Lahore, Pakistan
Beirut, Lebanon
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Sao Paulo, Brazil

The World’s Alex Gallafent looks at some of systemic problems behind such disasters.

The building that collapsed in Lahore, Pakistan, and killed more than 20 people, was a factory. It’s thought it was brought down by an exploding boiler.

The building that collapsed in Beirut killed at least 25 people. A couple of theories for its collapse:

Maybe cracks in the building were made worse by heavy rain. Or perhaps its foundations were weakened by nearby construction.

In any case, for the professionals, a building collapse is one of the worst things that can happen.

Cameron Sinclair is one of the founders of the non-profit group Architecture for Humanity. For him, what’s scary is rarely the design of buildings, rather it’s how those designs are constructed.

“The quality of construction is diminishing greatly,” he said.

“There was a time when we as architects would deal with a whole system of master craftsmen who would be working on the finer details of a building. Now it’s kind of like the McDonalds of building. It’s a lot of cookie-cutter, dropped-in solutions that are done to maximize profit locally.”

That may be true, but it doesn’t account for the building stock the world already has.

The factory that collapsed in Pakistan was about 25 years old, and the Lebanese building dated from the 1920s.

In these cases it’s more a matter of upkeep and regulation.

For instance, one commentator suggested that–in Beirut–the fact that old laws keep some rents very low means landlords don’t spend money on standard safety inspections.

And it’s problems with enforcing the rules that Christopher Gaffney thinks are to blame for the recent building collapses in Brazil.

In Rio de Janeiro a 20-storey building collapsed onto two smaller buildings, both of which also went down.

Gaffney is an architecture professor there, and he notes that Brazil has a long and proud tradition of structural engineering.

“So this was a bit of a surprise and it’s turn into a tourist attraction of sorts. But in terms of a shock at the falling apart of public infrastructure, people were not terribly surprised.”

Gaffney sees cracks not in Rio’s buildings so much as in the city’s civic infrastructure: no-one’s stepping up to take the blame.

“The mayor doesn’t want to take responsibility, the governor doesn’t want to take responsibility, the engineering firms don’t want to take it,” he said.

“And so this is a concern of mine in general for the way that the World Cup is going to be run.”

That’s the soccer World Cup in 2014, a major event that’s only going to increase the stress on Rio de Janeiro.

Rio’s problems are big and systemic, and Gaffney doesn’t see the city’s leaders tackling them.

“When you have a bit event coming in, when you have these gross failures of public administration, you expose yourself to international coverage and you expose your weaknesses,” he said.

Anywhere in the world, developing big systems takes a long time, whether it’s building a culture of responsibility or a well-regulated inspection regime, or a seamless construction process.

Maybe, says Cameron Sinclair, at Architecture for Humanity, that’s why it’s easier to blame fate when things go wrong.

“When we assume it’s a freak accident, we dismiss it and we just ignore it.”

A lot of investors will soon be scrambling to pick up some shares.

The social media giant has hundreds of millions of users around the globe.

But for our Geo Quiz we are looking for Facebook’s fastest growing markets.

In other words, we want to know which countries are experiencing an explosive growth of Facebook users?

Brazil and India are the answers to the Geo Quiz.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Zeynep Tufekci, professor at the University of North Carolina. Tufekci teaches the social impacts of technology at the University.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (Photo: State Dept)

Three cities in Brazil are on our Geo Quiz radar this time: we’re talking about Brazil’s three most populous cities.

We’ll give you the first one: São Paulo is the biggest with a population of more than 11 million.

That leaves numbers two and three for you to name.

One of them is said to be the most visited city – not just in Brazil – but in all the southern hemisphere.

The other is nicknamed “Brazil’s capital of happiness”, thanks to its outdoor street carnivals and nearly 50 miles of beaches.

These two cities are popular destinations for tourists.

The answers Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, and they are both destinations for the US State Department’s newest cultural ambassador Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Anchor Marco Werman talks with the NBA legend about his upcoming trip to Brazil, his first as US cultural ambassador.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (via US State Dept.)

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FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke said the right to sell beer must be enshrined in a World Cup law the Brazilian Congress is considering.

Alcoholic drinks are currently banned at Brazilian stadiums and the country’s health minister has urged Congress to maintain the ban in the new law.

Budweiser is a big FIFA sponsor.

Anchor Marco Werman gets more from the BBC’s South America correspondent, Tim Vickery.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. We Americans expect a few things when we go to a stadium to see a live sporting event. Beer is one of them. Like it or not, beer and sports just seem to go together…here, but not everywhere. In Brazil, for instance, beer sales inside soccer stadiums were banned a few years ago. Now, Brazil is getting ready to host the biggest soccer tournament on the planet, the 2014 World Cup, and soccer’s global governing body, FIFA, says there must be beer for sale inside Brazilian stadiums hosting World Cup matches. Tim Vickery is the BBC’s South America soccer correspondent based in Rio de Janeiro. What’s been the reaction from the Brazilian government to this pretty heavy handed approach by FIFA to approving the beer concession at the World Cup?

