Transcripts For WETA Worldfocus 20091016 : vimarsana.com

> tonit on worldfocus on this wor food day, we ok at renewed efrts toare for the 1 blion people across the globe who do n get enough to eat. ur more u.s. toops are killed as yetore volence sweeps pakistan. what should thebama administration do? it s part of ou weekly rndtable. wh is the right age to begin formal education for children? new studysuggests we are starting kids too youn and if you think of africa just a cot meant of suffering and poverty, then come with us night to the polo folds of lagos, nigeria. from the world s lding reporters and analysts, he s what s happening aund the world. th is worldfocus. major support has be provided by ralind p. walter, and the pete g. peters foundation, dicated to promoting fiscal sponsibility and addressing key economic challengefacing erica s future. an additional fundi is ovided by the following supporters. good evening, i m martin sadge. thank you fojoining us ll start tonight with a look at the problem of hunger arnd the world as the united nations mark thiworld food day. e pope declared is more than a basic ned, it is a fundamental right individuals and oples. he saithe world must take, determined d effective acti, against hunger after the global economic crisis pushed the number hungry people around the world to me th 1 billion. that s a billion, acrding to the u.n. s fooand agriculture progra as we take a broad looat the problem in tonig s lead focus, want to start with a basic question raised in ts reportby one of our partners, deutsch welle, is the current approach to feedg the hungry funmentally wrong? hunger and misery sll prevade. aid agencies said the situation day is the worst it has ever been dpite recordrain harvests, falling coodity pric and internional aid efforts. every day, mo than 1 billion people on the planet don tet enough eat. critics say seed delived from developecountries is to blame. translator:t looks like this is plainly a program druc up business for seed and fertilizer produrs from dustrialized nations. what we should be ing is strengthing the agricultura ctors from developed untries. it simply driving poor cotries d.j.er intdebt. reporte aid experts say seed and fertilizer should be produced where it s needed and should be adapd to local condions. translar: for example clime change is causin more flooding, whh increases salt accumulation in soil. at means seedshould be developed that are more tolerant of sal and more resist at-bat to drought and flooding. reporter: bernard valter called f better cooperation between the world ank, the eu d independent foundations. rorter: right w, oneand doesn t kn what the other doin what we need is better coordination, especially in the definition of objectives. reporter: agreed swi acon is eded. every delay means mo misery. thastory from deutsche welle. for ny other people around e world, the struggle involv a daily battle again rising food prices and the possility ofoing hungry as a result. in egyptfor example, prices have gone up dramatically th year, and we want toake you there for a ok at how rising pric are affecting those trying tfeed themselves and those trying to make a ling sellinfood. here is what amiel kahky oal jazeera glish found on the streets of egypt reporter: outside t alexandria bakery, pushi, shoving, scaming and shouting, is is what an egyptian bread store looks lke on a good day. egypt is the number o importer of wheat in theorld. it s a comdity in grade did he mant. aegises call it a word from the arabic word meaning life. that s how impornt it is to them translator: i have a family of fr and ha to travel six kilometers and pay doubl what i pay for ead on transport just to get here. reporter: 21% of egyptians live below t poverty li and doub that amount barely above itwhich means theslightest rise ithe price of basic commodities can hav a huge impact owhether people have enough money to pufood on thr plates. government figureshow that food pris have risen more than 23% this year, resulting in markets lik these, once bustling with ctomers, now almo deserted. r example, a kilogram of tomatoes ud to cost the equivant of 30entsnly last january. now, the pricef a kilogram is 45 the cost of cooking oil and nned food has aso shot up affecting not only consumersut so small retailers. tralator: there hasn t been a single customer for the past the or four hours. i ve barely made $5and i ve been open since 7:00 in the moing. reporter:nd it s not just the poorer classes fected. fish, meat and powell tree wod become o of reach for tm, too, if prices continuto rise at this te. the ice of an erage kilogram of fish has increased by at least $1 er the past year, making it even morearder for poor egyptians to get, wle it is taken for granted by the whlive in rich countries. but despite the hike in prices and ever incrsing demand, the government insists it is doi what it can. it spends $19 billion on foo bsidies a year, mainly for bread. but many complain of poor regulaon and corruption. translator: s, the governnt subsidis the brea but it s officials and those responsible give it to us bad and the bread keeps gtting smaller. e taste keeps getting worse. rorter: the united natio food and aiculture organization says egypt is not suffering hunger, yet many sa the wespread poverty and the cotant battle of supply a demand means that pele li this man wil continue to face the daily struggle of feeding a faly of four. al jazeera in theegyptian city of alendria. jning us now for a broader discussion of where the worl stands othis issue is anita sharma. she is nth american ordinator of the united natis millennium campaign to end poverty and