The car is getting mixed reviews from the experts, though most admit the Jennifer Lopez commercials are top notch.

Think back, if you will. How many of you remember the introduction of the Fiat Brava in the 1980′s?

European Luxury Gone Wrong

The ads promised “an impressive list of standard features.” And, “luxury that is uniquely European.”

You’d think selling a classy Italian car to Americans would have been a slam dunk. After all, Italy is the land of “La Dolce Vita,” Sophia Loren, Gucci and Versace.

But that’s what we think now. In the 1980’s, said Brian Kelly, it was a different story.

“They had some quality issues and they had some styling issues and the Japanese were coming on very strongly, and they were tough competition,” Kelly said.

“Studios” Not Dealerships

Kelly said this time around the Fiat 500 – the cinquecento, as it’s known in Italy – will catch on.

Kelly, who operates a handful of car dealerships in Massachusetts under his name, opened the first Fiat “studio” in the state last March.

“Everybody is into Italian styling today, whether it’s shoes, handbags. The Fiat’s like a Gucci handbag or a nice pair of shoes. If you sat in one and you drove one, you’d know exactly what we’re talking about,” he said.

So we did.

Salesman Sean Cheller put us in a Fiat 500 Sport, prima edizione. It was one of the first 500 Fiats imported to the US. In fact, we drove number 47.

The car comes in three models – there’s “pop,” “sport” and “lounge” – sounding much like a trip to Starbucks. There are 14 different colors and personalized chrome flourishes and decals – like flowers and butterflies. And even more options for the interior.

So, the Cinquecento isn’t cookie-cutter. It’s kinda fun to drive. But, will a tiny vehicle that looks sort of like an egg on wheels finally be the Italian car that takes the US market by storm?

Americans Won’t Drive Small Cars

Bill Griffith writes about cars for the Boston Globe. He said it’s highly unlikely that the Fiat 500 will ever be much of a player in the American market.

“These cars in a good year are selling 50,000 to 60,000 units. And Ford is selling 450,000 F-150 pickups,” he said.

And Griffith said the gimmick with the showrooms – the “studios” – could hurt sales. Fiat controls Chrysler, so Griffith said the 500 should be sold in Chrysler dealerships. Otherwise, you miss the impulse buyers who might initially be looking for another car – or who don’t know the Fiat 500 exists.

Even so, he said, Fiat could still do pretty well with the 500 in a niche market.

“They’ve sold, I’m not sure how many million of them worldwide; it’s been proven reliable on an international scale; it’s got the cute factor; and it’s been a great attention-getter, and that’s the way they’ve marketed it, with J-Lo and so on.”

Jennifer Lopez is no Sophia Loren, of course, but she does garner some amount of publicity.

But the 500 isn’t just cute and Italian and marketed by a sexy American singer: Coming soon, 160 horsepower in a car about the size of a bathtub.

And that’s just the beginning. A Fiat USA spokesman confirmed that there are plans to bring the Alfa Romeo to the North American market sometime soon.

(Photo: Alessio Romenzi/AFP/Getty Images)

• Geo Quiz: pictures of Lebanon’s record hummus
• BBC Jerusalem Diary: Hummus wars

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JEB SHARP: Israelis and Lebanese are engaged in competition.   It’s about hummus, namely, who can make the biggest plate of the stuff.   A few months back we reported on Lebanon’s salvo.  Well today, an Israeli Arab restaurant owner mashed up four tons of hummus, a new world’s record.   The World’s Aaron Schachter has this update.

AARON SCHACHTER: Today’s event began simply enough.

ANNOUNCER: For the thousands in attendance and the millions watching around the world, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get ready to rumble!.

SCHACHTER: Well, okay, maybe not like that.  But this was something of a grudge match.   Here’s the back story:  last year, Israeli chefs created a huge vat of hummus on Israeli Independence Day.  Lebanese chefs responded by whipping up a two-ton bowl of the stuff, setting a new world record.  And they claimed that Lebanese invented hummus.  Jawdat Ibrahim, owner of the Abu Ghosh Restaurant outside Jerusalem, says he saw that as a challenge.  Hummus, he says, is everyone’s food.

JAWDAT IBRAHIM: Lebanese hummus is good, Lebanese food excellent.  But like soccer, when you play soccer or football, someone has to win.  It’s fun.  We have to show who’s the best; not just who’s the biggest but who’s the best.

