← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
June 2, 2011
00:27:46
The E. coli outbreak in Germany is the subject of a despatch from Steve Evans in Berlin...
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Transcript13 lines
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Hi there.
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You're about to hear from our own correspondent, a Download from the BBC. We make editions of the programme for both the BBC World Service and Radio 4. And this is the latest Radio 4 broadcast. As ever, it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, a drive through Rathcombe Ladicha's Bosnia as the former army commander prepares for his court appearance tomorrow in the Hague. A crisis for pornographers in California as the Health and Safety Brigade issue their orders. Golden icons and rotting pipes. A street in Moscow which tells a story about Russian history and why the sight of a foreigner on a bicycle makes them roar with laughter in Cambodia. But first, several hundred new cases of food poisoning have been reported in Germany this week, as the search continues for the source of an E. Coli outbreak which has already killed 17 people. Trade in fruit and vegetables across Europe and beyond is being affected. Russia has announced its banning the import of all fresh vegetables from the European Union. The German government, meanwhile, is warning consumers to avoid cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes. Steve Evans has been gauging the mood at a vegetable market in Berlin.
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There are cucumbers at the Turkish market in Berlin. Some, but not as many as usual. The traders bark the merits of their produce in Turkish and German, but they've not much to shout about. Spanish cucumbers. The few stalls that have decided to offer them have big piles of unsold ones. Unsold, even with the word Holland written all over the labels, and even at half the normal price, 99 cents instead of the usual €2 a kilo. If you stand among the traders under the awnings in the drizzle, as I did, you will see a string of women, usually in their Turkish scarves, looking gingerly at the produce, dressed particularly at the cucumbers, before they finally put the big question, where exactly do those ones come from? They are told, as quick as a kitchen knife, that they are Dutch. Sometimes the customer proceeds with a purchase and the cucumbers are grabbed from the barely diminished pile and the paper bag is swirled. But more often than not, the customer proceeds with her journey, empty bag in hand, ready for nice, safe potatoes or cabbage, green or red or the Spargel. Spargel is the thing, the asparagus, which is now in season and of which Germans are very proud. White asparagus, which the country devours in every form, wrapped in ham, bathed in sauce as soup, just by itself. All part of an annual ritual. Every restaurant boasts about its spargel. They do say, as German as sausage, but as German as spargel. Would be much more accurate. At the Turkish market, which spreads along the railway embankment. There are tomatoes too, great big red ones, piles of them, unsold and squashy. When I left in the early afternoon, they were already being tipped by the pile into the big waste bins at the entrance by York Strasse S Bahn station. The traders do their best shouting out the bargains, but you can't beat fear. And that's what consumers now have. And fear mounts with uncertainty. The German authorities initially blamed Spanish cucumbers and then unblamed them, saying they couldn't be sure. So everything that's long and green is now suspect. Serkan Turkan, who runs a stall and at the far end of the market, explain to me that in the minds of many customers, all cucumbers are tainted. People don't distinguish between Spanish and Dutch produce. Spanish politicians go on television and munch and crunch through a cucumber to prove there's nothing so safe as a Spanish one. In the Turkish market in Berlin. That cuts no ice. So what customers need is clarity. And clarity may come through some mind blowing science, but more likely through old fashioned detective work. Just asking survivors what they ate and where, and then going to the store they bought it from and finding out where that batch came from, and so on backwards until the lines meet in one farm or a market. For the scientists in the laboratories, the problem is that this strain of E. Coli is is very rare and very virulent. O104H4, if you want to know. One of its mysteries is that it seems to hit women far more than men. Virtually all the people who've died have been female. One theory originally posited was that women are healthier eaters than men, which they are tending to go more for low calorie organic cucumbers than the high calorie bratwurst so favoured by men. But that theory too has had cold water poured on it. The scientists trying to unravel the secrets of the bug think it may just be something about this particular strain that finds women congenial hosts. Just as some ethnic groups are more prone than others, so one gender, in this case female, might be more prone to this particular strain. Maybe so runs the alternative theory to the much favoured killer health food or killer organic line favoured by tabloid newspapers. But the truth is that nobody knows. So mystery and confusion reign. And that is playing very badly at the markets of Germany. Which means that if you need very squishy tomatoes, I know a place to get them. It is the Turkish market. In Berlin. But no need to rush. There are plenty of stocks to last.
