ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images

The United States and Russia say there’s been considerable progress in talks on a new treaty to reduce their nuclear arsenals. The American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who’s in Moscow, said the world’s two largest nuclear powers had a responsibility to show leadership on disarmament. The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

• Scaling back on nuclear weapons (Sept. 2009)
• US and Russia make nuclear pledge (July 2009)
• Q&A on nuclear disarmament (July 2009)

Read the Transcript
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.  Hillary Clinton is in Moscow today.  It’s her first trip to Russia as Secretary of State.  And it comes at what may be a transitional moment in US-Russian relations.  They were pretty stormy under President George W. Bush.  Barack Obama is looking for a change in the weather, and he sent his top diplomat to the Russian capital to take the next step. The World’s Matthew Bell tells us how the Clinton visit has fared.

MATTHEW BELL: Hillary Clinton came to the job of Secretary of State saying she wanted to hit the “re-set button” on US-Russian relations.  After meeting with her counterpart in Moscow today, Clinton used some diplomatic language to suggest that process is well under way.

HILLARY CLINTON: We really are committed to this relationship.  We believe strongly that working together step by step we are transforming a relationship that was once defined by the shadow of mutually assured destruction into one that is based on mutual respect, and over time, increasingly, mutual trust.

BELL: President Obama’s recent decision to scale down US missile defense plans in Eastern Europe might have been a down payment on building that mutual trust.  Moscow long considered American missile defense to be a deterrent aimed at Russia, but Secretary Clinton today described the program as an opportunity for both countries.

CLINTON: We are very interested in working with Russia to develop cooperation, including a joint threat assessment and intensified efforts to establish a joint data exchange center, as our presidents agreed to in July, as a means of making missile defense a common enterprise.

BELL:  Clinton said the common threat comes from Iran.  And when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, she said Washington and Moscow are on the same page.

CLINTON: We believe that Iran is entitled to peaceful nuclear energy, but that it is not entitled to nuclear weapons.  Russia agrees with us on that.

BELL: But there may be some disagreement on what to do if negotiations with Iran fail.

CLINTON: We have always looked at the potential of sanctions in the event that we are not successful.

BELL:  The Russians though have been hesitant to play up the threat of new sanctions.  Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov made that point clearly today.

SERGEI LAVROV: [speaking in Russian]  Threats of sanctions, and threats of pressure right now are counterproductive.

BELL: So, was Lavrov pouring cold water on the idea that the Obama administration could expect a tougher line on sanctions for Iran?

KATHRYN STONER-WEISS: He’s throwing luke warm water.

BELL: Kathryn Stoner-Weiss is a Russia expert at Stanford University.  She says the Russians are in a tricky position with Iran.

STONER-WEISS: They can’t come out and openly declare sanctions against Iran because they have too many ties in there on a bunch of different levels, especially economically.  But they also don’t have an interest in having Iran sitting right below them, close to a very volatile area that they have an interest in as well, which is central Asia.  They don’t have a big interest in Iran having a nuclear weapon either.

BELL: Stoner-Weiss says the Russians are walking a fine line with Iran.  They want to keep selling the Iranians military equipment, oil and gas.  But they also see that there’s leverage to be gained with Washington by stepping up the pressure on the nuclear issue.  The Russian foreign minister might have had that in mind today.  He said there are no disagreements with the US over Iran’s nuclear program, because there’s nothing to disagree about. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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.

B & B Restaurant Corp. in Manhattan

Guineans living in New York City do have reminders of their home in West Africa. There are restaurants like the B & B in midtown Manhattan, which serves Guinean dishes and employs a number of Guineans. But given the violence that has gripped their homeland in recent weeks, many Guineans in New York are looking home anxiously, and awaiting news from their friends and family. Some Guineans in New York are even organizing opposition to the country’s military rulers. The World’s Alex Gallafent takes the pulse of Guineans in New York.

• Massacre in Guinea (Oct. 8, 2009)
• Timeline: Guinea
• Country profile: Guinea

Read the Transcript
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.  In the West African country of Guinea, a national strike today left streets and workplaces deserted.  People were protesting an incident two weeks ago in which soldiers opened fire on a crowd in a soccer stadium.  Human rights groups say more than 150 people were killed.  Fifty thousand people had gathered in the stadium, in the capital Conakry, to protest the country’s military regime.  For Guineans living here in the United States, the situation back home is confusing and frightening.    The World’s Alex Gallafent reports from New York.