hunger. ongoal of that campaign is t cut in half,y 2015, the proportion of people who sfer from hunger from t level of 1990. welcome. hi, nice to be here. how has the global nancial crisis affecd food prices and th ability of pple toe buy food? today, the worlfood program and e food anding agrictural organization reased a study which theyaid 1illion are suffering fromhunger and that s a ry troubling statistic what is haening, beuse of the finaial crisis, poorer countries who dinothing to cause the crisis are feelingthe effects becausfood prices themselves haven realy gone down. yoknow, there was spike in food and commodity prices, 20 to 2008. those levels are still 17% higher than they wer in 2005, so that meansood prices are still high. beuse of the financial crisis, poorereople have to snd more money onood and they have fewer resources now becau of the financiacrisis. they ve lst theirjobs, retanses going hometo them have decread as wel foreign dict investment is down, oveeas development sistance is down, so it s really just kind of a double whammy. hat about the issue of climate cnge? how hashat impacd the problem? tremenusly. climb change, lke the financial crisis, was notoor pele and they re fling the effect. it affects the yld of crops or affect rainfall or water. manyreas have decreased yields so farmer might los an entire crop, but they ve lost also their livelihoods. one idea trying t produce more food, genetic engineering anthe use of chemical where do you stand onthat? as a campaig we wouldn t advocate fo aarticular kind pesticide or chemal. what we re cling for is an increase in green technology and investment in agricultal productivity through the gree revolution of the 70s, for example, lifd many millions of people out poverty because they were ae to increase their cp yeilds. we need a new agrictural revoluti. it doesn tecessarily have to rely on dirty technolog but can done in such a way that the inteational community works tether to find and develop better, better crops and more sstainable crops. we mentioned th isworld food ay. yosaythere s anevent coincidi over the were weeken yes, if you go to stand against poverty.org, y ll see millions of ople around the world. last year we bre a guinness book of recor, 116 milln people mobilized saying they wanto end extreme poverty. people fromhe slums of india to the streets o berkeley are cong together and we re working toward lutions to stand up a take action to end extreme poverty and to end hunger. ata sharma, thank you very much. thank you, nice to be here. the u.s. military id today that four more arican troops have diein afghanistan. happened yesterday in a bombing in the southerpart of the country. twof the service members were killed insntly and two later di of their wounds. so far, this month, americans have been killed in afghistan. as presidentbama considers whether to commimore troops to thatonflict with taliban insurgents. the power of the talan in neighboring pakian was undecored onceore today by yet anotr deadly attack on a lice station. it happened in the city of peshawar, the capital northwest frontier provinc the suicide bombers were involvedn the attack on the avily fortified lice station. one drove a car filled with explosives while two oths were on a motorcycle,ncluding a woman. 13 people were kled in the attack. theescalating violence in pakistan and afgnistan is the first pic of our frid rodtable as we review of some the week s top stories. we re alsooing to look at iran s relationsith china and russiaclose relations that uld make it difficult for th united states to enlist those countries in supporting poible new nctions against iran. joininus once again is gideon rose, manang editor of foreign affairs magazineand david andelman, former forgn correspoent for the new york times and cbs news annow editor of worldolicy journal. welcome to the two of you. thank you. t s start with afghantan, thepolicy review, should we send more troops and if so, how many? we alrea know the general that charge has aed for 40,000 u.s. troops. the vi president doesn t like that idea, someing far less, and then we have democratic setor carl levi who no s chairman of the nate foreign or sate armed services committee. he s proposing we send a lot mo troops to train up the afghans. vietnamizationthat s the word at comes back to me, and gideon, we talk out this contsting and comparison o those two wars, bu is this a good ia? well, training i absolutely a good idea and it going to be part othe answer because this is an ongoing problem and at the end of theday, ifhere is an end of the day that s stble, e afghan vernment is going to be able to control s own territory with itswn troops. do have the time to do this? ou need to do that alonide. i think it s mistake to think of these as alterna options because there are jobs that we can do ourselves and that only the u.s. can t this point whilet the same time, we ed to tin the afghan forces and build them up so that they n eventuallyake over from us so, you have to do what we need to do now while at the same timeing somebody else to do it so we c hand off to them later . david,his is a compromise. essentiallthe obama administration saying we d t want tsend a lot me troops. oh, it isse. there s no questi. but takes theocusway from the other k priority and that is building a civilian infrastructure tha really works. what we reallyeed to do is focus on the countride, squeing corruptn of the countryside and governnt and so on ani m not sure ev adding, training tros, we tried that notonly in cmbodia and etnam, we tried iraq and that didn t seem to work all that well. entuallywe had to draw out of concern in iraq and