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Steve Evans. The former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic is expected to appear in court in the Hague tomorrow to answer war crimes charges. He arrived in the Netherlands on Tuesday after judges in Belgrade rejected a plea that he was too ill to be extradited. Before his arrest in Serbia, the general had spent 16 years in hiding. Nick Thorpe has been touring the countryside, meeting some of his family and supporters.
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Ratkomladic's aunt is milking the cows in a small, windowless barn. First comes the rich, pungent smell of the animals. Then the sound of the milk squirting into the pail. Then the murmured words of the old woman calling the cows by name. Finally I see her hands in the darkness squeezing the others and and her face framed by a black scarf. Afterwards, there's the warm Balkan hospitality, the little glasses of homemade plum brandy. Her nephew, she says simply, is a hero. Radkomladic's former home in Bojanovici is tiny, just three rooms perched on a hillside. His neighbour, Branko Mandic, shows me around. The wood burning stove in the kitchen offsets the afternoon chill. The room where Mladic was born in March 1942 contains a sofa, a dresser with photographs and a view across a valley where the mountains of Bosnia bury their heads in the clouds. On the wall is a portrait of Mladic's aunt, her husband and their daughter. Branko, 11 years the General's senior, remembers Ratko as a child. His father, a Yugoslav partisan, was killed in the Second World War, so he grew up with his uncle and aunt. Branco worked in the village shop and, feeling sorry for the little orphan, once gave him a set of coloured pencils. He burst into tears because he thought there were two yellow pencils and no white, relates Branko. But it was a trick of the dim, smoky oil lamps. He only stopped crying when he realised that one of them was white after all. Ratko grew up a strong willed youth. He once rounded on the village teacher and announced he was leaving for Belgrade at 15. He did, to become a military cadet in 1965. By now an army officer, he built himself another house in the village with a bright red tin roof. It's there at the beginning of the village, studiously ignored by a herd of black faced sheep coming down the road like a woollen wave. On the hilltop in front of his house is an ancient Muslim graveyard, the gravestones capped by the mitres of dervish sheikhs. The man accused of responsibility for the massacre of so Many Muslims must have seen these graves whenever he came home. Ratko had nothing against Muslims, insists Branko's daughter Liuba. He even saved local Muslim families when the war broke out here, she says. First he told them that not a hair on their heads would be touched. Then he told them it was time to leave for their own safety. None has returned to live here. In the small town of Kalinovik, nearby, several thousand people attend a rally organized by war veterans. A former soldier we pick up hitchhiking to the gathering, admits it will have little effect. We just want him to know we still admire him. Some lads, the worse for wear from a barrage of beer, say they bought an old car to come here from distant Gatsko. They've sprayed it with Pro Madditch graffiti, adorned it with his portrait, and say they intend to burn it after the rally. I swear on the cross I would give my blood for him, says one. As that is no longer possible, he will sacrifice his vehicle at Han Piesak. Amid the debris and excrement of Mladic's wartime headquarters is a relief map of the Balkans. Sarajevo, the city on which Mladic declared merciless war, is a splodge of red among the mountains. Lazarevo, the village in which he was finally arrested, a small dot amid green fields. A Bosnian thunderstorm rips the sky apart like a NATO air raid, so we take shelter in the former guardhouse. Shtukalya Dasha, a Bosnian Serb refugee, welcomes us like long lost relatives with thick Turkish coffee. Her own house was burned down by the Muslims, she says, because her sons served in the Bosnian Serb army. But she feels sorry for everyone, and she quotes an old local saying, even the Tsarny Tsiganin, the Black Gypsy. When the rain stops, we drive through ravines of spectacular beauty, past steep forested slopes and over trout streams. And just once, on the old confrontation line, the warning signs of a minefield in Sarajevo. Rusmir Mahmutcahaic, deputy prime minister at the start of the war, was, welcomes Mladic's arrest. For the first time in history, those who persecute Muslims in the Balkans are being held to account. He refers to the pogroms and expulsions of Muslims from the early 19th century onwards as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. And that bodes well, he adds, for Muslims all over Europe and for social peace in each country where they live. An alternative view is offered by the youth of Kalinovic. You have taken our eagle, read one banner at the Sunday demonstration. But the nest remains.