ALEX GALLAFENT: Mamadou Sidy Barry is a Guinean in New York, and here’s here on his own.

MAMDOU SIDY BARRY: All my family members are over there in Guinea, my wife, my daughter, and my father, brothers, everybody.  So I am here by myself and I’m here for political asylum

GALLAFENT: I caught up with Barry at the West African restaurant he runs in midtown Manhattan. It’s a small place, and Barry’s staff is getting for the lunch rush.  But back in Guinea, Barry was a political activist, working for an opposition party.  He says he was arrested during a local election in 2005 and jailed for three weeks.  On his release, he fled to neighboring Mali.  He didn’t feel safe there either.

BARRY: So from there I decided to come to the United States of America.

GALLAFENT: He hasn’t seen his family in years.  And since the violence of two weeks ago, Mamadou Sidy Barry has found it hard to reach them.  He says communication lines into Guinea have been disrupted, and he’s worried about his daughter in particular.

BARRY: My daughter is three years, so she’s a very small girl, and she’s really living on the panic, on the trauma, you know.  A little girl of three years, hearing every time sounds of guns, you know.  All over the night, they are in the streets of Conakry, blowing up guns, you know.  It’s crazy.

GALLAFENT: What does it feel like to be here while your family is there?

BARRY:  It is very, very, very hard, very difficult.  When they tell you some people lost their beloved ones, they never see their bodies, they never seem them in jail, they never see them in hospital, so it means that these people have been pulled away, or they have been buried, but who knows where and how?  What happened to the other person can happen to your own too, so it is really a very hard time for us.

GALLAFENT: Many of the workers in Barry’s restaurant are from Guinea themselves.

BARRY: Ismael!

GALLAFENT: Barry calls one of them from out of the kitchen, where a grill is piled high with chunks of meat.

ISMAEL:  [speaking Guinean Creole]

GALLAFENT: He says, “My wife and three children are in Guinea.  It’s safe here in New York, but if my family isn’t safe, I can’t be at peace.”  Finally, Mamadou Sidy Barry introduces me to a young woman named Mariama.  She comes out from the kitchen in an apron smeared with cooking juices and tells her story.

MARIAMA:  [speaking Guinean Creole]

GALLAFENT: Barry translates.

MARIAMA:  [speaking Guinean Creole]

BARRY: Really I’m very worried, because what is going on back home in my country is terrible.  They are raping women, killing them, taking off their clothes in the street in public and rape them in front of everybody, kill children.  My family is over there.  My husband, my children, my mother, my brothers and even they killed one of my brothers and I am terrified about what is going on.

GALLAFENT: The reports they’re hearing suggest that the violence didn’t spread beyond the events of two weeks ago, but that doesn’t ease the minds of these Guineans in the United States.  The Guinean community here is tiny, but Mamadou Sidy Barry says they plan to organize a series of rallies in Washington to protest what happened back home.  For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent in New York.

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.

• New York Times article
• Facebook: Mexican Coke fan page

Read the Transcript
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: We’re not going to take sides in the eternal competition between Coke and Pepsi nor are we about to reignite the bottle versus the can debate or revisit the new Coke versus coke Classic controversy but we are going to venture into a story every bit as volatile. This one pits Coca-Cola that’s made and bottled in Mexico against Coca-Cola from the US. Rob Walker wrote about this issue in his consumed column for the New York Times this week. And Rob please tell us which side you came down on.

ROB WALKER: Well I cam out pretty firmly as an admitted member of the Mexican Coke cult.

WERMAN: Okay. Before the facts tell us why you came down on the Mexican Coke side of things?

WALKER: It was years ago, very much by chance. I just happened to notice a glass bottle of Coke and I thought well you know nostalgia that kind of thing. I’ll pick one of these up. And I was like yeah it’s very refreshing. And then it became sort of a habit and then someone told me that’s the Coke from Mexico which is better. And I just sort of accepted that and remain a devotee.

WERMAN: And with all these thousands of members now on this Mexican Coke Facebook page do you think it’s a taste thing or is it a retro foody thing?

WALKER: I think it’s probably, as is often the case, a combination of things that some of which are based in reality and some of which are based in our heads. The big rational factor that everyone points is that the version of Coke that’s bottled in Mexico is made with cane sugar not corn syrup as is pretty much always the case in the United States.

