[WGpYlC7_Nvc_SPEAKER_09]: under God, with liberty and justice for all.
[George Scarpelli]: Councilor Scarbell. Sorry, spin the rules so we can hear. Take something off of the unfinished business. That would be 17-734. Motion by Councilor Scarbell
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I just want to go on record as recusing myself from the conversation. My parents live on South Street, and I spoke to state ethics today, and I'm going to recuse myself.
[Clerk]: Thank you, Councilor.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. President. After extensive meetings with our friends from Eversource and a thorough review on many concerns and issues, they've been very responsive with Aside from all of the official approvals through the city engineer and all that need to be apprised of this daunting task of a huge project that will take us through a few different cities. If we can have, I think that we've gone over every issue to nauseam and I appreciate everybody's effort and Eversource's responses to all of our concerns and issues and I move to accept and place it on file. Move approval, excuse me.
[Richard Caraviello]: On the motion by Councilor Scarpelli. Seconded by Councilor Knight. All those in favor.
[Fred Dello Russo]: Councilor Dello Russo. Mr. President, we've had, as Councilor Scarpelli mentioned, quite extensive meetings, and we've gotten a lot of answers. We've gotten a lot of response. in thoughtful responses to the questions that we've asked on behalf of the citizens regarding this program. We've also, I think, the representatives of Eversource and their contractor who's going to execute the project, have listened seriously and intently to the concerns of the council regarding the citizens and what they want regarding traffic, regarding safety. And we also delved in some of the previously negotiated items from the memorandum of agreement that was etched out between Eversource and the city administration and various department heads who have expertise in these matters. And although we were able to make some inroads and renegotiate some of the aspects of the Yalta conference, Mr. President, I'm satisfied as one Councilor to have heard everything satisfactorily that concerns me. And I approve of this project of the grant.
[Michael Marks]: Thank you. Vice President Mox. Thank you, Mr. President. And I agree with my colleagues. This has been a thorough and really in-depth process. We've heard about this project for at least the past, I think, two and a half years now regarding this underground transmission line and that Eversource was going to be doing this particular work in the community. This council had a public hearing back I think now it's over a year ago where we opened it up to the general public to ask some preliminary questions regarding the process. As I stated from the beginning and as I still state, this project, in my opinion, may benefit the overall grid and may benefit communities going out north, but it has little to no benefit to the residents of this community other than 100% disruption on our streets, traffic and everything else associated with this project. With that being said, Mr. President, I have to say over the last several weeks in meeting with Eversource and the Committee of the Whole meetings and asking the important questions that we did get many of our questions answered at the meeting. Part of the meeting tonight was to discuss some of the concerns we had from the last meeting and We did get, I think, some of the crucial issues, in my opinion, which, as Councilor Scarpelli brought up, regarding notification of the neighbors, and I feel very comfortable that there is going to be an exhaustive, a notification by Eversource to reach out to the neighborhood, not only door to door, but also to have a public meeting, which I think will address many of the issues or concerns residents may have along this particular route. And not just residents on the route, Mr. President, this impacts entire neighborhoods. and not just people on Winthrop Street or Mystic Ave or South Street, but entire neighborhoods. Also tonight, we requested that the city's new leak detection program, which was implemented back, I believe, roughly a year ago, that when this construction work that takes place on our roads is gonna be in the proximity of our water mains, over and above our water mains, that we as a community have to monitor and make sure that If there is disruption to our 100-year-old water pipes or sewer pipes, that we are safeguarded as a community to make sure that Eversource will pick up the tab when it comes to lead or cast iron pipes. that may be disturbed during this process. And I think we've come to an agreement with Eversource and the city engineer will sit down and do case by case analysis on what they believe is warranted for repair. So I think that was a very positive outcome that took place. Also, Mr. President, and this has been an issue near and dear to me, raised crosswalks in the community. Back some years ago, Mayor McGlynn at the time implemented a pilot program to do three raised crosswalks. And some four years later, we've only implemented one on Winthrop Street. But this particular proposal calls for not only the restoration of Winthrop Street, Mystic Valley Parkway, Salt Street, Main Street, Mystic Ave, but also, Mr. President, calls for the implementation of raised crosswalks at Medford High School on Winthrop Street, Winthrop Street at the crosswalk between Memorial Park and Medford Community Gardens, which we all know is a very tough place to cross, and South Street at the entrance of the pedestrian pathway to Route 16. So I am pleased to see that Eversource has included that in the MOU that is signed with the city, and I'm also very pleased to hear that We're not going to take a minimal standard as the city solicitor, which I don't know if he's here. I think he may have gone home. And I don't blame him, he's put a lot of work in this project. But we're not going to follow just a minimal standard on erecting these raised crosswalks, but we're going to put something that's tastefully done, that aesthetically is pleasing, and something that adheres to state and federal statutes when it comes to transportation and public safety. So that is a very positive outcome also, Mr. President. I, as one member of the council, would like to see in future agreements. We heard from Eversource that even though they're coming to the council for a grant of location, that they already have a memorandum of understanding with the city. So they already sat down with the administration and negotiated everything they'd like to see take place with this project. However, they left out one key factor. that this project needs approval from the City Council. And as we all know, the City Council has its own opinion, its own ideas, and we also communicate with residents and department heads and so forth. And I would say for future projects, it would be helpful that the City Council, if any permits are required from us, we be a part of the process. in particular when it comes to a memorandum of understanding. The city of Boston, which I mentioned tonight, and I won't go into it, but I will bring it up at a future council meeting, has a great process for granting of locations. It's not done by the city council. It's done by a public improvement commission. And that commission is comprised of a number of members that sit on the transportation department, property management, inspectional services, water and sewer commission, and the engineering department. And that body gets together and holds public meetings. And they discuss with whoever the utility is what some of their plans are and what they'd like to see for mitigation. And the approval process is a lengthy process which also involves a checklist. And I don't know, Cassandra, the city engineer is here tonight, but I don't know if our process has a thorough checklist on the process to which takes place in the community. We may or may have not. I don't know. I can tell you for future reference, Mr. President, it may be worthwhile to look at city ordinances and maybe at some point have the city council removed from the process and create a commissioner board that has all the parties together and collaboration that can deal with the utility companies, and it's one-stop shop. And as Ebersource mentioned, when they deal with Boston, when they get approval from the PIC, which is Public Improvement Commission, that when they leave there, they're done more or less with the permitting and all the process which takes place. And that's not the case here in the city of Medford. They've met with the administration, they've met with the council, and now they're gonna have to go for street openings and other permits and so forth. And I think it would only be advantageous for this community and also beneficial to the residents of this community to have one body that looks at it with people that their expertise is in this particular field and I am going to offer that as a future resolution. But tonight, Mr. President, I do support this and I look forward to the continued commitment that ever Eversource has put out there to work with the city to provide a clerk of the works that will be the direct communicator with residents in Eversource or residents in Bond Construction so that residents aren't going to feel the frustration when they need to get a hold of someone at 830 at night and unable to get anyone at Eversource, but they will have a contact that they can reach out. We heard from the city engineer that there will be a working group within the City of contact names and numbers that residents can speak with and that will alleviate a lot of concern. Also City Solicitor Rumley mentioned tonight and I thought it was an important subject that anyone along this particular route that needs access in and out of their property, someone that might be confined to their home or someone that may need dialysis or other health concerns that Eversource and the city work together to locate where these people are and to communicate directly with the people on the need for access when this construction is taking place. So I want to thank all the parties involved in particular, the city engineer and the city solicitor for their dedication on this project, Mr. President.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. On the motion by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Knight, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Clerk]: Councilor Dello Russo? Yes. Councilor Falco? Yes. Councilor Knight? Yes. Councilor Leopold Kerr? Yes. Vice President Martz. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli.
[Richard Caraviello]: Yes.
[Clerk]: President Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Yes, six in the affirmative, none in the negative, and one abstention. Is that correct? Motion passes. Mr. President. While we're on the suspension, yes, Mr. Vote. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Can we pull up paper 17-590, it's the Method Association, LLC, Middle Glen Mall, special permit extension hours, 30 day review for December 5th, if we can?
[Richard Caraviello]: Yes, we can. Disregards the special permit for Wegmans, I had contacted John Babuso and he has said that there is no complaints or problems over there that have been reported to him. I also spoke to the president of the Condo Association for 3920 Mrs. Valley Parkway and they have said they had no concerns that have been reported to them. Do you want to make a motion to?
[George Scarpelli]: Yeah, if I can make the motion that we now. 60 days. 60 days, next review.
[Richard Caraviello]: On the motion by Councilor Scarpelli, seconded by Councilor Falco. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. While we're on the suspension, Councilor Lococo.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, President Caraviello. If we could allow a couple minutes, a resident would like to speak with regards to the.
[Richard Caraviello]: We have a resident that would like to speak. Good evening. Name and address of the record, please.
[Maryanne Adduci]: Mariana Ducey, 2 North Street, Medford. I was before the council last week, and you people passed a resolution regarding the extension of the comment deadline for the Green Line project. And the resolution passed, but yet there's been no reverse 911 call. That was the resolution. So I'm here to question why, what happened,
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: If I may, Council President. Thank you. Thank you for coming again. We did pass a resolution requesting that reverse 911 call go out. And I think that definitely should have been done before today, but we still have one week, one week left. Comments are open and meet are due no later than 5 p.m. on Tuesday, December 12th. So there's one more week to comment on the further extension of the Green Line. And I asked, I sent an email out to the mayor today to ask if the mayor's office today to see if we could get a reverse 9-1-1 call to notify the residents, the entire city, especially those that live in the hillside in South Medford. And I'm publicly asking that a reverse 9-1-1 call go out. I know they notification hasn't been great on this project and I think that's essential that we let the public know whether they're for or against or have concerns. They have a right to be heard and a right to know what's going on and when deadlines are and when they're extended and when meetings are and this is just one component so I hope that we can get that reverse 911 call out tomorrow.
[Maryanne Adduci]: If there's an objection from the city hall here, I'd like to know what it is, why they didn't want to send this out because, you know, I mean, the same reason that people weren't notified about the meeting to begin with still stands because the same population didn't know that the deadline was extended. So it's the same principle. And they agreed to do the reverse 9-1-1 to tell people that the meeting was scheduled for Thanksgiving week. So I really can't see why they don't want to continue this way. Going forward, I hope MassDOT does a better job of communicating with people. I think Councilor General LaRusso last week passed an amendment to the resolution to say that he would like the MassDOT to notify people by mail. So we'll see what happens in the next round.
[Fred Dello Russo]: Councilor Dello Russo. Just briefly on that note as you remember early on in the process 13 years ago that was one of the major concerns that I think people have who administer projects like this sometimes become, because they live in a world of email communication, sometimes lose track of the fact that not everybody lives on that planet, and that we're dealing with a bigger solar system, and so various modes of communication have to be employed. And that's why we sent that letter out to the department.
[Maryanne Adduci]: Right, I appreciate that. Not only that, but we, 13 years have passed, new people have moved into the neighborhood that didn't even know about this project, that couldn't even get on any kind of a list because they didn't know about it.
[Fred Dello Russo]: Exactly.
[Maryanne Adduci]: So, I appreciate your requesting the reverse 9-1-1 again and we'll hope for the best, I guess. Thank you very much.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you for your hard work. While warrant suspension?
[Fred Dello Russo]: While we're on the suspension, some citizens on Winchester Street would like to address the council regarding a matter that we all received notice on, Mr. President. There are some citizens here that would like to speak.
[Francis Avola]: Good evening.
[Fred Dello Russo]: Name and address of the record, please.
[Francis Avola]: My name is Fran Abola. I live at 9 Alfred Street. First of all, I'd like to thank everybody here for giving me an opportunity to listen and hear what's going on. I've been living at this address my whole life. I'm right next to Nardone Electric. I still own the property. When he came here in 1995, I never had a problem, anything that I had a problem with, I could call Steve. I still have his number. I'd say, hey, Steve, this is what's going on. And everything always seemed to be resolved. His business expanded, and he left the premises. He moved to Woburn. And that's when all the trouble started. A company by the name of J.F. White, which is probably one of the top ten contractors, I would say, in Boston. They come in in this area and they totally disrupted the neighborhood with noise, banging, loud, I've been woken up, I have all the records here. I mean, I just started filming. This is what happened since 2015, 16, when I moved in. I didn't film any of this, because I was trying to resolve this all with Steve, who was pretty cooperative, trying to help me. But it just seems we weren't getting anywhere. But I have started taking documentation with my phone, which is, my house is literally My bedroom was from here to where that gentleman is, Mr. Lepore, of where all the pipes are being stored. They get slammed down. They have a fork truck that's made to pick up four tons, okay? They slam the pipes down, 6.30 in the morning. I've been woken up about 20 times. I have all the dates here. Every video can back up everything I'm talking about here. I'm talking about four o'clock in the morning, one o'clock in the morning, and it just totally disrupts the neighborhood. I've tried to have them stopped. I went down to the building inspector, found out, oh, I spoke to a gentleman by the name of John Bufuso, and he said, oh, you know, there's nothing we can do. You know, I go, well, not doing electric's not operating the property anymore. He goes, well, that carries on to the new tenant. Well, you know, looking at everything, and then I asked to go back to get a proposal in 1995 when the ordinance was changed exclusively for Nargon Electric, that they were allowed to operate there. This building was used for storage, car storage for Knox Brothers Dodge, and before that, back in the 1900s, it was used to store army jeeps that used to come off the trains. So this building was always storage. It's not like, you know, You moved in the neighborhood, you knew what you were living next to. It was always quiet, you know? It was just cars being parked. It wasn't anything business-disruptive. Now it's gotten to a point where I work, you know, a demanding job. I work a lot of hours. I'm not even home that much, you know? I work double shifts sometimes. I get woken up at 1.30, 2.30, 4 o'clock in the morning, 6.30 in the morning, 5.30 in the morning, pipes banging, and the pipes literally have destroyed my kitchen floor, blew the tiles right up, because they bring this pipe down that's 30 feet long, about 26 inches wide, and slam it down, and boom, bang. And it sounds like, you know, and the grinding, I have an audio clip for you. think you want to hear it. It'd be a great soundtrack for Guantanamo Bay because it's torturous to listen to. And you've got to hear this at 6.30 in the morning. And then another thing, too, I just want to, is the other day they have a flatbed truck I mean, they're supposed to be, you know, whatever's going on, you should at least have the safety involved in whatever you do. Okay? Winchester Street, they come down with a flatbed truck, they block the whole street, and then they come out with a fork truck and block the whole street and block the two neighbors behind there on Winchester Street. They can't even get out of their own driveway. Not even calling a cop to come down on a detail. And all we want is we want peace, and we just want it to stop. We haven't got one, uh, No one knows when they're getting out of there. We don't know when the lease is, no one knows anything. We try to speak to this, you know, the building commission says we're in violation, they're in violation. Well, they're in violation from the day they moved in. They're not Nardone Electric, they're J.F. White. Well, they're trying to find another place. Find another place, what about the neighbors? It seems like they're more concerned on getting a place for J.F. White. And it's totally disrupted the neighborhood. Dumpsters full of stuff, seven in the morning, throwing stuff. And all the trash isn't even from the job that they're working at at that building. This trash comes in on a flatbed truck from Kendall's, because I work at MIT every day. This trash comes from the work they're doing on the bridge from Kendall. Fills up the truck with trash. They used to come in at one o'clock in the morning, waking me up, slamming the door, that stopped. Now they come in at seven o'clock in the morning with the truck full of trash. First thing they do, boom, start emptying out, boom, start throwing everything in the dumpster. The grinding, the doors are wide open. This guy's outside grinding next to stuff, the acetylene tanks, flammable products. They just do whatever they want. There's no control. I'm kind of upset about it, because I've been putting up this for three years. And I just want your guys' help. If you can help, just let me know, when does this end? Who's going to enforce this? Who's doing this? These people are doing whatever they want. When are they gonna get out? I can't even find out when the lease is or when they're supposed to get out. I just came here tonight just to address the attention to everybody here and just ask for some help and put us in the right direction on where we go with this. for the whole neighborhood. It's really gotten totally out of control. And if you go by there and see the pipe, how big it is, it's insane. I get all this video and stuff, I don't want to play it for you, but if you want to hear one grind, I'll let you hear it. This is at 6.30 in the morning. I have to decline that call, sorry about that. This is next door to my house. All dead. This is next door to my house. What they do is they grind it. What they're doing is they're prepping the pipes for the big dig over there, whatever they're doing, I'm sorry, the Kendall Bridge. And what they're doing is they're prepping all the big pipes, putting all the elbows on, the offset, the offsets, the heat exchangers, whatever they're putting on. And then they grind it, they weld it, they're welding outside. I get video of sparks flying all over the place. And then they come in, it's 6.30 in the morning with a big flatbed truck, and this thing backs up. That's all it does is beep, beep, beep, and then they load the flatbed on and they take it out. You know, there's guys urinating outside next to the dumpster. I mean, I didn't have a camera with me every time. But you know what? I wish I had one with me, but I'm not home all the time. So I don't know even what goes on during the day. She works from her house and she deals with the day stuff. But I'm not even home that much. in the morning, and I'm out early, and then I come home late at night.
[WGpYlC7_Nvc_SPEAKER_01]: I live across the street. My name is Mark McPartland. I live at 8 Alfred Street, and I work a couple days a week from home. I work for Philips Health Care, an international company, so I take a lot of early morning international phone calls and conference calls throughout the day. And basically, from spring to fall, I can't have my windows open during the day because I can't be heard on my conference calls.
[Adam Knight]: Thank you.
[Richard Caraviello]: Councilor Dayton.
[Adam Knight]: Mr. President, I think that this is a matter that's appropriate for further review from our building commissioner. It's my understanding that in our packet here there is a letter from Mr. Mulkey to the property owner indicating that the current use is an improper use. It's not in compliance with the zoning board decision. And it's also my understanding that there was a process to relocate this tenant, Mr. President. But if we look further in the packet, we'll also see that that process has fallen through. So I think it would be incumbent upon us to figure out where we are in the process from our building commissioner to see what's going on. Ultimately, we've had situations like this in the past. If you recall several years back when they were doing the Winthrop Street drainage project, they were using Apostolon Mystic Ave as a layover yard, which abutted Sylvia Road, which is a residential street. And many of the same complaints and same concerns came up. you know, working with the building commissioner and the administration, we were able to get them out of there in short order. And I think that this is a project, a similar situation, and I think that you have everybody on the same page. I don't think that anybody in the administration wants these people here disrupting the quality of life, and I'm certainly sure that nobody behind this rail does. So with that being said, I think that the proper steps, Mr. President, would be to Refer this to the building commissioner for response to see what's going on Ultimately, I think this is something that may have to go through the city solicitor's office at some point in time But as of right now, it's up to the code enforcement officer to issue the appropriate fines for non-compliance with the zoning act and Then go from there Thank You
[Fred Dello Russo]: Councilor Dello Russo. Thank you, Mr. President. I've spoken with Mr. Vola on a couple occasions about this and spoken to the building commissioner, Mr. Moki. Clearly, upon all the research you've done, Fran, that the activity that's going on is beyond the scope allowed in the initial variance given to the property owner some 20 plus years ago. The property owner is not in there. He leased the property out to a company that's clearly operating way beyond the scope of the restrictions placed on the use of that property. They are in the process from what the Building Commissioner has told me they are in the process of finding a new location. However, he doesn't have an answer on when that's going to be. And that's what has him concerned the most, because it's too open-ended, and you folks need redress right away. I just want peace.
[Francis Avola]: That's all. I can't. And the whole thing is, is we just We just want an answer. That's the whole thing. It's like everything's left up in the air. I don't know. I don't know.
[Fred Dello Russo]: Here's what it is at this point. First of all, I have to share my surprise with J.F. White. You rightly mentioned, they're one of the top construction firms in Boston. They do enormous projects, and you would think, given their history and their success, that they ought to know how to treat people, and they're not treating you well. And that's sad. Mr. Mulkey has examined this and cited the property owner for a zoning violation. So a citation has been issued, all right? He goes through then a process of responding or appealing, and then they go from there. Hopefully this will be resolved before then. He personally met with the, the manager or whoever's in charge at that location for the construction company. He explained to them and walked through the whole thing with them where they're in violation. So they themselves have been put on notice. He's assured us that the inspectional service director, Mr. Bavuso, is monitoring them on off hours and making spot checks to survey the property, he wanted you to be aware of that. And then this is going to have to follow its course. I have to say that from what I've been told, the property owner is aware of what's going on clearly now and wants to move to get them out of there. Because he doesn't want them, that reflects poorly, because as you recall, he was a good neighbor.
[Francis Avola]: He's a great guy and I think what actually happened is I think he didn't realize that when they came in and took the space that this was all going to be going on. I think he was probably misled himself.
[Fred Dello Russo]: Right. He probably thought it was going to be a dump spot for trucks and that was it. Like it's kind of been. And he was kind of turned key when he operated out there. The trucks left for the day on their projects. Never had a problem with him. No. So that's where I've been updated on this. As far as a council resolution, that's up to the councilors if we want to refer this for action and further communication from the building inspector, but that's where he has us today.
[Francis Avola]: Okay.
[Fred Dello Russo]: All right.
[Francis Avola]: Well, I'm glad everybody gave me a chance to speak.
[Fred Dello Russo]: But this is important, too. This work that you put together is important, because I think it helped us as Councilors clarify the scope to which they're behind, and it also is clear that it's Um, uh, I know your friend. I mean, you're not a complainer. Um, I just want to sleep peacefully. I don't sleep much as it is, you know, exactly. You work morning, noon and night.
[Francis Avola]: Well, thank you all. Thank you very much.
[Michael Marks]: Vice president mocks. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. And, um, I think we're beyond the point of just talking, giving lip service. And no matter how many violations are handed out, that's not going to help Fran's problem. That's not going to help the neighbor's problems. At this particular point, it was clear when I read that document that although they're saying they have plans to relocate, but when you don't give a time frame To me, that's just lip service. So I don't have too much confidence. I don't know how long their lease is, as you mentioned. They could have a 10-year lease, five-year lease, who knows. But I think at this point, and I've been on the council for a number of years, I think this calls for a cease and desist order, which could be handed out by the building commissioner. And I think we're at that point, I shouldn't say I think, I know we're at that point. And I think the, building commissioner has to line up all his ducks before he does that. But I think we're at that point right now that I would ask the council take a vote to have the building commissioner look into a ceased immediate cease and desist order based on the fact that they're working prior to 7 a.m. In the morning, which is a violation of zoning ordinances. They're also doing work in that particular location that is not of proper use, which I think the building commissioner already cited them based on that. And to me, that's enough information to have in hand to go and provide a cease and desist order, which would have them close operations immediately until it goes to court. And I'm sure any business, especially if they're doing work, like you're mentioning, are not going to want to close their operation So it really brings them back to the table once this action's taken. So I would ask that in the form of a motion, Mr. President, that we direct the building commissioner to issue a cease and desist order immediately on this particular property.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Mr. Vice President.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Is it a point of information? I don't care. Thank you, President Caraviello. I agree with Councilor Marks. I think from those, just listening to that one clip, that would drive me absolutely crazy, never mind while I'm sleeping, during the day while I'm trying to work. And I think we need to get a little tougher as a city on this establishment. cease and desist seems to me like it's probably the way to go. I'd also ask that we request an opinion from the city solicitor, depending on how long it takes to actually cease and desist the operation, with regards to if the permit was given to Nardone Electric and only to them, how is JF White operating at the site? I think that was an important piece of information that maybe the building commissioner, um, needs an opinion from the solicitor to shut down operations. Also, the hours of operation, it seems like it's going all through the night, all through the morning. There is a start time and an end time that should be followed. So I think that's an important piece of information as well. I can't imagine every night listening to that noise. So whatever the city needs to do, I think they need to do it as if it was their home that was on 8 or 9 Alfred Street. So I would second that. resolve.
[Adam Knight]: Mr. President, just to clarify the motion that I made. The motion that I was making was to refer the paper to the Building Commissioner Enforcement of the Zoning Act, which would be all-encompassing. It would take into consideration any and all steps that he needs to take to make sure that there's a complying use at this location.
[Richard Caraviello]: We have two motions on the floor. We have one from Councilor Marks, Vice-President Marks, and we have one from Councilor Knight. As amended. As amended. So, which one are we gonna go with?
[Clerk]: I think they're one and the same.
[Richard Caraviello]: I just wanted to clarify what I was saying.
[Adam Knight]: We should refer to the purpose of enforcing the Seizing Act.
[Richard Caraviello]: Councilor Marks is asking for a cease and desist.
[WGpYlC7_Nvc_SPEAKER_09]: Which is probably a step in the process of enforcing the Zoning Act.
[Michael Marks]: Right, but I think we're at the point right now where that's the highest level of council to accomplish a request.
[Richard Caraviello]: Okay. Other than the zoning, that's fine. All right, we'll go with Councilor Marks' motion that the Building Commissioner order a cease and desist, seconded by? Councilor Dello Russo. Councilor Dello Russo, all those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Motion to revert back to. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Vola.
[Francis Avola]: Have a good night.
[Richard Caraviello]: Motion to revert back to regular business by Councilor Scarpelli. All those in favor. 17785 offered by Vice President Mox, be it resolved that the double poles on Alexander Avenue, pole number 4444 and 4443, and on Barnaround, pole number 2994, be removed in the interest of public safety. Vice President Mox.
[Michael Marks]: Thank you, Mr. President. I would just ask that this be sent to National Grid for immediate removal of the double poles. And also, if we can get a report I believe it was several months back I asked for an update on the double pole report, and I don't think we have yet to receive an update. I'm seeing more and more double poles throughout the community, which is good. It means they're replacing older poles, but we also want to stay on top of the utilities to make sure they're removing the double pole, Mr. President.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you. On the motion by Vice President Mox, seconded by by Councilor Scarpelli, all those in favor? Motion passes. 17-786, petition by Roberta Cameron, Ralph Nordstrom, Reverend Mast, to address the council for an update of the completion of the community preservation plan in the opening of the application process for the first round of funding.