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And that was Nick Thorpe, Now Hollywood is not the only California film story. What's euphemistically called the adult movie business there is the largest of its kind in the world. Yet all is not well in this billion dollar industry. The global economic downturn has taken its toll. Internet piracy is a growing problem too, as consumers discover they can get the images they want without. Ed Butler, who's been to California to find out about the business, says it's the health and safety brigade who are causing the producers the most concern.
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Light drizzle was falling as I pulled my car up outside a low rise warehouse studio in northern Los Angeles. I'd been told just to pitch up. It would be fun, they'd said. See how we do things. What I did see at first didn't quite match my expectations, but then again, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The Pawn shoot was Star the Next Generation, a Triple X parody billed as a humorous tribute to the iconic TV space saga. Performers in body hugging Star Trek outfits, some with prosthetic noses to resemble aliens, wandered around looking slightly bored as a weary crew worried over lighting arrangements. This morning was devoted to dialogue, I was told, although, as Sam, the film's artistically minded writer director, did explain to me with clear regret, there wasn't too much of that to be had. Only 30 minutes of this two hour sex film would involve plot, he sighed. The demands of porn may not allow Sam to be the ground breaking filmmaker he clearly aspires to be, but at least there are films to be made. The problem increasingly, is revenue. Like the music industry, pornographers are struggling to persuade their audience to pay for what they watch. DVD sales have collapsed online. A great deal of porn can be accessed for free, and the economic downturn doesn't help, what with the recession and piracy. We call it the perfect storm, one leading producer wistfully observed. The economic climate also means the industry is even less keen to accept California's increasingly stringent workplace regulations. For years, the authorities have been demanding that porn performers wear condoms. Health scares, most notoriously in 2004 when three actors contracted HIV, have highlighted significant levels of infection on set. But the industry says that wearing condoms on screen is a turn off. The public don't want it. It'll kill the fantasy, they say. Back on the Star Trek set, I talked to Bobby Starr, one of the lead performers of the film. A college graduate, a former National Standard swimmer and a professional oboist, she seems to have packed a lot in to her 27 years. She turned to porn, she said, out of a sense of sexual adventure. It's just fun. And when everyone around you is having fun, too, what's not to love? Her packed schedule today involved a couple of lines, then a four hour sex scene, then a costume fitting on Tuesday, and she was off to have her monthly health test after that, each day 15 hours long. Wow, you must be exhausted, I suggested. You get used to it, she smiled. And what about the health risks? I asked. Have you had many infections? Well, just chlamydia a couple of times, gonorrhea. Nothing much. Anyway, we test each month, so when you're diagnosed, you just take your medication and you're good to go. No problem. There was something very Californian about Bobby, I decided. In fact, there was something very Californian about the entire business. A combination of determined enthusiasm combined with a rebel attitude and a sort of libertarian defiance towards the forces ranged against had taken a Supreme Court battle back in the 1980s to make porn legal in California in the first place, formally distinguishing it from common or garden prostitution. Now many I met spoke of the right not to wear condoms as a key aspect of their constitutional right to free speech, as set out by the Founding Fathers. How can I express myself as an artist? One producer said to me, if you're going to clothe my performers in rubber? I struggled to picture Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson having this in mind as they penned the First Amendment. But then I also struggled to picture hordes of Star Trek fans queuing up to see Captain Jean Luc Picard going hardcore with the crew of the Star Trek Enterprise. So what did I know? The authorities, though, are adamant. Construction workers wear hard hats, miners wear masks. These actors have to have suitable barrier protection. It seems likely that porn will eventually lose its battle against the California regulators, not least because, as well as state penalties, the industry could be about to face some very expensive lawsuits brought by former performers. A number of actors told me privately that regulation could not come soon enough for them. The producers say that this won't help workers but will only force production abroad or underground. The public always gets what the public wants. That view was echoed by Bobbie Starr, her parting words, in fact, as she began to disrobe for her epic sex scene. I decided I'd seen enough and slipped back out into the rain.