WERMAN: And then there are some people who feel that the taste is due to the fact that in Mexico they use glass bottles and here it’s, for the most part, it’s all plastic. Is that … ?

WALKER: Well this was my original theory in my head long before I was ever going to write anything about it. But I thought like well it’s just the glass. And interestingly someone looked into this. Popular Science I guess looked into this and did their own sort of investigation I guess of just the materials issue. And they did conclude, somewhat tentatively, that there could be some minor difference on he margins because glass is the most inert material I guess is the way they put it. Meaning that glass really doesn’t transmit one way or the other any kind of taste. So that was my theory for a long time.

WERMAN: Are there to your knowledge other kind of global variations on Coke like is the Nepalese version … ? How does that taste?

WALKER: You know I tried to go down this road with the folks for Coca Cola who was getting a little tired of me at this point and you know he said look it’s a very far flung operation. The sweetener does vary by region which in and of itself I thought was kind of fascinating because you know you’re sort of brought up with the idea of the secret formula of Coke. Who knew that you could actually have slight variations on it? But apparently the sweetener does vary. They pretty much told me just by economics, whether it’s beet sugar, corn syrup, or cane sugar. Just depending on what’s the most economical decision for the bottler to make in whatever region of the world it is.

WERMAN: And then there’s the esthetic difference my producer thinks. And I have to agree with her that the tall and thin Mexican half-liter glass bottle is far more elegant than the fat, chubby plastic 20-ounce American bottle.

WALKER: Couldn’t agree more. Couldn’t agree more. Strongly agree.

WERMAN: Maybe it tastes better because it looks better.

WALKER: Well I actually think that you know I mean the psychology does matter. It matters to your experience of something. And if you bring to it a kind of positive mindset I actually believe that that makes a difference.

WERMAN: Well let’s delve into the science here. My producer has brought me two Styrofoam cups; they’re not glass I have to say. It’s two Styrofoam cups. One has Mexican Coke in it and the other has US Coke. And I’m going to taste them now and let’s see if I can tell the difference between sugar and corn syrup.

WALKER: Do you have a prediction?

WERMAN: My prediction is that I’m not going to know. We’ll see. Alright here’s cup A. Mmm okay. Hang on. Here’s number two. Mmm. I’m going to say number two is the Mexican Coke. I’m going to look under the cup. That’s cup B. Which is that? Oh cup B is American I am told by Adele in the control room. So I was right, I got it wrong. I predicted correctly.

WALKER: Well now here’s your excuse. As defense of the Coca Cola Company they did tell me that all of their research – and you have to believe that they have researched this – they tell me that people cannot actually perceive a taste difference when they don’t know what the context is.

WERMAN: The consumer’s always right. Rob Walker who wrote about the differences between US and Mexican Coke in his Consumed column in the New York Times and also author of Buying In. Thank you very much Rob.

WALKER: Thank you Marco.

[MUSIC]

WERMAN: So many songs about beverages today.

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

• BBC coverage
• The Institute of Cancer Research

Read the Transcript
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.  An unusual and tragic medical report from Japan could shed light on the biology of cancer.  A 28-year-old Japanese woman apparently transmitted leukemia to her child when the baby was in her womb.  Scientists say it’s the first conclusive evidence of cancer being passed from pregnant mother to fetus.  The genetic analysis that confirmed this phenomenon was conducted by researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research in Great Britain.  Doctor Anthony Ford was part of that team.  This news is sure to scare a lot of women, Dr. Ford.  I have to ask you first, does this mean it’s unwise for women who have cancer to get pregnant?

DR. ANTHONY FORD:  Absolutely not.  I think in this case, it’s quite unusual and very rare.  Similar cases have been reported only about 20 to 30 times in the last 200 years.  What’s unique about this case is that we now understand how the clones that would normally be prevented from passing to the baby via the placental barrier, how these clones have actually got across by changing their compatibility so that they look like the baby’s own cells and then do not get destroyed by the baby’s immune system.

WERMAN:  But normally, a baby’s immune system would protect it from leukemia or cancer?

FORD:  That’s right.  Perhaps one or two cells may get across, but they would normally be seen as foreign by the baby’s own immune system.  But this malignant clone has managed to escape that surveillance.

WERMAN:  Well, tell us about this specific case.  How did this Japanese woman and her baby come to your attention?