Tim Vickery: Well, this is an issue I think more than beer and more than violence. This is an issue of sovereignty. As you said, Marco, Brazilian law bans the sale of alcohol inside football stadiums. Now, the effectiveness of that ban I think can be questioned because in practice it means that the supporters drink outside the stadium before the game, and outside the stadium they can be harder to segregate. So whether this ban is in fact effective is open to question. And there’s also the whole aspect that the violence is caused by intense club rivalries, which will not be the case in the World Cup. So I think what we’re talking about much more than beer or soccer violence, what we’re talking about is the issue of sovereignty.

Werman: Is there any chance Brazil, the Brazilian government could trump FIFA on this, I mean apparently some lawmakers in Brazil are ready to go head to head with FIFA.

Vickery: Well, FIFA are clearly making concessions in a number of areas in their desperation to see the law governing the whole legislative framework of the World Cup, to see that passed through Brazil’s congress. FIFA were desperate for this to be passed last year. It hasn’t happened yet, it’s still going through congress. FIFA are prepared to make some concessions including I think on the issue of ticket pricing, but the issue of beer is far more important to them because one of their leading global sponsors is a beer manufacturer.

Werman: Which one?

Vickery: This is Budweiser, who also have a Brazilian connection as well. This is one of FIFA’s lines of defense and they’re in part a Brazilian company.

Werman: I mean, Tim, I remember a few years ago when Germany hosted the World Cup and there was a push by Budweiser to be the only beer at the concession stands. They didn’t want any local German beers. And FIFA as I recall sided with Budweiser. Why does FIFA seem to stand by its sponsors more strongly than you know, nations?

Vickery: Because it’s the sponsors that help FIFA provide the structure that gains support in nations all over the world, not merely the host nation in the World Cup. There are over 200 nations voting in FIFA. There’s only one vote from the nation holding the World Cup. I think clearly it is a controversial area, the demands that FIFA make on World Cup host nations, especially in the developing world where there is such a need for a massive investment in infrastructure in health, in education and so on. This is clearly a controversial issue.

Werman: It does seem like the Brazilian government is behind the eight ball on this one, but there must be a lot of soccer fans in Brazil who will be really stoked to be able to drink beer at a soccer game at least for a few weeks.

Vickery: I think that the vast majority of soccer fans will welcome this. I think also the clubs would welcome the opportunity to make money from beer sales inside the stadium. It could be perhaps one thing that might help ticket prices come down a little bit.

Werman: Tim Vickery, the BBC’s South America soccer correspondent speaking with us from Rio de Janeiro. Thanks a lot, Tim.

Vickery: Thank you, my pleasure.

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.

There are two major orange producing countries: Brazil and the United States. Both are involved in the current price spike.

Last week, Florida experienced prolonged temperatures below freezing, enough to cause some crop damage and to give traders the jitters.

Florida produces most of the oranges in the US, and the US produces about 15 percent of the world’s supply. But with 33 percent it’s Brazil that’s the biggest orange-grower, said Michael Smith of T&K Futures and Options in Florida.

“So when you take a problem with either or you’re talking about half of the global production,” he said.

The US Food and Drug Administration has found a fungicide not approved over here in shipments of orange juice concentrate coming from Brazil. Producers over there use the fungicide to stop mold on their trees. And now the FDA says it’ll stop any further shipments of Brazilian oranges that contain the chemical.

“We could have quite a lack of product on the global market,” said Smith.

The market for orange juice is enormous, thanks in part to campaigns like those produced by Florida’s Citrus Commission back in the 1950s. One features the tennis star Gussie Moran.

“And Gussie I’d say that you really go for that orange juice”, says a smart-dressed man. “Bud, I crave it,” replies Moran. “After a fast tennis match nothing refreshes me as fast orange juice.”

Elizabeth Sullivan is a health coach based in New York. She says there are 22g of sugar in a single glass of orange juice.

“So what happens is that the sugar gets absorbed immediately into your blood stream and it might give you an energy spike right away. But over the long run that’s an awful lot of sugar in your diet if you’re drinking a lot of orange juice,” she said.

We certainly do drink a lot of orange juice, and not just for the sugar kick.

While Sullivan says it’s better all-round to eat a whole orange, whether it’s from Florida or Brazil or anywhere else, OJ has long been America’s go-to source for vitamin C.

That doesn’t look set to change.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Global Post reporter, Tom Phillips, who covered a police operation this weekend that took control of one of Brazil’s largest and most lawless slums.