[qIvMl_-GSJQ_SPEAKER_17]: Yes, Doug Carr, 124 Boston Avenue in Medford. Roberta Cameron is on her way here. She should be here shortly. She's the chair of the Community Preservation Committee. She asked me to speak on her behalf until she gets here. and to answer any questions that the Council may have. I've been serving on the committees, the CPC, since it was formed in May of this year. I believe you have a four-page handout that summarizes the plan in front of you that was distributed with the meeting minutes today. And I just want to summarize a couple quick points and then take any questions you may have about the CPA and CPC. So over the last six months, the Community Preservation Committee has undertaken to fulfill its obligation to undertake a study of the community needs across Medford. We coordinated with many of the boards in this building and a lot of stakeholders and committees across the entire city. That included things like the Friends of the Medford Public Library, the Royal House, Friends of the Fells, really anyone who could possibly be a recipient or a stakeholder in the CPA process. So we've just published our final community preservation plan. It's online, and it's soon to be available in print. And we have also opened up the application process for the first round of funding. There will be two rounds in 2018. The first application process is just for determining if the project is viable. That is due on December 15th, which is 10 days from today. They'll be awarded, the funds will be awarded in March of next year and then the fall of next year as well. Two rounds for fiscal year 17 and 18. And every other, every year following will just be in one round in the fall of each year. So we, again, May will be the award of the first round, October the award of the second round, and October going forward for each year. It's a two-stage process to determine eligibility first, which is the 12-15 date, and then a more detailed application that will obviously get into more details about how much money it costs, the project, who's going to benefit, if there's any matching funds, and how it will serve the city of Medford in terms of the most number of people. We'll also consider some off-cycle applications on an as-needed basis. There has to be extraordinary circumstances to do that. We're not going to just open up the process unless there's a real need, and that could be the City of Medford, it could be somebody else, but we're not going to do that as part of our regular basis. We're going to have everyone compete and then evaluate all the projects. As the City Council knows, you are the final step in the process in terms of approving these projects, but the projects start really from the ground up. They're more of a grassroots thing from non-profits and from citizens. It could be community groups, neighborhood groups, park advocates, a whole bunch of different options, obviously. So we also intend to set aside $25,000 in funding for small projects, for CPA funds, up to $5,000 for projects with a total cost of up to 10. A very simplified application process to, again, to kind of make sure we capture both big and the small and the medium-sized projects as well. It's important to note, as I mentioned before, the city council has the final approval for our CPA funding in order to spend community preservation committee grants. All proposals will be vetted open to the public. There'll be public hearings. People will have a chance to advocate for their project and evaluate and give opinions on all the projects that are being submitted. At present, the general consensus of the Community Preservation Committee is that we basically equally distribute the funds right now until we understand what's going to be submitted between open space and recreation, affordable housing, and historic preservation. Obviously, we don't know what's going to be submitted yet, because nothing has been submitted yet. When we get the projects, we'll obviously evaluate them then. But our thought was, after the public forms we had, the public input we had, and talking to all the stakeholders, that we wanted to kind of give ourselves flexibility, but keep generally distributed evenly amongst those three categories. As you all know, by statute, we'd have to have 10% minimum for each of those categories. But that leaves 70% that is beyond the administrative needs that is discretionary in terms of which bucket of grants that they go into. As shown in the handout, if you look at the first page, the priorities and goals are laid out pretty clearly, and I'm obviously here to answer any questions, specific questions you may have about the process, or what the needs are, or how we're gonna evaluate these projects. So I open up to the council to ask any questions you may have.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Councilor Lungo-Koehn. Thank you, President Caraviello. Thank you, Doug Kerr, for coming to explain. My first question just would be with regards to, I understand May and October will be, funds will be awarded, and then October, every year after that, going forward. And I think going forward, it'll be more of a timeline known to the public. So my question is with regards to this December 15th eligibility determination form due date. How have we advertised that so far? And when did the advertisements start? Just so we know, I just want to make sure that people are well aware of it and have known for a while. It seems just like a very quick date.
[qIvMl_-GSJQ_SPEAKER_17]: We do have a coordinator, as everyone knows, Danielle Evans, who was hired by the CPC. who works three days a week in this building. And as part of her job is to basically distribute that information as wide as possible into the city. I know she has a big email list that's been developed over the last six or seven months with all the people that we've met. Obviously it's on our website as well. I believe there's a link on the city website as well. I don't know if there are any other advertisements in the paper, but picking up on what was just talked about with the Green Line extension, obviously The more people that know about this, the better. And that we can't do enough in terms of trying to make sure, whether it's reverse 9-1-1, putting in a transcript. The point is that we will do our best to let as many people know as possible through as many forums as possible. We've already had two public forums attended by about 100 people over the last few months. And our meetings are obviously open to the public, as every open meeting is. But frankly, it is quick. It is happening relatively fast. It is the holiday season, so I can understand why people might miss it. The point also I think is worth noting is that if people don't get it in by December 15th, there's still There's still opportunity to get it in, and there's still a second round in next year, so they don't have to rush. There's going to be at least $1.2 million, I believe, in each of those two rounds available. That's a significant amount of dollars. If your project is $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000, that's going to go a long way. And we obviously want to have the maximum impact on the city of Medford in terms of improving the quality of our city, whether it's restoring a park, whether it's restoring a historic building, creating affordable housing. There's so many different avenues. If you had a chance to read the document that was put together by the CPC over the last few months, the needs in Medford are great. They are really profound. It's a real challenge with affordable housing in this city. There's a lot of historic needs in this city, and there's certainly a lot of demand for open space and recreation across this city. That is clearly, these funds are meant to fill those gaps and take the city, move the city forward. So I can try to get as much information to you, Councilor, as I can beyond what I just described in terms of the advertising. But I would just obviously ask people to go to our website, read the plan, and the application will take somebody 10 minutes to fill out. really to get it approved.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: Point of information, Joan Sierra, 40 Cedar Road North. I believe the coordinator sent a request into the Medford transcript to have something in the paper, but I think she missed last week's deadline, so it's likely going to be in this week. Not a lot of time, but this is a very quick round because we had to get our process in place, and then we finally got the application done, and we're trying to get the money out as quickly as we can. So the first round is going to be really quick. The second round is going to be on a regular time schedule and then future rounds.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So when did the coordinator send out a notice to her whole email list?
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: I believe it was directly after we had, sorry, the initial meeting where we announced the plan and had some input from the public, which was, I believe, the last Monday. Last Monday. Last Monday night. Yeah.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So the end of November.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: End of November, correct.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And about how many emails does that go out to, do you know?
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: I want to say over 200 people.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And then if they miss the December 15th deadline, that's for a determination form. So do they still have till March 2nd to do a full application for the first round?
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: That, I'm not sure about that. It might be the second round.
[qIvMl_-GSJQ_SPEAKER_17]: I think for the smaller projects, it's going to be very simple. So I don't think it'll be difficult to get those in by the March actual award. We just want to make sure that nobody spends time working on a project that will not be funded by statute. We want to make sure it's viable as a project, so they don't fundraise, match grants, write all these details, and then it's not viable. We don't want to waste anyone's time, obviously. So it's important to get that step out of the way. And our coordinator, I think, will be, remember, she's here to answer all these questions. People can call her here at Medford or stop by her office three days a week. I think it's Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. To talk about the process, to answer questions. She's been a resource for the committee as well, because we're new at this. She has experience in the community preservation arena from previous jobs.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: Is there a particular type of communication?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: She'll be able to help people with the actual applications too? Absolutely.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: Yes. And she's invited people to call her before they fill out the eligibility form to help them walk through the process. Is there a particular form of communication that the council thinks would be helpful for us to use when these deadlines come up besides website, Medford transcript, email?
[George Scarpelli]: The loop maybe? I'm sorry? The loop on cable access.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Cable access, Facebook, any type of... I'm sure one on the Facebook page. Okay.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: I missed that one.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, no, my concern, and I appreciate all the hard work you've done. I know the committee's worked very hard, and I attended one of the forums, which was very, you know, it was a two-hour forum, definitely learned a lot. My concern, just with this first round, is that today is the 5th, and December 15th is when the applications are due. So that is, that's just my concern for this initial round. There'll be many, yes, there will be many more rounds, but we're talking about a lot, you know, $1.2 million. So I just, I feel like it's a lot of money to rush organizations when you could maybe extend it a few weeks or.
[qIvMl_-GSJQ_SPEAKER_17]: And there's no guarantee that we would award even half that if the projects aren't there or not enough people. It will obviously just, that money just goes back into the fund for the next round. It becomes a much bigger round. We don't know that until we see what comes before us, obviously. So I know it is quick, but we are hoping that people will at least put in, literally spend 10 minutes, put together a project name, a couple sentences description, see if it's viable, and then spend the next few months really developing the project. really figuring it out. Do you need to hire someone? Is it available? Is the property available? Is the property got a master plan already in place? Is it something that's shovel ready? There's so many different factors here.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: That's just it. We just don't know what we're going to get. We could get a ton of applications. We could get no applications. I doubt that's going to happen. But if we need to change the timeline based on what we get, we'll have to do that. It's basically what our first option out there is. And if we need to change that, we will.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And they're being funded. It's not in the key dates, but the first round, you said, was in March. You'll be awarding.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: Right. So in consultation with you folks, since you're going to be approving the plan, we're trying to, on the first round, it's going to probably coincide a little bit. We're trying to get it ahead of your regular normal budget schedule. So that's why we're trying to get it done in March, and then moving it to the fall to get away from your normal budget schedule. That's it for now.
[John Falco]: Councilor Falco. Thank you, Mr. President. And I'd like to thank you for all your hard work. I know this group has been meeting nonstop putting this program together. And I had an opportunity to attend the forum last Monday night at the South Medford Fire Station. And you did a great job. I mean, it was explaining the program. And there were a lot of good questions. And it was well attended. But I would definitely agree. If you can put something on cable access, I think even almost like an infomercial, just kind of describing what it's about, you know, how people can, you know, apply the process, who to contact with questions. I think that would be definitely beneficial. You know, people do, people do watch programs on that station, so I think it's something that, it's a great mode to, of communication to actually get a message out to people. So I think that, I would definitely agree. I think that, you know, a lot of, successful programs, it all comes down to communication. And I think that this is the key. But I had a quick question for you. Can you talk a little bit about the small projects? I think it was 25,000. You talked about that. I know that question came up last Monday as well. So if you could just shed a light on that, that would be great.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: So when Roberta and I attended a CPC forum that was run by the city of Somerville a couple months back, the other towns that have already implemented the CPA said that they had set aside a little bit of funding for really small projects, your gardens or that kind of thing. And I think what we said was the request would be up to $5,000 per project if the total project was 10, so really small projects. We just don't want the little guy feeling like they're going to get taken over by the big project that comes in. We wanted to set something aside for them. So that's pretty much what it is. It's a trial. We're going to see how it works.
[John Falco]: And I think it's a great idea. So the total project has to be $10,000. Is the total budget for that piece $25,000?
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: The total request for CPA funding would be $5,000, as long as the total project was $10,000. So you put in $5,000 from some other source. We'd put in $5,000.
[qIvMl_-GSJQ_SPEAKER_17]: If I could echo on that, one of the evaluation criteria is for matching funds as much as possible. Not 100 percent, but it always, I think, and this is quite common in any grant application, if the applicant brings some money to the table to show that there's public support for it and that money will go further, obviously, if we can spread that money and get matching. It could be a one-to-one, or it could be a partial match. I think that is one of the criteria that we evaluate, which most grant applications do, to benefit to the money to stretch as far as it can go. We urge people, if they're looking for a $20,000 project, maybe they bring $5,000, $10,000, or even another $20,000 to the table, because it will obviously help the process and stretch the money further for the whole city.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: And again, everything is a trial for this first year. We've seen what other towns have done. We're going to try it here. If it works, great. If it doesn't, we'll try something else.
[John Falco]: And as far as in the other cities and towns that you've talked to, that small piece of the budget that was allocated to small projects, is that something that's been successful?
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: Very successful. Very successful. That's why we wanted to implement it.
[John Falco]: Good. Sounds good. I like it.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: Thank you. Councilor Nice.
[Adam Knight]: Mr. President, thank you very much. I just want to say, keep doing what you're doing. You guys are doing an excellent job. This is a group that's been very dedicated to this initiative and endeavor since collecting the signatures for the ballot drive back in 2015. And to date, we've seen some great progress. So I just want to thank you for your efforts. This really is a marathon, not a sprint. And you guys have really been holding government's feet to the fire to make sure that this is done appropriately and in a fashion that's going to be successful. So I want to thank you for your efforts and your hard work. Again, keep doing what you're doing, because I think it's work, and the word's getting out there. People are talking about it, and people are excited to see the fruits of the labor that has been put into this. So thank you very much for your work.
[qIvMl_-GSJQ_SPEAKER_17]: Roberta Cameron, who's not here, obviously. She's right behind you. She's here. Who's hiding behind me. She's hiding behind us. Has been the driving force of this, really. The credit should go to her and the rest of the committee. But she's been fantastic on this.
[Bm5-jrZInBw_SPEAKER_07]: Yes, and we appreciate all the help that you are giving us because, again, we're new at this. The more we communicate, the better the product is going to be at the end. These progress reports will come on occasion. We're not going to keep you in the dark. We want to keep you involved as to what's happening. Guide us, help us, and it's going to be a collaborative effort.
[George Scarpelli]: I thank you, Mr. President, again. I thank Typical Roberta sitting in the back and sitting down, but again, this is what people would be doing. She's definitely not the lazy one. But I will tell you, if you see what's going on in neighboring communities that have implemented the Community Preservation Act, and you see the small projects that are happening, it makes such a huge impact on the community. And it really makes a neighborhood a true neighborhood again. So I'm really excited to see that. I think that one of the conversations I've had with different organizations, a lot of the youth organizations, It's something as simple as getting the word out to their organizations. For instance, Little League, Babe Ruth, Girls Softball, Youth Socket. Those organizations talk about fields and some questions they've had because I know they've been trying to capture some funding through the city. But everybody that voted for the CPA had talked about, well, this could be a viable source. So I think this is another avenue that maybe we can tap into and reach out to those organizations. There's one group that contacted me and I directed them right to the site so I know that they're coming with a, it's not a huge project, but it's also a project that what I like to hear and like to see is that you have organizations that come coming in that will be asking for something that they'll work for as well. It's not just my hands out give it to me so we can take care of this one group and that's it. It's I think that what's nice to see is the the partnership to say hey listen this is what our community voted on and this is what how people have worked on to get make this happen but at the same time we want to we want to do something great for our community But we're willing to put in the work with you. So it's impressive to see the community stakeholders now as we move forward with this process. So I'm, for one person who worked very hard with the recreation group and this being one of the pieces that when you talked about arts and not just sports and fields but the whole gamut of what we can do. I think it's really exciting to see. So, again, I thank you for all your hard work. I know Roberta's still sitting back there, but thank you for everything you've done. And I'm, for one counts, I'm very excited to see what's coming in front of us. So, thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Councilor Lungo-Koehn. Thank you. If we could just request a copy of the email that went out to the 200 organizations and people from. Devens, Ms. Devens. Danielle Evans. Oh, Danielle Evans. If we could get that email. And then I request that you just take another look and potentially, possibly push the first date two weeks just to get a little more, two to three weeks just to get a little more. let the public know a little bit more. I feel like I get the transcript. I didn't know of this date. And I feel like I just want to make sure that it is potentially $1.2 million. And I want to make sure that everybody and every organization is fully aware of this application date. That's just my only request. Thank you. Respectfully.
[Richard Caraviello]: Roberta, did you want to say anything?
[Roberta Cameron]: Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to hear everything that was said. I kind of walked in in the middle. But just in response to your last statement or request about the timeline is that we're squeezing the first round in because we're already a year overdue. And we worked backwards from when we needed you to be able to approve the funds, and worked backwards to give ourselves the minimal time that we felt that we needed to be able to consider each of the applications fully. And that's what drove the December 15 date. So we worked very hard to have the plan completed in time to be able to roll out the application. We've been doing the best that we can to get the word out about that, but as Doug mentioned earlier, the first hurdle, the eligibility determination form is a very brief form. So if people are aware of it, if they have a project that they think is ready to go for the first round, submit the form immediately. If you have a project that needs a little bit more time to cook, submit for the second round. We'll take your eligibility application form any time. And we can work with you to figure out which funding round you best fit into. But there's a second funding round coming up this coming year. So really the deadline is, if you look at it, March is your next chance to get in line.
[qIvMl_-GSJQ_SPEAKER_17]: Also, if you submit an eligibility form, it does not commit you to doing that project immediately. It could be done in the second round. You just want to know, is it eligible? You don't have to do it as quickly as possible. I can tell you that I know the Berkshire State is going to submit like seven. They're not going to do seven in one year. We're going to do that over three years. We want to know if they're eligible just to get in line. Might be only one or two. And then, of course, we don't even know if they're going to be funded. And obviously, I have a conflict of interest. And I will recuse myself, as the councilor just did right now, earlier this evening on the evaluation. So just getting the eligibility form is just the first step. But it doesn't mean you're going to start building this in March of next year at all. There'll be time to properly vet things.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: To the chair, thank you. Because maybe that's where I'm confused. So the eligibility, the way I'm looking at the key dates, I think it's different than what you're saying. Because December 15th, it says that simple form is due for round one. And then it says March 2nd, full applications are due for round one. But I asked the question, when will they be awarded? And I thought you said March.
[Roberta Cameron]: No, they will be awarded in, May so okay, so that's my problem.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So may isn't on this key date, which is confusing Yeah, and that is a key date for you.
[Roberta Cameron]: So I should have put that on the memorandum for you This is it the key date for the public is to know that they'll be asked if they're applicants They'll be asked to present to us publicly in April so that we can vet those projects before we recommend them to you and then we would ask for your We'll give that the round of recommendations for your approval in May.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, so if an organization does not have the simple form done by the end of next week or December 15th, they are not eligible to fill out a full application for March 2nd?
[Roberta Cameron]: Correct, but they will be eligible to submit the full application in September, or I'm sorry,
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: For round two? For round two, yes. Okay, so that's where I just find it an issue with regards to this. This is the first we've publicly kind of learned of the December 15th date. Like I said, I try to stay on top of the politics on social media and the transcript. This is the first I'm learning of the December 15th date. which even though there's going to be a round two, a lot of organizations may want to get in on that first round. I mean, they're going to know there's going to be less applicants, they're going to have more ability to potentially get some part of the CPA funding. If you don't plan on meeting, you know, the week of Christmas and New Year's, I respectfully ask, I know it's time crunch and I know how hard you work, but I just ask that we give this, you know, full transparency to the public and definitely publicize this a little bit more. That's really my only concern.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. Did you mention that we also have a process where we will be willing to accept off-cycle applications? Yes. So if there is an applicant who has an urgent need for funding for a high priority project that doesn't fall within our timeline that we've laid out, we are willing to work with the applicant for those urgent high priority projects to meet the timeline that they need to consider their application. Thank you.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you.
[John Falco]: Councilor Falco. Thank you, Mr. President. One quick question. So as far as those projects go, those urgent projects, what will be an example of an urgent project that would be eligible for this type of funding?
[Roberta Cameron]: A common example is property acquisition. If there's an opportunity to make a property acquisition, it can't wait months. They would need to be able to line up the funding in a timely manner so that they can close on a property acquisition in the time that the market demands.
[John Falco]: Okay. So like something that was maybe potentially gonna be developed, but the city had the option to buy it and prevent development, something like that?
[SPEAKER_18]: Yes.
[Richard Caraviello]: Okay, thank you very much. Councilor Knights?
[Adam Knight]: Motion to receive and place on file, Mr. President. Second.
[Richard Caraviello]: Motion by Councilor Knights to receive and place on file, seconded by Councilor Dello Russo. All those in favor?
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Aye. I'm sorry. Name and address of the record. Thank you, Andrew Castagnetti, Cushing Street, Medford. Good evening, honorable Councilors. This is Tuesday, it must be Medford City Council meeting. I have an idea for CPA fixed, if they could do this. It may seem trivial to some of you, but presentation, I believe, is everything. And I'm talking about the staple that's missing at 30 Salem Street. As you're coming in, from Route 93, north or south, the only Route 16 exit, through the square. In front of, or next door, I should say, to the Methodist Cinema, which is now Elizabeth Grady, there's a church there at 30 Salem Street. It's been missing the steeple for many years. And it is the gateway into the city. Now, I would think It would be a good idea to place some sort of finial on there. It doesn't have to be a full-blown, heavy-duty, original staple. However, anything would be better than a flat top. I think it would be appropriate in our downtown center as it is in most other downtowns I've been to, whether it's Chelsea, Malden, or especially Winchester.
[Richard Caraviello]: You should contact that group and have them file with the CPA. that you contact the church and have the church file an application.
[Andrew Castagnetti]: Just feel for at least 25 years, it seems to me that I shouldn't be the one that brings it forward. It should have been done a long time ago. If it was structurally sound. Thank you for listening. Thank you.
[Richard Caraviello]: Communications from the mayor, 17787. Dear Mr. President, city councilors, I respectfully request and recommend that your Honorable body approve the appropriation of retained earnings in the amount of $268,000.00 to fund repairs to Douglas Road due to a leak in the water main line causing flooding. The balance of retained earnings before this vote is $7,389,422.00. DDBW Commissioner Brian Kerins is present to answer any questions for the council regarding this matter. Mr. Kearns, name and address for the record, please.
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: Brian Kearns, Milton Terrace Hyde Park.
[Richard Caraviello]: Do we have any questions for Mr. Kearns?
[John Falco]: Councilor Falco. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Kearns, just a couple of quick questions. Can you just tell us a little bit about the water leak, the cause of the water leak, when it happens?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: It was brought to my attention by a constituent a little over a month ago that he was getting water in his basement. At that point in time, I had our water and sewer department dispatched out there to see where the source was potentially coming from. And okay, the long and short of it is we narrowed it down to the actual main itself on the street. All right, and we had our own leak detection equipment out there. We also called in MWRA, all right, to come in and assist us. They have a more elaborate setup. Off peak time, daytime, nighttime, to try to narrow down exactly where this leak was occurring. And we've actually isolated it down to a 400-foot section of main that the leak is in, but we can't narrow it down any further than that because that whole area is impacted with clay. Clay is actually acting as an insulation around the existing pipe that's there, and we're losing the sound. It's almost like sonar gear for a submarine. We can hear it, but then it stops. Now, we've shut off the actual main itself, all right, in both directions, and when we do that, the leak in the home stops, okay? So, as a result of that, we know that there is a leak that has occurred and is occurring within this 400-foot section. Now, going back through the history, all right, obviously, this is Douglas Road, by the way, between Summer and George, all right? The water main that exists today was installed in 1927. It's a six inch main and given the age factor with tuberculation has occurred, there's probably maybe only a three inch clearance going through the existing pipe as it stands today, which is not uncommon in the water and sewer business. The main service is 32 homes on that street. Going through all the records and everything, it was just several years ago, the gas main was replaced on that entire street. Well, as a result of the age and the condition of this pipe, the amount of pipe that we already have to replace, meeting with the mayor, we both agreed to replace the entire main on the street. And to do it right away, because even if we just replace that 400 foot section, through my experience in this business, once you touch something, it spreads. And let's do it one stop shopping here. Replace the entire main right away. We already have a contractor in the city who's actually working down on I think it's one of the side streets down there. I can have them start as early as next week, okay, to put the new main in. Now, we put a winter binder on the main, okay, once it's installed, all right, then return in the spring because, okay, with the money that the DPW has requested, the $268,000, that's also going to do curb-to-curb repaving in the spring. some casting adjustments and some new castings as needed, curbing adjustments as needed, and sidewalk replacement panels as needed. All right, we're gonna go full, full width down the entire length of that street, and that will, you know, to completely upgrade the street. Actually, in addition to that, we're probably also gonna install an additional fire hydrant, okay, even though there's adequate fire suppression there, an additional one while we're installing, okay, the new main.
[John Falco]: It sounds like there's two parts to the project. As far as replacing the main, putting in the new hydrant, how long will that take?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: The new main, if he were to get the green light from the council this evening, he probably would be starting maybe actually a week from today, all right, or next Wednesday he'd start. And he could probably go within a couple of weeks. Again, with weather, you know, that would also have to be the concern as well. But, you know, we want to, you know, go right ahead and do it right away. And, you know, within two weeks he'd have the new main in.
[John Falco]: So when they're actually installing the new main, what can the residents expect as far as, will they be without water periods during the day, I imagine?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: No, there'd be no loss of water service, Council, because what we would do is we would install a temporary line that would be on the surface of the roadway, in the gutter line, going to the individual homes, and then at that point, we shut the main down, and then excavate and start replacing it.
[John Falco]: So I actually took a ride down the street the other day just to kind of check out the situation and view it firsthand. And there's markings all over the place. And actually at one point the street looks like it comes up on a mound. It looks like something's going on underneath.
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's the soil, Councilor, like I said, it's heavily loaded with clay in that area. And, you know, it's probably one of the worst types of soil you want to deal with. But, you know, when we come back in in the spring, all right, and we, you know, scarify and do repaving, we'd be eliminating it at that point in time.
[John Falco]: Is there any concern, so when you connect that main on Douglas, that's connecting then to?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's Summer and George. Summer and George, okay. Okay, and they're okay. Those are newer mains? Right, yeah, no problems there. But this will also include new tees, valves, shutoffs, be the full gamut on that street. We can take advantage of it because, like I said, it was only several years ago the new gas main was installed there. So I'm not concerned with the utility companies coming in for an emergency at any point in time in the near future.
[John Falco]: I mean, it sounds like, I mean, it's almost 100 years old, so it sounds like the whole thing probably should be replaced, but thank you very much. Okay, thank you, sir.
[Fred Dello Russo]: Councilor Dello Russo. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. If I could, through the chair, say thank you, Commissioner, for bringing this forward and taking the course of action that you're taking in repairing this. I think it's an appropriate use of this money, and it's going to go a long way in giving a good quality of life to the citizens there. Thank you. I know your staff does excellent work in communicating to the neighbors what they're going to encounter in these projects, and I can only foresee this going well. So thank you very much. Good luck. Mr. President, Mr. Chairman, move approval.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: On the motion of approval, Council Member Curran. Thank you, Vice President Marks. If you could just explain, Commissioner Cairns, a little bit more about how you're going to potentially start the work very shortly, and then you're going to finish it in the spring. Will the road be closed back up and then reopened?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay, right now the contractor, as a matter of fact, he's on, I think it's Linden Street, actually putting a new water main in there. What we would do is we would put in the temporary water lines that would go into the homes, the 32 homes in that street. And then at that point in time, saw, cut, and excavate a trench exposing the existing pipe. Excavate it, remove it, and install the new pipe. backfill with clean fill and not clay. Alright, tamper it down, put a winter patch on it, energize it, chlorinate it, and then remove the temporary pipe that we had installed in the homes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And that will be done now?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, OK. That's the process. If they're going to be without water at any point in time, it's when we're going to be connecting up the temporary line from the permanent line. Probably an hour's job, OK, they'd be without water. But they would certainly get plenty of notification. And it would happen at an off-peak time. So that way, we're not concerned with people trying to get to work in the morning, lacking water for showers, and so forth. At the same time, we don't want to inconvenience people at night.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: You had mentioned there's going to be no loss of water, so I believe you on that one. Could you just clarify, could you have mentioned doing some of the work now and then doing the rest in the spring? so the street will remain open?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: The street will remain passable at all times. The only time that the street may be shut down will be in the spring when we coal plane it and repave the entire street. So depending on the location of the equipment at the time when they resurface it in the spring, it'll only be like a temporary shutdown till we either remove the old existing asphalt or install the new asphalt.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: and the reason we can't do the whole project now.
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: The weather is coming upon us, Council, that's correct.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So too cold to repave.
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that's correct.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: That's the only step that needs to be done in the spring.