FORD:  It started with a visit to the hospital in Tokyo by the father and his daughter, and she was admitted because of a massive tumor on her cheek.  The father told them that his wife and the child’s mother had died about six or so weeks after giving birth from leukemia.  And then after a biopsy of the tumor, the clinicians in Japan realized that it was actually a leukemia lymphoma that was in the cheek, and not a solid tumor that they were expecting.  And so then they had the idea, in collaboration with us, to backtrack and try and identify where those leukemic cells had come from, using a technique that we had used before.  And we were able to show that the cells that caused the leukemia and the cells that caused the tumor in child were actually identical.

WERMAN:  What happened to the girl with the tumor in her cheek?

FORD:  She’s been treated and she’s now, I think, nearly two years old, and hopefully is going to be fine for the future, which is a nice result.

WERMAN:  Why do you think this doesn’t happen more often?  I mean, a fetus does share a blood supply with its mother, right?

FORD:  Well, I think that the placenta obviously forms an effective barrier to the mother’s cells anyway, otherwise the mother’s own immune system would reject the foreign baby.  So obviously the baby’s own immune system, although it’s immature, can be expected to recognize and destroy any invasive cancer cells.  This is a case that shows us that this system normally works very well, unless there’s a specific change in the cells themselves.

WERMAN:  I mean, given it’s so rare, I’m wondering if by studying how, you know, babies, infants in the womb are usually protected, how their immune systems usually protect them, are there things you could deduce or investigate further that might lead us to understand better other forms of cancer?

FORD:   Yes, I think obviously if we can try to determine how the immune system actually does prevent these cells from growing and expanding in the child, then it may give us some clues to how we can prevent cancers in the future.  But I think that’s a long time off yet.

WERMAN:  Dr. Anthony Ford, a scientist with the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK.  He co-authored a study about a case of mother to child transmission of cancer.  The study appears in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Dr. Ford, thanks very much for your time.

FORD:  Thank you 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.

• Which disappearing name would you like to bring back?
• Which place names would you like to see retired?

Read the Transcript
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: Let’s go now to the answer to our Geo Quiz today about geographic names that have disappeared.  Did you find Tanganyika yet on the map?  Well, it once bordered the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria, but it’s vanished!  Harry Campbell has written a book about place names that history left behind, and Harry it’s called what, your book?

HARRY CAMPBELL:  It’s called “Whatever happened to Tanganyika?” which is actually something a friend of mine said to me once on the phone as we were discussing the subject.  I thought it had a good ring to it.

WERMAN:  Right, so whatever did happen to Tanganyika?  Let’s start off with that question?

CAMPBELL:  You want to spoil the surprise.  Okay.  It became independent, as so many African states did in the 1960s, in 1961.  But don’t forget that what we now call it is not quite the same thing, because it incorporated with Zanzibar three years later, and they simply took the “Tan” of Tanganyika and the “Zan” of Zanzibar and called it “Tanzania.”

WERMAN:  Now Harry, you’ve come up with about 50 examples in your book.  What’s the most recent name change to your mind?

CAMPBELL:  Well, there’s some which are very much kind of in progress, if you like.  There’s sort of an infamous one really, Derry, or Londonderry in Northern Ireland. That’s still very much bubbling under.  There’s some kind of procedure in progress at the moment to officially change the name from Londonderry, which is hated by the Republican community, to Derry, which is probably what most people call it, but that’s not an easy thing to do.  A lot of them seem recent to

me, even though actually they’re not when you add it up.  I still think of Yugoslavia as being recent, but unfortunately it isn’t. That’s just age, isn’t it?

WERMAN:  And what drives these name changes?  I mean, Londonderry and Derry, I mean, there’s a lot of political subtext there, isn’t there?

CAMPBELL:  A huge amount of political subtext.  Some of these things are very hot potatoes altogether and they’re to do with righting ancient injustices or the head on clash of two cultures, or changing from one language to another.  A lot of places in Eastern Europe we used to call by their Germanic name, and now we use the Slavic equivalent.  And of course the African ones often had European style names invented for them which have now been done away with.

WERMAN:  If you look at India, you’ve got the cities of Calcutta and Madras, now Kolkata and Chennai.  What’s driving that, do you think?

CAMPBELL:  Cynically, you might say that is the most overtly and really blatantly political of all, because you might ask, why did the Indian names change now, 50 years [MISSING AUDIO] very tangled web and I think many people in India would say they should just leave well alone.

WERMAN:  Are you one of those people who pines for Tanganyika as opposed to Tanzania?