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Marco Werman: Brazilian security forces are making headlines too, more positive ones though. In Rio de Janeiro over the weekend police forces backed by helicopters peacefully took control of one of the country’s largest and most lawless slums. The sprawling favela of Hosinia. It was part of an official campaign to restore security in Rio before Brazil hosts the 2014 Soccer World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. Tom Phillips is a reporter with Global Post. He covered the pre-dawn operation and joins us now. So, 3,000 heavily armed troops stormed the favela, Tom, it’s home to more than 100,000 people, and yet authorities claim not a single shot was fired. Sounds like a success, was it?

Tom Phillips: Yes, I think it’s fair to say it was a success. It was an unusual kind of operation. Normally in the past the police have launched secretive last minute operations going into slums without any warning. This pacification operation as they’re called them are being announced several weeks in advance. Drug traffickers therefore have the time to try and flee, which is what happened this weekend.

Werman: Right, so where did they go and what’s to keep them from returning to Hosinia?

Phillips: Well, most of the big ones are now in police custody. The “Boss of Hosinia” was arrested trying to sneak out of the slum last Wednesday night in a car with his lawyers and a man who claimed to be a Congolese diplomat rather bizarrely.

Werman: Right, I read about that, yeah.

Phillips: Yeah, so they offered a big bribe to police, but were eventually arrested as several other drug traffickers were arrested a few hours before that, and they were being escorted rather interestingly out of the slums by a group of corrupt police officers.

Werman: What made this operation different because as you said, the previous attempts to rest control of the favelas from drug traffickers have ended poorly, sometimes in bloodshed.

Phillips: Yeah, very often in bloodshed and very often [inaudible 1:41] as they have been very, very violent police operations that have ended with multiple deaths. What makes it different as I said, is that this is part of what the police here are calling the pacification project. So the idea there is that there is violence and the idea is that the police, once they go into the slums rather than going in killing someone or arresting someone and moving out, the police are now staying. That is the big difference.

Werman: I guess the question is if the police kind of semi-permanently occupy the favelas, can they permanently pacify the slums as well?

Phillips: The whole point of this game, police and government officials say, is not to prevent the drug trafficking, it’s to get the big weapons off the streets. So we’re talking about 1,000 slums in Rio, many of which have been over the last 25-30 years occupied by armed gangs carrying M16 assault rifles and AK-47s, often Bazookas. Once a Bazooka was found [inaudible 2:34] maybe a year ago.

Werman: Hm.

Phillips: So the idea there is to get rid of those guns, not necessarily to get rid of drug trafficker, and most of the pacified sums are located either in the tourist beach zone or near the World Cup installations. So the west side of the city and much of the north side is still business as usual there as it were.

Werman: So the police see some pretty big guns this weekend. They also uncovered some pretty wild and unexpected things in the raid, considering this is a slum. What are we talking about?

Phillips: One of the federal drug squads came across a house of a chap called Fish, which was down a very cramped alley way filled with houses made of bit of wood and red brick, not particularly wealthy people at all. And then at the end you came to a similar looking building, but inside we found a rather striking swimming pool with an electronic reclining booth[? 3:21]. We found an immaculately decorated nursery perhaps for one of his children, a gym, and given the drug trafficker’s name was Fish, there was a rather exotic looking aquarium filled with multicolored fish from all over the place. So rather a contrast compared to the poverty that does exist in Hosinia. It shows you how much these guys make out of drug trafficking.

Werman: They have a descent profit margin. Tom Phillips of Global Post speaking to us from Rio de Janeiro. Thank you, Tom.

Phillips: Thank you.

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Lisa Mullins: Other Latin American nations are reaching further back into their past to deal with issues of impunity and human rights abuses. Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil all endured military dictatorships in the 1970s and ’80s. Last week, all three countries took concrete steps to review the abuses committed during that period. Peter Kornbluh is a senior analyst at the George Washington University’s National Security Archive and he has been following all these developments. Start with Brazil, Peter Kornbluh, if you will; the decision to create a truth and reconciliation commission – it was unanimously approved by its congress. How dramatic a move is this?

Peter Kornbluh: It’s an amazing move for Brazil because Brazil, in great contrast to the other countries of Latin America, has refused to look into the dark past of its dictatorship which lasted from 1964 to 1985. Brazil has not had a truth commission. It has not prosecuted a single military officer for atrocities of the past. And the military, even today, has been so recalcitrant in even opening its own archives for evidence into these cases so that the Truth Commission Law has been really a political compromise of sorts. The Truth Commission Law actually says that it does not challenge the amnesty that the military holds.

Mullins: So what good is it then?

Kornbluh: Well…

Mullins: I mean, no one is going to be prosecuted in the current military?

Kornbluh: The process of truth can be very powerful even if it explicitly is not linked to justice. Once Brazil, if it can uncover the information, the evidence of a series of atrocities that took place during the military regime, then there will be a new discussion in Brazil over what to do about holding those accountable.

Mullins: What about in Chile? This is a country that you know very well from all of your works. The process also started with a very weak truth commission there, but two decades later Chileans now have made an enormous amount of progress on prosecuting members of the military. How did they overcome the kind of resistance that you just talked about in Brazil?

