Africa, it is, I think, a grossly incomplete way of viewing the tragedy that is Somalia.  And there are obviously ways that we can help this nation beyond simply seeing whether or not they are sympathetic to terrorist organizations.

KATY CLARK:  Robert Draper’s article on Somalia and Somali land is in the September issue of National Geographic now on news stands.  Thank you.

ROBERT DRAPER: My pleasure.

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Colombia is second only to Sudan in the number of people displaced from their homes because of war and violence. This despite claims by the Colombian government that the long guerrilla war is winding down. Correspondent John Otis reports on the plight of Colombians who may never return home.

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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.

KATY CLARK:  In Colombia the government says the country’s long guerrilla war is winding down, but the number of Colombians being forced off their land by warring factions is actually rising.  Last year, 380,000 Colombians were uprooted, and many of these Internally Displaced People, or IDPs, have little chance of ever returning home.  John Otis reports from Bogota.

JOHN OTIS: At a shelter in a South Bogota slum, students at a bread-making class trade jokes with their teacher. It’s a rare moment of light amid grim circumstances.  These peasants were forced off their farms by guerillas, paramilitaries or drug traffickers.  Now they’re trying to pick up new skills to rebuild their lives here.  Colombia is home to more Internally Displaced People, or IDPs, than any other nation except Sudan. According to human rights groups, about four million Columbians, nearly ten percent of the population, have been displaced since 1985. Most fled after they were accused by either Marxist guerrillas or paramilitary death squads of collaborating with the enemy.  Colombia’s president says he’s winning the war against leftist guerillas, and tens of thousands of right-wing paramilitaries have demobilized.  But in remote areas guerrillas as well as re-armed paramilitaries are now fighting for control of drug trafficking routes, and they’re forcing even more people off their land.  Marie-Helene Verney is spokeswoman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Colombia.

MARIE-HELENE VERNEY: What we’re seeing is the creation of new groups, smaller groups, and these groups are creating really a level of instability and violence in — again in these very remote areas of Colombia.

JOHN OTIS: Paramilitaries are also accused of joining forces with legitimate business interests to seize large swaths of land to mine gold and produce palm oil for Colombia’s booming biofuels industry.  That’s Jorge Rojas of the human rights group Codhes. He says that big palm oil projects almost always produce legions of displaced people.  One of the newly displaced is Maria Elvia Mendez.  She lives in a rundown building housing IDPs in Bogota.  She used to live on a coffee farm in the southern state of Huila, but gunmen threatened to kill her so she fled in March. “If soldiers pass by your farm, the guerrillas accuse you of spying for the government,” Mendez says. “But if the guerrillas pay you a visit, you come under pressure from the army and the paramilitaries. It’s an impossible situation. Your life is up for grabs.”  The Colombian government has set up shelters for the displaced and it provides food, health care, education and small monthly stipends.  But officials insist the problem has been exaggerated.  Armando Escobar is in charge of the government’s displacement programs. He claims that many poor Colombians are registering as displaced to scam the government out of benefits.

ARMANDO ESCOBAR: We are under a heavy issue of fraud.  People who is not really IDPs and get registered as such because they are able or they are actually trained to get through the system.

JOHN OTIS: But the UN’s Marie-Helene Verney says the number of displaced has probably been underestimated because many people who lose their land live too far from government offices to seek help.  She adds just a tiny handful ever manages to return home.

MARIE-HELENE VERNEY: Farmers who are displaced may have been on their farm for a very long time, but they may not have titles to their land.  And so obviously once they go, once they are forced to go it is extremely difficult for them afterwards to be able to go back or to hope to get any kind of reparation.

JOHN OTIS: Back at the shelter in South Bogota, a volunteer shows off the dorm rooms, which are usually full.  Many of the displaced are widows or single mothers with few job prospects.  But after learning to handle flour and yeast at the shelter’s classes, some of these women are determined to earn a living selling loaves of broad on the streets of the capital.  For The World, I’m John Otis in Bogota.

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.

Visitors to the IKEA store in Beijing, China treat the experience more like a vacation than a shopping trip. They dress up, have a meal, and spend the day relaxing. Anchor Katy Clark finds out why IKEA fans in China see the superstore as a getaway from LA Times reporter David Pierson.

(Photo by David Pierson) >>> See more of David’s photos.