we ll probably he to do the same in afghanistan. ife don t worry abt the civilian base. let s talk about the civiln government. the s going to be a runoff election, e new york times is saying thateems pret certain. ist this just the united states has forc this issue so much that wee demandinghere be a noff to legitimize the karzai government? to a ceain extent but tat doesn t mean it s necessarily ong because there s no question in most ople s minds th karzai stole the lead s forcing aunoff is even if it s done at our behest, is actually inhe service of getting a re legitima outcome and so, it ll be interesting to see what happens. tole the lead, i like it you re going wayut there. it s true. ere s no question. the elecon w stolen in so many ways. it s just an example of ho corrupt this government i from top t bottom and we have to find a way squeeze that ou if we re gng to make progres there. let sove to pakistan rit next door, escalatingiolence is week and now reports y have the taliban, alaedand pun jabi militants coming gether as a itical force against e government. my question is, are they trying to chae government poly in pakistan or are these grou wanting to take er? oh, certainly like in some fashion to ke ove what the really want totake over, in my view, and that why pakistan is eingle most strategically critic part of the world right now, ghanistan, leave that aside, pakistan is rlly where we should focus our atntion, that s t war now becaus they have nuclear wpons. taliban, al qaeda gets a nucle weapon from the pakisni arsena it s game over. what they wantis, they re oking at that nuclear arsenal, they re also oking at the ability tounction freely in places like south waziristan without gornment interference. i ll go out on a little re an say i thi these actual recent attacks a a good thing. you say, h can that possibly be? because they are aign of t militant overplaying their hand. evybody i talked toho knows the mostbout the situation says t pakistani arm retains its ability to control these grps, is in control of the country and is callously and cynically using them for its own purposes, vis-a-vis indiana pastan and so forth and the pakistani army h to be convind to shut these guys down andy having the militants actually atta the armynd the government and offici headquarte, itbasically is a step towards getting the army to recognize is is their oblem, nojust our problemand ities to this queson about the civian aid package we ve just given them and th conditis on it wch the army is resisting. it wants lots o moneynd suppt and absolutely no string attached. and we wa them to actually do things tha aren our intest antheir own interests and thi tually these attac could help convince them to do what we wa. with all d reect, you could ve said the same thing actually aut the roadside bomb attacks in iraq and it didn t work thaway. this is something that is very critical and we are going have to convince the pakistan to deal with it. speaking ofnukes, i want to turn to irabecause thiss a nation obviously ting to acquire nuclear wer. e united states wants impose tougher nctions. this week we ve had russian yeah and chi both have co out an said the don t see sanctions as the way to go. my question is,then, wre does the u.s. effort to try to iose ugher sanctions stand if you don t ve china and russia on board? well, what s verynteresting this wk, i think, putin and the chinese leadershi getting together and talking among themselves. remember, putinhat you on a visit to china, a very iportant visit, i think. it was right after that that all of a sden, this so-called ndominium thewest hought, unitedtates thought they d arrangedind of fell apart. i think what ey got together ansaid was, look, we each have our stakes the. let s kind of slow things down a littleit and see what happens. i m not persuaded they won t ultimately, if the inians move resolutely towards a bomb, won t timately come in and y, all righ we have to come in a do what we can. neher wants in to have a clear weapon if. welme toife in the postmerican world. they havmore autonom to ck ou wishes. re able to do what we want to do, but if you want to bring other countriealong and these days ecomically, for sanctions,ou need to, we re ing to have to basically got to have a really clearcut case or be really give up on oher thingshey want. gideon rose, david andelman, a pleasure, thank yo any time tre is a new set of gdelines on educating young children, there isertain to be controversy, and tt s exactly what s goi on in great britain, where aajor study on prary education has concluded thatormal teaching of children should n begin until age 6. this may not go over too wl with some pares who hope their children can read oficiently byhen, but it s worth listening to the argumen, which hear in this report from jennyivell of itn. repter: all work and play can do more ha than good according to anndependent repo. in the most comprehensive revew of primary education in engld for 40 years, the cambridge prary review calls the less formal teachingnterception classe there s plentofvidence that sws its children are put into too formal setting befe they re ady and they bome frightened t experiment in case perhs they fail and once there s a sense faile in a imary in aoung child, then it s very difficulfor them to engage with more formal learning as they get older. reporter: t six 08-page review makes numerous recmendations saying that children under 6 should be taught using play-bad learning rather than formal study. national assessment sts should be scrapped d staffing should be riewed to allow for more speciali teachers. the government, whicdecided to bring