Kornbluh: Chile had a truth commission right after General Augusto Pinochet was forced to step down. It explicitly did not name names because Pinochet was still head of the military at that point and said that he would not let a hair on the head of any of his soldiers be touched. But the Truth Commission report itself gathered evidence, was there, galvanized the debate that continued until Augusto Pinochet himself was arrested in London in 1998. That arrest and the dynamic of attempting to prosecuting him in Spain and the effort to prosecute him when he went back to Chile, I think has had a major effect on all of Latin America and particularly the southern cone. What we are seeing today in countries like Chile and Uruguay and Argentina and Peru and even a country like Guatemala where over 300,000 people were killed is this slow march of justice. It’s clear that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied.

Mullins: Moving on to Uruguay, this is just south of Brazil. Congress there last week revoked a military amnesty. It’s now going to categorize kidnappings, torture and killings that happened under the dictatorships as crimes against humanity. What’s the significance of that?

Kornbluh: Uruguay has been struggling to revoke an amnesty that protected the military from any type of prosecution. They already, a couple of years ago, took the dramatic step of convicting their former President, Alfredo Bordaberry, of human rights crimes, but they were framed outside of the actual amnesty law. What Uruguay has ingeniously done now is basically declare that these human rights crimes were crimes against humanity and therefore were outside the language of the amnesty law.

Mullins: Many of these Latin American military dictatorships of the ’70s and ’80s were supported by Washington. They received strong support from the United States. Why and what is Washington doing right now to help this process of justice?

Kornbluh: There is a bit of poetic irony here, which is that the more the United States was involved in the repressive apparatuses of a country like Chile or Brazil or Argentina, the more intelligence reporting there was on what those repressive apparatuses were doing. And therefore, in the coffers and the vaults – the secret vaults of the CIA and the FBI and National Security Council and the State Department – are these documents that are rich in detail about repression in these countries. In a country like Brazil, for example, where the militaries themselves have refused to really release their archives, have stood as guardians of the gates on these secrets to protect themselves from being prosecuted, the United States can step in by doing something that I call “archival diplomacy” – opening up our own archives, providing documents to bring these cases forward.

Mullins: Okay. Peter Kornbluh directs the Chile documentation project at the National Security Archive. Nice to have you in the studio, thank you.

Kornbluh: Thank you so much.

Mullins: We’ll have more of our conversation with Peter Kornbluh online including his view on why there is such momentum now in Latin America to prosecute past abusers. That’s at theworld.org.

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In one of the songs from the album she has updated a song made famous by the late Carmen Miranda.

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This backdrop is inspired by a hundred-year-old sort of Brazilian poetry called “Literatura de Cordel.” Cordel stories are numerous and infinitely varied. One popular one goes, roughly, like this: Once upon a time, a young man fell helplessly in love with a very lovely young woman. The young woman was also very unavailable, because her father kept her stashed away at home under lock and key. But the boy wasn’t easily deterred. He engages an engineer to craft a mechanical peacock, and uses the peacock to spring the young woman and carry her off to a distant land. They live happily ever after.

This story is set down in a poem called “O Pavão Misterioso,” or “The Mysterious Peacock.” It’s is one of the best known examples of “Literatura de Cordel.” Cordel descended from oral poetry native to the Iberian Peninsula, and took root in the backlands of northeastern Brazil.

In the late 19th century, as printing presses became more common in the region, these poems started to be printed in small books made of ragged paper. The books were ornamented with whimsical woodblock illustrations on their covers and sold at open-air market stalls, hung from pieces of cord for display. “Cordel” means “cord” or “string.”

To entice buyers, poets and vendors would perform pieces of cordel stories for the market crowds. The poems have six-verse stanzas and usually follow a simple rhyme scheme. And their subject matter is broad. There are cordel that tell medieval legends, ones that have Jesus and Saint Peter walking through Brazilian villages, and ones about 9/11 and the Iraq War.

Many relate and comment on local and national news. Gonçalo Ferreira da Silva started writing cordels in the 1970s; at last count he had written somewhere around 300. I met him recently at a conference about cordel at the Library of Congress in DC.

To illustrate cordel’s importance as a news source, he told me in Portuguese about the 1954 suicide of Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas. He said that, when papers with news of Vargas’s suicide reached northeastern Brazil, people there insisted it couldn’t be true. They said they would only believe it if they read about it in a cordel.

It took Candace Slater a while to understand the hold cordel had on people. Slater is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and wrote an authoritative book about cordel called “Stories on a String.” She started researching cordels in the 1970s because she knew they had inspired so many of Brazil’s major literary figures.

At first she was underwhelmed. “I couldn’t quite understand what the big excitement was,” Slater says. “All the stories seem sort of alike to me, and they seem sort of like fairy tales. I felt kind of guilty about this. But I felt I better find out why this was so important.”