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: That's correct, yeah, okay, and some casting adjustments, okay, manholes, all right, is, you know, another term, manhole either adjustments or replacements, all right, and then also curbing realignment, and then possibly some sidewalk work.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So how will Douglas Road be left from when you finish the first portion until the spring?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: It'll be a long, fresh patch, trench patch, down the center of the road. And then in the springtime, we'll return.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: and pave the whole streets. But the trench patch will be safe? Or are we going to be blocking it off?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: No, it will be up to street grade. It will be a winter hot tub.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: That's what I'm trying to get. Okay. Winter hot tub.
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: DPW has its own language on some of these terms.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, so there'll be a winter hot tub, everything will be safe, and then in the spring we're going to repave the whole street, do any sidewalk repair.
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: That's correct, Councilor.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you.
[Michael Marks]: Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. I can feel my phone blowing up already from Parris Street and Evans Street. This is being done because there's a major water leak. and those projects are still on course as we've talked about for the spring, correct? Yeah, nothing's been compromised. I can just only imagine. So, again, this is because there's a major water leak in that area that needs to be done.
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: That's correct, okay. Matter of fact, I have almost weekly dialogue with two of the homeowners out there, and they've been very, very patient and understanding, but they also know there's a process that we have to go through. I can understand that. Thank you, Mr. Carrings. Thank you.
[Michael Marks]: Thank you, Councilor Scott. Councilor Knight.
[Adam Knight]: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Kearns, can you tell me who the contractor is that's been selected to perform the work, if the money is appropriate?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: Kaidila Construction, Councilor, who's presently in the city doing work.
[Adam Knight]: And in your experiences, do you think that this is a good idea? A-plus outfit, B-minus outfit?
[uVH2naDKUEE_SPEAKER_02]: An A-plus. I had actually the owner, Mark Caraviello, in my office yesterday to lay out potentially this job coming up if the council were to approve it. I wanted to know if he was capable of taking it on in addition to the responsibilities that he presently has on board. And, you know, he was. I've seen his work. I've seen his equipment. And, you know, I'm pretty confident we'll, you know, get it done and done right. Excellent. Thank you. Move the question, Mr. President.
[Michael Marks]: Motion of approval. All those in favor? Roll call. Opposed? The roll call vote has been requested.
[Clerk]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Councilor Scarpelli? Yes. Vice President Marks?
[Michael Marks]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, none in the negative. The motion is adopted. Motion to take papers in the hands of the clerk. Suspend the rules, take the papers in the hands of the clerk. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Offered by Council President Caraviello. Be it resolved that the Medford City Council send its sincere condolences to the family of Marguerite Regan, teacher of over 40 years at the Swan School.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, Mrs. Regan has been a teacher in the system for 40 years, and there's not many teachers that can make that claim. And she recently passed away this week, and I'd like to send condolences to her family this week, if we could have a moment of silence, Mr. President, in memory of her.
[Michael Marks]: All rise for a moment of silence. Offered by President Caraviello, be it resolved that the Medford City Council have a representative from the bicycle company give the city a plan on how they are picking up the bicycles that are being left over of the city for several days at a time. Councilor?
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Mr. President. We have this new company that you sort of pick up a bike anywhere you want, you leave it anywhere you want. But as you're going around the city, you're seeing them left in the middle of sidewalks and all over the place. There's been a bicycle in particular that sat on the rotary over at Winthrop Street for the last five days, and now it's gone from the rotary over to the sidewalk on Winthrop Street. And I've seen them left over by the book school and all over the city. I don't know, I've never seen a plan or anything how this company got into the city or even does business here. So if the city can have some type of, we can get some type of representative, either come to the council or somebody from the city to let us know how this company operates. And they say you just can't leave stuff in the middle of sidewalks. for days at a time and not pick them up. So that's been a concern. Like I said, there's been a particular one that sat on the rotary of Winthrop Street right in the middle for five days and now somebody took it off and it's on the sidewalk on Winthrop Street. So again, we can have somebody from that, either have somebody come here or somebody from the city give us a plan on how this company works or some kind of contact with them. I don't even know where these people are from.
[Michael Marks]: On the motion of Councilor Caraviello, all those in favor? Aye.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Councilor Wango-Kern. Thank you, Vice President Mox, and thanks for bringing up Councilor Caraviello. I actually just ran out to the DPW Commissioner to get an update on Marshall Street in issue, and also the bike left on Winthrop Rotary, because I had emailed the Mayor's office this morning to see if they had that company's contact.
[Richard Caraviello]: It's on the sidewalk.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: They actually call. They didn't have a contact. I don't believe because they called Mr. Karen's to try to go remove it. So we need definitely need a contact. And I think it's the Maldon's new pilot program they use it. And the bikes are being left on Medford streets all over. So we do need to get a handle on it. He said he's going to remove the one on Winthrop Street right after he takes pitches hopefully tomorrow. So I just wanted to. Point of information on that.
[Michael Marks]: Thank you. On the motion. Second. All those in favor, seconded by Councilor Leif. All those opposed, the ayes have it. The motion is adopted. Paper from Councilor Scarpelli. Be it resolved that the Traffic Department look into illegal parking of out of state automobiles on Cherry Street. Councilor Scarpelli.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. I received a few phone calls on automobiles that are being left in front of residential homes that are resided by some seniors and the cars are left there for days at a time. If we could just have someone from the Traffic Enforcement Office or Officer Hodden and maybe reach out and just take a few trips down there to Cherry Street and maybe do a little extra enforcement and making sure that these out of state cars aren't left here overnight for a long period of time. Thank you.
[John Falco]: Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Falco. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank Council Colleague for bringing this forward tonight because I think this is an issue that is coming up more and more throughout our community. And if I could just amend the resolution to also include Tainter Street, Everett Street, and lower Fulton Street as well between Sound Street and Webster Street. That whole area, that whole block, there's a lot of cars down there with out-of-state plates. It's an issue that really needs to be addressed. I believe it's happening in other sections of the city or other neighborhoods of the city as well. It's a resolution that I certainly support, so I second the resolution.
[Michael Marks]: On the motion offered by Councilor Scarpelli, amended further by Councilor Falco. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it, the motion is adopted. Motion by Councilor Langel Kern to revert back to the regular order of business. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Reports of committee. 17-788. Report of Committee of the Whole meeting on November 28th, 2017. The Medford Square Master Plan. The committee met on November 28th in the Committee of the Whole. Attendees were President Richard Caraviello, Vice President Michael Mox, Councilor Falco, Councilor Knight, Councilor Scarpelli, Councilor Lungo-Koehn, Claudia Stoker-Long from the Office of Community Development, as well as Lauren DiLorenzo, the Director of Community Development, Josh, no last name, Fiola, Rick Orlando, Rick Sacco, Tom Lincoln, Andrew Castagnetti, and Miranda Wilson from the transcript. The purpose of the meeting was to review the Medford Grandmaster Plan, recommendations made by the council, OCD director provided the council with a copy of the presentation, that the Community Development Office provide the community comments and feedback to the project, that the city do an additional packing count, and it was passed by the council. Motion by Councilor Knight to accept the committee report, seconded by Councilor Dello Russo. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. The motion is adopted. Table of records of the meeting of October 31st, 2017 were passed to Councilor Marks. I find those records to be in order and move approval. Seconded by Councilor Knight. The records of the meeting of November 28th, 2017 were passed to Councilor Falco.
[John Falco]: Mr. President, I have a small edit that I could review with the clerk, but other than that minor edit, everything looks fine and I move that the records be approved. As amended.
[Michael Marks]: Approved as amended. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Motion to adjourn. All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it. Motion to adjourn. Yes.
[SPEAKER_60]: corporate tax havens, places like Ireland, where companies will stash lots of money that Trump would rather have repatriated here to the U.S. And so that seems to be a main focus. And whatever focus we did have on cracking down on this kind of activity revealed in the Panama or the Paradise Papers has kind of fallen off the map a little bit.
[SPEAKER_92]: Andrew, is there a case for saying that all this protest is not only pointless, but also perhaps counterproductive, and that actually tax havens are a way almost of the free market of nations, you know, if I give less tax, if I take less tax from you, you'll come and be in my country, that's my benefit, that's the game I'm playing, and any country can do this.
[SPEAKER_80]: I think that's an important point that you make there, Roger, and I think that that's where we sort of have to be realistic about this debate. You're always going to get countries that have higher or lower tax rates for particular reasons. It seems to me, therefore, that the debate around tax havens has to be around getting international standards around transparency. So you look at a place like Hong Kong, we have tax here around 15% personal taxes, 16.5% for companies. That's low, but it's not the lowest in the world. What the real concern about Hong Kong is the transparency of the tax system. And in particular, it's the ownership of companies here. We have a lot of shell companies, the allegation, the suspicion is that a lot of those are used for tax avoidance and money laundering as well. Now that's where potentially you can work to get international standards of disclosure and transparency around tax and companies. The idea that you're going to get some sort of harmony over actual tax rates, I think, you know, that's just not realistic. And also maybe not desirable.
[SPEAKER_92]: Is it even right?
[SPEAKER_80]: I mean, shouldn't there be an element of competition in this? You know, I think there should be. And I think developing nations, if part of their, sort of, the pitch they're making to international investors is we have low taxes here and that's how we're going to develop our country, that to me should be fair enough. But what I think you can say to developing nations and developed countries alike is we want to know more about, you know, who exactly is stashing money in your country so that we can combat tax avoidance and we can combat money laundering and all the problems that come with that.
[SPEAKER_92]: Yeah, but Tony, we know, don't we, that in a place like Switzerland, the actual ability not to be seen is a big part of the attraction for a lot of countries, isn't it? A lot of investors, they want to go places where whatever they're doing isn't in the public gaze.
[SPEAKER_60]: Yeah, that's right. It's a feature, not a bug. And it's interesting. It makes me think back to our conversation about Deutsche Bank. Right now we have a president whose finances are pretty opaque, and I don't know where President Trump's money is tied up, but it's kind of a recurring problem throughout, at least here in the US, trying to manage and debate the issue of tax savings. A lot of the people who are in power are a lot of the people who are squirreling money away in these countries.
[SPEAKER_92]: And Tanya, we talked about Delaware and Nevada. Do Americans and other states resent the fact that these states use that mechanism, or do they just think that's fine, that's just the way it works?
[SPEAKER_60]: I don't think so. I think, you know, like you said, there's a free market between countries, between states. They can really do whatever they want to remain competitive, and I think those states would tell you that. I think a lot of the resentment that you've seen build up here is more, you know, when jobs move overseas, when money is stashed away overseas, or at least that's what, you know, the current political climate has gotten people riled up about. Maybe there should be more resentment. I don't know.
[SPEAKER_92]: Andrew, let me come back to you finally on that one. I mean, is there a moral case for saying actually these companies should be able to avoid tax? They should just be able to, they have to pay tax at perhaps a normal standard rate wherever they are in the world.
[SPEAKER_80]: Well, I just, I mean, you know, if there is a moral case for that, it's unfortunately not a realistic case. I mean, some people would say, in fact, the most sensible thing to do is not tax companies at all. And then you, you avoid the problem altogether. And you tax individuals, because, you know, at the end of the day, if you don't tax companies, that means they can pay out more in dividends and payouts to their shareholders. And that should increase the wealth of people. Now, I think, you know, there are plenty of arguments against that as well, but the idea that you can harmonize tax across the world, I think, is slightly for the birds, and that's why I say I think that transparency and disclosure is the way forward here. That's probably where, more realistically, you can get some international pressure and you can get some international cooperation.
[SPEAKER_92]: Well, I guess it's an argument that's going to roll on for an awful long time in lots of places and not just in the EU. Thanks very much to both of you on that. Let's bring ourselves up to date with the business matters headlines with Jerry Smith.
[SPEAKER_81]: Reports say that Donald Trump's account with a major investment bank is being investigated as part of an inquiry into possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 US presidential election. President Trump has previously taken out a multi-million dollar loan with Deutsche Bank. The European Union has published its first blacklist of tax havens, naming 17 territories, including Saint Lucia, Barbados and South Korea. It's also published a grey list of 47 additional countries which say they're on the way to changing to EU standard tax rules. These include Hong Kong, Turkey, Bermuda and Switzerland. Both lists have been criticised as omitting the most notorious tax havens.
[SPEAKER_92]: Jerry, thanks. Now, it's that moment in the programme where we link up with one of our reporters. Today, it's Rahul Tandon joining us live on the line from Kolkata. Now, Rahul, smog, cricket, they don't go together, do they?
[j-SvxIQDpRA_SPEAKER_12]: No, they don't. I mean, an extraordinary test match that has been taking place in Delhi. Really not for what was happening on the pitch, but what was happening off it, Roger, where we had play stopped but for pollution. First ever, I think, in the history of cricket. We had the Sri Lankans saying they couldn't continue the match because the breathing conditions were so difficult. you know on yesterday on the last day of the test match we had an Indian bowler vomiting on the pitch we've had Sri Lankan bowlers doing the same and I think what this is bringing into focus is a much bigger debate about the huge problem that pollution now poses not just in Delhi I'm in Kolkata this morning where there is smog around the city we have pollution levels that rival Delhi at this particular point in time, 15 to 20 sometimes, 25 times above the recommended levels that the World Health Organization says that we should be breathing. And I think this is affecting Indians, but I think for business as well it's going to affect it in a big way, because I think a lot of people are going to think long and hard about whether they want to come and visit India's big cities. To give you an idea of how big the problem is, I've been speaking to a couple of sports people in Kolkata.
[SPEAKER_54]: I'm absolutely struggling to breathe today. I can feel, like, the pollution, like, clogging up in my throat as I'm breathing. And I'm an athlete, so I'm out in the open a lot. I'm finding it absolutely difficult. I wake up every morning just, like, gasping for air.
[j-SvxIQDpRA_SPEAKER_12]: Does it make you think about going out?
[SPEAKER_54]: I wish I could not, but I play golf every day and I can't help it. I have to play through everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, whenever we travel, you know, we play outside and we can feel the difference in our performance or the amount we can run and how much easier it is to run outside. You know, even with the temperature change or in higher altitudes, we still do better. Whereas here, it should be easier for us. And we are used to this temperature, but we still find it tougher because the pollution is increasing by the day.
[SPEAKER_92]: The difficulties of sports people there. Rahul, what about you? In Kolkata, you say there is smog there. Do you notice? Do you find yourself coughing? Do you find it's a problem on a day-to-day basis?
[j-SvxIQDpRA_SPEAKER_12]: It's a huge problem, Roger. I mean, I would say over the last week, I, like most people in Kolkata, is the pollution has really got a lot worse because as the temperatures drop, you know, it can't basically expand. It can't move up in the air and it stays and hovers around. Yeah, definitely. I mean, sore throats all the time, coughing a lot of the time. You just don't feel particularly well. You can taste it. I mean, I'm on my balcony this morning and you can see the haze and you can sort of taste it in your in your mouth and I think it is such an issue here now and it's an issue that really doesn't seem to be getting any better. I was talking to doctors the other day who say you know they see a lot more children coming in with asthma, they see a lot more older people coming in now with severe lung problems. I mean some of the stats are incredible. Look at an issue of premature death which in most countries as medical care you know improves is getting much better. In India over the last 10 years it's almost doubled and it's worse and a lot of people are now putting it down to pollution. So yeah, it really does affect you. And I think there is a big economic consequence that India could face. I mean, a recent report last year by the World Bank said it could affect GDP by up to 8% a year. Unless India tackles this, I think the economic and health consequences are going to be huge. But because India needs to generate more power and people want to travel in cars and public transport systems are not good here, we don't seem to be on the verge of improving the air quality here. You know Delhi at one stage recently, Roger, was I think a hundred times above what the World Health Organization recommended and it reached a point where doctors were saying you should probably evacuate the city.
[SPEAKER_92]: Well let's go from finally and briefly one of the, obviously a real bad taste in the mouth, perhaps a metaphorical one, which is the Vijay Malaiya case, one of India's most high-profile businessmen, extradition question mark.
[j-SvxIQDpRA_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, well that's taking place very close to you in London at this particular point in time. Getting a lot of coverage here in India. India's most flamboyant businessman. He's basically accused of misleading banks to loan money to his collapsed airlines and that he then wasted that basically on his own personal lifestyle. A very important case, I think, because a lot of questions were being asked about how he was allowed to leave the country in the first place. So if the government can get Mr. Malia back, and the last date of this hearing is on the 14th of December, maybe they're going to have a good Christmas, maybe not going to be such a good one for him.
[SPEAKER_92]: Alright, well we'll see. Just before you go there, Rahul, just very quickly, a difficult question for you, but how would you define happiness?
[j-SvxIQDpRA_SPEAKER_12]: Oh, how would I define happiness? There's a good question. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you, Roger. When I experience it, I'll let you know.
[SPEAKER_92]: All right. All right. We'll let you go. Thanks very much indeed, Rahul. Now, the reason I was asking Rahul that rather strange and fairly philosophical question is that we are interested in a case that's come up in Nigeria. Now, the governor of Nigeria's Imo state, Rojas Okorocha, has appointed his sister as commissioner for happiness and couples fulfillment. The governor's spokesman said there wasn't anything unusual about the appointment, as Mr. Okorocha always wanted to make people happy. Well, I've been speaking to Yemi Adamokolekun, who is one of the founders of the campaign called Enough is Enough Nigeria. It's a good governance advocacy group based in Lagos. Now, she says a minister of happiness isn't perhaps as absurd as it sounds.
[SPEAKER_33]: The UAE actually has one, and the role of the Minister of Happiness is a person who oversees the UAE's plans, programmes and policies to achieve a happier society. So there's a clear mandate for a Minister of Happiness.
[SPEAKER_92]: But we need to define what happiness is, I suppose. I mean, you and I might agree, we might disagree on what happiness exactly is.
[SPEAKER_33]: Well, yes. According to the lady who was tweeting earlier today, she's been responsible for hospitality for the Imo State government for the last six years. So it was considered it was a natural fit for her to continue to make provisions for large Christmas tree, catering for statewide events. So things that relate to fun occasions that the state organizes she was responsible for. So in their definition, it's just fun events. Fun events equals happy society.
[SPEAKER_92]: I mean, fun and happiness, I suppose, again, philosophically, you might not think of the same thing, but I mean, maybe if people had more money or didn't have to worry about illness, I mean, those kind of things might bring them happiness.
[SPEAKER_33]: Most definitely, especially in this context. So the governor of Imo, for example, is owing pensioners, I think, either 14 or 16 months of salaries. So I would agree with you that if those ones actually were able to meet their basic needs they will be quite quite happy rather than having a Christmas tree to go and look at.
[SPEAKER_92]: I'm detecting you don't think this is a particularly well that this is in the end a fairly absurd thing to do to a Minister for Happiness when that kind of thing's going on.
[SPEAKER_33]: Yeah in this context I mean the UAE it's quite okay for them to have a Minister of Happiness because if you have The GDP per capita that they do and sort of income inequality is not a major issue in the UAE. In Nigeria it is a huge issue and especially in the state in question where there are evidence that the governor is not spending the state's resources judiciously. So large Christmas tree, lavish events. I think for his birthday there were like 25 cakes stacked on top of each other. And then in recent months, he's done a statue of Jacob Zuba, and Jacob Zuba flew in to commission the statue. Spending state resources on things like that, to me, are just quite absurd. And you don't really need a Minister of Happiness to make people happy. You just need to respond to their needs to be able to meet their basic needs.
[SPEAKER_92]: But it's made this lady quite happy, I suppose.
[SPEAKER_33]: I'm indeed. She's actually the minister, the governor's biological sister. So she's quite comfortable in the role that she's been given and she, according to her tweet, is looking forward to doing more to make the people of Imo happy.
[SPEAKER_92]: Yemi, that set us all to thinking about whether governments or that kind of thing could actually talk about happiness in this sort of way. Is it quantifiable? I mean, Andrew, I do remember it was Bhutan, I think, started talking about the gross national happiness and somehow they could go towards that. I mean, do you believe that's possible?
[SPEAKER_80]: I'm pretty skeptical, I'm afraid, Roger. My concern here is, I remember a few years ago, David Cameron, former UK Prime Minister, when he was in opposition, during the years running up to the financial crisis, he would say, well, you know, we've got to start thinking beyond GDP growth, and we've got to start thinking about the happiness of people. And then, of course, the financial crisis hit, and everyone was thinking, crikey, we've got to sort out the economy here first. And it seems to me that when people start talking about this sort of thing, it's a it's a sort of worrying counter cyclical sign that we're getting a bit complacent about things and that actually government should stick to the knitting of just running the country competently. And whether I'm happy or not, I'll decide for myself. But as long as the country is run well, that's what I want from my government.
[SPEAKER_92]: Well, that's an interesting one, actually. Tony, isn't the problem his definition? I mean, what is happening? Some people are happy with one thing, other people are not. You can't really quantify or measure it, can you?
[SPEAKER_60]: No, you can't, although I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thinking about it here at the end of the year. This is a fascinating story. I'm not sure. I think I come down on Andy's side with this. I think stability, consistency in government would make me very happy.
[SPEAKER_92]: Well, there we are. You see, now you have defined it a bit. I mean, surely, Tony, there must be other things that make you happy. For me? Yeah, which perhaps, you know, you could make a list and say, right, that's fine. Now I can get that. I can even ask the government for it. And then I shall achieve happiness. Isn't that the way forward?
[SPEAKER_60]: Yeah, I suppose. I don't know if you need a commissioner for that.
[SPEAKER_92]: All right, then, come on. What would make you happy, Tony? Just a few achievable things. Come on. It's getting towards the end of the year. People might be thinking what to give you for Christmas. You never know.
[SPEAKER_60]: A giant Christmas tree sounds great. I think if our government could get right on that for me or for whoever, you know, I'd appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_92]: Andrew, it's an interesting, the part of the world you are, there is in some ways a more, I don't know, a mechanical attitude perhaps to some of the things that can bring happiness. People think, well, we will get this and that and the government can bring it. and they can make it happen and then we will have a nice utilitarian kind of paradise. I mean, do you think that's particularly something that in your part of the world, in Asia, is more of a thing people think about?
[SPEAKER_80]: I think people in this part of the world, particularly in Hong Kong, happiness is quite associated with wealth. Let's put it that way. And I think certainly in Hong Kong, as long as the government kind of gets out of the way and lets people get on and make money, then that's what makes the people here generally happy. I mean obviously on the mainland in China you have a slightly different approach where the government sort of is responsible for most things including the delivery of happiness to the people and I just worry that that is not exactly the way that countries are best run.
[SPEAKER_92]: Is that because it's a very materialistic way? I mean we think of a lot of course of philosophy coming out of Asia as well but is there a certain materialism you know that happiness is measurable as you say in wealth terms it's clear.
[SPEAKER_80]: You could argue that these are quite heavy topics for a Thursday morning. I think, look, I don't want to generalize too much about Hong Kongers in the sense that I don't want to tar them with just being interested in money. But I do think that it is a feature of the society out here. And perhaps that comes from historical background where you know, people have had to work hard for a living here and in this part of the world and so the attainment of a certain level of standard of living is something that's associated with happiness and you can't blame people for that if, you know, they've come from a generally poor background and a poor historical background.
[SPEAKER_92]: All right, well finally then, Andrew, what would constitute happiness for you? Come on, I've put Tony through this.
[SPEAKER_80]: I was pretty happy over the weekend. I was sat watching England play Australia in Adelaide. What would have made me happier is if England had been playing a bit better.
[SPEAKER_92]: I was going to say the outcome, but we didn't.
[SPEAKER_80]: I'm a simple guy. Good game of cricket, but England winning is what makes me happy. All right.
[SPEAKER_92]: OK. Well, we'll send you on your way happy. And Tony, we hope we send you on your way too. Perhaps you will get that large Christmas tree. And as for me, well, it's the end of the programme and I get to go to bed. What could be a better happiness? Thank you very much for listening. That's it from us. Back same time tomorrow.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: This is the BBC World Service, where now, here's Harriet Gilbert.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_52]: On this month's World Book Club, I'll be talking to Richard Flanagan about his Man Booker Prize winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_54]: It was something that grew in me like a boulder till it was almost choking me and I felt I had to write it.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: World Book Club at bbcworldservice.com slash worldbookclub You're listening to the BBC World Service. Our diplomatic correspondent James Landale was at the court to hear.
[SPEAKER_66]: As our defence correspondent Jonathan Beale reports from Mosul.
[SPEAKER_26]: Our Africa editor Mary Harper reports.
[SPEAKER_74]: Let's go to Hong Kong now. Time for business news. On our business desk is Andrew Wood.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: Available on the BBC iPlayer radio app. This is the BBC World Service, the world's radio station.
[SPEAKER_110]: BBC World Service, it's two o'clock GMT, this is Oliver Conway with the Newsroom. The US President Donald Trump is expected to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel later, breaking with the international consensus on the city's status.
[SPEAKER_124]: I know there have been a lot of questions surrounding the president's decision on Jerusalem. Tomorrow the president will deliver remarks. Has the president made up his mind? The president is pretty solid in his thinking at this point.
[SPEAKER_44]: Also on the newsroom. It's a political decision. Very bad decision. And I disagree. This position of the World Olympic Committee and so on.
[SPEAKER_110]: There's been a furious reaction in Moscow after Russia was banned from next year's Winter Olympics. Tens of thousands of Californians have fled wildfires north of Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_49]: Good friends up the street lost their homes, and I'm just so sad for them.
[SPEAKER_110]: And have investigators issued a subpoena for Donald Trump's financial records at Deutsche Bank? First, our top stories.
[SPEAKER_88]: BBC News with Gareth Barlow. Senior US officials say President Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel later on Wednesday. He'll also direct the State Department to start the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Arab states have warned that the decision could provoke violence. From Washington, here's Barbara Pletusher.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_36]: The president is planning to fulfill a campaign promise made to pro-Israel voters. But in doing so, he's tackling one of the most sensitive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the status of Jerusalem. Senior administration officials said he would simply be acknowledging reality, that Jerusalem functions as the capital of Israel. Congress has called for such a move for 22 years, but previous presidents have been resistant, accepting that Jerusalem's future should be part of a negotiated agreement. One U.S. official said that delaying the decision had done nothing to advance peace. But the U.N., Europe and Arab states have long calculated that it would prevent conflict.
[SPEAKER_88]: Russia has reacted furiously to a decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban it from next February's Winter Olympics in South Korea. A damning report by the IOC said there had been an unprecedented systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system. From Moscow, here's Steve Rosenberg.
[SPEAKER_101]: The deputy speaker of Russia's parliament said it was a humiliation and an insult to Russia. In a defiant post in social media, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said Russia would survive this like it survived World War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Western sanctions. Although the Russian team has been banned from competing in South Korea, Russian athletes who can prove they are clean will be permitted to participate under the Olympic flag. But will the Kremlin allow them to? Vladimir Putin has in the past described such a scenario as a humiliation for his country.
[SPEAKER_88]: Tens of thousands of people in Southern California have fled wildfires being driven by high winds. James Cook reports from the outskirts of Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_106]: In Ventura County, to the north of Los Angeles, a wildfire which broke out on Monday intensified with terrifying speed, trembling in size in just a few hours, driven by arid and gusty Santa Ana winds. Scores of homes were gutted and a mental health hospital was destroyed. Here, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the charred ruins of houses are still smoking, while dark, choking smoke has closed a major moat away. Ash is blowing through the air, and there is a firefighting helicopter overhead. And with forecasters warning that ferocious winds and low humidity will continue for several days, this could yet get a lot worse.
