09/08/2014 Reporters

Welcome to Reporters. From here, we sent out correspondents to bring you

the best stories from across the globe.

The changing face of Washington, DC, how the city once known as the

murder capital of America has undergone a remarkable revival. We

learn by $2000 a month. As the new neighbourhoods come in, they were

demanding it. If I am paying taxes, I want my neighbourhood safe.

Preachers of peace in Pakistan. We report on Sufism, now under threat

from hardliners. Men and women coming together to dance and play

music with passion and rhythm in a place of worship. These are scenes

unthinkable in most of Pakistani today. 100 years on from the start

of World War I, Fergal Keane assesses its lasting legacy. Lying

in the ruins of this port are 250 men. `` fort. They were among the

first victims out of millions in the Great War.

Close encounters with a comet. We investigate how the Rosetta

spacecraft's $6 billion journey could reveal the secrets of life on

Earth. And wine of the Romans. We visit Tuscany to investigate Italy's

natural wine movement. But, will wine from the Middle Ages excite

modern palates? The natural wine movement is still very small, but

they are challenging conventions, raising some awkward questions about

the way most modern wine is made. It was once known as the murder

capital of America. A quarter of a century ago, Washington, DC was

plagued by a crack epidemic and gun violence. Neighbourhoods just blocks

from the White House were considered no go areas. It is different today.

Washington has enjoyed a remarkable revival of the past decade. We have

been looking at that transformation from two people with very different

experiences of Washington at its worst. Curtis is a filmmaker who saw

friends and neighbours gunned down in turf wars, and another is a

former Washington Post crime reporter, who lived a double life as

a crack addict. The city was undergoing an horrific

wave of violence, as a result of the crack epidemic. DC in the early

1990s became known as the murder capital of the country.

The crime got so bad, we were losing 400`500 every year. Two a night were

being murdered. We were all wondering who would be next. I

arrived in DC about ten days after then`President George HW Bush at a

press conference, declaring a war on drugs. By Saturday of that week, I

had already found a new place to buy crack.

It was extraordinarily exhausting to live a double life as a crime

reporter and crack addict, who at times covered stories in the same

neighbourhoods where I would buy. I was out there on the corner,

filming him, as the ambulance was coming. I went to the hospital. The

people who did the shooting didn't see that, they had run away. I was

capturing it on camera, where I could show the pain that his mother

is going through, as she had just lost a second son. I could show the

impact that the guns have. Then, things started to change in the late

90s, for a number of different reasons. The work of the police and

federal law enforcement authorities did in taking down major crack

gangs. Arrests and prosecutions had an

impact. Federal and local money began to pour into certain

neighbourhoods, and these neighbourhoods began to change.

The times have definitely changed, but there is still violence going

on. Again, when a new neighbour came in,

you could see buildings that were once vacant are being fixed up. Park

areas, they were getting beautified and looking pretty.

Those who were here at first were also sent away because they couldn't

afford it. Rent went from $500 to $2000 a month. And, as the new

neighbourhood was coming in, they were demanding. If I am paying

taxes, I want my neighbourhood to be safe. I want the trash picked up.

That was their demand and boy did they get it.

You wouldn't think a bunch of Ukrainian soldiers would be welcome

in Russia at the moment, or that they would go there of their own

free will. But that seems to be what happened to 400 Ukrainian troops who

crossed the border into Russia after coming into heavy fire. Russian

border authorities say the troops would affect them, but Ukraine

denies this. Steve Rosenberg went to the camp where the soldiers are

saying on the Russian Ukrainian border.

As we approached our destination, security is tight. There have been

battles near here, just across the border. This is right on the border

with Ukraine, and this is the field camp, which the Russians have set up

for those 438 Ukrainian servicemen who came across the border and

refuge here. `` took refuge. They say there was fierce fighting going

on between the Ukrainian army and militants, and they had no choice

but to come here. This is Ukraine's 72nd Brigade. Not everyone here

wanted to talk to us about what had happened. Those who did told us they

had been under intense pressure. With no ammunition left, and no

backup, they retreated to Russia. Despite strained relations between

the two countries, they have been allowed in and given food and

accommodation. TRANSLATION: If they want to go back

to Ukraine, they can. Or, they could apply to remain in Russia.