SCHACHTER: Ibrahim’s four-ton bowl of hummus was created today by fifty chefs and served from a satellite dish about the size of a backyard jacuzzi.  Hummus is enjoyed by rich and poor; Muslims, Jews and Christians, and by Israelis and Palestinians.  It’s a simple dish of chickpeas , sesame paste, olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic, but it stirs passion and rivalries across much of the Middle East. For the moment, Arab-Israeli Jawdat Ibrahim has the upper hand. Ibrahim’s bowl today was the biggest ever.  This is Guinness judge, Jack Brookbank.

JACK BROOKBANK: It gives me great pleasure to award a new Guinness world record.

SCHACHTER: But it seems Lebanon isn’t taking Jawdat Ibrahim’s challenge lying down.  Brookbank says he’s already heard rumblings.

BROOKBANK: Somebody did say to me about an hour or two ago that the Lebanese had already had word of this event and are already planning a counterattack.  I think this will be an ongoing battle.  This is a very interesting situation we have here.

SCHACHTER: Whether or not Lebanon will seek to reclaim the title for the biggest bowl of hummus, Ibrahim says one thing isn’t  in contention: who makes the best hummus.

IBRAHIM: You been here and you tried and you know our hummus.  It’s very tasty and it’s very good.

SCHACHTER: Yeah, I’m not getting in the middle of that fight.  For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter, in Jerusalem.

SHARP:  You can see photos of that record breaking hummus at The World dot org.

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Purchase HaBanot Nechama’s CD

Tour dates

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JEB SHARP: Once upon a time, popular music in Israel was basically folk music, songs that praised the budding Jewish state and its collectivist values.    Well, times have changed, and the popularity of folk music has been dwindling there for decades. But now a trio of female singer-songwriters is generating new interest. The group’s called HaBanot Nechama, and their optimistic vibe is taking the country by storm.  The World’s Aaron Schachter met up with the trio in a Tel Aviv cafe.

AARON SCHACHTER: I first saw the Hebrew word “nechama” translated as “comfort,” so the name of this trio would basically “Comfort Girls.”  But Yael Deckelbaum explains, that’s not what they’re trying to convey.

YAEL DECKELBAUM: The word nechema is a deep word, as Hebrew is also very deep and wide.  It’s almost a holy word, because that’s what we felt together.

SCHACHTER: Nechama actually means soothing or consoling.  Deckelbaum says when she met Karolina Avratz and Dana Adini seven years ago, they were in need of a little consoling.  They were two shop girls and a failed waitress, hoping for something better.

DECKELBAUM: Really, it’s true, I’m telling you the truth.  We were all crying saying, “nothing’s going to happen with me. I’m nobody, I’m nothing, I’m not going to make it.”  And then Karolina said “So why don’t we just make a band together and make some money, you know? Let’s start doing shows.”

[HaBanot Nechama music plays]

DECKELBAUM:  Wee did like each of us four or five songs, and then three songs together. The minute we did three songs together, that’s it, there was a band.

[HaBanot Nechama music plays]

KAROLINA AVRATZ: I didn’t want these songs released.  Dana, she arrived and I told her, “I’m feeling really bad and I wrote something.”

DANA ADINI: “I wrote something.  It’s not a song, it’s uhhh..  I don’t know, listen to it.”  And suddenly I heard it and it was the most amazing thing I ever heard.  It sounds like God speaking.  Really, I swear, and I told her it’s amazing and actually it was a very huge hit in Israel, this song.”

[HaBanot Nechama music plays]

SCHACHTER: The women, as you can tell, mix English and Hebrew, whimsical and serious.

[HaBanot Nechama music plays]

SCHACHTER: The three are all pretty self-deprecating.  It takes a while for Dana Adini to admit that she’s not just a singer, but also a famous actress, appearing in a popular Israeli takeoff on the HBO series “Entourage.”  And she also wrote a song she thought was a throwaway, but was rescued for HaBanot Nechama’s self-titled debut album.

ADINI: “Really it’s just a love song.  I was in love with some boy, that today is my husband, and I wanted him so bad, but I just couldn’t say anything because I was in another relationship.  So it’s a request from God to release my soul just to love him.

[HaBanot Nechama music plays]

SCHACHTER: The HaBanot Nechama CD went platinum in Israel, selling about half a million copies, which is a big deal in this small country.  The group is now working on a second album and they’re starting a US tour Friday in Philadelphia.

[HaBanot Nechama music plays]

SCHACHTER: For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter, Tel Aviv.