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Ed Butler in Los Angeles Some of the sights of Moscow are known the world over. Perhaps the most famous is Red Square, site of St. Basil's Mushroom Domed Cathedral of Lenin's Mausoleum, and still the place where the Kremlin stages its military parades even years after the end of the Soviet Union the city is also firmly associated with other buildings too, like the group of skyscrapers known as the Seven Sisters. But when you ask our Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg to name his favourite place in the city, he makes an unusual choice. A street just round the corner from where he lives. It's a place, he tells us, which says much about life in Russia today.
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Lyudmila the greengrocer has so much more to offer than just apples and pears. Her little fruit and veg store is also a wonderful source of gossip. They had a blind fortune teller on Russian tv. Last night, Lyudmila told me she'd had a premonition of the end of the world. Looking worried, Lyudmila plonked half a dozen potatoes on the scales. For a moment, I wondered if it was actually worth buying those spuds. I mean, if the world was going to end, did I really want to meet Armageddon with a mouthful of mashed potatoes? Then again, what if Lyudmila had got it wrong? What if the planet was going to be spared? Then I'd have nothing to eat for dinner. That's the great thing about a Russian greengrocer. They really get you thinking about life, death, the universe. I must confess, it's not just the gossip that brings me to Lyudmila's stall. The truth is, I love the street it's in. It's called Zwapisne Ulize, which means picturesque street. Funny that, because it's one of the ugliest streets I know. On Picturesque street there are crumbling apartment blocks and barbed wire fences built to blot out factories and nuclear research institutes. And then there's the traffic, lots of it, vomiting exhaust fumes which mix with dust from pneumatic drills digging up the road. And yet, I adore my ugly picturesque street, because to me, this place sums up Russia. A land of surprises, a country of contradictions. There's a supermarket here called World of Apricots, which sells everything except apricots. There's a meat shop called Milky Way. And that's why every time I'm on the street, I'm reminded of a famous Russian poem. 150 years ago, Fyodor Tyutchev wrote, russia is baffling to the mind. She cannot be measured by a common yardstick. I wonder if he wrote that after shopping at World of Apricots. There's a lot more on Picturesque street that's baffling to the mind. There's a brand new Orthodox church, St. George's built by the government to Give government staff next door somewhere to worship. What a change from communist times when the atheist state waged war on religion. The walls of St. George's are encrusted with golden icons, and yet just across the road there are shabby prefabricated apartment blocks. When I walked past them the other day, there was a nasty smell coming from inside. It's the sewage pipes, explained one of the residents, Marina. They've been leaking for the last six years. No one ever fixes them. Marina's not the only one with problems. On a number 28 tram trundling along Picturesque street, the driver told me he earns about 650 pounds a month. Not enough, he said, to feed his wife and two children. When the number 28 stopped outside a health club, I went to have a look round the picture here was such a contrast. There was a spa, a state of the art Fitness studio, four swimming pools, two 20 tennis courts and something called the human regeneration machine that will blast your body with positive energy and make you feel younger. Membership costs 3,000 pounds a year. For a tram driver, that's about five months wages. Most of our members are top managers and business executives, General director Alexander told me. And most of them have their own yachts. That's why we're thinking of building a harbour by the river, to make it easier for them to get here. Back on the street, I got talking to 80 year old Nina Sergeyevna. She didn't have her own yacht, but she did have lots of hats which she'd crocheted herself and which she was selling on the street. Six pounds each. When Barbushka Nina told me her story, I realized this woman was stronger than any human regeneration machine. One of her sons had been stabbed to death by someone who'd approached him to ask for a cigarette. Her other son had died of a heart attack. Her husband had passed away too. But Babushka Nina stood there smiling and laughing and selling her hats so that she could pay for extra English lessons for her great grandson. The police still tried to move her on, though, she told me, because she doesn't have a permit to be there. Some people in Russia steal millions and get away with it. Nina Sergeyevna complained. But an ordinary Babushka with a tiny pension, she's the one who gets in trouble with the police. Where's the justice? Picturesque street, like Russia itself, is such a mixture. Golden icons and rotting pipes. Rich man, poor man. But I'd like to think that one day you will be able to buy apricots in World of apricots. And perhaps one day, Barbushko Nina won't need to sell hats on the street to make ends meet.