She found an answer in stories like “The Monstrous Kidnapping of Serginho.” This one tells the true tale of the kidnapping and murder of a young boy in a sleepy town in northeastern Brazil. Cordel, Slater says, provides order and explanations for some of life’s more gruesome realities.

“It’s so important because it makes sense of the world,” she says. “It’s so important because it repeats in a language that people can understand and identify with. It gives reasons for the way things should be, and it makes wondrous, because it’s poetry, things that otherwise would just be hard, cold, depressing prose.”

Cordels have had an influence on Brazilian culture far beyond the thin pages of their chapbooks. Aside from inspiring some of those literary figures that got Candace Slater interested in cordels in the first place, they also have always had a close relationship with Brazilian music. Many cordel writers are also singers and songwriters, and many classic Brazilian songs draw on cordel stories. The contemporary group Cordel do Fogo Encantado reference the tradition in their name and in their lyrical songs.

And there is, of course, the just-finished telenovela with a very similar name—“Cordel Encantado.” It’s setting—a magical, imagined version of Brazil’s northeastern backlands–is straight out of cordel.

There are more direct references to cordel in the telenovela too. In one scene from the show’s final episode, crowds at a sumptuously lit open-air market gather around a circle of cordel poets, our friend Gonçalo Ferreira da Silva among them. The poets recite – in typical cordel meter and rhyme – a summary of some of the show’s salient plot points. They finish, the crowd surrounding them cheers, and the camera pans off to a man and a woman whose relationship is at the heart of the drama.

Candace Slater thinks it makes sense that the world conjured in cordel still captures Brazil’s imagination. She says that, as Brazil races forward as a major world power, cordel’s picture of northeastern culture is appealing.

“It’s a kind of culture that on one hand people are really happy is gone, in the sense of it was very unjust, it was very poor, it was deeply troubling in the sense of inequalities,” Slater says. “But, it’s not surprising that at a time of great change, and a certain anxiety about what will Brazil be as a world economic power, the whole idea of this magical kingdom in the far off backlands, where things supposedly haven’t changed, is a lot more intriguing.”

And, of course, the story of Brazil’s rise to economic superpower is sure to be told, retold, and commented on in cordel verses for years to come.

Comments emailed to the BBC in English:

“I was south of San Francisco on September 11 and had an involuntary extended business trip as a result. I think that I saw the best and the bad of Americans in the 10 days that followed the attacks. The very best was the fall back on the US National Anthem line “the flag was still there” with US flags and red white and blue bunting appearing on public buildings, private houses, cars, roadsides and bridges; indeed, almost everywhere there was a space. The bad was the gung-ho, we must find someone to blame and retaliate to vent our anger, never pausing to ponder on the driving force behind the attacks and the role that Uncle Sam had played in the run-up to the attacks.”
Robert Wilson Thomas, Ireland

“At the time of the attack I was a resident of Hell’s Kitchen (on the westside of Manhattan in the West 50′s) but had spent the summer in Massachusetts on Cape Cod. When I returned to Manhattan in late October, the small picture window that had offered a perfect view of the Twin Towers instead showed a plume of smoke that continued to rise from the rubble more than a month after the planes had hit the towers.”
Alan Klein, New York

“I was nine-years-old. My father said this is a deliberate terrorist attack. As we went outside i remember what looked like F-15 fighter jets flying above us. I was lucky to be home, not in school. 22 people were killed from my town just 22 miles from downtown Manhattan. My cousin was in the building across the street from the WTC, where he helped evacuate his building. It was a very worrisome day. My brother is now in Afghanistan and that day still affects me.”
Robert Le Sueur, NY.

“It was a very crisp bright morning, the first i knew was a dull humming sound, as i looked up it was hard to register what i was seeing, like being in the cinema watching a disaster movie. As the planes hit the most impactful feeling was the wind it generated through the avenues, it felt like a hurricane the souls of the dead whirling through the city. At night the sky was a crimson red, a hue i had not seen before, the streets were ghostly and fighter jets flew past my 25th floor apartment. I caught a glimpse of yesterdays news, an article about Paris Hilton, I wondered if the news would ever be that frivolous again.”
Poran Malani, Bangalore.

Comments Sent To BBC Arabic (Translated)

“These attacks changed the way the world looks at extremism. This western world was prompted to pay attention to all extremist religious currents in all the world, even ones in the remote areas, a turn-around from the days extremism was a local problem in repressive undemocratic regimes.”
Issam, Baghdad

“The consequences were catastrophic on Afghanistan, Iraq and the Arab region. The attacks affected the world view of Muslims and Arabs in a negative way, despite what some may consider are genuine attempts by the West to learn more of the essence of Islam. On a personal level, the attacks meant getting a visa to western countries and America in particular is much harder.”
Sayf al-Din, Egypt