[HaBanot Nechama music plays]

SHARP: And you can find out more about HaBanot Nechama’s US tour at ‘The World dot org.

From the Nan and Bill Harris studios at WGBH, I’m Jeb Sharp.  We’ll be back tomorrow.

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MARCO WERMAN:  Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reached out today to Jewish settlers.  He unveiled a plan to offer them additional funding and benefits.  Netanyahu made the announcement a day after thousands of settlers converged on his home.  They did it to protest his temporary freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank.  The World’s Aaron Schacter reports from Jerusalem.

AARON SCHACTER:  (Sounds of crowds of protesters in the background.)  The sound of large protests isn’t new or even especially dramatic in this world, but the politics of this particular fight are getting interesting.  Israel’s Right Wing Prime Minister, Netanyahu, is clashing with the group that, arguably, got him elected—the 300,000 Jewish settlers living in the West Bank.  Bobby Brown is a former advisor to Netanyahu.  He and other settlers accuse the Prime Minister of selling-out to America for a peace deal that won’t come any time soon.

BOBBY BROWN:  We believe we have a right, as Jews, to settle where we are.  To say there’s going to be a freeze based on religion—that a Muslim can build and a Jew can’t—is not something we expect in this day and age.  Israel wants an agreement.  Israel has stated over and over again, “We are ready to negotiate.”  Who’s our partner?

SCHACTER:  And the anger isn’t just directed at Netanyahu, it’s spilling-over to anyone implementing the freeze.  That includes just over a dozen inspectors, with the job of roaming the West Bank, looking for illegal construction.  At least some of them are settlers themselves.  (Sound of protesters.)  This was the scene at the Kedumim settlement earlier this week when inspectors arrived.  Police had to drag settlers out of the road.  The Head Inspector is Rami Ziv.  He and his family live in another settlement, in the northern West Bank.  Ziv’s wife, Ayala, says their neighbors have begun picketing outside their home.

AYALA ZIV:  I don’t like people making demonstrations out of my house, but I understand the situation is very problematic.  They will do whatever they can to that the government would change this decree.

SCHACTER:  Ziv’s husband used to make sure people weren’t building without permits.  Now he has to insure that people with permits don’t build.  Ayala Ziv says it’s a tough job, though she feels for the many settlers who have already sunk thousands of dollars into licenses, land, and down payments on construction.  But many analysts say the settlers should have known that the days of unfettered growth were numbered.

GERALD STEINBERG:  I think this was entirely predictable.  Anybody who didn’t see it coming was really fooling themselves.

SCHACTER:  Gerald Steinberg is a professor of Political Science at Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv.

STEINBERG:  Netanyahu knew that he had to govern from the center, because that’s where the dominant Israeli public is.  But the people who make the greatest amount of noise, as in almost every democratic political process, are the people on the fringes.  They make a huge amount of noise internally, and it gets picked-up externally, but they don’t set policy.

SCHACTER:  The settlers also feel betrayed, again, by one of their own.  In their view, Netanyahu is just following in the footsteps of hawks like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who evacuated Jewish settlers from Gaza; and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords.  Dror Etkes is a long time human rights campaigner.  As the head of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch, he documented a tripling of settlers since 1993.  Etkes says the settlers express anger in Netanyahu for what they say is caving-in to American pressure; but it’s their own intransigence that set things in motion.

DROR ETKES:  It’s exactly this hard line and lack of willingness to conduct any dialogue with the Arab world unless it’s a violent dialogue, which brings Israel to increase dependency—economical, political, military dependency on America—and eventually brings Netanyahu to declare that he is freezing settlements, something which never happened before in Israeli politics.

SCHACTER:  The settlers are vowing to continue their protests—both in and outside Israeli controlled areas.  Recently, settlers burned a house and a car near the Palestinian city of Nablus.  The Israeli army is reportedly concerned that such acts will only grow more violent in the days to come.  For The World, I’m Aaron Schacter in Jerusalem.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. While President Obama decides whether to send more troops to Afghanistan his Afghan counterpart is making decisions about his new government. Hamid Karzai returned to power after a presidential runoff election was abandoned on Monday. And he’s under pressure to form a government that will more effectively battle corruption and terrorism. But any hopes Karzai may have had about turning his political rival into an ally were dampened today. The World’s Aaron Schachter reports that Abdullah Abdullah says he’s not about to play ball with Karzai.

AARON SCHACHTER: Many Afghans didn’t seem to care much how the August presidential election was held or whether there was a runoff vote. Most suspected that by hook or crook Karzai would be reelected. Now Afghans like Wajma Jan just want to move beyond the election mess.

