APRIL 2007
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Wednesday, 25th April,2007
IRAN: WOMEN'S TAXI COMPANY
To Iran now and, in particular, that country's traffic-congested capital, Tehran. There recently on assignment, reporter Bronwyn Adcock - as adventurous as ever - took a cab ride with a very different sort of cab company - one that's raising plenty of eyebrows in staunchly Islamic Tehran.
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Wednesday, 25th April,2007
GEORGE SOROS INTERVIEW
As the mega-rich go, 77-year-old Jewish American financier George Soros is a rare bird. Not only is he an outrageously generous philanthropist, he's also a political activist and global powerbroker. In the last US presidential elections, for instance, he tossed in a lazy $25 million to get George Bush out of the White House - for him, a rare failure. As chairman of his own Open Society Institute, the Hungarian-born Soros supports causes that have ranged from Solidarity in Poland to needle exchange programs for drug addicts and pro-democracy campaigns in the former Soviet Union, Africa and Asia. In Canada recently, George Negus caught up with the normally interview-shy Soros.
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Wednesday, 25th April,2007
MUD SLINGING
As disasters go - man-made like war or natural - they don't get much nastier than the one in our first report tonight. For a year now in Indonesia, a giant mud volcano has been spewing out thousands of cubic metres of boiling mud every day, wreaking havoc on the surrounding area and those who live there. What actually caused the eruption and who, if anyone, is responsible, has turned into a battle between two of Indonesia's most powerful families and a mining company from Australia. As that battle rages, the disaster has also turned into a real political headache for Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. One of the key corporate players involved just happens to be a minister in SBY's cabinet. Here's Ginny Stein on the spot.
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Wednesday, 18th April,2007
BONES OF CONTENTION
With Australian Fashion Week opening shortly in Sydney, the organisers have already decided what to do about stick-thin models on their catwalks. Like many overseas counterparts, they've opted for self-regulation, meaning, basically, designers only have to meet a voluntary code on the body size of their models. But Australian health workers are asking whether those wafer-thin waifs are sending a dangerously wrong body image message to girls and young women. In the fashion capitals of London and Madrid, Liz Tadic has been running the tape over a worrying aspect of the industry.
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Bones of Contention Video -
Wednesday, 18th April,2007
DR ANWAR IBRAHIM
Remember Anwar Ibrahim? Well a few years back, he was regarded as the next big thing in Asian politics. Indeed, he was tipped to become the prime minister of Malaysia. Well, after six years in jail for corruption - he was acquitted on sodomy charges - he's mounting a pretty bold comeback. And now, despite still being officially banned from political activity in Malaysia, 60-year-old Anwar has returned to the political fray. In fact, his plan is to lead the oppostion against the ruling UMNO party and Malaysia's current Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi, in the next election. George Negus caught up with him recently in Vancouver.
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Dr Ibrahim Video -
Wednesday, 18th April,2007
BAN THE BOMBLETS
10 years ago, a committed bunch of international activists received the Nobel Peace Prize for their campaign to have landmines banned worldwide. As a result of their efforts, close enough to three-quarters of the world has signed up to the ban. Now, these same people have their sights set on cluster bombs. And at the forefront of their effort is an Australian, John Rodsted, who these days pretty much devotes his entire life to ridding the world of these deadly weapons. David Brill recently travelled with Rodsted to southern Lebanon, where people are still dying from the cluster bombs rained down by the Israelis in the last days of that recent war.
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Ban the Bomblets Video
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Wednesday, 11th April,2007
PROF AMIN SAIKAL & FRONTLINE FLYERS
John Howard's announcement yesterday that the Australian troop numbers in Afghanistan will be doubled, included a chilling warning that the public - in an election year that means voters - should be prepared for casualties. He stressed that the 300 extra Australians would be more 'proactive' in hunting down the resurgent Islamic radicals, the Taliban. His announcement came the day after news that six Canadian soldiers had been killed when their vehicle triggered a hefty roadside bomb. Clearly, with the Taliban promising a spring offensive, the additional Australian forces are moving into an increasingly dangerous theatre of war. Professor Amin Saikal - himself of Afghan descent - is the Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the ANU in Canberra and George Negus spoke with him earlier this evening.
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Wednesday, 11th April,2007
PRIME MINISTER JOSE RAMOS HORTA
Despite East Timor’s recent history of violence, it's actually a mark of East Timor's fledgling democracy that this week's presidential race attracted eight candidates and, surprisingly, according to UN observers, the polling booths were peaceful. The way the election works in East Timor is if no candidate gains a clear majority first time round - and none of the candidates has - they'll have to have a run-off election later this month between the two leading candidates. As the counting stands tonight, Nobel Peace Prize winner and the country's interim prime minister, Jose Ramos Horta, is amongst the frontrunners. George Negus spoke with him earlier today from Dili.
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Wednesday, 11th April,2007
MACAU - ASIA'S HONEY POT
It is almost 10 years ago now - in 1997 - that the Brits handed the island state of Hong Kong back to China. But we probably don't remember that two years later in 1999, the Portuguese also handed back their former colony of Macau - a typhoon-ridden dot, 50 minutes by ferry from Hong Kong, with no arable land, not even rice paddies, fewer than 500,000 people and less than a sixth the size of Washington D.C. George Negus was actually there on assignment in the mid-'90s and remember Macau as having two faces - the fortresses, the Catholic churches and the food of its former European colonial masters, and also as a place that saw itself as the emerging casino capital of the Orient.
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Well, last week, the financial press reported that Macau has actually overtaken the famous Las Vegas strip in the US as the biggest casino magnet in the world. It'has even attracted the eye and the investment dollars of Australia's richest man, James Packer. Dateline's David O'Shea - always prepared to take a punt on a good yarn - went to take a look at yet another of China's market miracles. -
Wednesday, 4th April,2007
MY ISLAND HOME
Almost five years ago now, Dateline reporter Nick Lazaredes was the first television journalist to report on the fate of the Chagos Islanders - more than three decades ago forced from their homeland, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, when a giant US military base was built there. Since then, these people to-all-intents-and-purposes forgotten have waged a determined, lonely battle through the British courts to win their right to return home. In London recently, Nick caught up with the islanders for the latest round in this classic David and Goliath struggle.
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Wednesday, 4th April,2007
MORGAN TSVANGIRAI INTERVIEW
It is pretty hard to forget the pictures from Zimbabwe like the ones shown of oppostion leader Morgan Tsvangirai, with his swollen face and his scalp slashed after his savage beating at the hands of Robert Mugabe's henchmen. Like Morgan’s Movement for Democratic Change party colleague, former Australian resident and Zimbabwean activist Sekai Holland, who was also viciously battered by Mugabe's thugs, a few days ago Tsvangirai fled to South Africa to get much-needed medical care. George Negus spoke with Morgan Tsvangirai from his safe house in Johannesburg.
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VIDEO Sekai Holland interview -
Wednesday, 4th April,2007
INSIDE IRAN
After 10 days of tough words back and forth between Tehran and London over the release of 15 British sailors, seized after they allegedly crossed into Iranian waters, it sounds as though megaphone diplomacy has been swapped for a much quieter dialogue behind closed doors. With serious international unease over Iran’s nuclear program continuing, this latest flare-up was hardly needed right now. We hear plenty of course in the West on Ahmadinejad immoderate views, but what do Iranians themselves think of the perilous international situation they now find themselves in as a result of their leade’s brinkmanship on nuclear power and other sensitive issues. Well video journalist Bronwyn Adcock travelled to the Iranian capital, Tehran to test public opinion.
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