So, have you ever gone to Ikea just to hang out? What did you do? >>>Leave your comment here

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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.

KATY CLARK:  Many Americans are familiar with IKEA, the giant Swedish furniture store chain.  One of its selling points, apart from the cheap build-it-yourself furniture is convenience.  Got kids?  Drop them off at the play room while you shop.  Hungry?  Try the Swedish meatballs in the restaurant.  Don’t know what to buy?  Try it out.  Sit in the chairs or lie on the beds.  Most American shoppers, though, try to get what they need and get out as quickly as possible.  On that score, things are very different in China.  Many visitors to IKEA store in Beijing aren’t there to make a purchase but they linger for hours.   It’s less a shopping experience and more like a vacation.  LA Times reporter David Pearson wrote about this in a recent article.  David Pearson, tell us why do Beijingers go to IKEA?

DAVID PEARSON: You know, I think it’s got all the right ingredients, air conditioning, there’s cheap attractive food and most importantly, there’s a soft seat available almost anywhere.  Every room you go to there’s sofas where there’s people lying down, falling asleep, people underneath the covers.  And you find that most people are kind of just hanging out in there, young families with their kids, with their parents in tow.  It’s just an excellent way to get out of the smog and the typically hot Beijing summer days.

KATY CLARK:  Which that makes sense; I mean air conditioning is nice.  Having a place to sit is nice, but one of the things that’s really weird about this is how they take photographs of themselves in the store.

DAVID PEARSON:  IKEA is one of these places where you know, it’s sort of got this aspirational style to it for a lot of Beijingers.  And when I met this one young man who was just taking pictures of everything he came across and then ended up putting on his blog with a little quickie remark at the end saying, “I don’t need to buy because I have the pictures.”

KATY CLARK:  So you’re describing sort of they like the soda refills, they have a nice nap but do they buy anything?

DAVID PEARSON: That’s sort of been the conundrum for IKEA.  And, you know, this is a private company so they don’t talk about their profits but they have hinted that this is a long-term strategy in China and the profits might come later.  It’s one of these weird situations where they have amazing brand awareness but people aren’t spending money as much as they’d like to.

KATY CLARK:  Well, I don’t like to be judgmental here, but I mean, at the end of the day don’t these folks have anything better to do than to hang out at IKEA?

DAVID PEARSON: I bet, you know, any other city where there’s an IKEA people go there just to hang out.  I think the only difference here is I would challenge anyone to find people as brazen as the Beijingers are in just coming to hang out.  You know, the interesting thing about IKEA in Beijing is if you take the people out, it looks like any IKEA.  It looks like the IKEA I went to in Burbank for nine years.  It’s just interesting how different cultures use the same things across the world and it sort of reflects, I think, the different values here in China.

KATY CLARK:  Are the meatballs in the restaurant as popular there as they are in Burbank for instance?

DAVID PEARSON: I don’t think they are as popular.  I see people eating them, but people just in China can’t seem to resist their own cuisine.  So most people are going after pork belly and dried mushrooms over rice.

KATY CLARK:  What do they call IKEA in China anyway?  It’s not IKEA is it?

DAVID PEARSON: No, they call it I Ja [ph] and I hope I pronounced that correctly but it means comfortable home.

KATY CLARK:  And what about all of those wonderful IKEA names that we all struggle over like the TROFAST storage frames and the SULTAN mattresses and some other great ones.

DAVID PEARSON: Yeah, I think the Chinese struggle with pronouncing some of those names with the umlaut just as much as other countries do.

KATY CLARK:  Excellent.  David Pearson is the Beijing reporter with the LA Times.  Thanks for speaking with us.

DAVID PEARSON: Thanks very much.

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.

For today’s geoquiz we were looking for Barcelona’s most popular beach. The answer is Barceloneta. Many tourists who visit the Spanish city of Barcelona strip down, because it’s hot and – well – they’re on vacation. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports that the bare-it-all atmosphere is upsetting some Barcelona residents.

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Celebrity blogger and gossip columnist Perez Hilton is also a big fan of pop music from around the globe. Hilton has put together a package tour of some of his favorite artists. Anchor Katy Clark speaks with Perez Hilton about the upcoming tour and the artists involved.

>>> More information on the “Perez Hilton Presents” Tour.

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