WAJMA JAN: [SPEAKING DARI]

TRANSLATOR: We Afghans want peace and stability. Whenever we come out we’re scared. It does not matter if Karzai is the president or Abdullah. We want peace.

SCHACHTER: It was Abdullah who withdrew from the planned runoff. Still today he called the Karzai illegitimate and criticized Afghanistan’s government appointed election commission for declaring Karzai president.

ABDULLAH ABDULLAH: [SPEAKING DARI]

TRANSLATOR: This decision to award Karzai the presidency has no legal basis and a government coming to power as a result of an illegal decision by a discredited body cannot introduce the rule of law and fight administrative corruption in the country.

SCHACHTER: But Abdullah’s credibility could be called into question as well. He portrayed his pullout from the runoff election as a selfless act. But today’s Washington Post quotes Afghan and Western officials as saying Abdullah was negotiating to join Karzai in a power-sharing deal. They say Abdullah demanded several key positions in the government for his allies and quit the race only after he was turned down. For his part Karzai has promised to eradicate the stain of corruption that has tainted his country and his government. He vowed to reform Afghan laws and strengthen an anti-corruption panel formed last year. But former presidential challenger, Sarwar Ahmedzai, says there’s no chance that Karzai will change his spots.

SARWAR AHMEDZAI: There is absolutely no rule of law. There’s absolutely an increase in the drug business. He has promised so many slots in cabinet to warlords and drug lords.

SCHAHCTER: Ahmedzai had promised Iran-like street demonstrations if the elections were tainted and Karzai returned to power. He says he called those off when he realized it could lead to violence. Still, he says, there is simmering anger among the Afghan people in the wake of the elections, the cancelled runoff, and the continuation of a government widely considered corrupt and ineffective. For The World I’m Aaron Schachter.

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• Article on Sulukule from The Guardian newspaper
• Podcast: Istanbul, A Past and Future City

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MARCO WERMAN: Ethiopia is hardly the only part of the world plagued by drought these days.

Two thousand miles or so to the north, parts of the Middle East, and the eastern Mediterranean, are suffering water shortages as well.  One of the worst-hit regions is the island of Cyprus.  The World’s Aaron Schachter has our report.

AARON SCHACHTER: I’m standing beside what sounds like a raging Kouris River.  But this 10-foot-wide swath of muddy brown water that runs into the Kouris dam represents a trickle compared to what the Greek Cypriot city of Limassol needs, just down below.  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Water was once plentiful here.  Then in the 1960s, Cyprus started promoting itself as a tourist haven, and officials scrambled to get water for new swimming pools, gardens and golf courses.

GEORGE PERDIKES: For many years the policy was to make drills and take out the water from the earth.

SCHACHTER: George Perdikes is Secretary General of the Greek Cyprus Green Party. He says development helped deplete the island’s groundwater.

PERDIKES: When they destroy the underground water, they tried to make the big dams.  Everybody was celebrating that it’s going to be the solution, the final solution for the water problem in Cyprus.

SCHACHTER: But since the late 1980s, rainfall has dropped by 15 percent.  Last year was the fourth straight drought year, with half the average rainfall.  During recent summers, Cypriots have sometimes found themselves without water for up to four or five days a week.  They’ve had to import hundreds of millions of gallons from Greece and Turkey. And experts fear it’s only going to get worse. Nicolas Jarraud is a scientist with the United Nations based in Cyprus.

NICHOLAS JARRAUD: The eastern Mediterranean region, as a result of climate change, is going to face increasing aridity, increasing desertification and a rather smaller amount of rainfall.  And this we are very much certain about.

SCHACHTER: One recent study predicted that by the end of the century, the once relatively lush island could become a Saudi-Arabian-like desert.  But climate change is only exacerbating a problem that Cypriots helped create. Islanders have been profligate in their use of water.  Kyriakos Kyrou works for the Water Development Department in Nicosia. He says officials are just starting to take the problem seriously.

KYRIAKOS KYROU: The situation was getting worse and worse and worse, but the decisions are not being taken by the technocrats.  So, it’s very frustrating.  We are under tremendous pressure here because we need to produce the water, but in reality you have no say in how the water’s being used.

SCHACHTER: Despite the development binge, the number one offender remains agriculture.  Farms suck up three-quarters of Cyprus’s water, often for thirsty crops like citrus and potatoes that are sold outside the country.  The UN’s Nicolas Jarraud says Cyprus’s farmers aren’t greedy or callous.  They’re just stuck in old ways.