CAMPBELL:  No.  By and large, I don’t have strong moral feelings about these different places, except of course to the extent that atrocities happened in them, and let me tell you, some of the stories would curl your hair.  The one feeling I do have sometimes is that nowadays, we’re possibly too quick to use a local name that just doesn’t work happily in English.

WERMAN:  For example?

CAMPBELL:  When there is a perfectly good– well, why do we have to call it Moldova as opposed to Moldavia?  It’s still the same place, you know.

WERMAN:  What drove that change?

CAMPBELL:  I think it’s just part of becoming a new nation, or throwing off the imperial shackles in the case of the Moldovans of the Soviet empire.  They want to sort of rebrand themselves and have a fresh identity.  I supposed, you know, one can sort of sympathize.  That is perfectly legitimate, but it makes people confused and uncertain.  I mean, what’s the adjective?  Are they Mold-O-vans or MOL-do-vans?  No one knows how to pronounce it.

WERMAN:  Now you call this a book of nostalgic geography, but implicit in that nostalgia is some pretty rough and tough histories.

CAMPBELL:  There are.

WERMAN:  For example, I wonder what the Congolese would say when asked, “Were times better when your capital was Leopoldville or now that it is Kinshasa?” and I think most would say, “Independence is far better than the alternative.”

CAMPBELL:  Yes, indeed, but then, of course, independence often goes awry when it’s hijacked by demagogues and tyrants and dictators, so the late and not at all lamented dictator who called Congo Zaire, at least, he called the Belgian Congo Zaire.

WERMAN:  Mobutu Sese Seko.

CAMPBELL:  Exactly.  Now he’s– that was only one of two Congos.  People don’t– people forget that there are in fact two.  There’s the People’s Republic and the Democratic Republic, or Congo Kinshasa, and Congo Brazzaville.

WERMAN:  Right.

CAMPBELL:  But yeah, Kinshasa has been through some pretty bad times.  It used to be “Kin La Belle” because it was thought to be beautiful.  It was one of the most elegant and modern African cities, but I don’t think that it still really could quite be called that.  It’s suffered quite badly over the years.

WERMAN:  Harry Campbell, are there any cases of voluntary name changes that didn’t involve colonial powers invading or conquesting an area?

CAMPBELL:  There’s a place in Montana that renamed itself Joe, so that it could be Joe, Montana.

WERMAN:  Right, I remember that, yeah.

CAMPBELL:  No, but how seriously people take these sorts of name changes, I’m not 100 percent sure.  It’s just a bit of fun, I guess.

WERMAN:  I’m wondering, you mentioned Moldova.  I’m wondering if there’s a place name that you think really should get changed.

CAMPBELL:  Well, I wonder what people think about those.  Presumably if they haven’t changed them, they’re not bothered by them.

WERMAN:  Well, that’s a great question we can share with our listeners.  What disappearing name would you like to bring back?  Which place names would you like to see retired?  So let us know.  Post your comments at The World dot org, and we can circle back with you Harry, and give you some of those answers, maybe for some further research.

CAMPBELL:  That would be great.

WERMAN:  Harry Campbell, that’s still your name, right?  You didn’t change it since this interview began?

CAMPBELL:  No, I’m sticking with it for now.  I’ll cross it out on the headed paper if I change my mind.

WERMAN:  All right, Harry Campbell, the author of “Whatever Happened to Tanganyika?” speaking to us from Glasgow, Scotland.  Thank you very much.

CAMPBELL:  You’re welcome.  Thank you.

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.

Read the Transcript
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: As leaders of the Russian government gathered for meetings with Secretary Clinton, some leaders of Russian organized crime gathered for a funeral at a Moscow cemetery.  They’d gone to pay their final respects to one of their own.  Mafia kingpin Vyacheslav Ivankov was laid to rest today.  He died Friday from wounds he suffered during a sniper attack in July.  Ivankov was 69 years old.  He had a lengthy career in racketeering, arms smuggling, and drug trafficking.  Stephen Handelman directs the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College in New York.  He’s an expert on post-Soviet crime and corruption.  So tell us, Mr. Handelman, first of all, how big a figure was Vyacheslav Ivankov in the world of Russian crime?