“I agree with those who say that the Arab Spring was to an extent a consequence of the Sept. 11 attacks. But people are still between denying and believing the official version of the attacks. Ironically, those who carried out the attacks are a result of the Afghan war against the Soviets in which the Americans sided with the Afghan militants and now it is as if the magic has turned on the magician. On a personal level I weep whenever I see the burning towers and pictures of workers falling to their deaths. I wish the date is marked globally as a day for world peace and brotherhood between all.”
Abdul Elah Al-Ayashi, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

“Up to this moment, it is not clear who was behind the assassination of President John Kennedy, was the killer acting alone or with others? And the question is still discussed after more than 40 years. On the same basis, we may not know the truth of 9/11 for another 40 years.”
Ayad Awad, USA

“In my opinion, America’s interference in the Arab and Muslim world, its alliance with Israel and its support of the Arab dictators was the real reason for these attacks. It is the foreign policy of US administrations that determine the fate of the relationship between America and the Arabs, and I think America has, in effect, declared another war on Islam and Muslims post-September 11th.”
Issam, Gaza

“Any horrible event like September 11th, whose dire consequences in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria are still continuing, is a painful incident for anyone with a conscience. But despite that, it served a divine purpose; who can deny that what’s happening now in our beloved East would have happened without September to 11th.”
Abu Mazen, West Bank

“The effects of September 11th on my country, Iraq, does not need explaining. It destroyed lives and souls. America saved us from the dictator that was Saddam, but what came after him made us long for the days of dictatorship.”
Zaid Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

“America is still continuing to repeat its mistakes. The world was better before 11 September! Most Arabs respect the Americans as a people and as individuals, but they hate the hostile policy of the US towards them! Bush claimed that he would dry the sources of terrorism but he reproduced thousands of Bin Ladens!!”
Musa, Amman, Jordan

Comments Sent To BBC Persian (Translated)

“It’s clearly obvious that the US was behind the 9/11 attacks and took political advantage from them. If US intelligence is so strong that shortly after the attack it learned that Muslims are responsible then why did they not know it before?”
Yousef, Shirazv, Southern Iran

“It was hard to believe. Only after watching the videos of the attacks several times did I believe it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the poor people who were killed in those buildings. And even worse was to think about US’ reaction. I was worried about US’ hasty and illogical reaction against Muslims.”
Reza, Mashhad, Northwestern Iran

Comments Sent To BBC Vietnamese (Translated)

“At the anniversary, 9/11 the whole world pays tribute and send condolences to the United States but no one would do that to the wars with American ‘footprints’. In Buddhism we call it ’cause and effect’, so despite all the rhetoric, people were caught up in the 9/11 event because of all the wars America had been involved in.”
Danny Mai

“That cause and effect principle does not spare anyone. Japan has paid a price for the massacres they did during World War II (they got two American atomic bombs, tsunami and floods).”
Harry Nguyen

Comments Sent To BBC Brazil (Translated)

“The biggest terrorist strike in history wasn’t the fall, in New York, of the Twin Towers, 10 years ago. It was an act of the American government: the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than 242,000 civilians died.”
Ed Oliveira

“I believe that September 11th changed international relations forever. To me, one of the saddest consequences was Islamophobia, a clear distortion that Islam is to blame. Danger lies with radicalism, religious, political, cultural or ideological!”
Catarina Muniz

“The death of innocent people is tragic and sad in any event. However, I think the US is trying to turn September 11th in something more horrible than the Holocaust. The US is using September 11th as a way of justifying their responsibilities in so many deaths they have been causing around the world.”
Willams de Carvalho

“Afghan and Iraqi cemeteries are full. The life of a westerner is more valuable than the ones of thousands of murdered Arabs. This is the White House in all its white color.”
Elizabeth Mendonça

Comments Sent To BBC Russian (Translated)

“If I try to analyze the present situation in the world (especially Libya) I might predict two trends with all my regret – more terrorist attacks and more countries willing to get nuclear weapons.”
Alex Ivanchuk

“I was at work on that day. I got the news very quickly but was able to see pictures only in the evening. I remember what I thought – it was like watching a badly produced TV trick show. Something like Apocalypses… The first plane which crashed to the tower – I was sure it was some kind of a pilot mistake but when the second plane crashed I had no doubts any more – it’s serious.”
Pastor

“I remember how I read a so-so novel 20 years ago about some hero who was trapped by evil forces and had nothing left but to fly his jet into the headquarters of his enemies. 9/11 is real and much scarier.”
Demian Filimonov

Comments Sent To BBC Mundo (Translated)

“On 9/11 the economy of the world’s richest country collapsed.”
Francisco Mejia, Toronto, originally from El Salvador

“It was more an ideological disaster than economical, as the security and faith of the world’s strongest figure was destroyed. So I think the impact was social, cultural, emotional, etc … All my affection for all the generations of people that saw so many human beings dying in the safest place in the world, people whose only sin was to do their daily activities.”
Gustavo Alonso Reséndiz Suárez, Mexico

It’s a shame that the US has squandered so much money over the last 10 years only in wars and the worst is that it continues and will continue doing so, even going through this terrible economic crisis where the most unfortunate and affected are the citizens (mainly from middle class and below) It’s so sad.
Carla Revollo Pérez, Bolivia

So, can you to name that region?