We didn't find anyone here who was keen to stay.

Ukraine is my home, he says. It is where I was born and where I belong.

Across camp, this man blames Russia for stoking the violence in Ukraine.

Our nations should be friends, Yuri says. It is just that politics gets

in the way. Russia claims its actions here were humanitarian, but

Ukraine continues to believe that this is a conflict which Moscow is

fuelling. For centuries, south Asia was a

place where the mystical Islamic conflict of Sufism thrived, a

practice which goes beyond religion. They have traditionally been known

as mythical practitioners of Islam. `` mystical. Sufism has been in

retreat, with the spread of other varieties of Islam.

They come at dusk, beating the drums and praising their saint. Swirling

and chanting, they are hoping to achieve a trend that will bring them

closer to God. `` a trance. Families have travelled hours, if not days,

to pray at the shrine of a Sufi saint.

Men and women coming together to dance, and play music with passion

and rhythm, in a place of worship. These are scenes unthinkable in most

of Pakistan today, except in Sufi shrines like this one.

Hardliners like the Taliban are furious about such practices. The

shrines, the devotion to Saints, a heresy, they say. `` are heresy.

Sufis are coming under attack. This man is the 12th descendant of the

saint. His car was fired at recentlyl. He escaped unscathed, but

security has been increased after the shrine received threats. I am

worried, but I'm not hopeless. I believe that Sufism has to stay

forever and there's no way that terrorism could stand at the end of

the day in front of Sufism. Sufis believe their practices are the

purest form of communicating with God. But, the pushback against

Sufism is also ideological. Just a few hours away in Karachi, they

spend hours memorising the Koran. This is an austere, puritanical

brand of Islam, and it is being taught that thousands of religious

seminaries across the country. `` taught at. Many inspired by Saudi

Arabia. TRANSLATION: We reject Sufism and all of these other

'isms'. We also reject violence. We are the ones teaching true Islam.

But, Sufis feel vulnerable, and the barriers have come up. In Karachi,

this novelist says this is also a cultural war. When you come from

outside, and you come to a culture as accepting and welcoming as Sufi

culture is, and you start telling them that your way of life and way

of worshipping God is not just wrong, it is sinful, and that you

should be punished, not just in the next world but in this one, for

practising your culture and your traditions, I see that as real

psychological violence. At the shrine, the celebrations continue,

the devotees keep coming, undaunted for now. The Taliban may have their

guns, one of them told me, but we have truth.

The Taliban may have their guns, one of them told me, but we have truth.

It is a conflict that cost millions of lives and redrew borders in

Europe and beyond. 100 years ago this week, Britain declared war on

Germany, marking the start of the First World War. It also led to a

new world order. There was the collapse of the Russian, Hungarian

and Ottoman empires. We have been assessing the continuing legacy of

World War I. We have only their voices left to

tell us of the war. We very soon found ourselves looking

at the bodies of the men who had fallen. Wounded men who tried to

crawl in the shell holes. They tried to get protection.

In August 1914, they marched off to defend neutral Belgium. Whose forts

were attacked by German artillery. Like a maligned giant trampling

through. At this fort, defenders buried where they fought. The unused

coffins waiting for those they could not find. From fife and drum to the

Maxim gun, war had changed irrevocably. Lying in the ruins in

the fort beside me are 250 men. They were among the first victims out of

millions in the Great War. They were soldiers, but they could not have

imagined the destructive power that was going to rain down on them.

Modern warfare didn't just change the lives of soldiers. For

civilians, from 1914 onwards, there came a new age of atrocity.

Destruction, famine, massacre, the war shattered humanity. Many

millions became refugees. This man from Belfast joined in 1914 and was

killed just two weeks before the war ended. For 13 years, his

granddaughter and her husband have been custodians of the trenches

where he fought. For her, memory is a personal debt.

We must always remember and must never forget those men. Or they

might as well not have come here. They wasted their time coming if we

forget. We have to remember. I am proud to keep remembering.