JARRAUD: If one can provide farmers with alternative crops that would per input of water provide more financial returns, for example the production of pomegranates instead of citrus, I think it’s a question therefore of convincing the farmers of the financial benefits and secondly of showing the methods they can use.

SCHACHTER: Of course convincing farmers to change their ways takes time.  But many in Cyprus think they have a quicker fix.

BURAK CELIK: The cheapest, and maybe the best way, is now desalination.

SCHACHTER: Burak Celik is a Cypriot environmental engineer.

CELIK: The sea is endless.  If you do not destroy the habitat.  I mean, maybe if all the countries used the sea, so maybe it will be a problem, but no need for all countries for desalination.

SCHACHTER: There are three desalination projects now in Cyprus and more being planned.  Dozens of similar plants exist all over the Mediterranean and Middle East as water shortages continue to grow.  But the plants are expensive, they use a lot of energy, and some worry about the impact of the tons of salt dumped from the plants back into the sea.   Meanwhile, the broader solution to the region’s water woes requires money and political will.  Both are lacking.  The small island has been divided into a Turkish north and a Greek south since a conflict in 1974.  Turkish and Greek scientists have worked together on water solutions in recent years, but the politicians have yet to reach agreement.

And while the Greek Green Party’s George Perdikes says ordinary Cypriots understand there is a problem, they don’t seem to feel much sense of urgency.

PERDIKES: If you go to the street and speak to the people the majority will say, the Greens are right, saying that we have a problem with water; that Cyprus will be a desert.  But then they do nothing.  After all, god is blessing our country and the people.  <laughs>  That’s not wise, I mean, the solution is in our hands.

SCHACHTER: For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter, Nicosia, Cyprus.

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KATY CLARK: Reaction around the globe to President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize has been mixed.  That’s certainly the case in the Middle East.  The World’s Aaron Schachter reports from Beirut.

AARON SCHACHTER: Here in Lebanon, Hezbollah Member of Parliament Hassan Fadlallah reacted skeptically to the news.  He said he had seen no signs of peace from President Obama yet, and he said he’s waiting for deeds not words.  But to the south in Israel President Shimon Peres offered effusive praise for Mr. Obama perhaps a little over the top, considering the recent disagreements Israel has had with the U.S. President.

HASAN FADLALLAH: Here in Jerusalem the bells will ring again with a new hope, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believer on earth, and both of us can act together to move properly and determinedly to provide a new reality. Mr. President, I congratulate you from the depth of my heart.

SCHACHTER: But the reaction on the street from many in this part of the world can best be summed up this way. “Huh?”

MUNA NASHASHIBI:   Of course, of course they will be skeptical.

SCHACHTER: Muna Nashishibi monitors media in the Middle East for a London-based organization called Arab Media Watch.  She says it’s not that people in the region don’t like President Obama, or appreciate the things he’s had to say, it’s just that, well, he hasn’t actually done anything yet.

NASHISHIBI: He projected an image that there can be change, you know, but we see now he hasn’t really worked towards that change.  I’ve lost a bit of confidence in this Nobel committee really.

SCHACHTER: In the larger Middle East more mixed reaction, some of it quite predictable. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, an embattled U.S. ally, expressed appreciation of the president’s, quote, “Creation of friendly international relations.”  The Taliban, on the other hand, condemned the award as unjust, saying president Obama has not taken a single step for peace in Afghanistan.  Surprisingly, Mr. Obama did get some praise from Iran.  A spokesman for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who has never expressed any great enthusiasm for America’s Commander in Chief, said  quote,  “We hope that this gives him the incentive to walk in the path of bringing justice to the world order.”   In awarding the Peace Prize to Mr. Obama, the Nobel committee said it had attached special importance to his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. That’s crucial these days in this region. Many observers believe if Iran’s nuclear program isn’t checked, it’s only a matter of time before a full-blown nuclear arms race takes off.  Mohamid El Baradei heads the International Atomic Energy Agency.  He says no one is more deserving of the prize today than Barack Obama.

MOHAMID EL BARADEI: He’s committed to democracy.  Dialogue and diplomacy are the best way to resolve conflict.  So, the Nobel Prize Committee in many ways tried to not just recognize achievement but encourage people who are on the right track.