STEPHEN HANDELMAN:  Well, it’s debatable.  He’s been called the most important Russian crime figure to have come to the United States, which is certainly true.  In the entire pantheon of Russian crime figures, which are called authorities or vori v zakonye, or thieves within the law, he’s right up there.  He’s not the most powerful one, but then again, there is never any one single godfather that dominated the Russian mafia in those years of 1980s and 1990s.

WERMAN:  Right, I mean, Ivankov was actually in jail in the US for a while. What was the charge?

HANDELMAN:  He was in jail for a charge that the FBI moved against him on extortion.  He was in the midst of, some people say, creating a new network in the United States, based in Brooklyn.  And he was picked up.  It was a clumsy effort.  He basically figured that he can get around US authorities in the same way he’d gotten around Russian authorities for all of his career, but that was quickly scotched.  He was really arrested about three years after he came here.

WERMAN:  I mean, if you had to characterize his kind of career as a crime boss, would he be more Don Corleone or more Tony Soprano?

HANDELMAN:  Well, he’s certainly not Tony Soprano, if you means he’s sort of a media conscious celebrity.  Ivankov hated the media.  In fact, he threatened one journalist who was doing a lot of stuff about him, and it was regarded even then as a serious threat.  But with Ivankov’s passing, it’s really kind of the end of an era, when top Russian crime kingpins who emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union hobnobbed with celebrities, made fantastic amounts of money and exerted a huge amount of power in the post Soviet economy at the time, which, if you remember, was both a booming economy, at the same time totally uncontrolled.  So figures like Ivankov had a lot of heft and were involved in huge amounts of turf battles and fights and lots of businesses that extended way beyond Russia to Eastern Europe, Europe and, they hoped, to the United States.

WERMAN:  Now who do you think would have been in attendance at his funeral today in Moscow?

HANDELMAN:  Well, from the reports, there weren’t any celebrities there, but there were certainly a lot of mid level or senior level crime bosses.  Some of the top ones are obviously not going to show up, because they’d be afraid of being arrested.  But it sounds like with a crowd of about 300 to 400, even 500 folks, this was kind of a way to pay respects to a man who dominated Russian crime life, and the image, which is just as important, of the Russian criminal for so long, really for the past two decades in post Soviet Russia.  So his passing really signifies that a lot of the kind of shoot them up first gangsters and gangsterism of the post Soviet economy has really gone.  Although one could say also that the death of the era really predated Ivankov’s own death, because a lot of the criminal activities have in fact been subsumed by corruption by state authorities and by other–

WERMAN:  Right, well I was going to ask you.  I mean, you said that this is kind of an end of an era.  Does that mean that there’s no more Russian mafia?

HANDELMAN:  No, not at all, not at all.  The Russian mafia is an institution and in fact that goes back to well before the Soviet revolution at the turn of the last century.  They’ve been around forever and they operate in the cracks and precipices of Russian society, since the government has always been a weak influence in many parts of Russia.  Russian criminals operated a huge network and a powerful network which supplied a lot of the services that Soviet government couldn’t, and even though a lot of them were in prison, in fact they operated a lot of their activities from prison itself. So these godfathers were prison based for the longest time, until the mid ’90s or so when they began to emerge.

WERMAN:  It’s an odd coincidence that the formal or official international spotlight is on Hillary Clinton in Moscow, but the local news spotlight there has been turned on this funeral of Ivankov.

HANDELMAN:  Well, yes.  Of course, the gangsters were so colorful and they’re so full of the life of immediate post Soviet Russia.  There were songs, still are songs written about them.  A lot of young people, at least in the ’90s, kind of emulated them, because they were the ones who can get money quickly.  They dressed beautifully, they traveled around the world.  I’m not sure they’re so glamorous now, but it was a very strong feature of Russian culture, particularly in the post Soviet era.

WERMAN:  Stephen Handelman is the author of the 1995 book “Comrade Criminal: Russia’s New Mafia.”  He directs the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College in New York.  Thank you very much for your time.

HANDELMAN:  And 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.

Read the Transcript
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: Vyacheslav Ivankov lived more than a decade longer than the average Russian man.  That probably says something about Ivankov’s bodyguards.  But it also has to do with the fact that the average Russian man drinks too much.  Russian drinking and its effects on health are a national disaster, and if you think I’m exaggerating, listen to this: the average life expectancy of the Russian male is about 58 years.  That’s 18 years less than the average European lives.  Many health experts blame the difference on alcohol-related illnesses.  Jessica Golloher has the story from Moscow.