forward the school starting age fro5 to 4 earlier this year following its ow revi of primary education, has dismissemany of these proposals. the consvatives agree with them, that some ofhe recommendations are ouof date. the head teacher at brenide primary school in westondon where the youngest pils are ught using play, has used he own experience to advisehe auths of the cambridge primary review. teachg ishat can heall multisensory. it s about meeting the cld s needs in a devepmental approach where chiren, they talk, they feel, they look, listen, so we resing all e senses so whever the chilen s preferce of learning style might be, we going to meet at. rorter: the natial union of teacherselieves the review is too comprehsive to be ignod. if formal sty were to be delayed until children rea 6, it wou bring england in line with the majority of other eupean countries, including france and germany. jenny wivell of i. so from britain toni right-ng dutch politician who has infuried muslims was allowed to returto britain today. gert wilders was permittedo ter the country after succsfully suing the british government f banning him becae of his comments about islam. he has comparethe quran, for example, to olf hitler s mein kampf, and has caed for an end to muslim immigration. today, he described his return toritain as a victory for free speech. in geneva, the u.n. human rights council vot today to endorse the findings of report it had commissiod on the war in gaza. sent the report to the security counc, possibly settinthe stage for prosecution of iaelis and palestinians accused of r crimes. e resolution passed by aote of 2 to 6 withthe united stat among those opposing it. e report found evidence that somections by both israel and the palestinians in gaza amounted to war cres, although it was morcritical of israel. the resolution calls on bo sides to conductredible investigatns of their own or fa referral of the matter to the international crimin court. we also want to know wha you thinabout this issue. our queson tonight do you think israel and/othe palestinians should ce prosecution for their actis in the gaza war? you can ve us your opinion by going to the how u see it section ofur website at rldfocus.org. and in casyou missedt, thweather made news this week in europe. there was unusually heavy snow in germanypoland and other rts of eastern europe, catcng many people off-guard, coming ait did in the middle of october. and as winter approaches, the mayor moscow has his own idea for dealing with heav snows that usuly hit his city. he plans to marshal e russian air force and air defens systems to intercept advanng storm fronts and seed th with dry ice and lver iodine particles, so ateast some of the snow falls before hits moscow. he says doing all at will be cheaper th clearing city stets of snow. it s his own cold wa during the year we ve en on the air, we ve brought u ny stories about life in afri that you probably hadn t seen before about that continent s cell phone boo the chese influence there, and the rise of theiddle class. but even we were surprised by another storwe cam across day from nigeria. it com to us froour partners at africa . eporter: nigea s commercial capal, home to over 17 million people, ands growing. the city isrobably most famo for it traffic jam but gag owes is also gaing a retation for its polo team. every year, the city pol club hosts the biggest tonament in africa. this time around, 30eams participated and ove 3,000 people came to watc polo was introduced here by british conialists in the eay 1900s. the sport isn t as popular as soccer but local interest is growingfast. seral companies spoored this year sevent, which cost millions of dollars. polo is an expensive ort. each team fields 24 horses during amatch and each horse sts about 50,000 u.s.ollars. mostf nigeria s playe are young, scessful busessmen. this manrades in oil a gas. s been playing po for three years now. the ultimat aim isctually tobuild a very strong, strong team so tt in the future, to compete not just in nigeria but africa and, who knows, even europe, around the world reporr: this manlso comes to the polo club every week t ain with friends. he wan more people to courage their children to play the sport from an early e. a lot of peopl are gting interested. people are starting to find out it s not as snobbish or as, as you say, is not as outf reach as a lot of people sort of think. an average man can pl polo. actuallywhile they call the ga of the richest, the money involved in thgame, buying horsesuying your mallets, definily there s money there. reporr: as the tournament ew to a close, a match for the veteran players was held. a few minutes later,he team shows off their skills on the pitch. the match proved a bi difficult for the older players are tired, but they still put on a good show. the players down. the play is down. oh, let s put our handtogether for the d man! [ applause ] reporter: notany nigerians will be participating in drop the popular sport o football to play polo but knowhey have an oppounity to try. thats worldfocus for this friday nighand for this week. plea remember to visit our website at worldfocus.org d let know what you think about that controversial u.n. fiing today out israel and the palestinians. my colague, daljit dhaliwal, returns monday i ll see you back re toward the end of nt month. have a good nighand a good the end of nt month. have a good nighand a good grt weekend. captions by vita www.vitac.co majp major support fore-cck us has been broughtb per gpeter g. petso peter g.et addressing key economic challenges facing americs future. aanp and additional fundin providedy the following supporters.