SCHACHTER: For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter in Beirut.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  When Iran’s president Mahmood Ahmedinejad spoke before the UN General Assembly last night, he did not mention Iran’s nuclear program.  Still, it’s been a key topic of conversation at the UN all this week.  The US and its allies have given Iran an October 1st deadline to respond to demands to halt its nuclear pursuits.  Iran maintains its program is for producing energy—not weapons.  But that hasn’t stopped other countries in the Middle East from pursuing their own nuclear ambitions.  The world’s Aaron Schachter reports from Beirut.

AARON SCHACHTER: The list of Middle Eastern countries looking for nukes might give you pause:  Yemen, Syria, Sudan.  In the past few years these countries have publicly expressed interest in building nuclear reactors.  Some have actually signed contracts with western firms.  All say they’re pursuing only nuclear power.

GARY MILHOLLIN: In no case, I think, does it make sense for a country in the Middle East that does not have a reactor now to get one.

SCHACHTER: Gary Milhollin heads the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control based in Washington.  For him, what’s going on in the Middle East is clear; everyone’s afraid in one way or another of a nuclear Iran.

MILHOLLIN: Generally speaking, you can divide the countries in the Middle East into two groups: one group has oil and doesn’t need a reactor; and the other group doesn’t have oil and therefore cannot afford to pay for a reactor.  And unfortunately if you look at history, you see that many countries have tried to hide a nuclear weapon program under the guise of a civilian power program.

SCHACHTER: Milhollin puts Iran in that group.  He says unless Iran is stopped soon, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East will be impossible to contain.  But Kristian Alexander, a Political Scientist at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed University, says the so-called “nuclear arms race” in the Middle East is more puffery than fact.  He says outside of Iran, no one’s actually building anything.

KRISTIAN ALEXANDER: I really think it’s more for domestic consumption, to claim a status that you’re somewhat of a powerhouse in the region.  But there’s a lot of talk and not a lot of action.

SCHACHTER: But From Iran, there’s talk and action.  Its president is issuing hateful rhetoric and the country is developing nuclear power, possibly nuclear weapons.  Even so, Alexander doesn’t think Iran would actually use The Bomb, against Israel or anyone else.  Ronen Bergman agrees.  He’s an Israeli journalist and author of The Secret War with Iran.  He says Iran wants nuclear weapons for bargaining power.  That worries Israel and Sunni Arab countries, which wouldn’t want to kowtow to a nuclear-armed Shiite country and its proxies.  Bergman says this has already created some unlikely alliances.

RONEN BERGMAN: There has been an ongoing intimate connection between Israeli and Arab intelligence services trying to fight the support of the Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Hamas and other militant groups and the attempts to acquire nuclear Armageddon weapons.  We are talking about Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco.

SCHACHTER: Lawrence Rubin, with the Dubai Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School, says he doesn’t know whether Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons or not.  But he thinks all sides of the debate need to stop and take a breath.  Rubin says there’s nothing inherently wrong with Iran or other countries pursuing nuclear technology, as long as the pursuit’s transparent.

LAWRENCE RUBIN: If they sign various international agreements regarding nuclear technology, then they’re entitled to the sharing of technology.  And these are agreements that the international community, and especially the United States supports.  And these are obviously some of the agreements the United States and the international community have been trying to work out with Iran for a long time.

SCHACHTER: But Rubin concedes even when everything’s on the up and up, you never know when a civilian nuclear program will lead to building a weapon.  For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter in Beirut.

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WERMAN:  Much of the West is getting its economy back to at least half speed but money is pouring into Lebanon.  Lebanon’s Central Bank Governor announced that the country took in fourteen and a half billion dollars in just the past year.  Most is from Lebanese living abroad but more and more is coming from the Arab world.  And much of the money is going into real estate.  The increase in investment comes despite Lebanon’s unstable politics and last year’s factional violence.  The World’s Aaron Schachter begins his report in a suburb of Beirut.

AARON SCHACHTER:  More than a billion dollars is coming into Lebanon each month and that cash has to go somewhere.  Much of it ends up in neighborhoods like this.

LEBNAN CHEDID:  This is Monte Verde, a very nice neighborhood, pine everywhere. It’s beautiful, quiet.

SCHACHTER:  That’s realtor Lebnan Chedid and yes, Monte Verde is beautiful but quiet, not so much.  You’d be hard pressed to find a street here without the sound of construction, yet another multi-million dollar home is going up just about everywhere you look.  Chedid said building permits in June went up nearly a hundred percent over last year and prices in this neighborhood have quadrupled.  Chedid said the Lebanese have spent decades watching the economies grow in other places, especially the Persian Gulf states.  Now, it’s Lebanon’s turn.