[SPEAKER_88]: Three men in Malta have been charged with murdering the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. She was killed in a car bomb attack in October. The case has shocked the small Mediterranean island and the European Union. The three accused men were among ten arrested on Monday. World News from the BBC. Fifteen thousand people a day are being forced to flee their homes in African conflict and disaster zones. Figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Internal Deplacement Monitoring Centre show that more than 12 million people in Africa are internally displaced. Nearly four million left their homes last year, a quarter of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone. The opposition in Honduras has demanded a full recount of presidential election ballot papers, which it says were tampered with in order to favor President Juan Orlando Hernández. The electoral tribunal had already agreed to an earlier opposition demand to recount around one-third of the ballots. The opposition candidate, Salvador Nasralla, has appeared set for victory shortly after the election ten days ago, when the vote count was suddenly halted. Christine Keeler, the British former model whose relationships with a British minister and a Soviet diplomat in the 1960s caused one of the most notorious political scandals of the Cold War, has died. She was 75. As a teenager, she had a brief affair with John Profumo, a senior Cabot member who was forced to resign. The scandal rocked the British establishment. Christine Keeler said she'd been too young to deal with the impact of the affair.
[SPEAKER_116]: I wish that at that time I had been older so that I would have been able to have answered or spoke up for myself, but I was only a young girl.
[SPEAKER_88]: Britain's most prestigious contemporary art award, the Turner Prize, has been won by an art professor who was born in Zanzibar, Lubaina Hameed. Judges praised her work, which explores the African diaspora and black creativity, for what they called its exuberant approach to painting and its sense of theatre and satire. Professor Hameed is the first black woman and the oldest person to win the award. She said she would use the $33,000 prize money to help young artists get their work exhibited. BBC News.
[SPEAKER_110]: Thanks very much. You're listening to the Newsroom from the BBC World Service with Oliver Conway. Despite warnings from Arab leaders about the possible dangerous repercussions, it seems Donald Trump is planning to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. White House officials have briefed journalists that the president will announce in a speech at 18 Hours GMT on Wednesday that the US is recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, making it the first and only country to do so. Here's his press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
[SPEAKER_124]: Finally, I know there have been a lot of questions surrounding the President's decision on Jerusalem. Tomorrow, the President will deliver remarks. Has the President made up his mind about this, or is this decision still in flux? The President, I would say, is pretty solid in his thinking at this point.
[SPEAKER_110]: Both the Palestinians and the Israelis claim Jerusalem as a capital of any current or future state. President Trump has tried to ease concerns with a series of phone calls to Arab leaders in the Middle East, including the Palestinian leader, as we heard from Yolande Nel in Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_05]: In their phone call, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is said to have warned Mr. Trump that moving the U.S. embassy would have an impact on the peace process with Israel and regional stability. Mr. Abbas has since spoken to the Pope and the leaders of Russia, France and Jordan, asking them to intervene. King Abdullah of Jordan was also called by Mr. Trump and is said to have spoken of possible dangerous repercussions of his plan. Egypt's President Sisi is reported to have told him there was no need to complicate matters in the Middle East.
[SPEAKER_83]: Well yes, although with the caveat that unless until he actually delivers the speech we can't predict entirely what he's going to say and specifically his thinking behind this decision. It would be highly contentious, it already is, in terms of what we have heard in moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem effectively acknowledging Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the first country to do so since the foundation of the state of Israel since 1948, and it would mark a sea change in certainly US policy towards the region.
[SPEAKER_110]: And the briefings we're getting from White House officials suggest though that it will take some time to move the embassy.
[SPEAKER_83]: Yes, what we understand is that there will be some form of waiver written into Mr. Trump's announcement that will keep the embassy in Tel Aviv for at least six months. Now, my understanding is that much of this is simply logistics, the moving of staff between the two cities, which is clearly going to take some time, but perhaps also it is a little bit of breathing space to see what the reaction is going to be and the policy may well change over coming months depending on how things unravel in the weeks and months to come.
[SPEAKER_110]: And why, what is the attraction of doing this for President Trump?
[SPEAKER_83]: Well, certainly it was part of his campaign pledge that he wanted to do this and it was one of his major foreign policy planks and perhaps domestic policy comes into this a little bit in terms of the president wanting to be seen to be making good on those big promises in his first year. I mentioned domestic politics because it hasn't necessarily all gone his way. in terms of those big promises. So I think he wants to get something done, and I think he is known as quite an impatient character in this respect. But in terms of doing it now, I think there are quite a few people here who are rather mystified by the timing. We know that the White House, the Trump administration, has been working on a peace plan for several months. We don't know the detail of that. So why to make this announcement now, perhaps ahead of a bigger plan and bigger negotiations, I think we remain to see, because it does show the US's hand, and if the US is going to play a role as a mediator in negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, it perhaps makes things rather awkward, because it's certainly not what the Palestinians wanted to hear.
[SPEAKER_110]: Peter, many thanks indeed. Peter Bowes there and hopefully we'll get more details in that speech apparently from Donald Trump tomorrow at lunchtime in the US. While he focuses on that big change in U.S. foreign policy, Donald Trump could be facing an investigation at home into his finances. I say could because there's some dispute over whether the U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller has issued a subpoena for Mr. Trump's financial records at Deutsche Bank. Many media outlets in the U.S. reported that he had, but it was denied by the president's legal team, as relayed by White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
[SPEAKER_124]: Look, I think it's important to note, and hopefully you guys have seen this statement, that Jay Sekulow, a member of the president's legal team, has put out within the last hour that they confirmed that the news reports that the special counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are completely false. No subpoena has been issued or received. We've confirmed this with the bank and other sources. I think that this is another example of the media going too far too fast, and we don't see it going in that direction.
[SPEAKER_110]: So, do we know if a subpoena has indeed been issued? A question for our correspondent Anthony Zerke in Washington.
[SPEAKER_87]: We don't. We had multiple news outlets reporting that the documents had been subpoenaed by the special counsel Robert Mueller, subpoenaing Deutsche Bank. But since then, the White House lawyers have pushed back fairly vociferously, saying there was no subpoena request. They checked with Deutsche Bank and other sources that have said these reports are false, but the sources that these news outlets are citing are standing by their contention. So it's basically up in the air whether this actually has happened or not.
[SPEAKER_110]: And why would the special counsel want those records?
[SPEAKER_87]: Well, that's the interesting thing here, because so far Robert Mueller has, say, looked into the foreign lobbying of Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's former campaign chair. He has reached a plea agreement with Michael Flynn, who was a confidant of Donald Trump's and his first national security adviser, and George Papadopoulos, who was a foreign policy adviser on the campaign. Those are all kind of outside the main purview of the inspection of whether there's ties between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling. Well, here you have Robert Mueller directly looking at the president himself, if it's true, and his finances, looking at Deutsche Bank, because Donald Trump owes Deutsche Bank about $300 million when he came into the presidency. The bank has loaned Donald Trump about $4 billion over the course of the past 20 years, so they have very close financial ties.
[SPEAKER_110]: And this all raises the question of whether Robert Mueller will be allowed to continue his investigation.
[SPEAKER_87]: Well, when Donald Trump was interviewed about this a few months back, they asked whether it would be a red line, whether it would be going too far beyond his mandate if Robert Mueller started looking into his business dealings prior to being a presidential candidate. And Donald Trump was fairly clear that he thought that would be going too far, and perhaps this would instigate a more aggressive response from the president. possibly even trying to get rid of Robert Mueller, which, as president, he could do if he orders people in his Justice Department to do so, although that would create quite a controversy. But there may be some uneasiness on the part of Donald Trump to having someone poking around in his business dealings long before he was a serious candidate for political office.
[SPEAKER_110]: Anthony Zerker in Washington. Let's go across now to Los Angeles, because since wildfires started there just over a day ago, the flames have spread across some 180 square kilometres. People in California have already experienced a number of bad wildfires this year, but now 27,000 residents have suddenly been forced to evacuate, with no sign of when the fires will be put out. James Cook is in LA.
[SPEAKER_105]: This wildfire exploded overnight, trembling in size in just a few hours, driven by ferocious Santa Ana winds. Devastation, with nothing to salvage. Families had just minutes to scramble their belongings together and flee.
[SPEAKER_49]: Good friends up the street lost their homes, and I'm just so sad for them. I'm happy for myself and those of us that kept their homes, but it's awful.
[SPEAKER_105]: There is, though, little hope of the winds easing. They are dry, gusty and erratic, the most dangerous conditions possible. Ventura is home to more than 100,000 people, and with more than 1,000 firefighters struggling to protect the city, a second blaze broke out. This fire is closer to L.A., and millions of Angelenos awoke to find the skies to the north thick with smoke. Helicopters have struggled to fly in the wind, making it much harder to contain the fires. With forecasters warning that the dangerous weather will continue for several days, the governor of California declared an emergency. And with a third fire now burning, the most devastating wildfire season on record in this state just got a lot worse.
[SPEAKER_110]: James Cook reporting from Los Angeles. Quick bit of breaking news from France. The country's best-known rock star, Johnny Hallyday, often known as the French Elvis, has died at the age of 74 after a battle with lung cancer. And we'll bring you more on that before the end of the programme. This is the Newsroom from the BBC World Service. Gareth has our headlines.
[SPEAKER_88]: Senior officials in the Trump administration say the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel later on Wednesday. Tens of thousands of Californians have fled wildfires north of Los Angeles. And there's been a furious reaction in Moscow after the International Olympic Committee banned Russia from the forthcoming Winter Olympics.
[SPEAKER_110]: Yes, this was state TV in Russia announcing the news.
[SPEAKER_43]: The International Olympic Committee announced the decision after a 17-month investigation into allegations of state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Games in the Russian city of Sochi.
[SPEAKER_110]: Some Russian athletes will be able to compete in 2018 as neutral competitors under the Olympic flag, but Russia's Olympic Committee says it will appeal against the ban. For reaction from Moscow, we heard from Steve Rosenberg.
[SPEAKER_101]: There's a sense of deep disappointment here, a sense of injustice too, and an unwillingness to accept that Russia has committed a crime here. The Deputy Speaker of the Russian Parliament, Igor Lebedev, said this was a humiliation for our country. I spoke to Dmitry Svishchev. He's a Russian MP and the president of Russia's Curling Federation. He told me this was unjust, not based on any evidence. He said collective responsibility was unfair. He suggested this was a political decision and said sport should be outside of politics. And then I went to a ski slope on the edge of Moscow, just to speak to ordinary Muscovites.
[SPEAKER_44]: First of all, it's a political decision. It's a very bad decision and I disagree with the position of the World Olympic Committee and so on. because I think that for Russian sportsmen it will be great and very important to show their results under the Russian flag.
[SPEAKER_101]: In recent weeks a number of Russian politicians have suggested that if the IOC was to take that decision and allow clean Russian sportsmen to take part under the Olympic flag that they should not do so, that this would be almost treachery on the part of the sportsmen. Everything will depend, I think, on what Vladimir Putin says, because there is one man who will decide this question, that is the Russian president, and we expect that he will announce his decision on whether Russian sportsmen should go and take part under the neutrofag. This will decide what kind of participation there will be from Russia in the Olympic Games.
[SPEAKER_110]: Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus, has faced unrelenting bombardment in the past three weeks. A ceasefire announced recently didn't even hold for a full 24 hours. As the death toll from airstrikes continues to rise, so does the number of children nearing starvation. The UN has said that acute malnutrition among youngsters is at the highest level recorded anywhere in Syria since the war there began. Martin Patience reports now from Eastern Ghouta.
[SPEAKER_79]: The aftermath of the latest airstrikes is like a scene from hell. The sky is dark with dust and debris as rescuers rush into buildings to scoop up children. Among the injured was five-year-old Yusuf with a head wound. The doctors patch him up as best they can, but they're desperately short of medical supplies. A rebel stronghold, Eastern Rota, has been bombed and besieged by the Syrian government for several years. Many families are now on the brink of starvation. Eight-year-old Noor and his seven-year-old sister, Ghazal, sit round a wood-burning oven. It's their first and only meal of the day, a thin piece of bread made from barley, which is normally fed to donkeys. Their father, Abu Ahmed, was seriously injured when out gathering firewood.
[SPEAKER_76]: A shell landed close to me, and I was hit by a shrapnel. I was blinded in my left eye, and my knee was damaged, and I can no longer walk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in a pretty bad shape, and I have three kids to look after.
[SPEAKER_79]: That means his children are left carrying the burden. Here, they're fetching drinking water. It's no surprise, then, that Ghazal dreams of freeing herself from her prison, Eastern Ghouta.
[SPEAKER_19]: I wish I could have cookies, sweeties, or any other delicious foods. And I wish someone could send me a pair of slippers and some new clothes and shoes. I really miss food, like chicken, cheese, tea, and juice.
[SPEAKER_79]: In another home, two-and-a-half-year-old Hamza is suffering from severe malnutrition. His ribs are protruding, and he's wearing a plastic bag as a nappy. He was abandoned before being taken in by a neighbour. Umm Mohammed says Hamza is like one of her children. He's my son now, she says. There's supposed to be a ceasefire in Eastern Ghouta. But almost every day, people in this area dig fresh graves. For families here, there's no respite from the war.
[SPEAKER_110]: Our report from eastern Utah by Martin Patience. And now Gareth has some more of the day's stories.
[SPEAKER_88]: One of Australia's most prominent churchmen is going on trial today accused of covering up child abuse in the 1970s. The Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Watson, is the most senior Catholic figure in the world to be charged with this type of offence. A military operation in Western Cameroon has led to hundreds of people fleeing their villages. The exodus comes after the government pledged to retaliate against an armed group that wants independence for the country's two English-speaking regions. Some of those fleeing the army have crossed into neighboring Nigeria. The public prosecutor in Saudi Arabia has said that most of those detained in an unprecedented anti-corruption purge have agreed to settlements in order to avoid prosecution. He said that a total of 320 people have so far been subpoenaed to provide information about alleged corruption.
[SPEAKER_110]: Ukraine's prosecutor general says Georgia's former president, Mikhail Saakashvili, has 24 hours to hand himself over to the Ukrainian authorities. Mr. Saakashvili was invited to Ukraine by its president, Petro Poroshenko. But the two men have fallen out, and Mr. Saakashvili has become a prominent opposition politician. On Tuesday, Mr. Saakashvili's supporters helped him escape from security officers in dramatic scenes, as our correspondent in Kiev, Jonah Fisher, reports.
[SPEAKER_91]: This was a remarkable day in the extraordinary career of Mikhail Saakashvili. It started on the roof of his apartment block in central Kiev. He spoke to his supporters below as security agents climbed up the stairs to arrest him. Then, having been detained, Saakashvili's supporters first blockaded, then hours later broke open the police van he was inside, enabling the former Georgian president to escape triumphantly.
[SPEAKER_45]: What happens next?
[SPEAKER_74]: We will go now to Parliament. We will go to Parliament. What happens next? We will ask for impeachment of Poroshenko, who is a thief, who is mega-corrupt, who is plundering the entire Ukraine with his gang. We have to stop supporting him, because it's outrageous what they are up to. And today it was a classical political arrest.
[SPEAKER_91]: Do you think you really have the support of the people here in your bank?
[SPEAKER_74]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_91]: You saw it today. Ukraine's Prosecutor General says Mr. Saakashvili should be detained for allegedly receiving funds from businessmen connected to the former President Viktor Yanukovych. Mr. Saakashvili says he's being targeted for his increasingly vocal campaign against Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko. It was Mr. Poroshenko who granted Mr. Saakashvili Ukrainian citizenship in 2015. But the relationship soured as Mr. Saakashvili accused his former friend of not being serious about tackling corruption. Jonah Fisher in Ukraine.
[SPEAKER_110]: There's been political chaos and protest in Honduras since the presidential election on November 26th. The opposition has now demanded a full recount of the votes, which ended up in favour of the incumbent president, Juan Orlando Hernández, after initially looking promising for the opposition candidate and former TV star Salvador Nasralla. Candace Peards, our America's editor, told me the latest.
[SPEAKER_78]: They haven't declared a winner yet and now what we're seeing is the opposition are now demanding a full recount of the vote. Now why are they doing this? Earlier the electoral tribunal had agreed to a partial recount of around a third of all the ballot papers in the elections and now it looks like the opposition have taken this opportunity to extend their demand even further. They might have been emboldened by very recent, quite surprising events. On Monday, hundreds of members of the riot police refused to carry out orders to enforce a nighttime curfew ordered by the government to keep order after widespread street protests organized by the opposition. Now, the police spokesman said they didn't want to clamp down on peaceful protest. It's really unusual in Latin America to see ordinary voters out on the streets, as we saw on Tuesday, holding placards thanking the riot police. And then the opposition also had support from international observers, who've been urging the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to agree to a wider recount, arguing there'd be numerous inconsistencies, including ballot boxes that arrived opened or incomplete.
[SPEAKER_110]: So is it possible we could get a full recount or even a rerun of the election?
[SPEAKER_78]: That's certainly something that the opposition, Salvador Nasralla and the opposition coalition are calling for. They're calling now for a very wide recount, 18,000 ballot boxes, and he has already been tweeting about possibly it would be better to have a full election again.
[SPEAKER_110]: Candace Peart said on the news that Johnny Alliday, the French rocker, has died at the age of 74. He sold more than 110 million records and made 30 films. Yet outside the French-speaking world, he was virtually unknown. Emma-Jane Kirby looks back at Johnny Alliday's life.
[SPEAKER_28]: It was a career that spanned five decades and three generations. Born as plain Jean-Philippe Smet, Johnny Halliday first hit the limelight aged 16 as an Elvis wannabe who sang rock in French. His early concerts caused riots, but then French President Charles de Gaulle accused him of being a corrupter of youth who was spreading dangerous American values throughout France. Yet despite having more than 900 songs under his belt and 100 live tours, his fame never really spread beyond the French-speaking world. Most rock and roll stars, Johnny's life had its ups and downs. For nearly 50 years, France's gossip and celebrity magazines were full of the details of his three failed marriages, his tax evasion scandals and his cocaine addiction. But his fans remained loyal, and his concerts were always sellouts. Johnny Halliday announced his semi-retirement in 2009. France's greatest rock star said he was tired of the limelight, and he yearned to return to the days when he was just plain old Jean-Philippe Smet.
[SPEAKER_110]: Johnny Halliday, who has died at the age of 74, the Lycée Palace has paid tribute. That's it for now from the newsroom.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: This is the BBC World Service. Now, take a moment to listen to this. What intrigues us?
[SPEAKER_62]: Dogs have a really unique and special ability to read and understand us. What alters our view?
[SPEAKER_53]: Every time we look around we just say, it's a homeless people.
[SPEAKER_11]: But they have names, they have dreams and paths and everything. There are stories that make us wonder.
[SPEAKER_61]: They talk about having an intimate, not just a sexual, relationship with the robot. And that's hard because it's a one-way relationship. The machine can't love you back.
[SPEAKER_11]: And ones that defy all belief.
[SPEAKER_55]: I've found members of different communities, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, stabbed, lying on the street.
[SPEAKER_11]: The more we know about the world, the more we understand about ourselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Many of us didn't really think bisexuality existed.
[SPEAKER_11]: Documentaries on the BBC World Service.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: To listen, go to bbcworldservice.com slash documentaries.
[SPEAKER_21]: The Maxing stands in China are crowded with new publications every month. But what are Chinese people reading?
[SPEAKER_58]: Not only magazine, I think everything happening in China reflects the new China.
[SPEAKER_22]: I pretty much read every single page of the magazine.
[SPEAKER_21]: Join me, Xin Yuan Wang, for the face of China on the BBC World Service after the news.
[SPEAKER_88]: BBC News with Gareth Barlow. Senior U.S. officials say President Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel later on Wednesday. He'll also direct the State Department to start the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The decision will break with years of U.S. policy on the status of the disputed city, as well as the international consensus. Russia has reacted furiously to a decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban its participation in next year's Winter Olympics, following a report accusing it of systematic doping. The deputy speaker of the Russian parliament called the ban a humiliation and an insult. The foreign ministry spokesman said Russia would survive this as it had survived the world war and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of people in Southern California have fled wildfires being driven by high winds. One which broke out in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles, has trebled in size in just a few hours. At least 150 buildings have been destroyed and a quarter of a million homes are without power. Three men in Malta have been charged with the murder of the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in October. Alfred and Georges de Georgiou and Vince Muscat were arrested on Monday. They have pleaded not guilty. Hundreds of people in Cameroon are fleeing their villages because of a military operation in the west of the country. The government has said it will retaliate against an armed group that wants independence for the country's two English-speaking regions. The opposition in Honduras has demanded a full recount of presidential election ballot papers, which it says were tampered with in order to favour President Juan Orlando Hernández. The opposition candidate, Salvador Nasrulla, has appeared set for victory shortly after the election, when the vote count was suddenly halted. It sparked days of street violence, which have left at least three people dead. World News from the BBC.
[SPEAKER_21]: The magazine stands in China are crowded with new publications every month. But what are Chinese people reading and why?
[SPEAKER_52]: CBN Weekly, Chinese edition. That's the one that I read almost from day to day.
[SPEAKER_128]: Oh, I love this one. Fashion magazine. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_22]: Fashion. I pretty much read every single page of the magazine.
[SPEAKER_58]: Not only magazine, I think everything happening in China reflects the new China.
[SPEAKER_21]: I'm Xin Yuan Wang, and for the BBC World Service, I'm out on the streets of Shanghai to find out what's between the magazine covers in The Face of China. Now I'm in front of one of the magazine stands and on both sides there's a display of altogether around 100 different magazines. And on my right there's all the magazines about fashion and also the news, like News Weekly and some political reports.
[SPEAKER_18]: She says the best seller is always something about fashion.
[SPEAKER_21]: It's actually the main customer, they come from like 30 years plus.
[SPEAKER_17]: Nowadays young people don't buy newspapers, they use mobile phones.
[SPEAKER_21]: So she said like definitely change a lot and before people came for newspaper and things but now once you have smartphone nobody come to newspaper and magazine, especially young people.
[SPEAKER_18]: Nowadays we have a lot of newspapers shut down because they can't be opened.
[SPEAKER_21]: So it's actually a very difficult time for those physical Maxine stands because they have to close down. Many of them have to close down because there are no people. She hoped that there was some way, some solution that these very traditional physical Maxine stands will exist in Shanghai. So is there any future for magazines in China? I'm going to talk to readers of all generations as well as the editors and journalists who are facing new challenges.
[SPEAKER_55]: Hello, open the door.
[SPEAKER_21]: I've come to visit a couple in Shanghai with a young baby, a typical middle-class family, with both parents working and facing the issues of bringing up a child in the city. They're looking at the magazine, Nanfang Zhoumo, that's targeting their needs and interests. So basically this is that the topic actually is very children orientated. For example like this one is about second child and also the education in general and also housing is a very hot topic. People are concerned about where they can buy their flat or rent their flat because then that will decide whether they can send their children to the good primary school, middle school, etc. So, all in all, it's all about the next generation. That will be the most popular topic in Shanghai.
[SPEAKER_20]: That's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_21]: Zizi told me that even strictly speaking in terms of a year's income, she don't think she really account as like middle class because middle class earn certain amount of money and not everybody can reach that amount of money. But more and more people, including more and more her friends, regard themselves as middle class in terms of high education received and awareness of citizenship. And in that perspective, they really think they are middle class. And for those, Maxine actually suits that purpose very well, because they will report, again, as a topic. about, for example, a marathon, like you train yourself and run for hours. That kind of thing is typical middle class behavior. So people would go for a run, not because they really love running, but they want to see themselves as middle class. And this magazine will give very in-depth discussion about the nuance between the certain kind of behavior and being middle class. But what about readers who haven't reached this stage of life? I'm going to talk to a different generation, the young ambitious workers in Guangzhou, one of the top business cities in the country.
[SPEAKER_08]: It's a very energetic and very rich place. There are a lot of young generation to work here and want to earn a high salary to raise themselves and have a promising future here. So it's a place with hope and energy.
[SPEAKER_21]: Here, many of them are in their 20s and have no children. Over their busy lunch break, we asked them what they think of the family-orientated magazines.
[SPEAKER_128]: This is about, have a second baby, are you ready? I was like, I don't even have a husband, I'm not ready.
[SPEAKER_08]: So I won't read it. Nowadays, young people are prefer the online magazine or online news. And it's totally free, but the magazines, we need to pay for it. But the information, we can get it the same with the online magazine or online paper.
[SPEAKER_58]: In China, if we want to get information of some certain subject, we usually go to the cell phone.
[SPEAKER_21]: So there's not much interest in printed versions here. Everything is going online. Clark explains how he reads Maxine's on WeChat, the social media app.
[SPEAKER_52]: They have this WeChat public account where they will post, they will not post everything there, but they will select some of the key articles from that magazine on their public account and then push that for free. And then I realized I don't have to buy the magazine myself, I can just read through it. Because I don't really need to look at all of the magazines, I only need to just try to understand the key, like the whole topics.
[SPEAKER_21]: In Shanghai, Ms. Chen is the vice chief editor of CBN Weekly, a magazine that targets young business professionals like those in Guangzhou. She explains that her magazine must keep pace with technology and the new ways that Chinese people want to get information. Of course they will put more effort on the online part because of course it's very clear that if you only rely on the paper-based magazine the future will be not so bright. They think it's time to think about to keep a relationship with readers because before the main media, they just like sell the magazine and that's it. But now you really have to keep some two-way communication with readers so that you can keep your readers. It's not just the selling magazine. So that is probably the plan, the long-term plan. But anyway, it's very difficult to survive in this digital age. So, how has the content of magazines changed in recent years? Journalist Mandy Lee has worked on traditional magazines and new media. And she's seen a move away from areas seen as controversial in China.
[SPEAKER_53]: Before we graduated, it's political. Most of them will be about politicals and also the sensitive subjects about economy and business.
[SPEAKER_21]: I've come to see Mr. Zhang, a retired journalist in Shanghai. In his career over 30 years, he told me how he had witnessed the development of the media in China. He started on the magazine in a factory, which was really a propaganda for the Communist Party, as were all the publications at that time. During the economic reforms, he helped to set up a new magazine, but was faced with challenges. He was one of the co-founders of the magazine called The Bond. So The Bond used to be, nowadays it's more like fashion magazine, but when it's first established, it's more about political editorial, so it's focused on topics. And the reason he left The Bond, because Some political sensitive things happened and he realized maybe it's not where he can take the full social responsibility as the journalist. So that's the reason he left the bond. But Mandy believes people's attitudes have changed. People don't care.
[SPEAKER_53]: People don't care anymore. So I think they are losing their voice. Also, on the other hand, people still kind of respect them, but they don't read them.
[SPEAKER_128]: They have a lot of types of magazines, but I don't read, like, economic magazines or political magazines. I think that's... a lot of things to know from them. But, you know, it's all censored. So I don't know how many information you can get from there or whether it's altered. So you have to really find out.