JESSICA GOLLOHER:  Russia has long had a drinking problem.  It’s one of the world’s largest per capita consumers of alcohol, and a study out this summer found alcohol played a part in more than half the deaths of working age Russian men since the Soviet collapse.  So President Dmitry Medvedev is taking action.  He’s introduced legislation to rein in Russian drinking.  Medvedev is right on schedule, says Andrei Kortunov of the New Eurasia Foundation, a Moscow think tank.

ANDREI KORTUNOV: This is a tradition in Russia, that practically every new leader who comes to power wants to do something in terms of fighting alcohol. Everyone understands that it is a national problem and something has to be done about that.

GOLLOHER: What the Russian president plans to do about it is put restrictions on beer sales,  for instance, barring the sale of beer in cans or bottles larger than 12 ounces.  But many here don’t think much of the plan.  Shawna Lucey is from Texas.  She’s lived in Russia for nearly five years.

SHAWNA LUCEY:  Making the cans smaller isn’t gonna make people drink less.  That is so stupid.

GOLLOHER: And beer, though popular, isn’t Russia’s drink of choice.  That would be vodka, and the government isn’t proposing limits on vodka sales.  Kortunov says he thinks the government’s anti-beer campaign is more about targeting foreign business, than addressing Russia’s drinking problem.

KORTUNOV: First of all, you know, beer is not the only drink which Russian population consumes in plenty. One of the reasons why it happens, paradoxically, is that most of the beer production is now controlled by foreign companies.

GOLLOHER: Companies like Danish brewer Carlsberg, which brews Russia’s number one beer, Baltica. The Russian government is also proposing a dramatic increase on beer excise tax in the next few years.  Kortunov says he’d like to see the government focus more on the unhealthy lifestyles of many Russians.  Until that happens, he doubts the government’s latest campaign will have a real effect.

KORTUNOV: If it’s just the first step, we can give Medvedev the benefit of the doubt, though this step is probably rather a clumsy one. But if it is all that they can offer, I think the results are not likely to be that great.

GOLLOHER: If history is any indication, Kortunov is probably right.   In 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev imposed strict restrictions on public drinking, and he slashed production of wines and spirits.  That triggered a massive surge in moonshining and a dramatic drop in Gorbachev’s popularity. For The World, I’m Jessica Golloher in Moscow.

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.

Read the Transcript
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.  Just about any custody dispute is heart-wrenching, for the parents and the children.  But here’s a case that’s especially difficult.

It involves a Tennessee man, his Japanese ex-wife, and their two children.  The father is currently in jail in Japan for trying to get his kids back.  Akiko Fujita reports from Tokyo.

AKIKO FUJITA: Christopher Savoie says he always feared his ex-wife Noriko might take their children to Japan.  In an interview with WTVF in Tennessee, Savoie said she threatened that more than once. So when their 8 year-old son and 6 year-old daughter didn’t show up for their first day of school, he called his ex-wife’s parents in Japan.

CHRISTOPHER SAVOIE: I said “What do you mean don’t worry? They weren’t at school.”  “Oh, don’t worry they’re here.”  I said, “They’re what? They’re what? They’re in Japan?”

FUJITA: A few weeks ago, Savoie flew to the city of Fukuoka. Police there say Savoie snatched his two children as they walked to their Japanese school with their mother.  He put them in his car, and drove to the US consulate to get passports for them, but police caught up and arrested him for kidnapping.

TADASHI YOSHINO: [speaking Japanese]

FUJITA: Christopher’s Japanese lawyer says his client acted as a loving father. He doesn’t feel like he did anything wrong, but he now faces up to seven years in jail.  Technically, Christopher Savoie has custody of the kids.  The Savoies lived in Japan until last year.  A US court awarded the mother custody after the couple moved to Tennessee and divorced earlier this year.  But when Noriko Savoie took the children to Japan this summer, the court reversed and gave Christopher sole custody.  The problem is Japan does not recognize that ruling.  The country’s not a party to the Hague Convention on child abductions, so Japan isn’t obligated to return the children to Tennessee.  The Savoies’ case has grabbed headlines in the US, but in Japan, it hasn’t made much of a splash.  That’s partly because it’s not uncommon here for mothers to take off with their children in custody disputes.