The answer is Largs, Ayrshire where the Kelburn Castle is now colorfully adorned. Anchor Marco Werman finds out more from the castle’s owner, Viscount David Boyle.

Google’s “Street View” project has received some bad publicity in the past and some have accused the internet giant of invading their privacy. But in this case, Google says locals invited the company in. An Amazonian conservation group says it hopes the project will bring global attention to the challenges of climate change, deforestation and poverty in the region.

Check out the slideshow from Google about its Amazon project.

Here’s a little video on the tricycle that Google will use in the Amazon

Read the Transcript
The 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.

Lisa Mullins: Here’s an achievement that’s going to impress you if you’ve got a zillion photographs you still haven’t sorted through.  The group, Conservation International has installed cameras in tropical areas in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia.  The cameras shoot pictures 24/7 for a study of mammals.  Now, here’s what’s impressive: Conservation International has organized all 52,000 of these images and it’s released a study based on what the pictures reveal. Jorge Ahumada is with the Tropical Ecology and Monitoring Network of Conservation International.  First off, what is a camera trap study?

Jorge Ahumada: We use cameras to capture animals doing what they’re doing.  So the camera works with a heat sensor and so whenever there’s a change in the heat signature in front of it, you know, if a warm body walks in front of it, then it will trigger a number of images.  And that’s how we get these animals.

Mullins: And there were a lot of warm bodies that walked in front of your cameras.  Tell us about some of the more interesting or maybe more revelatory images that you found.

Ahumada: Well, there’s several of them.  I mean one of the ones that hit me most was some of the pictures from gorillas in Uganda.  You can capture pretty intense moments of the mom staring at the camera with the baby on the lap and they look like they’re going about their day.  We also captured some very rare species.  In Costa Rica we photographed the mountain tapir which is a very difficult species to see in the wild.  You can spend all of your life looking for it and never see it.

Mullins: And what does the tapir look like?

Ahumada: A tapir looks like a cow, but it has like an extended nose, pretty much like an elephant, but very short.

Mullins: And this as I remember was one of the more — maybe you wouldn’t use the term ugly — but scary animals that you found?

Ahumada: Some of these animals look like characters pulled out of Star Wars movie.  Some of them have long noses because they’re adapted to eating ants.  Some of them have big fangs like all of the cats, you know, those are pretty common as well.

Mullins: There was one image and maybe you can remind me of what the animals were, it was like a family.  Looked like mom, dad and a couple of babies and they were staring right at the camera.  I don’t know if they could see it or not.

Ahumada: Yeah, these were pictures from Suriname of a family of peckeries.  Peckeries travel throughout the forest, huge groups, and they probably stumbled across a camera and were interested in look at it probably by the smell.  So, a peckery looks like a pig, you know, very much like a wild pig or a wild boar.  And you could see all the different sizes there…a couple of adults in the foreground and a couple of little ones there too in the background.

Mullins: And had you ever seen anything like that before?

Ahumada: Peckeries are pretty common, but other animals like the big cats, the giant anteater, the tapirs are very difficult to see.

Mullins: So when you saw for instance, the tapir, what was your reaction?

Ahumada: In the pictures?

Mullins: Yeah.

Ahumada: Yeah, I was completely blown away.  I mean you never see a tapir like this ever.  The best you get when you’re walking around the forest is you hear a huge amount of noise of a tapir running away.  You might be able to get a glimpse of the rear part of the animal, the tail sometimes, but that’s it.  So seeing these tapirs look into the camera, investigate, passing by, you know, going by with their babies, it is incredible.

Mullins: So you’re seeing this images, what information do you gleam from them?  I mean what’s the value other than the awe effect and really, these are amazing images.

Ahumada: These images for us are also data, so they contain a lot of information about what species are in the sites, how abundant they are, what are they eating and what is their behavior.  So we used these images as tools to extract information about how these communities and mammals are doing throughout the world.  And the main message we got from combining all this information is that basically, no matter where you are in the world, humans have a huge impact over these mammal communities.  And you know, this data are really important not only because you know, we want to protect these animals, but ultimately because we want to protect people.  And you know, if these animals decline and disappear from these forests there will be a lot of other consequences for these forests, for the water they produce, for the carbon dioxide that these forests regulate, so ultimately this will have an impact on the local populations and the human well-being people that live around there.

Mullins: Is there one photo that taught you the most?

Ahumada: There’s one picture of a jaguar and I found that picture so artistic.  It looked like a painting.  The animal is walking towards the camera.  The forest and the background of the forest mingle exactly with the animal, you can hardly see it.  It looked to me like these animals just kind of coming out of the beautiful forest and showing us his or her face, I don’t know if it was a male or female.  That image really impressed me as you know, as an artistic value.