[SPEAKER_21]: So instead of relying on magazines, many Chinese professionals have been using VPNs, or virtual personal networks, to access the wider Internet.
[SPEAKER_58]: Basically, if I want to get some information like that, I will go to the Internet, I will go to Google.
[SPEAKER_21]: Here they can get information that's not available in China. However, the government is now trying to restrict the use of VPNs and it may become much more difficult in the future.
[SPEAKER_58]: I will skip the wall, you know the wall the Chinese government set for all the internet server so I will use some app to skip the wall and get message on internet on YouTube, on Google or something like that because it's quite fresh news and magazines
[SPEAKER_128]: I think it's very true because, you know, YouTube and Facebook are blocked in China, so we all have VPNs. We have more opportunities to know other things, to know the real other things, which is good. It's not changed or altered by Chinese government or other things. It's closer to the truth.
[SPEAKER_21]: I'm going to meet Mr. Kuan, the chief editor and founder of the publication Urban China. He's confident that his magazine can offer a valuable resource for those living in cities and give people the chance to get involved with local issues. You think there must be something missing. There's something between the fashion and professional. So it's like some magazine allow people to care about the very severe, serious issues about urban China, but not necessarily to be too academic and very accessible language. So we should take our social responsibility. Let's talk about some hot issues, the hot topics in contemporary China. This one is about the urban transformation. And this is about social housing. So they're really very open-minded. They have no problem touching some sensitive problems of urban development.
[SPEAKER_71]: So actually, it's not like always about political correct or not.
[SPEAKER_21]: It's actually they want this magazine to represent the concern about the current problem. So it's always problem orientated. For example, one of the issue talking about the Chinese style of building a city, and they criticize a lot because the speed is too fast. So as a result, many new cities become ghost cities because nobody lives there, just empty buildings. So they criticize a lot of the problems in the process of urbanization. And he thinks that's totally healthy because that is good for China. And he thinks the atmosphere for those very take the responsibility and you do your constructive criticism that is always good and is actually welcomed by the Chinese government. I'm with Yiming, a typical student reader. She has found that, for her studies, there are magazines in China which have a lot to offer. So she just gave me a very good example of the reading experience of the magazine called South Weekly. rather than just reporting the news, they will invite different specialists come from the sociology or laws to analyze the different layers of argument behind the news and actually that is very helpful for students who are interested in sociology or philosophy or laws because it shows how you can use theory and apply theory to understand the modern society. But she is honest about what interests her and for so many other young Chinese people. There's one topic which is really important to them. So when she came to Shanghai, then it's become mainly fashion magazine because it's really the right place to read fashion magazine because Shanghai itself is regarded as the city of fashion. So she think she was kind of influenced by the atmosphere of where she studied and live. So fashion magazine become the main one on the reading list.
[SPEAKER_16]: Mainland China, the market is several billion R&B. So in terms of US dollars, one or two billion, yeah, that's the market.
[SPEAKER_21]: Loficio is one of the leading fashion magazines in China. Annie works with a young and energetic production team.
[SPEAKER_16]: Ten years ago, if the magazines published stories about these big brands, readers loved to read them and they would love to buy. But now, the new generation readers, they are less interested in the big brands. They are more interested in the individual unique brands. So it's harder for us to target the right readers. So it's more challenging to us. I think that the whole society, the change of the culture, the change of the consumption habits all drive the big change. in terms of these publications and even the fashion industry itself. Also the new generation, they are from better off families. They have enough money, so they are well-traveled. Most of them are educated abroad, so they are very selective or picky. And also they want to show their individuality. They don't want to conform with others. So that's why they're more interested in the unique brands, not these household names. So to us, we have to change our editorial style and our material to tailor to their needs.
[SPEAKER_21]: The team are active in promoting their magazine online. finding innovative ways of getting their material read.
[SPEAKER_59]: I'm just 22, maybe I'm the youngest fashion editor. I think I was born to do the job.
[Fred Dello Russo]: I think it's a wonderful job.
[SPEAKER_15]: They stay in the front line of the fashion industry, so they pick up the trend and the news very quickly. So he is the future of this business.
[SPEAKER_59]: We also help the local designers, not just the luxury brands. I sometimes, yeah, I will cooperate and promote their collections, their new collections, the local designers. Because we are in a fashion magazine, we can do some things to help them.
[SPEAKER_16]: You know that's the excitement about being in China right now because every day is different and Probably after five years there will be a big change in ten years. There will be a huge dramatic change So it's very exciting
[SPEAKER_21]: I've traveled from Shanghai to Beijing to join a group of readers who want to talk to me about their reading habits. And again, I'm finding that things are changing.
[SPEAKER_38]: people have the choice of looking for all the news they need from the mobile phone. By using a mobile phone, you can get a lot of information that you need. So frankly, I don't know how the magazines or newspapers make a living in today's business environment if they want to make money.
[SPEAKER_21]: other family members, do they into the internet magazine or what kind of magazine?
[SPEAKER_38]: You know, my wife and my daughter, you know, love to buy, you know, really old fashion magazines, you know, five years ago, even 10 years ago. But nowadays, they just check all the information, you know, you know, words or pictures on the mobile phone.
[SPEAKER_03]: If I buy a physical magazine, I buy it for job. If I read some online magazines, I read it for fun. For example, I will buy the Harvard Business Review for my job because I'm an HR. And there are many HR-related articles in this magazine. And it will cost about 50 RMB for one magazine. So these physical ones is for job. And for fun, I will read some articles from WeChat, you know, such like Mimeng, the biggest wanghong in China, yeah. Her article will publish about every day and there will maybe more than 1 million readers to read it every day so it is quite a popular online magazine for me.
[SPEAKER_21]: So she just introduced the paid magazine online so if it's like professional content people are still willing to pay even the one article from the one magazine, and she also mentioned there's some very popular writers. So in Chinese it's called Wang Hong, literally means Internet Red, which indicates that it's very popular among people, and people just follow them and got millions and millions readership of everyday articles. So that is, I think, daily live reading.
[SPEAKER_12]: Nowadays, for the young people, you know, China, we have a policy called one child only. Yeah, that's why I think I'm the one of it. So I think it's quite lonely for my daily life. after work or after social life. I think I'm quite lonely, so I will always check the WeChat and see some articles like the common things. We will discuss it. Yeah, and I think this is what we call the interaction.
[SPEAKER_21]: So it's more about like two-way communication. Traditional magazine you just read it, there's no feedback, but online you can like it or you can make your comment or even give tips. So it's more welcoming, encouraging readers to participate the whole process of the re-reading experience of magazine.
[SPEAKER_22]: On the internet, you will read all those articles. It's more like you're self-responsible, you're self-sponsored. Everybody can express what they are thinking. When a magazine is printed, the writer should be more serious. They will be responsible to whatever they said. So that's very, very important. When you open this kind of paper magazine, you read it, it's printed. It cannot be cancelled. It cannot be, you know, drawback. So this writer will be really, really serious about whatever they say.
[SPEAKER_39]: And one of the reasons why I stopped buying magazines is because I found one magazine has 20 or 30 articles, but I can't finish it in maybe three months. So I want to ask the first question is, did you really read every article of every magazine? Okay, that's it.
[SPEAKER_22]: Okay, because I pretty much read every single page of the magazine.
[SPEAKER_12]: sometimes we'll buy some fashion magazines like Vogue or really as well and I will buy maybe a huge outfit maybe yeah 2020s yeah decoration It's quite useful. We put it in like a stage and we use it as a desk maybe sometimes.
[SPEAKER_21]: Because it's a very very nice design so it's like even it's quite cheap for something really nice decoration. It costs money as well. Will magazines in China become accessories left around on coffee tables to decorate the homes of well-off families? Or do they have a more significant future? The printed versions are certainly facing many challenges, from losing readership to close scrutiny by the Chinese government. to find one place which is looking positively about the future. I'm heading to a quite suburb of Beijing to visit a very specialized coffee shop where magazines from all over the world line the shelves. And they are not just decoration, they are being read. So Mr. Yin just told me that actually there's not many places like this. It's quite a small number of the bookshops where you can find foreign magazines, the latest issues. There's several challenges, for example in China there's of course the limits that whether you can sell those magazines and a lot of the control of it. But he comes from the background of the design and publication background, so he has been in this field for more than 10 years. So he definitely has these links and networks which really help him to introduce these nice magazines or books for Chinese readers. And also the idea of this bookshop is not only for the professionals that allow them to catch up the newest trend, but also for ordinary Chinese readers that you just enter this bookshop and Maybe in some ways it will improve your taste, so you have some idea of the better lifestyle. So that is really his wish for this workshop. He just told me that actually it's become the safe place for people who love paper maxing and they will come here to read paper maxing regularly. And some professionals, they saw that how wonderful maxing can be and he told me some of them even thinking about to set up their own Maxine but of course it's very difficult especially nowadays China everybody go for internet and maybe it's easier to get like first or second issue and then you just can't continue but still you think people see this place of the hope. Let me show you how wonderful Maxine can be. For the BBC World Service in Beijing, I'm Xinyuan Wang, and today's program was produced by Mark Rickards.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: This is the BBC World Service, where now, here's Harriet Gilbert.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_52]: On this month's World Book Club, I'll be talking to Richard Flanagan about his Man Booker Prize winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_54]: It was something that grew in me like a boulder till it was almost choking me and I felt I had to write it.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: World Book Club at bbcworldservice.com slash worldbookclub. And in 30 minutes, ocean stories.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: The Arctic Ocean is warming at an extraordinary rate. But what does that mean for the wildlife and the people that rely on these waters? I'm Liz Bonnen, and I'll bring you ocean stories diving into the icy depths of the Arctic and Southern Oceans.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: Next today, it's hard talk on the BBC World Service, the world's radio station.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: Coming up after the news on the BBC World Service, it's Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. In this age of the internet, we've come to expect instant access to knowledge. But real, deep understanding takes longer to acquire and to share. My guest today is one of the world's most acclaimed novelists, Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. He's lived almost all of his life in Istanbul, writing stories about Turkey, which have, over decades, painted a vivid picture of a country and society pulled between East and West. past and future. What is the key to understanding Orhan Pamuk's Turkey?
[SPEAKER_57]: We have a lot of repression, a lot of suppression, people self-censor, but people self-censor in interviews, in political comments. You'll go fast to jail if you criticize the government too much, if you attack Erdogan too much, you may end up in a jail.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: That's Orhan Pamuk on Hard Talk after the news.
[SPEAKER_88]: BBC News, hello, I'm Gareth Barlow. Senior U.S. officials say President Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel later on Wednesday. He'll also direct the State Department to start the process of moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The decision will break with years of U.S. policy on the status of the disputed city, as well as the international consensus. Barbara Platusha is in Washington.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_36]: Not only is Jerusalem disputed by Israel and the Palestinians, both claim it as their capital, it's also holy to Muslims and Christians, as well as Jews. Jordan and Saudi Arabia are custodians of Islam's holy sites, and have issued strong warnings that this move could inflame the Muslim world. Administration officials insisted that the decision would not affect the status of the holy sites, nor determine issues like boundaries and sovereignty. They said Mr. Trump had had detailed discussions with Arab leaders, that he remained committed to facilitating a peace deal, and that he was optimistic it was in reach.
[SPEAKER_88]: Russia has reacted furiously to a decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban it from next February's Winter Olympics in South Korea. A damning report by the IOC said there had been an unprecedented systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system. From Moscow, here's Steve Rosenberg.
[SPEAKER_101]: The deputy speaker of Russia's parliament said it was a humiliation and an insult to Russia. In a defiant post in social media, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said Russia would survive this like it survived World War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Western sanctions. Although the Russian team has been banned from competing in South Korea, Russian athletes who can prove they are clean will be permitted to participate under the Olympic flag. But will the Kremlin allow them to? Vladimir Putin has in the past described such a scenario as a humiliation for his country.
[SPEAKER_88]: Tens of thousands of people in Southern California have fled wildfires being driven by high winds. One fire, which broke out in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles, has trebled in size in just a few hours. At least 150 buildings, including a mental hospital, have been destroyed. Three men in Malta have been charged with murdering the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. She was killed in a car bomb attack in October. The case has shocked the small Mediterranean island and the European Union. The three accused men, Alfred and Giorgio and Vince Muscat, were among 10 arrested on Monday in connection with the killing. They have pleaded not guilty. Local media say all three were known to the police. A military operation in Western Cameroon has led to hundreds of people fleeing their villages. The exodus comes after the government pledged to retaliate against an armed group that wants independence for the country's two English-speaking regions. Most people in Cameroon speak French, and many in the English-speaking minority feel they are being discriminated against. World News from the BBC. A new report says about 15,000 people a day are being forced to flee their homes in African conflict and disaster zones. Figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre show that more than 12 million people in Africa are internally displaced. Nearly 4 million left their homes last year. Britain's most prestigious contemporary art award, the Turner Prize, has been won by an art professor who was born in Zanzibar, Lubaina Hameed. Professor Hameed is the first black woman and, at 63, the oldest person to win the award. The chair of the judges, Alex Farquharson, said Lubaina Hameed's work had particular relevance today.
[SPEAKER_85]: It is a moment in time in the art world where maybe people are a little bit less obsessed with youth, and particularly interested in looking at the overlooked achievements of what is often older women artists or artists of colour, who are maybe making a different kind of work.
[SPEAKER_88]: And France's biggest rock star, Johnny Alliday, has died aged 74 after a battle with lung cancer. The BBC's Emma-Jane Kirby looks back at his life.
[SPEAKER_28]: It was a career that spanned five decades and three generations. Born as plain Jean-Philippe Smet, Johnny Halliday first hit the limelight aged 16 as an Elvis wannabe who sang rock in French. His early concerts caused riots. The then French president Charles de Gaulle accused him of being a corruptor of youth. Most rock and roll stars, Johnny's life had its ups and downs. For nearly 50 years, France's gossip and celebrity magazines were full of the details of his three failed marriages, his tax evasion scandals and his cocaine addiction. But his fans remained loyal and his concerts were always sellouts.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: BBC News. Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today is one of the most acclaimed novelists in the world today. Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk has perfected the trick of rooting his stories deep in the history, culture, and geography of his native Turkey, in particular, his beloved home city of Istanbul, but giving them a humanity, depth, and resonance which strikes a chord with readers all over the world. His novels are translated into scores of languages. He's been bestowed with a glittering array of international literary prizes. But still he lives in the same neighborhood in which he was born. But life hasn't always been easy for him in Turkey. After one outburst against the government in 2005, he received death threats and he still appears in public with a bodyguard. And the pressure on writers has increased in Turkey. President Erdogan's government has locked up scores of writers, academics and journalists as politics has become more polarised and the state more repressive. The constant tension between East and West secularism and religiosity, liberalism and authoritarianism has put enormous pressure on Turkey's most prominent creative voices. So how has Orhan Pamuk responded? Well, I'm delighted to say he's with me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Very pleased to be here. I want to start with the book, the novel that's just been published in English, The Red-Haired Woman, your latest. It is built around relationships between fathers and sons. And I just wonder why you were so drawn to that theme.
[SPEAKER_57]: In 1988, I was finishing one of my novels during summer, and in the land next to me, an oldish man and his disciple started digging a well. And I was writing my novel and paying attention to them. After a while, they asked, sir, can we have some water? Can we have some electricity? This sort of relation developed. And in the end, before they left, I asked them to do an interview. That's how sometimes I operate. But what stayed with me was two things, actually. The father-like, older, traditional verdigr, and they were digging a well with their own hands, using an axe.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: So he was like the master well digger.
[SPEAKER_57]: He was a master well digger. It's something that we have in Istanbul since Byzantium. Sometimes people find Byzantium coins in old wells in Istanbul. So they were following this tradition. as the tradition was coming to an end, like many, many things I have seen in my life. So, and what I observed was this, that the master, old Veldiger, was shouting and shouting at the boy, and sometimes teaching him things, ordering him things, in a very strong, I would say, authoritarian voice. So, we approached the novel fast. At that time, I didn't think it was, it was rough, hard, cruel, a cruel father, I thought. But, Contrary, I also paid attention to their daily lives. They had a portable TV as in the novel, they built a tent as in the novel, but the fatherly figure was both scolding, angry, cruel, authoritarian, but at times, after hours, after when the work is finished, very tender, very attentive, very elegant to the son. And this left a mark on me because perhaps I was raised with an absent father, a father who never scolded me, who was never a Freudian, so to speak, father to me. And why was that?
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: because it did strike me from the very beginning knowing a little about your life story that when you address this issue of fathers and sons the balance between sort of being the guide and the authority figure but also the caring and loving figure and it was obvious that the son liked him in the end Indeed, but you didn't have that because your father, as I understand it, he quit the family home in Istanbul for a long period to go and try and find his writer's voice.
[SPEAKER_57]: He would disappear for a while. He went to Paris. Yes, he went to Paris following footsteps of Jean-Paul Sartre in Paris, hotels, he wrote diaries which he gave me. Did you feel betrayed? No, and when you're a child, you don't feel betrayed. Also, since my father was not a Freudian father, a father that perhaps Baudelaire would have hated, oppressing his son, he always said, I'm your best friend. And, in fact, my Freudian father may be my brother who taught me things, who was stronger. My father always had fun with us, and he treated us as if we are me and my brother geniuses, and never suppressed us. While, on the other hand, this other father was more attentive to the boy than my father.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: See, your book raises this fascinating question about the way in which individuals develop, the balance between being taught and disciplined and finding your own path, your own identity and individual personality. You seem to suggest that if The character in the book, Jem, had had an active father throughout his life. He might have been different and he might actually have struggled to find his own voice more. And I wonder if you feel that about your very self.
[SPEAKER_57]: I was influenced by my father first because he had a good library when he was continuously reading books but never telling me that you have to read this, you have to read that, just being an example without doing anything. And also, my father's, this is more important, my father's heroes were not, as in most of the time, as in Turkey, soldiers, police, religious notables, political notables, statemen, but my father's heroes were Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus or others. other fashionable but deep philosophical authors of the time and I thought I have to be like that but he never said to me you have to be like that.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: It seems to me all Orhan Pamuk novels work on many different levels and many of them are somewhat allegorical and it seems to me this relationship between the well digger and his apprentice who sees him as a father figure for the absent father that he never really had It is also an allegory, it seems, for Turkey and a desire in Turkey to look up to a figure of authority and the balance between individualism and authoritarianism in your country. And today you have President Erdogan, who perhaps would like to see himself as the father of the nation. Was that in your mind as you wrote this book about fathers?
[SPEAKER_57]: At the beginning, it was not in my mind that this story of fathers and sons stayed with me many, many years. Then I thought about it, and I have, I must confess, projects like that all around me. I did the interview, someone typed it up, and I carried it with me as I do, even in my travels, thinking what to do with it. Then, after a while, I decided to write a book comparing Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, which is about killing the father without knowing it, and Firdevsi, the famous, the most distinguished Persian classic, which also influenced the whole Ottoman Empire. Firdevsi is called Book of Kings, Shahnameh. which is a sea of stories, in which there is one particular story, Ruslam and Sohrab, which almost mirror images, mirror reflects Oedipus and his father.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: You have a Western classic sort of myth, which is the son killing the father by accident, and then you have an Eastern Persian similarly, a sort of mythical story in which in the end a father kills a son. Would it be right to say that what you portray is, and again a lot of allegory is involved, but you use these two myths, one that comes classically from the West, one that comes from Persia and the East, you show the way that both play out in this story of the characters in your book. And in essence, what you seem to be saying is that Turkey remains pulled in these different directions, Western tradition, Eastern tradition, somehow finding a path between the two. But is it your feeling that right now, the Eastern tradition, to use the allegories, the father kills the son, the authority figure is the survivor, is that your feeling about Turkey today?
[SPEAKER_57]: Now, to answer your previous question, where you said, is this an accident, coincidence, that you wrote this? No. The story stayed with me. But I thought, my God, then associating the father who kills his son, then I can also write this book in such a way that alludes to what's happening in Turkey. Yes, Turkey is increasingly getting authoritarian. Though I had this story the well-digger and his disciple, a desire to compare Sophocles and Ferdowsi. But yes, in the last two years, when I was busy with this book, I was thinking also, I am alluding and writing almost a fictional inquiry into the roots of Middle Eastern, Asian, Muslim authoritarianism.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: Orhan Pamuk, let's be honest, do you have to write in this form of allegory and almost code, because if you wrote directly about what you see happening in Turkey today, you would run the risk of, frankly, censorship, repression, and as we've seen with some writers, even imprisonment.
[SPEAKER_57]: Good question. I never had, even in this horrible state that we are politically in, and maybe I'll explain why horrible, I'm calling it horrible, You know, everyone knows that some 15 months ago there was a horrible attempt to do a military coup, then after that came a purge, and during the purge 130,000 people were fired from their jobs, and these people cannot go back to their work, and some of them even cannot work in private business.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: have hundreds of journalists, writers, academics locked up.
[SPEAKER_57]: And 50,000 people are jailed and the government needs more prisons and they're announcing their thing and around 180 or 70 journalists are in jail. This is the situation of the country and I'm writing my novel in this situation. But even in this situation I don't think I will ever have a problem with any novel that I want. This never happened to me in Turkey, nor to anyone. But you will have... Why is that? Is it because you self-censor?
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: Is it because you are so careful? selecting your subject matter, your characters and your words with a knowledge of how to sort of send messages without upsetting the system.
[SPEAKER_57]: No, it's not. If I want to send messages like that, as we are going to do now, I am always outspoken in my interviews. And when we said 170 journalists are in jail, some of them my friends, and they are also novelists. But they are not in jail for writing their novels. They're in jail for making political commentary. Writing novels, say, in Stalin's time in Russia, we have a lot of repression, a lot of suppression, people self-censor, but people self-censor in interviews, in political comments. You'll go fast to jail if you criticize the government too much, if you attack Erdogan too much, you may end up in a jail. But I never intend to write a novel attacking a president. I never wrote actuality, so to speak.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: So in no sense do you feel creatively paralyzed by the current situation?
[SPEAKER_57]: I'm paralyzed, if the word is right. I'm repressed, angry, confused. Sometimes I feel guilty because I'm out. Sometimes I feel angry. I have to do more. Sometimes... Do you actually literally feel guilty that
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: that you are free when some of your writer colleagues are in prison.
[SPEAKER_57]: Dostoevsky said that we are responsible for everything, you know, and I think this is the moral writerly thing. And then what do you do? You look at what the other writers doing in people. So there, for example, going to courts, the doors of the courts, or backing, or I also did, for example, there is this prominent intellectual, Murat Belget, whom I respect. He had a case, so I went there. You know, prominent Pamuk is there, so it makes a difference. But in the end, this is... Let me tell you this. The biggest Turkish newspaper, just before the referendum we had, I think in March or April, asked to do an interview with me. Now, I was very happy. This is the biggest Turkish newspaper, and they're going to publish my views, and I'm going to say no to the referendum, no to Erdogan. Very happy. We did a nice interview, but then just before the interview, the editor-in-chief, who is a sort of a friend, called me to say, I'm sorry, we can't publish this. And really, I cannot accuse the editor too much. They're pressured so much. And in the end, they're all my friends. We are in the same atmosphere. And I couldn't address my Turkish readers.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: Therefore, what fascinates me is that you This atmosphere you talk about is so constraining when it comes to your public voice as a campaigner as a man who cares about your your national life And yet you're telling me that all of those constraints the anger that you feel the guilt that you feel doesn't affect you when you go to your writing room, wherever it is, I know it's in Istanbul, it's in the building that you've occupied for a long time, you go to your writing room and you can shed all of that frustration and that anger and that feeling of constraint and write as free as a bird?
[SPEAKER_57]: Not as free as a bird, but let me tell you what the products of this repressive authoritarian air to a writer who is more concerned about the beauty. First, you shouldn't read newspapers till 2 o'clock because it spoils your day, you get angry. Second, this kind of atmosphere of fear and repression makes me work harder. I work harder, just perhaps like in my early years when my family didn't want me a writer and they all accused of me, maybe you're a bohemian, what? I worked so hard in these years because I felt guilty about something. Again, in the last 15, 16 months, I'm working a lot. Why? Perhaps to avoid these problems. And also, if you write well, even if you're living in a terribly undemocratic, threatening, menacing situation, you feel happy.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: Could you write your books anywhere else but Istanbul?
[SPEAKER_57]: I can. I did that. I'm teaching at Columbia University one semester each year. I wrote there and there was a time that I was, remember we also did an interview ten years ago, I was almost a semi-exile.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: You ran into a lot of problems for a while because of things you'd said which were relevant to both the Armenia and Kurdish issues. The Turkish government sought to charge you for a while. You had to leave the country. But it seems to me you always go, in the end, you always go home for creative inspiration.
[SPEAKER_57]: Yes. Not only that, I also don't want to go to Europe or America and criticize it from distance. I don't want that. And also there is a reality. a reality that feeds my optimism. I'll tell you about it perhaps. Don't forget that Erdogan's bloc's votes are going down, and the opposition got 49%. I am optimistic about the situation, not because there is so much repression, so much repression. Also, in the last referendum, I think the referendum was unfair, that is, there was unfair government propaganda. In a way, they were taking our tax money and making propaganda for their party. But in the end, the results were objective. Though it was unfair, the result was objective. And if they continue to keep the voting ballot there, I'm there. I'm going to come. I'll be part of it. This is how I think.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: Let me get back to one aspect of this book, The Red-Haired Woman, that again just strikes me as very relevant to your own place in Turkey. The key relationship really in the book is between Mahmut the welder, the master welder, and Cem, the assistant who's a student and who comes from a westernized family. His father's a leftist and he goes to university and he becomes a property developer. So you've got East and you've got tradition juxtaposed with a Western mentality and individualistic liberal sort of background. Most people would assume that you yourself, coming from an upper middle class family, as you say, spending time in America, an acclaimed writer, a secularist and a you know, a modernist in Turkey. Most would assume that you identify completely with the Western tradition in Turkey. I do. Do you? Because the implication of the book is that Turkey draws from all of its history and culture and its different traditions. So I wonder what you draw from tradition.
[SPEAKER_57]: I identify, I believe in Western political values. What are they? In the end, it's represented by French Revolution slogan, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. In Turkey, we lack Liberté. And some people even claim that in pro-government newspapers they are saying, well, our democracy is not European democracy, we are inventing Turkish democracy, let me add. It seems that they're trying to invent a democracy without free speech. I don't think it will work, but I'm there. I am at least saying this to you, to other journalists in Turkey, outside of Turkey. In Turkey they don't print, but they listen somehow.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: Let me talk to you about Istanbul. Again, it's almost like it's a character in the book because you describe evocatively how Istanbul changes over 40 years. You know, where they dig the well in the first place is a little village outside the city. By the end of the book, it's just another suburb. Swallowed by the city. Sucked up by the city with its industrial zones and its high-rises and its condos and everything else. Has the change in Istanbul changed the people and the character of the city?