TAMIKO NAKAMURA: [speaking Japanese]

FUJITA: Family lawyer Tamiko Nakamura says it’s standard for Japanese women to take their kids back to their parents’ home after a divorce or separation. And it’s perfectly legal for the mother keep her children there. But if the father comes back for the kids that’s considered illegal.  The Savoie case isn’t unique.  The US government says there are more than 80 ongoing cases of American parents denied access to their children in Japan.   A State Department spokesman says though the US and Japan are close partners on many issues, they hold very different points of view on this one.  But that might be changing.  Japan’s Foreign Ministry has said that the problem is growing and that it’s becoming a diplomatic issue.  As for Christopher Savoie, Japanese prosecutors plan to hold him for another week while they investigate.  Neither Noriko Savoie nor her lawyer could be reached for this story.   For The World, I’m Akiko Fujita in Tokyo.

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

Read the Transcript
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: For four decades now, the government of Colombia has been battling the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC.  The United States classifies the FARC as a terrorist organization, and has backed the Colombian army in the fight.  In recent years, the tide has turned in favor of the Colombian forces, but a clear victory is not quite theirs, not yet.  John Otis sent us this report from La Macarena

JOHN OTIS: These elite commandos of the Colombian Army’s Puma Company are preparing for a high-risk operation. Within 24 hours, helicopters will deposit them deep in the jungle to pursue FARC rebels.  The soldiers will have to jump out of the choppers and rappel down ropes, a maneuver they practice by leaping out of a 50-foot-tall tree.  These veteran commandos brim with confidence. But a decade ago, the Colombian Army appeared to be losing the war. Back then, the FARC had 18,000 guerrillas who overran towns and army bases and kidnapped hundreds of soldiers.  But with the help of better intelligence, improved military cooperation and billions in US aid, the Colombian military has turned the tide in the war.  US Ambassador William Brownfield says Colombia’s best troops are better than the Green Berets at jungle warfare.  Last year, the Colombian Army pulled off its most spectacular operation when commandos rescued 15 rebel-held hostages, including three US military contractors.

SOLDIERS: [chanting]

OTIS: The FARC, in turn, has been reduced to about 9,000 fighters. Colombian troops, who were once glued to their bases, now spend months at a time in the jungle tracking the rebels.   That’s why they’re now more likely to suffer from land mines injuries and tropical diseases than combat wounds.  As evidence of the military’s progress, Private Jose Villalba of Puma Company points out that the Army’s training facility here in the southern state of Meta used to be a FARC camp.

PVT. JOSE VILLALBA: [speaking Spanish]

INTERPRETER:  We feel like we are winning the war because we expelled the rebels from territory where they thought they were untouchable.

OTIS: Villalba and his fellow soldiers are now targeting one of the FARC’s most crafty military commanders, known as Mono Jojoy.  Army officers say they’ve pinpointed a camp housing one of Mono Jojoy’s security teams.  They plan to catch these rebels off-guard in a pre-dawn raid using night-vision goggles. But bad weather delays the operation for several hours and by then the sun has risen.

GEN. MIGUEL PEREZ:  [speaking in Spanish]

OTIS: Operation leader Miguel Perez says the guerrillas are now awake. They’ve eaten breakfast and have their rifles in their hands. His men have lost a critical advantage.  After Colombian air force planes bomb the rebel camp, helicopters hover just above the treetops and drop the troops into the jungle.  But as the troops push through vines and underbrush, it soon becomes clear that the FARC fled this area months ago. The military mobilized 11 aircraft, dropped nine bombs, and sent three dozen soldiers into a patch of jungle with no guerrillas.  The only human being the troops come across is a farmer driving his pickup along a rutted dirt road.

FARMER:  [speaking Spanish]

OTIS: The failed mission illustrates why it’s so hard to completely crush the FARC. The rebels first took up arms in 1964 and though the FARC has been battered, the guerrillas can still find plenty of hiding places in Colombia’s remote jungles and mountains.  General Perez admits his troops can’t chase down every last guerrilla. The idea is to score enough military victories that the rebels lose their will to fight. One sign of success is the rising number of FARC deserters, who often provide key intelligence for army operations.  But not all their facts checks out. In fact, the jungle assault that turned up nothing was based on faulty information from a FARC informant.  OTIS: The soldiers of Puma Company regroup in a clearing and radio in their request for a helicopter pick up. Though they didn’t deliver a stinging blow to the FARC, they’ll have more chances. And they’re relieved all of the 36 soldiers who rappelled into the jungle are coming back alive.  For The World, I’m John Otis, La Macarena, Colombia .

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.