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Steve Rosenberg in Moscow the streets of Southeast Asia were once awash with bikes. For millions of people, there was simply no alternative. But times change, as we so often seem to point out on this program. With development, cities and countries like Cambodia have become full of cars and motorbikes. The bicycle has fallen out of favour. Some now say only poor people go by bike. But as the locals turn away from pedal power, there's a new phenomenon cycling tours, popular with foreign visitors. And as Guy Delaunay in Phnom Penh has been finding out, wheels and pedals can make connections between the most unlikely people.
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As social lubricants go, the bicycle is seriously underrated for adults. In many, if not most, countries, cycling is a minority pursuit. But for us grown ups who persist in doing what certain misguided people like to label kids stuff, there's often an instant bond, one that can transcend all sorts of differences in background, nationality and circumstance. That's certainly been the case in Cambodia. For proof, I only need to look at the photo of a 4 former Khmer Roo sniper turned wildlife ranger taking a spin on my mountain bike. We'd met on a ride in the Mondalkiri jungle, but of all the characters I've encountered in the saddle, there's been no one quite like Tim Durran. We met in a cafe rather than on the road or trail. He started laughing at a story I was reading to my children. I noticed his bike helmet and water bottle, and we got talking from there. Tim's unkempt mop of curly hair suggested an ebullient personality, and so it proved, as he raved about riding through the Cambodian countryside and meeting the local people. He was taking a few months to get to know the country, he said. I gave him the details of a couple of bike shops in case he needed any parts, and suggested he take his bike to Siem Reap and ride around the Angkor temples. By the time I left the cafe, we were Facebook friends. This meant I could follow Tim's adventures online, and his updates were among the finest examples of anyone using a bike as a social lubricant. It was simple. Tim would stop whenever he saw something or someone interesting. On one occasion, a group of people raking puddles by the sea in Kampot Province piqued his curiosity. He went over to find out what was happening. At first, he was met with surly indifference, but then he pointed to the bicycle tattooed on the inside of his upper arm. Everyone smiled and laughed. Barang qigong, they said. Foreigner riding a bike. It's a phrase I know well. Many Cambodians are highly tickled by the idea that someone who could afford a car should be indulging in such a sweaty, dirty activity. The ice having been broken, Tim spent the rest of the day collecting sea salt with the locals. But the trip up to the temples didn't go so well. Riding back to town at dusk, Tim didn't see the pothole in front of him until it was too late. He flew over the handlebars and into the back of a parked pickup truck. The bike was a write off, and the rider's knees weren't much better. Reading the messages from dozens of concerned friends prompted me to search for Tim's name on Google. It turned out that he'd been in the US army and seen active service in Iraq. I would never have guessed that the man I'd met was a combat veteran. Or as Tim revealed when he returned to Phnom Penh recovering from drink and drug issues, his trip to Cambodia was a step towards finding redemption and rediscovering parts of his character that had been lost in teenage recklessness and an impetuous decision to join the army. The bicycle was part of it too, a form of transport that made Tim feel childishly free and open to the people and situations he came across. But it wasn't just about himself. Tim had decided he wanted to do something to help others. As Cambodia is one of the world's poorest countries and US Military intervention has caused great suffering here, it seemed like the ideal place. Tim took me to the side entrance of a Buddhist pagoda to meet a friend. Lam was from a small village in Siem Reap province and studying medicine in the capital. Like many poor students, he was living with the orange robed monks to save cash. But he spoke passionately about his desire to bring free health care to rural Cambodia in the future. Lam's plans had impressed Tim so much that that he'd decided to sponsor the young man's studies. He'd bought him a laptop and also provided an endowment to the village school, which Lam had helped to set up. And what could be the connection between a part Native American Iraq conflict veteran and a rural Cambodian with dreams of making a difference? The answer was securely locked to the railings outside the monk's quarters. Lam's well cared for mountain bike. Both men, and of course your own correspondent, are dedicated cyclists.
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And with Guy Delaunay raising a laugh in Phnom Penh. We've reached the end of another programme. I'll be back on Saturday morning with more from our own correspondence. I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.