[SPEAKER_57]: Good question. OK, first, the change, and this is Erdogan's success, the change in last 15 years is bigger than the change in my first 50 years of my life. That is, I also want to argue, especially to my Western journalist friend, key to his success, as much as religion is his success, But on the other hand, this party is saying they're conservative, and they're not. And besides, the religious buildings and mosques, they're not conserving anything, they're destroying everything. The city had turned out to be a sea of baton, and I'd love to ask them, well, you were conservatives, and it's not only religious buildings that should be preserved. Where is the old Istanbul you were so lovingly talking about? There is also, this book is going into that, money and politics combined in construction businesses, and of course leading party, ruling party, people who are close around this benefit from these.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: Do you feel it's still your city? It is.
[SPEAKER_57]: It's geographically. It's my city. I am looking at its entrance. I have a great view. It's changing, yes. The hills overlooking Bosphorus, I see that now. Behind them, they are preserving at least the hills overlooking Bosphorus, the gardens. But behind them, all the high-rises are grazing there, and it's changing. But I cannot say that it's not my city. Yes, also it's a self-imposed ethical mission that I don't want to be a nostalgic middle-class Turkish westernized secular. They only look at the newcomers, immigrants. you're destroying. I don't want to even see you. Why? Just like in Germany, they need labour and also they look down upon them. From the beginning, I didn't want to belong to my class. I betrayed my class because I want to see the totality of the nation in an ethical way.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: But only somebody of your class could say that sort of thing. I mean, That is the irony of being so full of self-awareness and education that you can talk about not wanting to be of your class. You are quintessentially of your class. And that's the problem, perhaps, for some people in Turkey, that however hard you try, you cannot help but be what you are, which is a member of the elite.
[SPEAKER_57]: It started with Snow that, in that book, 65% of Turkey's population has not political, some kind of headgear, headscarf. And even in early 2000s, they did not allow these people to universities. And then they thought the secular parties, they would get votes from the people. They paid way for the success of Erdogan's party, for their cruel, authoritarian attitudes. Now, Erdogan is even more, getting even more authoritarian now. But whenever, I sometimes argue, whenever these two sides clash, I can find a space in between talk but if they're happy together I'm afraid. Are you happy in Turkey today? I am a happy novelist but I can first never be happy in life that when I'm too happy I begin sleeping you know I need to running around fight with some people I have ideas I have projects that to be realized I am. I will be even unhappier is the right answer. That I may not be happy, but I will be even unhappier outside of Turkey. If Turkey had a decent European democracy, I would be very happy, no matter where I am. Unfortunately, it seems that we are not having it, and we are not going to have it for quite a long time. because I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I persist staying in my country and be part of what's happening there now.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_46]: It's a great thought to end on. Orhan Pamuk, thank you so much for being on Hard Talk.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: This is the BBC World Service, where a family secret is shared.
[SPEAKER_47]: I'd always believed that my father was a bureaucrat in the American State Department. But one day when I was 18, he turned to me and he said, it's time I told you about the family business. Espionage. In the late 1960s, during the Vietnam War, the CIA sent him to Laos.
[SPEAKER_61]: The troops are not regular Laotian soldiers, but members of a force trained and financed by the CIA.
[SPEAKER_47]: But what was this covert mission about?
[SPEAKER_61]: Bang Pao denies this success was due to America.
[SPEAKER_47]: After my dad died, I decided to look for answers. We weren't cold-hearted. We were trying to help those folks and do anything we could for them. I'm Peter Lang Stanton, and this is a very personal story, but one I feel needs to be told.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: The Arctic Ocean is warming at an extraordinary rate. But what does that mean for the wildlife and the people that rely on these waters? The ice is changing.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's changing so fast. And it's challenging trying to go caribou hunting because of the erosion.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: I'm Liz Bonnen. And after the news, I'll bring you ocean stories for The Compass on the BBC World Service, diving into the icy depths of the Arctic and Southern Oceans.
[SPEAKER_88]: BBC News with Gareth Barlow. Two senior U.S. officials say President Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel later on Wednesday. He'll also direct the State Department to start the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The decision will break with years of U.S. policy on the status of the disputed city, as well as the international consensus. Arab states have warned the decision could provoke violence in the Muslim world. Russia has reacted furiously to a decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban its participation in next year's Winter Olympics, following a report accusing it of systematic doping. The deputy speaker of the Russian parliament called the ban a humiliation and an insult. Tens of thousands of people in Southern California have fled wildfires being driven by high winds. One fire in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles, trebled in size in just a few hours. At least 150 buildings have been destroyed, and a quarter of a million homes are without power. Three men in Malta have been charged with the murder of the campaigning journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in October. Alfred and Jorge de Georgiou and Vince Muscard were arrested on Monday. They have pleaded not guilty. The opposition in Honduras has demanded a full recount of presidential election ballot papers, which it says were tampered with in order to favour President Juan Orlando Hernandez. The opposition candidate, Salvador Nasralla, had appeared on course for victory after the election, when the count was suddenly halted. France's biggest rock star, Johnny Hallyday, has died from lung cancer at the age of 74. In a career spanning five decades, he sold more than 100 million records and headlined 50 major tours. Known as the French Elvis, he was hugely popular in the Francophone world, but less well-known elsewhere, earning him the nickname, the biggest rock star you've never heard of. BBC News.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: I'm Liz Bonnen. I'm a wild animal biologist and a science and wildlife presenter. In this series for The Compass, we're on a voyage through the world's oceans. Now, I've spent time tracking Siberian tigers in the frozen Russian Far East, and I'm fascinated by how both animals and humans adapt to the coldest conditions on Earth. Welcome to Ocean Stories. The oceans cover 70% of our planet's surface. The wildlife they contain is extraordinary, but so too are the people who make their living from the depths and the shallows of our seas. In this special four-part series for The Compass, I'm introducing you to them, from the ice-strewn landscapes of Alaska to the coral reef coastlines of Madagascar. From the BBC World Service, this is Ocean Stories, part three, the Arctic and Southern Oceans. These are the extremes of marine life. Two very different oceans where life has evolved to survive the intense cold. Two oceans where the climate is changing rapidly, where the fish, mammals and people are learning to adapt. We begin in the far north, the ocean encircled by Russia, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and Alaska. The Arctic Ocean has tempted explorers in search of a faster passage from east to west for centuries. As the waters warm, the voyage becomes less dangerous and the plentiful, rich resources of the north are suddenly within reach. Our marine ecologist John Copley is watching closely.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_01]: That whole area is very rich in oil and gas, and so there's a real bit of an underwater land grab around the Arctic at the moment for these seabed resources. Russia is claiming that the Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of the Siberian continental self geologically, and therefore it should belong to Russia as seafloor territory and its resources. A lot of that oil and gas should belong to Russia. and other nations who ring the arctic are also simply trying to get a piece of the pie. Previously we hadn't thought about those resources because the ocean is covered most of the time or most of its extent by sea ice but of course there have been such dramatic declines in arctic sea ice extent in recent years that the prospect of operations that require more open water, whether that's shipping and navigation to make a shortcut across the top of the world for transport of goods or actually to start extracting oil and gas from these sorts of latitudes, that's potentially becoming more realistic.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Oil is already being extracted from the Arctic. At Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, millions of barrels of oil have been pumped since the 1960s. Operations there provide the jobs for Utqiagvik, America's most northerly town. Here, 500 kilometers inside the Arctic Circle, it's completely dark for 65 long winter days. But in the Arctic summer, a beach party is underway. The whaling season is coming to an end. As the last boat, a sealskin canoe, is pulled onto shore, the local Inupiat Inuit gather for a feast.
[SPEAKER_10]: the beginning of a ceremony called the Parati where the crew is going to bring in their boat from the ice symbolizing that they're done whaling for the season and they're gonna hand out fermented whale, some soup. I just said, welcome, everybody. I am Naomi Asok, and I'm from Barrow.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Naomi is 23. She hunts walrus, seal, caribou, and whale with her father, Herman.
[SPEAKER_41]: When you harvest a whale, you can't sell the meat or muktak. It's given away to everybody, everybody. Even if you don't belong to a whaling crew, and you go up and butcher the whale, you get a share. You can't sell it because it's the International Whaling Commission law, because we use it as subsistence.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: The success and safety of a hunting season here depends on the local knowledge of the ice, as it forms, solidifies and breaks up over the course of a winter.
[SPEAKER_41]: Ice is siku in Inupiaq, and there's also the tuak, which is the ice that's connected to the shore. And then the salvi is the main pack that travels with the current.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: These names are important. They allow the hunters to communicate, to tell each other where they can walk, where they can drive their trucks and where they can gut their prey in a landscape that merges for most of the year with the Arctic Ocean.
[SPEAKER_09]: There was a lot of different changes within just my 23 years of existing at home. The ice is changing. It's changing so fast. The coastline has eroded so fast. And it's a little bit more challenging trying to go caribou hunting with the four-wheelers along the coast because of the erosion. And we're trying to have to work around the thawing and around the breaking of ice. And we have to be very careful.
[SPEAKER_47]: We have a hammer up there?
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: The whales that are caught in the short hunting season feed the community here right through the year. In a town where an omelette in a cafe costs 20 US dollars, the whale meat, traditionally kept frozen at the bottom of a four meter shaft drilled through the ice, is a vital food source. Let's have a look.
[SPEAKER_10]: This is our traditional ice cellar. This is where we store our muktuk and our meat from the bowhead whale. It's 20 feet down, and it's a natural freezer. Whenever a crew is successful catching a whale, they'll put the excess meat and muktuk in here, the blubber. And there's a difference, you can tell. Like, if you put the meat in a traditional freezer, like in your home, you'll actually You can taste where it's been sitting, but it tastes really good. It's like the earth.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: But the permafrost here is no longer reliable. There's water instead of ice at the bottom of Naomi's cellar.
[SPEAKER_10]: There's some that are not working anymore because of the changing weather.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Travel across the Arctic Ocean, over the North Pole, and you reach Svalbard, a group of islands administered by Norway, but home to research stations belonging to France, Germany, Russia, the UK, and even China. With so many scientists here, the melting of the ice and the thawing of the permafrost are monitored very carefully.
[SPEAKER_99]: So it was relatively cold here in Svalbard in the 60s and in the 80s and then after that for the last 35 years we have seen a more or less persistent temperature increase up here.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Ole Humlen is a geographer at UNIS, the university centre in Svalbard.
[SPEAKER_111]: This was what we had in the beginning at UNIS, the only room where we could work on frozen samples.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Ole is married to geology professor Hannah Christensen.
[SPEAKER_111]: It's minus 17 in the freezer today.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: She keeps her core samples from the Svalbard permafrost in a walk-in freezer at UNIS.
[SPEAKER_111]: Not only do we measure the temperature of the permafrost in Svalbard, but we're also monitoring and measuring the thickness of the thawed layer, the active layer on top of the permafrost that develops every summer when energy is provided to the ground. And then we can monitor that. And we've been doing that for 15, 16 years now. So we know that on average over that period of time where temperatures have gone up, we see an increase in the thickness of the active layer of around half a centimeter to a centimeter, of course varies between years. So that means that we're losing that amount of permafrost from this area that we are monitoring like that.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Thawing permafrost can release the climate-warming gas methane, which is even more damaging than carbon dioxide. It also causes local problems. Most of the offices, shops and homes in Svalbard are built on stilts resting on ground that used to be frozen solid all year round.
[SPEAKER_111]: I'm living in a house on piles, as you have just seen, and at the moment you can't close the windows in one side of the house because the whole house is being deformed because of the ground that it's standing on. It's getting maybe a thicker active layer or getting more water under there.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: From the Norwegian Polar Institute, Christian Ledesen studies the mammals that spend their entire lives in these arctic waters.
[SPEAKER_70]: Walruses is one, ring seal and bearded seals are other, and also the narwhal and the bowhead and the white whale. And they are what we call ice associated, two different degrees. And the one that is most dependent on sea ice is the ring seal.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: And it's the ringed seal, a small seal with a coat of black spots surrounded by grey rings, that's having a particularly tough time coping with the warm waters around Svalbard.
[SPEAKER_70]: They have this very special breathing system where they actually pop in a snow cave on top of a breathing hole in the ice. And that protects the very small pup from harsh weather conditions to some degree, but also from predation. Because it takes a while for a predator, which is normally a polar bear or a fox, to dig through the layer and take the pup so it has a chance to escape. What the problem has been here now the last years is that first, especially on the west side of Spitsbergen, the ice forms very late, if at all, and normally it forms too late for snow, enough snow to accumulate, so they can make these layers. And then they pup on the open ice, and then almost all pups are killed before they are weaned. Even big gulls take them then. In principle, we're not having Arctic conditions here anymore. You know, they're changing to more Atlantic. And we have here on the west coast of Svalbard, we have harbor seals too, not so ice adapted. And it seems like they are thriving with this new Atlantic water, and they're expanding their distribution into the fjords here.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: The oceans at both ends of the world are changing fast. Some animals may adapt to warmer waters, others won't. In the Arctic, the shifting climate will certainly change the lives of native people and bring more workers from the South. A place like Svalbard, perfectly positioned on the Northeast Passage from Asia across Northern Europe to North America, is likely to take on newfound importance in world trade. Mads Forshamer is a local biologist.
[SPEAKER_63]: When the sea ice goes, it will open for transportations by ships. It will open for explorations of petroleum and other natural resources. So yeah, it will change the picture a lot. And that could have consequences for a place like this because it could be increased in size considerably if you have ships coming in. because Svalbard is positioned there. They're actually the hub, the main entrance to cross polar routes. So yeah, that's going to be quite interesting to watch.
[SPEAKER_119]: There are a lot of people who are wondering about what will happen to Svalbard if it should be possible to sail through the Northeast Passage.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Tarin Sorensen is deacon at the Svalbard Kirke, the most northerly church in the world. What about the spilling of oil?
[SPEAKER_119]: What about the fuel effect, the Arctic?
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: There are many questions. I'm Liz Bonnen and this is Ocean Stories. Today we're discovering how a warming climate is changing the Arctic and Southern Oceans. head south, 60 degrees south, far beyond the southern tip of South Africa, Chile and New Zealand, to the mother of the oceans, the water that brings life to the rest of the world.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_01]: The Antarctic is particularly important because it's where a lot of the deep oceans of the world are effectively breathing in.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Our guide to the deep is Southampton University's ocean explorer John Copley.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_01]: Deep water that fills the bottom of Marianas Trench in the Pacific actually begun its journey into the deep at the sea surface around Antarctica. In winter in the Antarctic a lot more of the sea freezes around Antarctica. We get this phenomenal growth of sea ice spreading out from the continent and if It effectively doubles the size of the Antarctic. And as the surface sea freezes to form that sea ice, it leaves behind very cold, very salty water. And that very cold, very salty water is heavier than normal sea water, so it sinks. And it sinks and it flows out, spills out from the Antarctic into the deep ocean basins. It flows north in the Atlantic, north in the Pacific, north in the Indian Ocean. And it's very important because when it's forming at the surface, that's when it's dissolving oxygen from the air into the ocean and then carrying that oxygen into the deep ocean. So all of the deep sea marine life in those deep ocean basins, it gets its oxygen from that deep water formation at the surface around Antarctica.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Where other continents slope gently into the surrounding ocean, Antarctica stops and drops off dramatically. Deep sea washes right up against the land and this far south the difference in temperature between the deep water and the shallows is greatly reduced. Which means that the strange life forms of the deep can be spotted close to land and relatively close to the surface. John Copley is one of the first people to take a submersible into these waters.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_01]: So we're 120 meters now. Toby's driving us towards the point we hope to land on the seabed at to start our dive. So we're heading down half a kilometer to explore this part of our planet for the first time. So we just passed 100 meters. All the daylight has gone now. It's all been quenched by the seawater. Amazing, thick soup of plankton. And it's mainly animal plankton. And they're tiny. It's hard for me to make out what we're seeing here. That's a larval fish that's just gone by the sphere there. Tiny little crustaceans. They're kind of like the insects of the ocean. Control, control, rover. Both subs off bottom.
[SPEAKER_36]: Depth 4-0-0 meters, over.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_01]: Where we are right now, mid-water, this is a very strange place. It's a world without war, so there are animals that live their whole lives here, never touching a solid, hard surface. And that means they've got bodies that are like blown glass, that are sort of ethereal. A lot of them are bodies very delicate, made of jelly. And the only way to understand the life here is to come and see it. Because if you try and fish these up with a net, all you get is a lot of snot in the bottom of the net. Oh, look at that ice fish there. Crocodile ice fish. That's a beauty. And it has a... Its snout is really like crocodile-like. Just everywhere we go, there is something amazing and something different. Oh, the krill are really starting to swarm around us now. I mean, they're almost see-through. You sometimes catch a flash of what's in their gut, a little line down the body, and they've actually got little organs like headlights dotted along their bodies as well, which when we switch out the lights later, hopefully we'll be able to see some of their firework displays.
[SPEAKER_36]: Control, Rover, that's both subs finished, standing by to leave bottom hour.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Those krill are the foundation of life in the Antarctic. Food for the seals, the whales and the penguins that live on the West Antarctic Peninsula. This is one of the fastest warming areas on Earth. Warming temperatures means less sea ice. Less sea ice means less habitat for the algae that the krill eat. And that could be catastrophic for the mammals and birds in this part of the Southern Ocean.
[SPEAKER_123]: You know, really, it's amazing. There are so many wandering albatrosses behind this boat now, I can't describe. They're the world's largest bird in terms of wingspan. They're three, three and a half meters. And they come just alongside the boat. And they sort of, they just float, just almost within fingertip reach of them. They just look at you as they sort of glide gently up to see what you're all about. and then fire off across the surface of the ocean, almost skimming the surface of the sea with their wingtips. They're just extraordinarily capable birds in the air. They look like they're applying no effort to the mechanism of flight whatsoever.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: Gerard Baker is a chef and a writer. He's been working in the Southern Ocean for 23 years on cruise ships, fishing boats, and in the British Antarctic Survey's research stations. In a region with no permanent residents, Gerard qualifies as a local. And like most of us, he cares about the future of life on his own doorstep.
[SPEAKER_123]: We've been stalked by a foot and a half long, fluffy, slightly damp-looking fur seal pup with teeth about a millimetre long. So although it makes a growly, aggressive kind of noise, it might nibble the end of your boot, but not much more than that. This is one of the more unusual treasure hunts I've ever been on. We're hunting for fur seal scats, or faeces, here on the snow at King Edward Point. And I'm with the zoologist here, Kieran, who is going to show me what he does with this. He's got a plastic bag on one hand and there's a dirty brown lump on the snow. Kieran, you go ahead. Tell me, what's the point of collecting the fur seal scats?
[SPEAKER_117]: So the whole point to this is to analyse their diet, to understand exactly what they're eating, and this can indicate then how much krill and fish and potentially squid is in the waters here in South Georgia. OK, well, you go ahead and pick up. So there's absolutely no skill towards this, same as what you would do with your own dog. And this one is basically...
[SPEAKER_123]: It's nicely frozen onto the snow there. Dog owners will be sympathetic to you at this point. The reason Kieran, who works for the South Georgia government, is so interested in krill numbers, is that krill fishing is on the increase, as the world's human population craves new sources of omega-3 oils. The warming climate means that fishing boats can work further south, deeper into the Antarctic winter. Crucially, the Norwegians have developed a cunning way of catching the krill and freezing them whilst they're still completely fresh. That makes them fit for human consumption, so you'll now see krill oil high in omega-3 in a lot of health food shops around the world. The Chinese and South Koreans are now following the Norwegians into the southern waters. Well, I've come to Nikko Harbour on the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, and here it's a large Gentoo penguin colony. There are adults wandering around, chicks, large chicks now, it's mid-season, and they're beginning to fledge. And all around is evidence of krill and iguana on the ground in between the rocks here. Oh, there's a glacier carving in the background, a little bit of wave happening. It's hard not to connect the success, the breeding success of the penguins here on shore with what's happening out there on the water. Here at Neco Harbour last year, along with other nearby islands like Cooverville, almost all of the Gentoo chicks died from starvation.
[SPEAKER_103]: This is one of the cameras, and as you can see, there's a bunch of nests in view. And this is the cool one. It takes a photo every hour all year, which shows when they arrive, when they depart, and the reproductive success, so which chicks survive and which don't.
[SPEAKER_123]: Using a network of cameras, Tom Hart from Oxford University monitors the three species of brushtail penguin on the Antarctic Peninsula, the chinstrap, a dayleaf, and gen2. Every summer, he visits the cameras to change the batteries. In the spring of 2016, he noticed a sharp decline in the number of chicks successfully fledged on Cooverville Island.
[SPEAKER_104]: Cooverville Island has about 2,000 gentoo penguins on it. And there was a big die-off there right at the end of the season. So I'd come back, I didn't see it. But we started getting all these reports of a die-off.
[SPEAKER_123]: So what caused the southern penguin die-off? The evidence, according to scientists at the nearby Palmer Research Station, suggests it wasn't disease, but starvation. That points to a problem with the krill. They could have suffered their own bad breeding year, or returning whales could have taken a larger share. Climate change is another of the key suspects. Mark Belsher from the British Antarctic Survey.
[SPEAKER_98]: Climate change is likely to have a very large impact on all aspects of the Southern Ocean ecosystem, not least in Antarctic krill. They are very much dependent for their early life history stages on the northerly extent of sea ice. where their spawning and egg duration phase takes place. So clearly the location of the ice edge and the timing of the extent of the ice edge will have a major impact as to where krill ultimately will end up in the Southern Ocean, which currents they get entrained in, and indeed their overall success.
[SPEAKER_123]: Brent Stewart from the Hubb Seaworld Research Institute also expects an impact.
[SPEAKER_13]: Well, I think the key here with all the discussion about changes in climate, which is clearly happening, local changes in climate, regional changes in climate, oceanographic climate or atmospheric climate, is the question is how quickly does it happen and do animals have the, can they respond to it? Some will respond to it well and some won't if it happens very quickly. So if the climate changes quickly enough that it degrades the habitat for krill, which are the primary food source for a lot of things, and that just vanishes, then that's going to be a very, very sudden change for the predators. They'll either move elsewhere or they won't do so well.
[SPEAKER_123]: So climate change is likely to affect the krill, but it may be premature to blame it for a single bad year. Another suspect is the fishing industry. Large krill fishing boats were seen working close to the penguin colonies at the time of the die-off.
[SPEAKER_104]: Trying to pin the blame on any one event is really hard. It was possibly a bad krill year but there was also a lot of fishing going on nearby and yeah that to me absolutely highlights the problem that you can have associations and that's not evidence either way.
[SPEAKER_123]: So far, there's no firm evidence that krill numbers have declined in the Southern Ocean. It's very difficult to gather accurate data over such a huge area. What worries Tom is that the birds and mammals are concentrated in particular parts of the ocean. If fishing boats target exactly the same area, then food could run short.
[SPEAKER_104]: Yeah, so all of these predators, they're land-based, raising their young on land, so they're tied to the land like an aircraft carrier. They can go out and they can fish, they can go foraging, but they need to come back to land where they're young are to raise their young. All different species, so this could be Adelie penguins, Chinstrap penguins and Gentoo penguins, but also Crabbeater seals, anything apart from whales, they're land-based when they're breeding. and doing these little forays out to get food.
[SPEAKER_123]: The penguins all around me are witnesses to what's happening in the Southern Ocean. The future health of this colony and others like it is very dependent on climate change and ultimately what we as humans do.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_20]: I'm Liz Bonnen and you've been listening to Ocean Stories for the Compass from the BBC World Service. The producer was Alistair Cross. In episode four, I'll be exploring the biggest and deepest ocean of all, the Pacific.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: This is the BBC World Service, where science lives. For the creative.
[SPEAKER_36]: With drones, we can get blood anywhere in the country in 15 to 20 minutes.
[SPEAKER_32]: And the curious.
[SPEAKER_89]: When we looked at our twins, we found there were certain microbes that were always present in the skinnier twins than in the overweight twins. For our remarkable world.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: It's like releasing the valve on a pressure cooker. Science on the BBC World Service at bbcworldservice.com. You're listening to the BBC World Service.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Hello, welcome to Outlook. When Ayik Shute was 13, he joined a rebel army in Sudan, but he hated it and tried to run away. When he was caught, he was horribly punished.
[SPEAKER_108]: All I remember, I cried and you can't cry anymore. You know, you want to, your lung is gone. There's nothing that can come out of it. Who would punish you? There was a guy who ran the prison, the child soldiers prison. His name was Anyang.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Anuang was just a child himself, a few years older than Ayik, and Ayik hated him with a passion. Years later, Ayik got asylum in Australia, and one day in church, saw a familiar face.
[SPEAKER_108]: This is the guy that used to torture me. Every time we run away, he'll send the guard to go and get us, and bring us back there, and then lock us up for up to four weeks, and then release us into training again. That's him. Okay, I think I should kill him.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: What happened next is truly extraordinary. Find out after the news.
[SPEAKER_88]: BBC News, hello, I'm Gareth Barlow. Senior U.S. officials say President Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel later on Wednesday. He'll also direct the State Department to start the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Arab states have warned that the decision could provoke violence in the Muslim world. Barbara Platusha reports.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_36]: The president is planning to fulfill a campaign promise made to pro-Israel voters. But in doing so, he's tackling one of the most sensitive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the status of Jerusalem. Senior administration officials said he would simply be acknowledging reality, that Jerusalem functions as the capital of Israel. Congress has called for such a move for 22 years, but previous presidents have been resistant, accepting that Jerusalem's future should be part of a negotiated agreement. One U.S. official said that delaying the decision had done nothing to advance peace. But the U.N., Europe and Arab states have long calculated that it would prevent conflict.
[SPEAKER_88]: Russia has reacted furiously to a decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban it from next February's Winter Olympics in South Korea. In a defiant post on social media, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Russia would survive this as it had survived World War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and sanctions. Here is Alex Kapstik.
[SPEAKER_67]: The decision was made following a damning report which confirmed there was state-sponsored doping. The sports ministry has been held responsible. Its former boss and the current Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko has been banned for life. The country's flag will not fly in Pyeongchang. Its anthem will not be played. Russian athletes will be free to compete as long as they prove they are clean and were not directly implicated in the doping program. They will wear neutral uniforms, but in what could be a crucial concession, they will be known as Olympic athletes from Russia.
[SPEAKER_88]: Tens of thousands of people in Southern California have fled wildfires being driven by high winds. The BBC's James Cook reports from the outskirts of Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_106]: In Ventura County, to the north of Los Angeles, a wildfire which broke out on Monday intensified with terrifying speed, trembling in size in just a few hours, driven by arid and gusty Santa Ana winds. Scores of homes were gutted, and a mental health hospital was destroyed. Here on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the charred ruins of houses are still smoking while dark choking smoke has closed a major motorway. Ash is blowing through the air and there is a firefighting helicopter overhead. And with forecasters warning that ferocious winds and low humidity will continue for several days, this could yet get a lot worse.