By its end, the war had claimed millions of lives amid untold

devastation. The leaders who gathered at Versailles in its

aftermath spoke of ending war for all time. But within 20 years,

Europe was at war again. And the boundaries that resulted from

decisions taken here created fresh conflict, in the Middle East

particularly. It is that along with the memory of the dead that makes

the Great War our war. We still hear the echoes of the war that began

that day. It was incredible. It was like a flock of sheep in their

fields. A number of the men were still alive. They were crying out

and begging for water. It has been an epic mission going

where no spacecraft has gone before. The comet`chasing Rosetta spacecraft

has been travelling for over a decade. This week it finally got to

its destination. In a historic first, it is now orbiting around the

comet. It could offer the answer to one of the biggest questions, where

did life on Earth come from? The Rosetta spacecraft has begun its

orbit of the comet. It will spend the next few months analysing what

it is made from. Its mission is to find out whether a comet might have

started life on our planet. They peppered the early Earth 4.5 billion

years ago. They brought with them water and some of the ingredients

for life. As they cooled, those ingredients mingled to create the

chemicals from which life emerged. Charles Darwin described the origin

of life in a warm little pond. Somehow water was involved in life

getting going. That water could have come from the comet. The carbon in

the DNA we are all made from could have come from a comet. The theory

is that comets brought with them many of the basic building blocks of

life. Molecules such as carbon, water, methane and many other

chemical compounds. They all mixed together in a primordial soup to

form, at first, very simple organisms which billions of years

later went on to evolve into the plants and animals that we see in

the world around us today. What started off as pondlife evolved into

more context organisms, including us. This man is a researcher working

at a space science laboratory here in Surrey. He will be following the

results that the Rosetta spacecraft sends back very closely.

One of the big questions that Rosetta is addressing is did comets

kickstart life on Earth? Did they bring to Earth the key ingredients

for this primordial soup that later led to the development of life?

Never before will a spacecraft been so close to a comet for so long.

Rosetta will spend the next few months taking measurements and

pictures. It is up close and personal. We will be able to

understand everything there is to understand about the comet, about

the chemical composition, about whether the ice on the comet was the

source of the oceans on planet Earth.

In November, scientists plan to land a probe to see what it is made of

and find out whether comets hold the key to how life on Earth began.

What do you think wine that like the Romans drank in the Middle Ages

would taste like? According to supporters of Italy's natural wine

movement, it is better than much of the wine produced today. They are

producing natural wine using the additive`free techniques of their

forefathers. There are competitors who do not agree and say tastes have

changed. We have been to Tuscany to find out if wine from the Middle

Ages can really excite modern palates.

Doing it the old`fashioned way. Working the vineyard by hand. No

machinery here. No polluting engine fumes. No use of pesticides. Wine is

being made here just as it was 1000 years ago. Almost untouched by the

modern world. This is a quest for the purity of the past. It goes on

in the cellar as well. Makers of modern wine are legally allowed to

use many additives, including chemicals and gasses. But here,

almost nothing is added. They say it is wine the way it tasted in the

Middle Ages. It is not just liquid, there is

something more. But the natural approach has met resistance from the

local wine establishment. This vineyard has been stripped of its

ability to use the local name in its marketing. The natural wine movement

is still very small. Only tiny numbers of producers are working

like this. But they are challenging conventions and raising some awkward

questions about the way most modern wine is made. Here they say the

natural additive`free product is true wine. The real thing.

Wine is produced since 4000 years. Until the Second World War, it was

produced without chemicals. So if it was possible for so many years, we

know it is possible now. We know that what is called wine today is

not wine. But is this so`called natural wine worth drinking? We

asked a professional wine taster. TRANSLATION: It is a good wine. It

has character and personality. It is a true wine that speaks of the place

it comes from. But modern producers argue that the

old`fashioned techniques are not necessarily better. That wine`making

has evolved, improved, created tastes that are loved today.

TRANSLATION: We have many reminders of what the Romans called wine. I

would not offer it to my worst enemy. I mean that wine has changed

over the years. The taste has changed. What the Romans called wine

is not the wine of today. But the makers of additive`free wine believe

more and more consumers want natural products. They believe the world is

slowly turning in their direction. That is all from us this week.

Goodbye for now. And I hope you meet the least of the

first part of the weekend.