CHEDID:  There is a big demand here in the real estate sector to where the prices are just going up like crazy.  Every month the price is different.  Every month the price goes up.  A lot of investors are turning to Lebanon.  They see a good opportunity here and a lot of Lebanese are coming back home because of the financial crash globally.

SCHACHTER:  Chedid himself recently came back from Dubai where he had gone to cash in on the boom.  This all may seem like a repeat of the real estate bubble in the West but Chedid says it simply can’t happen here because banks won’t let it happen.  Lebanese banks loaned forty billion dollars to fund reconstruction after the country’s civil war that ended in 1990.  Working with that much debt made bankers nervous so the country imposed tight regulations on how and how much banks could lend.  That’s part of the reason that Maher Mezher, with First National Bank in Beirut, says people are dumping their money these days into Lebanese banks.

MAHER MEZHER:  It’s a bit boring. You don’t have that exposure, you don’t have that volatility.  If you deposit your money in a bank in Lebanon, they’re going to give you four or five percent but you know at least until the crisis finishes up, your money is safe.

SCHACHTER:  Mezher says depositors, especially from Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have been showing up in Lebanon with suitcases full of cash.  In some cases they’ve been worried that banks in their home countries could crash.  Lebanese banks saw double digit profits in the first and second quarters of this year and the future looks even brighter.  Mezher says the down side has been figuring out what to do with all the money the foreigners are bringing in.

MEZHER:  They don’t want to get their four percent from the bank, they want to do more but in a safe investment.  What is a safe investment?  Of course not stocks and options and shares.  It is real estate in a small country in Lebanon so no more land, where you going to build, in the sky?

SCHACHTER:  Well, not exactly.

MEZHER:  Those people are buying not lands, they are buying mountains.  And trying to build on it a very big project.

SCHACHTER:  Not only is Lebanon’s real estate market and banking industry growing, tourism this summer was off the charts.  Still, Dominic Dudley of the Middle East Economic Digest says these three sectors of the economy can’t employ everyone.

DOMINIC DUDLEY:  There’s a big young population so finding jobs for them as they’re coming out of school and out of universities is a pretty difficult thing to do and the growth rate the countries are having at the moment probably aren’t fast enough to create jobs.  It’s a big problem not just for Lebanon but across the Middle East.

SCHACHTER:  And it’s why real estate is booming in Lebanon.  People with extra cash are getting downsized from jobs overseas and bringing their money back.  But once the economy picks up everywhere else, Lebanon may find that its boom days are over.  For the World, I’m Aaron Schachter in Beirut.

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MARCO WERMAN: Afghanistan also has big political problems at the moment. The country is still sorting the results of presidential elections last month. The vote and the count have been marred by allegations of fraud. It’s unclear when the post electoral dust will settle in Kabul. It may be a while. It’s already been a while since elections last June in Lebanon and that country is no closer to forming a government. Today the man who led the winning coalition gave up on the task. From Beirut The World’s Aaron Schachter explains what happened.

AARON SCHACHTER: Lebanon’s prime minister designate was until today Saad Hariri. His Saudi and US-backed coalition won at the polls in June. His talks about forming a unity government with the Syrian and Iranian Hezbollah block didn’t go well. Hence Hariri’s announcement today.

SAAD HARIRI: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

SCHACHTER: Hariri apologized to Lebanon’s president for not being able to form a government and said he hoped his decision to throw in the towel would benefit the country. The country’s president will now start consultations with lawmakers to name a new prime minister designate. Hariri spent three months trying to put together a unity cabinet which he presented this week. Hezbollah called Hariri’s proposal inappropriate and unhelpful. Hariri bemoaned what he called constant obstructions. Lebanese politician Misbah al Ahdab is a Hariri supporter. He says what’s happening is absurd given that Hariri’s coalition won last June’s elections.

MISBAH AL AHDAB: We have the majority. We have people’s support – people went to these elections against all the pressure that has been done against them and gave us a clear message saying that we would like to have a state.

SCHAHCTER: Hariri and his allies won 71 out of 128 seats in the Lebanese parliament. Theoretically Hariri doesn’t need the opposition to form a government. But this is a place, as some say, where those with the guns call the shots and Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and backed by powerful friends in the region.

FARID CHEDID: The situation in Lebanon is not controlled by the Lebanese.