[SPEAKER_88]: James Cook reporting. Three men in Malta have been charged with the murder of the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in October. Alfred and Giorgio De Gionio and Vince Muscat were arrested on Monday. They have pleaded not guilty. World News from the BBC. The opposition in Honduras has demanded a full recount of presidential election ballot papers, which it says were tampered with in order to favour President Juan Orlando Hernandez. The opposition candidate Salvador Nasrulla had appeared set for victory shortly after the election ten days ago, when the vote count was suddenly halted. A new report says about 15,000 people a day are being forced to flee their homes in African conflict and disaster zones. Figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre show that more than 12 million people in Africa are internally displaced. Nearly four million left their homes last year, a quarter of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone. Britain's most prestigious contemporary art award, the Turner Prize, has been won by an art professor who was born in Zanzibar, Lubaina Himid. Judges praised her work, which explores the African diaspora and black creativity. Rebecca Jones has this report.
[SPEAKER_76]: So, the winner of this year's Turner Prize is Lubaina Himid.
[SPEAKER_29]: And with that, Lubaina Himid made Turner Prize history, the first black woman to win the prize, and at the age of 63, the oldest. She's an artist who paints, makes collages and installations, but all her work focuses on the black experience in Britain, highlighting racism and the legacy of colonialism.
[SPEAKER_88]: France's biggest rock star, Johnny Alliday, has died aged 74 after a battle with lung cancer. In a career spanning five decades, he sold more than 100 million records and headlined 50 major tours. Influenced by the music of Elvis Presley, Johnny Alliday began his career in 1960, singing rock and roll in French. Known as the French Elvis, he was hugely popular in the Francophone world, but less well known elsewhere. He was married five times. World News from the BBC.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Hello, I'm Jo Fidgen and this is Outlook, taking you around the world one extraordinary story at a time. Today we'll be hanging out with rebel cows in Italy and foraging for fungi in Bhutan. But our first story takes place in a prison camp run by children on the border of what is now South Sudan and in a church in Brisbane, Australia. It links two men in ways that are both disturbing and inspiring. Both were child soldiers in the 1980s in Sudan's civil war. The younger of them, Ayik Shute, was just 13 when he took up arms. He did it because his father, brother and grandmother had all been killed and he wanted to fight back. So he joined the Sudan People's Liberation Army and was sent to a training camp in Ethiopia.
[SPEAKER_108]: The first few weeks was all right. And then it just got worse. We're getting trained. It's on, like, Ethiopian mountain. So we just climb up there. Even if you're thirsty, you can't go to the river by yourselves. When the boss say we got to go and drink, that's when you got to go. It's like the old age, the stone age, you know? Everything, we used to use rocks to cut trees.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: So it's hard work. And what were you expected to do apart from that?
[SPEAKER_108]: Just getting trained every day. That's it. Do what the boss say. In the morning, wake up around 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock in the morning. You go until 12 o'clock. Just getting trained in the mountain with using a stick. to haul it like a gun. You know, how you attack when you make ambush, all that sort of thing. And it was just too much running on the mountain, no water. And you only eat once in the morning, and that's it. What would you eat? Corn. We used to boil corn or rice. And then we make our own soup or whatever. We're going to get some tree leaves somewhere, because we're all from different part of Sudan. So when I came there, you learn to eat other food from other cultures. You know, other culture that were there with me, other children that were there with me.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: When you graduated, as it were, from sticks to guns, what was expected of you?
[SPEAKER_108]: Just get a fight. That was it.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: And would you fight?
[SPEAKER_108]: Yeah. I've been attacked so many times. And I've seen people dying. It's too much. When I used to think of them, I used to cry. And then after a while, I think it's fading. The memories is there but it's not as bad as I used to think because I'm grown up now. But the punishment was so bad.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: The punishment was to be sent to a prison at the camp where another child soldier called Anyang had been put in charge. He and the other young prison guards were known to torture the boys.
[SPEAKER_108]: Sometimes you have to stand on one feet and every time you take the ground with the other feet you got four people around you that would just whip you And sometimes you get tied up, like hogtie. You're only sitting on your chest. They'll just leave you there for hours, six, seven hours tied up. You know, the skin does peel off a little bit. And when you see the skin peel off, he'll put chili in it. He'll just rub chili in it. And he'd done it, he'd done it to another child, so I was there with me, and he was tired after so long, and chile was put there, and got infected, and then the doctors couldn't do anything about it, so ended up getting amputated.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: You had chile rubbed in your wounds as well, did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it happened to me all the time. Can you even describe what that feels like?
[SPEAKER_108]: All I remember, I cry, then you can't cry anymore, you know what I mean? You know, you want to, and your lunk is gone. There's nothing that can come out of it.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Anyang, Iyik's torturer, was a child himself, just a few years older than his prisoner.
[SPEAKER_108]: I know that he was just bigger than me, and he had the power. When you would see Anyang, what kind of emotions would come to you? Back then, there's nothing. I'd just stand up and just salute him, because that was it. I was useless at the time, but inside, I used to pray that I want to get deployed with them. I want to go to war with them. That was my prayer. That was what I used to pray for. Why? Because I wanted to kill them. So bad, so bad. You know, no one has ever, ever, ever put me through what I went through in the rebel. No one has ever, ever beat me up like Aung San Suu Kyi did.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Ayik kept trying to run away and each time was caught and punished by Anyang until he'd finished his training and was sent off to fight. Ayik was on the front lines for four years before his older sister managed to get him away to Kenya to a refugee camp and to his joy he and his relatives were granted a visa to go and live in Australia.
[SPEAKER_108]: The first night we came here Oh, man, the sausages. And I have never eaten so many sausages in my life until I came here. I even threw up. I went there, threw up, and then came and ate, because I was thinking, maybe this is just, they're doing it for tonight. Tomorrow is going to be just the same. We wouldn't be treated like visitors. And then the next day, I wake up in the morning, there's breakfast, again, sausages. I don't even eat sausages anymore. I hate sausages.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: You overdosed on them.
[SPEAKER_108]: Yeah, I think. I think I did.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: What else did you like about Australia?
[SPEAKER_108]: Oh, it's just that you'd be able to sleep. You wouldn't hear a gun. The first time I heard fireworks, being an ex-child soldier, when I hear bang, bang, I'm just scared. I'm looking around, what's going on? And then my brother's little nephew says, yeah, it's the fireworks. They were kids, and I just get used to it. If I hear a gun now, I probably wouldn't even think it's a gun. I'd probably think it's a firework.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: You have the most amazing Australian accent. I mean, you really have. become Australian, huh? Oh, not really.
[SPEAKER_108]: Maybe because you're a Pommie, that's why you think I sound like an Aussie. But if you hear, if you live in Australia, you probably think, nah, I don't even know my accent. You go to church in Australia, in Brisbane? Yeah, I go to church.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Tell us about what happened in church a couple of years after you got there.
[SPEAKER_108]: A few years ago, I went to church. I think it was a wedding. I knew a few people there, hello, how are you doing? And then we just had to pray. After everything was done, you know when people shake hands, okay, see you Joe, see you Michael. And then I look to my right, and I saw this face. And I thought, oh no, what's going on? And then I look again, and then I realized the face that I was looking at, it was Anyang. My mind was telling me, this guy should be dead. He should have died back home because I thought If someone didn't kill him, who got killed in the war? But it was him.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: The moment you saw him, you recognised him as the man who'd run the prison, did you?
[SPEAKER_108]: At first I thought it was a flashback. And I shook my head like that, wake up, wake up, I was like, what's going on? And then I look, I said, oh yeah, that's him. I said, oh, this is the guy that used to torture me. And this is the guy, every time we run away, he'll send the guard to go and get us, and bring us back there, and then lock us up for up to four weeks, and then release us into training again. Oh, this, that's him. Okay, I think I should kill him. But how? And then I start thinking, He's in church, and then I'm in Australia. If I kill him now, I'll probably get locked up for the rest of my life. All these sort of things were going on in my mind. And then the time was over anyway, because it was the end of the service. And then I never went to that church again. Because he might be there? Because of him. I was very angry, very angry. I wanted to kill him, but I just didn't know how to do it. You know, if I found him in Africa, I think it would have been a different story. If I found him where he had no power and it was in Africa, that's it.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Did you have anyone in Australia to talk to about it, to talk about your feelings and what you were going through?
[SPEAKER_108]: No, I didn't want to talk to no one. I just kept it to myself, even my own family. My own family didn't even know about it.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Two years, I think it was, after that church sighting, you see Anyang again. What were the circumstances?
[SPEAKER_108]: It was at a party, a friend's place. And then I was drinking. And then when I'm drinking, you know, I'm a happy person. I said, hey, how you doing? I said, yeah, you remember me? And he said, yeah, of course I remember. And then I said, man, I swear to God, you're lucky. You know, Australia saved your life. From there, I went, I left. And that was it. That was the second time I saw him.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Ayat, can you introduce the man sitting next to you right now? Okay.
[SPEAKER_108]: Joe, meet Anyang, Anyang Rang, my ex-boss when I was a child soldier. He's here sitting next to me.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Anyang, hello.
[SPEAKER_108]: Hello.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: What can you tell us about seeing Ayik at that party, talking to him, saying you remembered him? What went through your head?
[SPEAKER_42]: That was not a good meeting at all, to be honest, because you can judge somebody by their look. Ayik was coming near to me while he's really, really angry. So when I see that way, I didn't wait. I walked away from him.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Well, Ayik couldn't forget about it. It preyed on his mind. And then he saw an advert for a new television programme on the Australian channel SBS, Look Me In The Eye. They were trying to find people who were estranged or had an issue to meet and try to solve their differences through a mediation technique where the parties stare at each other but don't talk, at least at first. Ayik applied and was invited onto the show.
[SPEAKER_108]: It's like a warehouse. There's two seats and that's it. So I was sitting there And then I can hear footsteps. There was someone coming. And that person came and sat opposite to me. And I had to raise my head and look straight into his eye. And that's where we began. And then from there, the tears start coming. Because I went back to when I was in my younger age, 13. I went back to that age. And all I can remember was, it was that face that used to beat me up. The phase that I suffer under, I didn't see any change. Then I just break down, tears start coming, and that's it. And then what did you do when you were staring at Ayik?
[SPEAKER_42]: I was really shaking. I was thinking, if I go and sit next to Ayik, I was not sure what reaction Ayik will have. And in the beginning, to be honest, Ayik's reaction was not good either to me, because he was crying, upset. I was even scared that Ayik can do something to me. So that was a really hard time for me to sit with Ayik and look face to face. That was really a scary moment for me.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: So you were afraid of him?
[SPEAKER_42]: Yes.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Were you sorry for what you had done to him?
[SPEAKER_42]: I was sorry, but I didn't did it intention to Ayik. That's the order given to me, and I have to implement the order.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Did you have to be so cruel?
[SPEAKER_42]: All I say, if my big boss told me, Nyang, your soldiers have to do this, I have to make sure that they done what I was told.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: And you didn't have any doubts about the kind of pain, torture you were inflicting on those boys?
[SPEAKER_42]: To be honest to you, I asked for the forgiveness. And I told him that what I did, I knew is wrong. But I was having a big boss ahead of me.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: When you heard that from Anyang, when he said, look, you know, I had a boss who was giving me orders, how did you respond to that?
[SPEAKER_108]: I think maybe he had his own problem. I really don't understand. You know, I realize now he's a good person, but there is something that I think that down the track Anyang needs to look into. Treatment, because he's never been treated with anything at all.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: It's clear that there are still many issues between you and yet, Ayik, you said, I realise he is a good person. Where has that come from?
[SPEAKER_108]: I forgive him. I forgive him because he's got two grandkids. I have one little boy. And I know how much I love my little boy now. So I just think the same with Anyang. I know how much he loves his kids, how much he loves his grandkids. And if I hold all the grudges for the rest of my life, it's me hurting myself. Because everywhere I'm going to go here in Brisbane, I'm going to see him and I get angry. That means that I'm the one hurting myself every time. That's why I forgive him. And after I've forgiven him, you know, we become good friends. I go to his house now. I sleep there. Every time I go to his house, there's no spare bed. I try to sleep on the couch. He says, no, you sleep in the bed. I say, all right, I'll sleep in the bed. They'll give me food. They give me anything. If I get into any problem now, I think Anyang will stand up for me, I swear to God. And if he get in trouble, I'll stand up for him.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Do you think that there is somehow a special bond between you, an element of your friendship which is rooted in this shared experience you had all those years ago?
[SPEAKER_108]: Yeah, that's the only one I can relate to in a way that this guy understands me as a child because my own family don't even know me.
[SPEAKER_107]: It's because... Sorry. Honestly, I've got the best family in the whole world. My family will look after you before they look after me. Not because they don't love me, that's how much they care. They're a very caring family. They're better than me. All of them are better than me. But the thing is, the bad thing is, I don't have a bond with them. I can go to my mum's house now, just stay there. After an hour, I want to get out of the house. Not because I don't love them, but something just takes me out. There's no bond because I grew away from them. The best moment of my life. that I should have spent with them. I spent it in the rebel. That's the only sad thing about this. But apart from that, I forgive Anyang. And I have so much to achieve, you know. I want to just move on and try to build a bond with my family now. That's the next one.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: You have a son now, and you can be there with him. You can be a father to him.
[SPEAKER_107]: Yeah, I have my son's name Freeman.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Freeman?
[SPEAKER_107]: Yeah, Freeman, like just Freeman, like a free man, you know, that's when he was born. I thought, okay, I talked to his mama, said, I think the only name will make me happy after what I went through.
[SPEAKER_108]: And I think Freeman is a free man. And I'm a free man now, because I'm in a free country. So I named him Freeman. And he's one of the best kid I know. How old is he? He's 11. What kind of boy is he? Oh, he's a funny boy, you know, he's got that sense of humor, you know. For example, sometime when I pick him up, we're driving down the street, and then I stop at the light, and I saw this one day we're driving, and there's these two girls looking at us. I said, Freeman, look at them girls, they're checking me out. And he said, Dad, because you're ugly. You know what I mean? All these little things. I say no for him because I'm good looking. I tell him if I was ugly, your mum wouldn't pick me. So he's got that humour, you know? He makes me laugh.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Ayik and Anyang meet up often now. They talk about their past and they started writing a book together. It means a lot to Anyang.
[SPEAKER_42]: Now I'm working hard to build a good relationship between me and Ayik. Because I ignored what I did, and he's the one who forgave me, so it's now my turn to do something to convince him that I was not that bad.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: And what did you do to convince him that you're not that bad?
[SPEAKER_42]: Yeah, like I have to talk with him every single day. I have to come and see his child, and he does come and see my kid too. So, and we just discuss the life, what should we achieve in the life ahead of us.
[SPEAKER_108]: I wish we didn't go through what we went through. I wish we started on a good foot. It would have been better, but my world number one enemy become a good friend to me now. I think the ending It's really good.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: A remarkable story of two child soldiers from Sudan and their reconciliation in Australia many years later. Ayik Shute and Anyang Rang, and you can see a photo of them together on our Facebook page. You're listening to Outlook on the BBC World Service. To get in touch with any comments, our email address outlook at bbc.com. Now up in the highest mountains of Bhutan, there's an underground fungus that's very rare and very valuable. Cordyceps are a group of parasitic fungi that grow mainly on the bodies of insects. Some of them are worth twice their weight in gold, and people sometimes risk their lives to find them. Not everyone going foraging is doing so legally, but Outlook's Canada Beverage has been to meet someone who is above board. He's called Chawton.
[SPEAKER_25]: Chawton lives in Nashville, a tiny, picturesque village in Bumthang Valley in central Bhutan. It's as remote a place as you can imagine, with towering mountains all around. He and his family have just returned from a month's camping, up where the snow line starts and the air is thin. He's been collecting this year's harvest of cordyceps and invites me to join him for lunch.
[SPEAKER_23]: taking our shoes off and going up some large wooden steps hello nice to meet you So everyone's cooking. Local dish, ma'am. Local dish. What is it? Flat noodles. Flat noodles. Oh, they look delicious. Is that what we're having for lunch?
[SPEAKER_25]: Yes. Chorten's daughter and wife bring out an incredible array of sumptuous food. A meal like this would once have been impossible for this family, says Chorten. That was until he discovered cordyceps.
[SPEAKER_56]: When I was young and herding cattle, I knew about codices, but I didn't realize them, that they were so valuable. The demand for them was started by the Chinese, who used them medicinally.
[SPEAKER_25]: Cordyceps grow in the fertile high plateaus and mountains of Tibet and Bhutan. They're antioxidant and antiviral. It's for this reason and their scarcity that they fetch such high sums of money, sometimes priced at twice their weight in gold. We've got some cordyceps in front of us. They're very strange looking. It's sort of like a caterpillar with a long strangled root coming out of it. The odd appearance of the cordyceps is due to its unique nature. It starts life as an underground dwelling caterpillar that becomes infected by a parasitic fungus. The fungus engulfs the body of the caterpillar, leaving only its exoskeleton intact. Then, at the start of spring, the fungus explodes through the caterpillar's head, poking a stalk up through the grass.
[SPEAKER_56]: By looking at the top of the fungus, I can tell whether or not it is cordyceps. It has a thing that looks like a black blade of grass poking out of the soil. You have to be very close to the ground and be on your hands and knees with your face about a foot from the ground. They are very difficult to spot. I remember the first one I found, I was so happy because I was thinking how much money I would get. They literally are like gold. But nowadays, I don't think so much about the money. I just feel immense happiness just to see one cordyceps because they are precious to me.
[SPEAKER_25]: Searching for cordyceps takes place from early May until late June, up where the snow line starts. Chawton shows me the track he takes up to the mountain pass.
[SPEAKER_23]: Wow, look at that. That's so steep. How long does it take you to get up to where we can see just the top of the mountain?
[SPEAKER_56]: To reach the summit where the snow line is, it takes three nights and four days. I pack enough food to eat and drink, and a raincoat and heavy woolen clothes to protect against the cold if it snows. We also need a tent and a sleeping bag. We have to take horses. When we camp, it can be hard to get wood for the fire and to pitch our tent. Sometimes I'll be going with 20 people. Sometimes it can be as many as 200 to 300 people.
[SPEAKER_25]: Looking for cordyceps is not an easy task. The altitude and vertiginous terrain means even the most experienced locals may lose their lives, and many do. Once Chawton has collected all his cordyceps, he brings them down the mountain and waits for the auction date to be set, when he can sell them. When he first started selling them, he was making around US$4,000 a year, but in recent years his profits have been far less because the fungus is getting harder to find. This year's crop was even smaller than usual.
[SPEAKER_56]: This must be around 130 grams. This would be worth around 1000 US dollars.
[SPEAKER_23]: And how has it changed your life, finding these cordyceps?
[SPEAKER_56]: I paid for my house, the car parked outside, the TV, and the education of my children with money from cordyceps. It has improved everybody's living standard so much. We have everything we need because of this amazing fungus. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to continue for the next five years, and then I'm not sure whether my body will endure the challenges of walking up to the mountains. If my children are going to carry on, it is good. If not, I guess that will be the end of cordyceps.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: Chawton, speaking to Outlook's Canada Beverage. This is the BBC World Service, where science lives. For the creative.
[SPEAKER_36]: With drones, we can get blood anywhere in the country in 15 to 20 minutes.
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[SPEAKER_93]: It demonstrates what I think robotics is for, which is helping us to understand ourselves.
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[SPEAKER_50]: We keep finding ever more compelling evidence for not only water on Mars, but now even the potential for life.
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[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: World Service at bbcworldservice.com.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Coming up on Outlook, what happens when a herd of cattle run away from their owners and live wild for years?
[SPEAKER_97]: The most interesting thing about the rebel cows is that their behaviour changed. They turn into a wild herd. They hide in the forest during the day and only come out to graze at night. They are extremely agile. They run and jump around like deer.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: more about the rebel cows still at large after the news.
[SPEAKER_88]: BBC News with Gareth Barlow. Senior U.S. officials say President Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel later on Wednesday. He'll also direct the State Department to start the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The decision will break with years of U.S. policy on the status of the disputed city, as well as the international consensus. Arab states have warned the decision could provoke violence in the Muslim world. Russia has reacted angrily to a decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban its participation in next year's Winter Olympics, following a report accusing it of systematic doping. The deputy speaker of the Russian parliament called the ban a humiliation and an insult. Tens of thousands of people in Southern California have fled wildfires being driven by high winds. One fire in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles, trebled in size in just a few hours. At least 150 buildings have been destroyed, and a quarter of a million homes are without power. Three men in Malta have been charged with the murder of the campaigning journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in October. Alfred and Giorgio De Giorgio and Vince Muscat were arrested on Monday. They have pleaded not guilty. The opposition in Honduras has demanded a full recount of the presidential election ballot papers, which it says were tampered with in order to favour President Juan Orlando Hernandez. The opposition candidate, Salvador Nasralla, had appeared on course for victory after the election, when the count was suddenly halted. France's biggest rock star, Johnny Allardy, has died from lung cancer at the age of 74. In a career spanning five decades, he'd sold more than 100 million records and headlined 50 major concerts. Known as the French Elvis, he was hugely popular in the Francophone world, but less well-known elsewhere, earning him the nickname, the biggest rock star you've never heard of. World News from the BBC.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Hello, I'm Jo Fidgen, and you're tuned to Outlook. So, Russia is finding out today whether its athletes will be allowed to compete in next year's Winter Olympics in South Korea after a doping scandal. If you're listening to the live edition of Outlook at 12 hours GMT, we're still in the dark about the decision by the International Olympic Committee. If you're listening to the rebroadcast later in the day, then you'll probably know what happened. But we thought we'd take you back to how the whole scandal broke. Last year, we spoke to the couple who helped blow the whistle on what was happening, Yulia and Vitaly Stepanov. Yulia is a Russian runner. She does the 800 meters. And when they met eight years ago, Vitaly worked for the country's anti-doping agency, Rosada. They fell in love, got married. But the complicating factor in their relationship was that Yulia was on a regular drug-taking regime to enhance her running.
[SPEAKER_31]: I took steroids and EPO. Steroids helped me to build up my muscles and be quicker, faster, stronger, and EPO helped me to be stronger as well. that coaches always, always told us that actually it's not only us who take illegal drugs and doping, that everyone does it. And when you hear these things from them, obviously you don't think that it's a lie. You trust them because you see all the achievements, previous achievements of Russian sportsmen, Russian champions, and you sort of think that should be okay.
[SPEAKER_65]: I guess I somewhat preferred to close my eyes to this, because I was not doing doping controls at that point that much. I was mainly involved with educational programs. So I thought, well, maybe I'll just try to continue doing my job, knowing what's really happening, and see what happens. Obviously, as we got married with Julie and we had the honeymoon and we had our first real fight where we started to talk about her preparation for the winter season. And I said, well, maybe we can try to prepare a different way without doping. And she was completely right. She said, well, are you a coach? Do you know any other way? And I had no answer. We had to change the topic of the conversation. But from that point on, we kind of knew that within the family, we have different opinions.
[SPEAKER_31]: Our relations were based on Vitaly's loyalty. He really didn't want to divorce. He really wanted to save our marriage.
[SPEAKER_65]: It was difficult. This part of the relationship was really difficult, and both of us still don't understand how we were able to get through those years without getting divorced.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: All the while Vitaly was struggling with what to do with the information Yulia had given him. He had some contacts at the World Anti-Daping Agency, WADA, and was considering becoming a whistleblower.
[SPEAKER_65]: I had to make up my own mind, what do I do? Do I go against, I guess you can say against even my own home country and do I share the information with WADA? And in the end I was invited to Vancouver to the Olympic Games and I spoke to one of the persons from WADA and I said I'm concerned about some things that I'm seeing and I think I should share it with you. From that moment on I started telling to my point of context, at what I was seeing. I have to tell how I know things, and yeah, I said that my wife is involved in it as well, and I'm not sure what to do about it. I mean, that's completely against the code, but this is the Russian reality. Ever since I came back from Vancouver, I openly started to complain about the things that Rosada was not doing correctly. Obviously, my bosses did not like that, and at some point, they openly started to try to get rid of me. And finally, in February 2011, there was a reorganization, restructure. It was kind of expected that I will not be kept in the newly restructured organization.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: After Vitaly lost his job in February 2013, Yulia failed a drugs test and was banned from competing for two years.
[SPEAKER_65]: It turned out that Yulia is going to become a scapegoat, even though the officials in Russia were saying that if you follow the system, you will never be sanctioned and we'll protect you.
[SPEAKER_30]: But then it turned out that it's just not true. Disqualification changed everything.
[SPEAKER_31]: It actually saved our marriage. Because after I was disqualified, I had three choices. First, to continue and to keep silent and to continue taking drugs and be a part of this existing system. The second choice was just to end up my career and just leave this big sport. And the third one was actually to tell the truth to everyone about what's happening in the Russian sport with the doping. I've decided to choose a third way to tell the truth and actually to find the system. We've decided that our marriage is the main thing and we should be together, we should fight together all this illegal stuff and I had enough strength to see the world in real terms. So, for our family it was a blessing. This crisis was a blessing.
[SPEAKER_30]: Yulia started making secret recordings of her meetings with people involved in Russian doping.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: The couple then approached a German investigative journalist, Hajo Seppelt, with their evidence. They agreed to take part in a documentary which was to be aired on German television.
[SPEAKER_65]: We could never imagine that we would actually go public with it. It was in the beginning of 2014, more than a year after officially Yulei was providing statements, providing audio recordings. We met Hajo Zeppelt, and we spoke to him, and he was actually the one who said, we got to try to fight this. The more evidence we have, the better it would be. Unfortunately, you know, as a journalist, he cannot help us with getting the evidence. So Julia was just talking to different athletes, coaches, and officials, just having normal conversations, only the difference was she always had her phone voice recording program on all the time. We left the country, Russia, right before the documentary. We knew that the reaction will be negative because protecting at least systematic doping in Russia, it's called being a patriot in Russia. And even though I do not share this point of view, I could understand that as soon as this information is out, we will be called traitors and liars. And that's exactly what happened. So I had to make sure that we go public, but that our family feels safe. And I knew that we wouldn't feel safe in Russia.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Yulia and Vitaly watched the story break from their temporary home in Germany. Soon the World Anti-Doping Agency commissioned an independent commission to investigate the claims made in that documentary. The report confirmed the existence of widespread cheating in Russia through doping. The aftermath has been bittersweet for the couple, as Yulia has since been banned from competing at the Rio Olympics because of her own doping charge in 2013.
[SPEAKER_31]: I don't want to whitewash my own past. Obviously, I know what I did was wrong, and I want to apologize before all the clean athletes for what I did. But you know what? I cannot change my past. The only thing I can do is actually try to change the current situation and the future and to be just another person.
[SPEAKER_65]: Right from the beginning, I understood that, unfortunately, the best supporters in doping fighting are investigative journalists. If a journalist approaches us and wants to talk to us and wants to hear us, we will tell our story. It's not a pretty story, but it's a real story and we are telling the truth. We will keep apologizing for our own mistakes and we are trying to change and at least as a family I am sure that we are doing a good job. A new relationship is not easy to build, but we are working on it and it's improving. We have a two-year-old son, and we try to be good parents now.
[SPEAKER_30]: Even I was banned from the Rio Olympic Games.
[SPEAKER_31]: I think that we made the right choice, because it didn't affect our marriage, it didn't affect our relations. young athletes will help sport in future.