Mullins: Is that the one you have on canvas hanging in your living room?

Ahumada: I will do that probably.  Not right now, but…

Mullins: You have a choice of 52,000 images so…

Ahumada: Yeah.

Mullins: That’s a lot of sorting through to do.  Well, we wish you good luck on the project.  Dr. Jorge Ahumada is an ecologist with Conservation International.  We’re going to put some of the images of the 52,000 that you’ve collected from 420 cameras at theworld.org.  Thanks, Dr. Ahumada.

Ahumada: Thank you, Lisa.

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.

The US women’s soccer team is flying high after its dramatic win over Brazil Sunday at the Women’s World Cup in Germany. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Joanne Gerstner, who is covering the tournament and blogging about it for ESPN.

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The 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:  It’s ice bags, massage, and plenty of fluids for the members of the US World Cup Women’s Soccer Team today and tomorrow.  This is their quickest turn-around yet in the tournament they take on France Wednesday night.  It’s hard to imagine that contest will top yesterday’s match against Brazil the Americans won five to three in a penalty kick shootout.  Earlier, Abby Wambach equalised with a magnificent header in the one hundredth twenty second minute.

COMMENTATOR: Rapinoe get a cross in- It’s towards Wambach- Oh! Can you believe this?  Abby Wambach has saved the USA’s life in this World Cup!

WERMAN:  Yes indeed.  Abby Wambach saved the USA’s life in the Women’s World Cup.  Joanna Gerstner writes for ESPN, she’s in Frankfurt right now.  So, Joanne, Ian Darke, the play-by-play commentator at ESPN said “One of the best, maybe the best, matches he’s ever seen in his career, men’s or women’s soccer.  It was everything you could have asked for.” So, besides that goal we just heard about, what for you were the moments that made it such an incredible game?

JOANNA GERSTNER:  Oh, uh, you name it.  From the US goalie Hope Solo making a save on a penalty shot only to have the referee call that Hope had left the line to give Marta another penalty shot, to the very opening of the game where it is a bizarre miscue happened and the US scores off a Brazil defender into their own goal.  I mean, it was like a Hollywood blockbuster action adventure it was crazy!

WERMAN:  And the penalty kick came just after Rachel Buehler had been ejected, leaving the US with just 10 women on the field for more than forty-five minutes.  That ejection of Buehler was crucial because it was one of several dicey calls by the official and it makes you wonder just how impartial she was.  What did you think of the officiating?

GERSTNER:  You know, I always try to have a little bit of compassion for the referees because in the heat of the moment, they are human and they make the wrong calls, but man- I don’t know if I would have called the game that way.  She was very ticky-tack, very inconsistent, and if you’re a US fan you’d definitely have some severe questions on what she was thinking out there.

WERMAN:  You know, so much has been said about the Brazilian Women’s Team and Martha, fantastic striker for them.  And yet, after Abby Wambach scored that incredible neutralising header, the Brazilians tried to burn time off the clock.  It they just started looking lame.  What happened to them?

GERSTNER:  They started throwing a fit.  To them- to me, it’s no different from a two year old who doesn’t want to go to bed.  I mean, they were just not acting very gracefully.  Which is a shame, because Brazil is absolutely gifted and talented team, and they should be above that, but obviously in the heat of the moment it got to them.

WERMAN:  One of the women fell down with what seemed to be an injury.  A crew came out on the field with a stretcher and then, after a couple of minutes at least, she walks off the stretcher!

GERSTNER:  Yeah, that’s happen a lot in the men’s game where they have these, what I call “Hamlet-After-The-Stab”scenes, then five minutes later they jump up and they’re fine.  Either they’re taking a breather and abusing the injury regulations, but I mean, the problem is you never really know someone’s hurt or not, so you always err on the side of caution that someone is hurt.  They want to treat them and take care of them.  And when the person gets to the five line and then jumps up like nothing’s happened, that’s not a good player.

WERMAN:  Now, we got to say as well Joanne that er-  US Brazil wasn’t the only great match over the weekend.  Japan unexpectedly beat Germany in the final minutes of overtime in that game on Saturday.  All of this seems to have yielded a much more exciting World Cup then anyone ever expected.

GERSTNER:  Well, it goes to show you.  Just because you’re the favourite doesn’t mean you’re gonna win, and the Japanese worked and worked and worked, and when that little window of opening came they took it.  And I was actually sitting with some Germans during that game and let me tell you, when that goal went in they were just stunned- absolutely stunned and looks like er- someone had stolen their Halloween candy.

WERMAN:  <Laughs> Joanne Gerstner, writer with the EPSN, from Frankfurt.  Thanks so much.

GERSTNER:  My pleasure.

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.

Abby Wambach’s goal in the 122nd minute

Freak Le Boom Boom