SCHACHTER: Farid Chedid is editor of the news site Lebanon Wire dot com. He says it’s hard to figure out these days who’s pulling what strings in Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, once staunch adversaries, are now getting along. And that may have angered Iran, Hezbollah’s main backer. Or Saudi Arabia may be upset that the US and Syria are becoming closer. Or perhaps even the US is peeved at the Saudi-Syrian thaw in relations. Chedid says things could get really ugly.

CHEDID: It’s a new civil war. You might even say that it will be heading to an Iraq-type conflict.

SCHACHTER: A new civil war or even an Iraq-type conflict those are the worst case scenarios. Chedid concedes Hariri’s resignation is more likely a political tactic intended to pressure the opposition. Many here expect Lebanon’s president to reappoint Hariri as prime minister designate and give him another shot at forming a government. Besides, it’s still early days by Lebanese standards. In 1969 Prime Minister Rashid Karami took nine months to form a government. For The World I’m Aaron Schachter in Beirut.

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The Pentagon is using a Washington public relations firm to “profile” journalists who embed with U.S. forces. Host Katy Clark speaks with Howard Witt, editor at Stars & Stripes. The paper has covered the story. The World’s Aaron Schachter (pictured) was recently embedded with US troops in Afghanistan. >>>He filed this story

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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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.

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LISA MULLINS: A media company in Kabul is working hard to turn the process of democracy into stirring television. In fact as The World’s Aaron Schachter tells us it’s hoping to become the CNN of Afghanistan.

AARON SCHACHTER: It’s been a heck of an election season. Posters promoting rival candidates plaster billboards and walls and Kabul and vehicles with loud speakers drive around urging people to vote for one candidate or another. There are 17 television stations covering what’s going on including this event which Afghans have rarely seen before.

ASHRAF GHANI: [SPEAKING DARI]

SCHACHTER: This is presidential contender Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister campaigning.

GHANI: [SPEAKING DARI]

JAHID MOHSEN: The fact that people are being wooed is extremely positive. You gotta keep in mind we’ve never had a traditional people being wooed. We had a traditional key power holders being wooed and then the rest of the people being told what to do.

SCHACHTER: Jahid Mohsen runs the MobyGroup, a media company that owns TV and radio stations in Afghanistan including the hugely popular Tolo TV. The company has spent the better part of the year planning CNN-style election coverage.

MOHSEN: There was like two aspects to it. One was to create visibility which is important for transparency, etcetera. And the other one was to start engaging people so that there was no apathy. We felt that there was a strong sense of apathy from people where they felt the decision was going to be made for them in the halls of power in London and Washington and Europe.

[SOUND CLIP OF MUSIC AND TV ANNOUNCER]

SCHACHTER: This is one of the political talk shows that run every night on Moby’s television stations. The host is the company’s director of news and current affairs, Mujahid Kakar. Here he is on the program.

MUJAHID KAKAR: [SPEAKING DARI]

SCHACHTER: Kakar is a soft-spoken man who wouldn’t last a minute on the loud free-for-alls that mark American talk shows. He laughs when I tell him that and says while Afghans may seem tough, even fierce to outsiders, the style of discourse is polite and friendly and that means giving everyone a voice. As we talk an obscure presidential candidate comes in to tape an interview. During presidential debates, held with the top two challengers to incumbent President Hamid Karzai, Afghans were encouraged to send in text message questions for the candidates.

KAKAR: If you talk with the ordinary Afghans they have strong interests in the media because they know that this is the only way to approach to the government officials, to critique the government, or to report what’s going on in their areas. And they know the importance of the media.

SCHACHTER: Moby TV also uses citizen journalists to keep their viewers interested in the campaign. But the media can only go so far when it comes to covering the elections. For example, Afghans would be afraid to answer an exit poll so there won’t be any real way to get a handle on results until the official count ends some two weeks after voting day. But Moby Group boss Jahid Mohsen says his stations will build viewership in other ways.

MOHSEN: Initially there’s going to be a lot of interesting stories about voting booths and what happened – things that have gone wrong, things that have gone right. From the candidates expectations of what they’re going to get. There’s going to be a lot of stories on the process. A part of this is also going to be around what happens when the new administration comes in. So there’s a fair bit of stuff to cover between all of those things.

SCHACHTER: According to surveys some 80% of people in Afghanistan cities have a television. About 25% have one in the villages where electricity is a problem. More and more people are getting TVs mostly so they can watch Indian soap operas. But they may find themselves transfixed by some of the election coverage as well. For The World I’m Aaron Schachter, Kabul, Afghanistan.

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