[SPEAKER_30]: Yulia and Vitaly Stepanov speaking in 2016. They're still in hiding.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Now, we're off to the north of Italy, to the valleys around the city of Genoa, where a herd of cattle has been making the headlines after running away from their owner. They've been dubbed the rebel cows. Let's get the story from local scientist and documentary maker Alessandro Ghigi, who's been following the rebel cows deep into the woods. It's a territory he knows well.
[SPEAKER_97]: I grew up in a city, but I've always been passionate about science and nature. My dad is a hunter and we would always go hiking in the countryside. He would be killing animals, while I was more interested in taking pictures of them. I soon became a keen bird watcher. I got used to hide in the bushes, completely still, waiting for hours for a bird to approach. Throughout the years, I became very familiar with the mountains and woods surrounding Genoa. It's a very harsh place, with narrow valleys and steep slopes. It's also a wild place. Wolves and wild boars inhabit these forests. I normally go hiking there with some friends looking for wild animals to photograph. One day we heard a story from a local that caught our attention. It's the story of the rebel cows. The rebel cows are a mysterious presence in these valleys. It's a herd that has been living in the wild for almost seven years. They're a very elusive bunch and they're surrounded by an aura of mystery. Everybody who lives in the villages up here has a story to tell about them. This group of cows must have had something special to begin with, to be able to break free in the way they did. It's just unbelievable. I don't know much about how they managed to escape in the first place. It must have been around 2010. People told us that they belonged to a local farmer. They had been sold and they had to be driven away. But as the farmer was trying to get them into a lorry, a small group of them broke free and they simply disappeared in the bushes. Since then, the rebel cows have been living in the woods. Local authorities tried everything they could to catch them. They even brought in expert cowboys, but nothing worked. And because of the nature of these wild valleys, it's incredibly difficult to build traps.
[SPEAKER_121]: The rebel cows are still at large.
[SPEAKER_97]: My friends and I were immediately captivated by the story of the rebel cows and by their indomitable spirit. We don't know how big the herd is. A few years ago, it was of about 15. We know there's a bull among them, and calves have been born. But throughout the years, the herd was decimated by diseases and natural deaths. Some of them have been found dead in ditches, horribly wounded, because, unfortunately, poachers are operating in the area. and they are looking for the cows too. Now we think there are only six cows left. But I mean, you have to give them credit. The rebel cows have been living in the wild for seven years and survived several attempts of capturing or killing them. It's a unique case. The most interesting thing about the rebel cows is that their behavior changed. They turned into a wild herd. Because of their elusive attitude, it's almost impossible to study them. So my friends and I decided to put together a little documentary about them. We positioned several hidden cameras in the woods, in places where we thought they might roam around. We didn't have to wait long to get our first footage. One day, my friend Paolo went to collect the SD card from the camera, and he called me. He was so excited, he screamed, we have the cows! Oh, he was so happy. I still remember seeing them appearing in the footage, walking around, then fleeing from something. I'm sure you're all familiar with the video of a cow, and that's usually boring. But this is nothing like that. The footage is shot at night with an infrared camera, so the rebel cows look like extraordinary and mysterious creatures. They're crossbred. The females are light brown, almost gingerish, while the calves are darker, mainly black, and they behave like wild animals. They hide in the forest during the day and only come out to graze at night. They move in perfect silence.
[SPEAKER_121]: Locals who saw them noticed that there is what we would call a sentinel in the group.
[SPEAKER_97]: While the others eat, she stays on the side, her back to the group, nose in the air, sniffing the potential dangers, ready to tell the other cows to run and hide. And from what we know, they are extremely agile. They run and jump around like deer. While filming our doc, we tried to remain impartial, but we're obviously biased because we cheer for the cows. Of course, not everybody is excited as we are about the rebel cows. The villages in these valleys are very small, and people rely mostly on agriculture. During the winter, the rebel cows come down the mountains and they break into gardens and allotments. You have to understand, these animals weigh 500 or 600 kilos, so if they spot a cabbage they are really interested in, be sure they will do everything they can to get it. And that often means trampling down fences and damaging fields. Lots of people around here would like to capture or kill them. But some scientists would like to let them be, because it would be very interesting to do more research on them. And our documentary created a lot of hype around the rebel cows. They have become resistance icons in Italy.
[SPEAKER_121]: People are fascinated by their rebel spirit, and that's what I love about them too.
[SPEAKER_97]: When you think about the fact that these animals have been tamed thousands of years ago, and for all this time they have lived with humans, the idea that they can break free and run away is just extraordinary. I never had a face-to-face encounter with one of them, But in a way, this is what keeps my interest going. It keeps the mystery intact. Long live the cows.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: Alessandro Ghigi on the trail of the rebel cows in northern Italy. Now a witness, and today we're going back 50 years to 1967, the British withdrawal from the port city of Aden, and the creation of the People's Republic of South Yemen. Farhana Haider has been speaking to a former British diplomat, Oliver Miles, who was instrumental in Britain's departure, and Tugarsun Lukman, who as a teenager lived through that time.
[SPEAKER_125]: With torchlight processions and dancing in the streets, the people are celebrating independence, although they're still awaiting the arrival of the National Liberation Front leaders from Geneva.
[SPEAKER_32]: Britain had colonised the port city of Aden in 1839, one of the longest inhabited places on earth. The colony consisted of Aden and the British protectorates of South Arabia, desert hinterlands which surrounded the city, controlled by tribal leaders. But by the 1950s, Britain's retreat from empire around the world was well underway. And in the Middle East, there was a rising wave of Arab nationalism.
[SPEAKER_113]: There were definitely celebrations. It was a happy day for many people. And for many others, it was a day of reflection of what happened in the past and what could have the effect on the future.
[SPEAKER_32]: Ghazan Luqman was 14 years old in November 1967, and from a prominent Adeny family. While he remembers jubilation on the day of independence, there was also a sense of uncertainty.
[SPEAKER_113]: I think the mood was somber.
[SPEAKER_32]: People were apprehensive as to what would come next.
[SPEAKER_113]: Yes, exactly. And their apprehension proved to be right. It was good to see the colonial power was gone, but then what's next? The people of Aden, I would say, probably the majority was very scared of the future.
[SPEAKER_32]: Aden was at the centre of the British colonial trading system. Ships stopped there to refuel en route between Europe and India, the Far East and Australia. It was one of the busiest ports in the world. Growing up in the city, Gazan Lukman remembers it being prosperous and modern.
[SPEAKER_113]: As a teenager growing in Eden, life was good. The majority of people were enjoying their progress at that time. Electronics were available at that time. Eden was actually a hub or a center because of tourism. You could buy the best watches of the time, fancy clothing.
[SPEAKER_82]: The big passenger ships bring swarms of tourists to the famous duty-free crescent of shops ashore.
[SPEAKER_113]: Life was good, and it was a paradise lost from textile to perfumes to consumer goods. Aden had great beaches. Aden had great airport, great port. Aden was the Dubai of the 1960s. It was a liberal city.
[SPEAKER_32]: There was, however, growing resentment at the British presence, and although they had announced they were withdrawing from Aden, they hadn't fixed the date.
[SPEAKER_82]: We've said we'll quit by 1968, yet the terrorist attacks become more frequent. We can't be allowed to just pack up and go.
[SPEAKER_32]: Oliver Miles was posted to Yemen in 1966 and appointed private secretary to the British High Commissioner in Aden.
[SPEAKER_69]: And as private secretary, of course, I was in a position of absolutely in the centre of everything that happened in the last six, nine months before independence.
[SPEAKER_32]: And by 1967, there was growing violence. Two armed movements were vying to lead a new post-independent government. FLOSSI, the Front for the Liberation of South Yemen, who was supported by Egypt, and the NLF, a Marxist movement.
[SPEAKER_69]: The people who were fighting us, we called them terrorists, the Front for the Liberation of South Yemen and the National Liberation Front, the two rival groups. They didn't really believe that they were going to go because they thought that Aden was too important to the British Empire and there was no way we were going to go. So although the first of those two groups, the Front for Liberation of South Yemen, was moderately prepared to see themselves as a future government and therefore be ready to talk to us about the process, the National Liberation Front were absolutely not willing to talk to us. And as the time of independence drew closer, the two fought each other, literally fought each other in the streets with a good deal of bloodshed, and the NLF won.
[SPEAKER_127]: This is the flag of the terrorists of Aden, the red, white and black tricolour of the National Liberation Front, a symbol of the NLF's triumph over its rivals Flossie.
[SPEAKER_113]: Events leading to independence were not great. There was a civil war.
[SPEAKER_32]: Do you remember feeling scared because of the war happening around you?
[SPEAKER_113]: Very scared, especially during night time, because if you are perceived to be from the other group, the other group will come and drag you in the middle of the night, and many people disappear. One of them was my brother. And so we were very, very scared. To actually see a civil war was very sad.
[SPEAKER_32]: Having won the civil war, the NLF now sat down for talks with the British to negotiate the withdrawal.
[SPEAKER_126]: Geneva and the lakeside setting for the first political confrontation between the terrorists of Aden and the British government.
[SPEAKER_69]: It became clear in the last month or so before independence that we were going to hand over to people we'd never met, literally never met.
[SPEAKER_126]: In that building over there, that Britain will meet the National Liberation Front
[SPEAKER_69]: To our surprise, we found one or two faces on the other side of the table were familiar, but they were familiar in different guises, if you like, because there was one senior police officer from the Aden police who we thought was on our side, but it turned out he was a senior NLF man. There was an army officer, similarly, and at that time, of course, the British Empire was shedding its colonies like autumn leaves. Normally, it's a long process where a lot of people spend a lot of time in each other's offices, getting to know how systems work. But because the NLF were our enemy, we didn't have time to do that, and it was all done in a terrible rush. I could see that my friends, the Adenese and the Yemenis, were in for a hell of a time after we left. That was perfectly obvious. If only because Aden City, Aden Town, was to some extent a creation of the British Empire, and the fact that the British were leaving, in particular the British military base was closing down, meant that they were losing half the source of their income. And the other half they'd lost already because the Suez Canal had been closed following the 1967 war, so the trade was off. So they were left with nothing to live on. Aden was clearly going to nosedive as we left, we could see that. The government was resorting to more and more repressive measures, but that was not immediately after amendments, that was when the situation deteriorated maybe a year later or two years later.
[SPEAKER_32]: Do you feel that the British had let down the people of Aden?
[SPEAKER_69]: I don't think that it was our fault. I think we did the best we could in the circumstances. You can argue that we let the people of Yemen or of South Yemen down more broadly, that they weren't ready for independence, that they didn't really want independence, most of them, many of them, and that we got out in a rush.
[SPEAKER_32]: Britain left behind deep divisions between those who'd worked for the colonial government and those that had fought against it, and between supporters of the different independence movements. Guzun Lukman found that many of his friends and family were targeted by the repressive and pro-Soviet state that later emerged. He soon left Aden.
[SPEAKER_113]: Many Adenese felt that they were betrayed by Britain, unfortunately. The withdrawal from Aden was abrupt, it was fast, just gone, just overnight. Families, people we knew in our neighbourhood, everybody was actually gone, just like a wolf. Wake up and they're gone, which left many people apprehensive and bewildered.
[SPEAKER_32]: When you think about independence now, do you think it was a good thing?
[SPEAKER_113]: I think it was premature. It should have taken maybe a few more years. They should have brought everybody and put them around the same table.
[SPEAKER_32]: In 1990, communist South Yemen merged with the separate state of North Yemen. But the divisions within Yemeni society have never gone away. And Ghazan believes Britain bears much of the responsibility for the violence that still blights the country.
[SPEAKER_113]: The people of England have gone through a lot. From 1967 up to now, the older generations went through a lot. Many of them, they just wait for the day they die because it has been nothing but downhill changes since 1967, unfortunately.
[SPEAKER_32]: Do you think the situation that Yemen is in now is partly as a result of the British leaving so quickly?
[SPEAKER_113]: Yes, absolutely. And I hope that Britain helps now in sorting the issue of the conflict between the North and the South. It will be a sort of a make-up for what they, when they left in a hurry and a half. I think Britain could actually, they should help them in resolving the conflict.
[SPEAKER_32]: And do you miss your home city?
[SPEAKER_113]: Extremely. And the older you get, the more you miss it. I miss my family. I miss Eden very much. I think of it every day of my life.
[SPEAKER_32]: Guthen Luchmann now lives in Ottawa. Oliver Mars retired from the diplomatic service in 1996 and is the editor of the Arab Digest.
[W1Pcx_tDASA_SPEAKER_37]: And that report was by Fahana Haider. That's all from Outlook for today. Matthew will be here tomorrow. He's hearing from a high-flying Kenyan banker who was jailed for a crime she didn't commit. She will tell you, Matthew, what she learned in prison and how she fought to clear her name. Do join him for that same time tomorrow. But for today, from me, Jo Fidgen, and the rest of the Outlook team, thanks for listening.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: You're listening to the BBC World Service, and here's what's happening in the studio this week.
[SPEAKER_26]: Meet Arnd Henning Hessen, one of the top mixologists in the world. He captures smells and tastes from across the globe, from frankincense from Oman to tonka beans from Madagascar. And who can create a drink for you based on just the perfume you're wearing.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: In the studio at bbcworldservice.com slash inthestudio. And in half an hour on Click with Gareth Mitchell.
[SPEAKER_122]: Farmers in India are receiving advisories by text or voicemail telling them the best time to sow their crops. The alerts come from data from sensors in the ground combined with historical climate records.
[mgC3PACaQmc_SPEAKER_72]: Stay with us. The Newsroom is next on the BBC World Service, the world's radio station.
[SPEAKER_110]: BBC World Service, it's five o'clock GMT, this is Oliver Conway with the Newsroom. In a break with international consensus, Donald Trump is expected to declare Jerusalem to be capital of Israel.
[SPEAKER_124]: I know there have been a lot of questions surrounding the President's decision on Jerusalem. Tomorrow the President will deliver remarks. Has the president made up his mind? The president is pretty solid in his thinking at this point.
[SPEAKER_110]: Arab leaders have warned of dangerous repercussions. Also on the newsroom.
[SPEAKER_44]: It's a political decision. Very bad decision and I disagree with this position of the World Olympic Committee and so on.
[SPEAKER_110]: Russia has reacted angrily after it was banned from the Winter Olympics. We report from the Damascus suburb which has faced a relentless bombardment.
[SPEAKER_19]: I wish I could have cookies, sweeties, or any other delicious foods. I really miss food.
[SPEAKER_110]: And France's biggest rock star, Johnny Hallyday, has died. First, our top stories.
[SPEAKER_88]: BBC News, hello, I'm Gareth Barlow. Senior U.S. officials say President Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel later on Wednesday. He'll also direct the State Department to start the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Arab states have warned that the decision could provoke violence in the Muslim world. Peter Bowes reports.
[SPEAKER_83]: Donald Trump is venturing into uncharted territory. The president will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, making the US the first country to do so since the foundation of the state in 1948. According to the White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, Mr. Trump's thinking on the issue is pretty solid. He's already indicated that he intends to move the American embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and has informed regional leaders of his plans. The reaction has been heated. The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has warned of dangerous consequences for the peace, security and stability of the region and of the world. Jordan's King Abdullah said the decision would undermine efforts to resume the peace process and provoke Muslims.
[SPEAKER_88]: Russia has reacted furiously to a decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban it from next February's Winter Olympics in South Korea. A damning report by the IOC said there had been an unprecedented systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system. From Moscow, here's Steve Rosenberg.
[SPEAKER_101]: The deputy speaker of Russia's parliament said it was a humiliation and an insult to Russia. In a defiant post in social media, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said Russia would survive this like it survived World War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Western sanctions. Although the Russian team has been banned from competing in South Korea, Russian athletes who can prove they are clean will be permitted to participate under the Olympic flag. But will the Kremlin allow them to? Vladimir Putin has in the past described such a scenario as a humiliation for his country.
[SPEAKER_88]: Steve Rosenberg reporting. Tens of thousands of people in Southern California have fled wildfires being driven by high winds. James Cook reports from the outskirts of Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_106]: In Ventura County, to the north of Los Angeles, a wildfire which broke out on Monday intensified with terrifying speed, trembling in size in just a few hours, driven by arid and gusty Santa Ana winds. Here on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the charred ruins of houses are still smoking, while dark, choking smoke has closed a major moat away. Ash is blowing through the air, and there is a firefighting helicopter overhead.
[SPEAKER_88]: Three men in Malta have been charged with the murder of the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in October. Alfred and George DiGiorgio and Vince Muscat were arrested on Monday. They have pleaded not guilty to the charges. World News from the BBC. A new report says about 15,000 people a day are being forced to flee their homes in African conflict and disaster zones. Figures show that more than 12 million people in Africa are internally displaced. Nearly 4 million left their homes last year. Britain's most prestigious contemporary art award, the Turner Prize, has been won by an art professor who was born in Zanzibar, Labena Habib. Judges praised her work, which explores the African diaspora and black creativity. Professor Himid is the first black woman and the oldest person to win the award. Scientists at Oxford University have carried out the first radiocarbon dating of a fragment of bone claimed to be from Saint Nicholas, believed to be the inspiration for Father Christmas. Their findings revealed that the bone was 1,700 years old, matching the era of the saint's life. Sean Coughlin has the story.
[SPEAKER_84]: Relics of Saint Nicholas have been venerated in churches since at least the 11th century, and his popularity meant that hundreds of bones are claimed to have come from the Christmas saint. This fragment of pelvis, tested at the University of Oxford, had come from a church in France, and Professor Tom Hyam said many such relics turn out to be not nearly as old as claimed. But researchers were taken aback when test results showed that the bone really was from the era of Saint Nicholas, almost 1700 years ago. Although there's no definite proof, Professor Hyam said it was possible that the remains could indeed be those of Saint Nicholas himself.
[SPEAKER_88]: France's biggest rock star, Johnny Halliday, has died at the age of 74 after a battle with lung cancer. In a career spanning five decades, he sold more than 100 million records and headlined 50 major tours. Influenced by the music of Elvis Presley, Johnny Halliday began his career in 1960, singing rock and roll in French. Known as the French Elvis, he was hugely popular in the Francophone world, but less well known elsewhere. BBC News.
[SPEAKER_110]: Thanks very much. You're listening to the Newsroom from the BBC World Service with Oliver Conway. In a speech at 1 p.m. local time in Washington, Donald Trump is expected to announce that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, upending years of American policy on the Middle East. According to briefings from senior White House officials, the president will start the process of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, although that could take years. The decision to recognize Jerusalem would put America at odds with almost every other nation in the world, and Mr. Trump was warned about the possible dire consequences of the move when he spoke to Arab leaders, including the Palestinian president, on Tuesday, as we heard from Yolande Nel in Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_05]: In their phone call, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is said to have warned Mr. Trump that moving the U.S. Embassy would have an impact on the peace process with Israel and regional stability. Mr. Abbas has since spoken to the Pope and the leaders of Russia, France and Jordan, asking them to intervene. King Abdullah of Jordan was also called by Mr. Trump and is said to have spoken of possible dangerous repercussions of his plan. Egypt's President Sisi is reported to have told him there was no need to complicate matters in the Middle East.
[SPEAKER_110]: Now, the White House official did say that Mr. Trump recognized that boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem were subject to final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and also that he was prepared to support a two-state solution if both sides agree. But what is the thinking behind the change in policy? I spoke to our correspondent in the U.S., Peter Bowes.
[SPEAKER_83]: It was part of his campaign pledge that he wanted to do this and it was one of his major foreign policy planks and perhaps domestic policy comes into this a little bit in terms of the president wanting to be seen to be making good on those big promises in his first year. I mentioned domestic politics because it hasn't necessarily all gone his way. in terms of those big promises. So I think he wants to get something done, and I think he is known as quite an impatient character in this respect. But in terms of doing it now, I think there are quite a few people here who are rather mystified by the timing. We know that the White House, the Trump administration, has been working on a peace plan for several months. We don't know the detail of that. So why to make this announcement now, perhaps ahead of a bigger plan and bigger negotiations, I think we remain to see, because it does show the US's hand. And if the US is going to play a role as a mediator in negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, it perhaps makes things rather awkward, because it's certainly not what the Palestinians wanted to hear.
[SPEAKER_110]: Peter Bowes. Russia has reacted angrily after the International Olympic Committee banned its team from the forthcoming Winter Olympics. The International Olympic Committee's decision comes after their damning report said that Moscow was guilty of an unprecedented systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system. The decision has been welcomed by Dr. Grigory Radchenov, a Russian lab director who was the original whistleblower on the scandal. Jim Walden is his lawyer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Taking a country as powerful as Russia and saying you can't compete is a very significant penalty. It shows that Russia and other countries who break the rules in this kind of a pervasive way need to be held accountable. And so from that perspective, I think that it was a step that will help march us toward reform.
[SPEAKER_110]: Well, in Russia itself, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament called the ban a humiliation and an insult. And President Putin is due to speak about it later today. Well, let's get reaction from the country actually hosting the Games. Paul Adams is in South Korea.
[SPEAKER_66]: I think everyone knew that the IOC was poised to take this unprecedented step. And so the reaction here has been pretty measured. The head of the committee here, Lee Hee Boom, said that it was the second-best alternative, a reference, obviously, to the fact that Russian athletes deemed to be clean will be able to attend. He welcomed that decision. There was a statement from the organizing committee. We accept and respect the decisions of the IOC. And they're very keen to emphasize that these games go ahead regardless. The head of the organizing committee said he wasn't particularly worried about the impact on ticket sales. He felt that those were going reasonably well. Russia is strong in some areas and not so strong in others. It's not a big downhill skiing nation, for example. But it is a near neighbor. The South Koreans must have been expecting significant numbers of Russian fans to show up. And that obviously is not going to happen. Paul Adams in South Korea.
[SPEAKER_110]: Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus, has faced unrelenting bombardment over the past three weeks. A ceasefire announced recently didn't even hold for a full 24 hours. As the death toll from airstrikes continues to rise, so too does the number of children nearing starvation. The UN has said that acute malnutrition among youngsters is at the highest level recorded anywhere in Syria since the war began. Our correspondent Martin Patience reports from Eastern Ghouta.
[SPEAKER_79]: The aftermath of the latest airstrikes is like a scene from hell. The sky is dark with dust and debris as rescuers rush into buildings to scoop up children. Among the injured was five-year-old Yusuf with a head wound. The doctors patch him up as best they can, but they're desperately short of medical supplies. A rebel stronghold, Eastern Rota, has been bombed and besieged by the Syrian government for several years. Many families are now on the brink of starvation. Eight-year-old Moor and his seven-year-old sister, Ghazal, sit round a wood-burning oven. It's their first and only meal of the day, a thin piece of bread made from barley, which is normally fed to donkeys. Their father, Abu Ahmed, was seriously injured when out gathering firewood.
[SPEAKER_76]: A shell landed close to me and I was hit by a shrapnel. I was blinded in my left eye and my knee was damaged and I can no longer walk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in a pretty bad shape and I have three kids to look after."
[SPEAKER_79]: That means his children are left carrying the burden. Here, they're fetching drinking water. It's no surprise then that Ghazal dreams of freeing herself from her prison, Eastern Ghouta.
[SPEAKER_19]: I wish I could have cookies, sweeties, or any other delicious foods. And I wish someone could send me a pair of slippers and some new clothes and shoes. I really miss food, like chicken, cheese, tea, and juice.
[SPEAKER_79]: In another home, two-and-a-half-year-old Hamza is suffering from severe malnutrition. His ribs are protruding, and he's wearing a plastic bag as a nappy. He was abandoned before being taken in by a neighbour. Umm Mohammed says Hamza is like one of her children. He's my son now, she says. There's supposed to be a ceasefire in eastern Ghouta. But almost every day, people in this area dig fresh graves. For families here, there's no respite from the war.
[SPEAKER_110]: Martin Patience reporting from eastern Ghouta in Syria. The billionaire businessman Andrej Babiš is due to be made Prime Minister of the Czech Republic later today. Known as the Czech Donald Trump, he'll lead a minority government with the tacit support of parties from the far left and far right. Let's speak to our correspondent in Prague, Rob Cameron. Rob, how similar is he to Donald Trump?
[SPEAKER_86]: Well, there have been those comparisons, perhaps inevitably, because Andrej Babiš is fantastically rich and there is something of the populist about him, but I think the most striking resemblance to Donald Trump is that both men have sold the public this image of fighters against the system, of fighting the hydra of corruption, of being an outsider, an iconoclast who's determined to bring the system crashing down. Yet both have done massively well under the system. That's certainly true of Andrei Babish, because he's been in business since the last few years of the communist system, and he's grown massively rich in the transition to capitalism and yet he portrays himself as someone who is determined to bring change and bring the system crashing down and introduce something much more efficient and much better for the Czech Republic.
[SPEAKER_110]: How will he be able to do that as a leader of a minority government?
[SPEAKER_86]: Well that's going to be very difficult for him and I think if you speak to analysts here They suggest that his first attempt to get a confidence vote through Parliament will in fact fail, and then he will be reappointed, appointed a second time by the President to lead a second attempt at forming a government. That could, under the Czech system, last for several weeks, maybe even several months. So he could be in place with no formal majority, but forming ad hoc coalitions to make changes to, you know, very senior posts here and also take some important executive decisions without actually a formal majority. But it is the fact that he is willing to lean for support on, say, the far right or the Communist Party that has some people quite worried.
[SPEAKER_110]: Rob Cameron in Prague.
[SPEAKER_88]: And now with a quick look at some of the day's other stories, here's Gareth. The UN's Children Agency is warning that 17 million babies under the age of one are breathing toxic air, putting their brain development at risk. Satellite images have revealed that babies in South Asia are the worst affected, with more than 12 million of them living in areas where air pollution is six times higher than safe levels. Christine Keeler, the British former model, whose relationships with a British minister and a Soviet diplomat in the 1960s caused one of the most notorious political scandals of the Cold War, has died. She was 75. As a teenager, she had a brief affair with John Profumo, a senior cabinet member in Harold MacMillan's government. She was also seeing Evgeny Ivanov, a Russian diplomat and KGB spy at the Soviet embassy. A military operation in Western Cameroon has led to hundreds of people fleeing their villages. The exodus comes after the government pledged to retaliate against an armed group that wants independence for the country's two English-speaking regions.
[SPEAKER_110]: The hugely popular French rock star Johnny Hallyday has died at the age of 74. During his five-decade career, he sold more than 110 million records and made 30 films. Yet outside the French-speaking world, France's favourite pop icon, is relatively little known. Emma-Jane Kirby looks back at his life.
[SPEAKER_28]: It was a career that spanned five decades and three generations. Born as plain Jean-Philippe Smet, Johnny Halliday first hit the limelight aged 16 as an Elvis wannabe who sang rock in French. His early concerts caused riots, but then French President Charles de Gaulle accused him of being a corrupter of youth who was spreading dangerous American values throughout France. Yet despite having more than 900 songs under his belt and 100 live tours, his fame never really spread beyond the French-speaking world. Most rock and roll stars, Johnny's life had its ups and downs. For nearly 50 years, France's gossip and celebrity magazines were full of the details of his three failed marriages, his tax
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