BBC News - Ronald Reagan: 30 years since assassination attempt

BBC News - Ronald Reagan: 30 years since assassination attempt

On 30 March 1981, just 69 days into his presidency, Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded outside the Washington Hilton by John Hinckley Jr in an assassination attempt. President Reagan suffered a punctured lung in the shooting, but survived. Three others were also wounded.

That day, 30 years ago, two actions saved Reagan's life. The president's reaction to the attack which almost killed him may have made his presidency.

For Secret Service agent Jerry Parr, it started as a pretty regular day.

"Rawhide" - the codename the Service gave this 40th president of the United States - was giving a speech at the Washington Hilton, a venue that was just a few minutes' drive from the White House, and had been used dozens of times by presidents past.

After the speech, Reagan walked out of the VIP entrance and toward his car. To his left there were gathered a few reporters, some camera crews, some bystanders.

By today's standard the security was astonishingly lax; anyone, it seemed, could get within metres of the president. One of those who did was John Hinckley Jr, armed and with a desire to make an impression that would last.

'Get him out'

A short distance from his car, Reagan turned to his left, raised his arm and waved to the small crowd.

"When we get about five or six feet from the car," remembers Jerry Parr, "I hear two shots, quick, bang bang, and then bang, bang, bang, bang."

The quick actions of former Secret Service agent Jerry Parr probably saved President Reagan's life

Mr Parr did not stop to think, he just reacted to the sound, almost throwing the president into the car and landing heavily on top of him, covering Reagan with his body in case there was a second gunman waiting to take another shot through the open car door.

On the tape of the shooting, which was caught on film by the waiting news crews, you can hear voices shouting "Get him out! Go! Go! Get him out!" amongst the mayhem. Reagan's bullet-proof car sped off.

Inside, Mr Parr ran his hands around Reagan's body but failed to find any wound. The president complained of chest pain and said that perhaps he had bruised or broken a rib when Mr Parr had landed on him in the car immediately after the shooting.

Over the Secret Service radio, the word went out: "Rawhide is OK, Rawhide is OK." And the decision was made to take the president back to the White House - the safest place in Washington.

But Mr Parr, with Reagan in the back of the car, started having doubts. At the city's Dupont Circle he asked the president how he was feeling.

"He said he was doing OK, 'but I think I've cut the inside of my mouth'. And he started spitting up this bright red blood, real frothy, and I took one look at it and I looked at his mouth and I saw that it was ashen grey, little bit of blue around the lips.

"And I just took a quick decision, I'm taking you to the hospital, and he said 'OK'."

Entry wound

That act probably saved the president's life. Reagan managed to walk unaided from the car into George Washington University Hospital but then collapsed.

Jerry Parr, right, was among Secret Service agents who pushed Reagan into his waiting limousine

After several examinations, an entry wound was found: a bullet had ricocheted off the road, slipped between the body of his car and its open door, and slipped into him 6in (15cm) below his left armpit. It came to rest in his left lung.

Outside the hospital all was confusion. On a live news broadcast, ABC's Frank Reynolds assured viewers that Reagan had not been shot, only to be told that he had been hit.

"My God!" he cried out on air. "The president was hit… he is in stable condition… all this information… The president WAS hit."

In hospital, Reagan's blood pressure was lifted and stabilised, but blood kept filling his lung, suggesting heavy internal bleeding. An operation was planned.

His wife, Nancy came to see him. "Honey," quipped Reagan, "I forgot to duck."

'Genuine moments'

The surgical team assembled, but before they started the president looked at them. "I hope you are all Republicans," he said, mock-gravely.

After the surgery the gags kept coming. And this, believes Del Quentin Wilber, who has written a minute-by-minute chronicle of the day, is what lifted Reagan's presidency out of the mere normal.

President Reagan had a genuine connection with the American people

"The last four presidents who have been shot have all died, and here he is cracking jokes and laughing at death. The American people love that.

"Those kinds of things, they don't get cemented in a person's mind through polling or slick advertising or message management. It's through the genuine moments that the public experiences with the leader.

"And this was the moment for Ronald Reagan. The American people had separated the man from his politics."

Reagan went on to serve two full terms - the first president in almost three difficult decades to do so - and when he left office, he did so with sky-high approval ratings.

Just a few weeks ago, what would have been Reagan's 100th birthday was commemorated with a slew of rosy retrospectives. But the legend that was celebrated was arguably born 30 years ago today.

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BBC News - 'Spiderman' Alain Robert scales Burj Khalifa in Dubai

BBC News - 'Spiderman' Alain Robert scales Burj Khalifa in Dubai

Alain Robert, the French urban climber dubbed spiderman for his feats, has scaled the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

It took him six hours to ascend the 828-m (2,717-ft) tower in the United Arab Emirates city, including the tapered spire above the top floors.

A large crowd watched from the ground as he moved up the facade, picked out by spotlights after darkness fell.

Unusually, he used a rope and harness, to comply with safety requirements.

"I know that sometimes there may be some specific requirements," he told Reuters news agency before the climb.

"I do understand. You know, this is such an iconic building so I can understand that even though they are taking care so much about my precious life, they are also taking care a lot of that precious Burj Khalifa."

Triumphant wave

Strapped to a safety harness tethered more than 100 floors up, he began his climb up the silvery, glass-covered tower just after 1800 (1400 GMT) on Monday.

Moving methodically and swiftly along the metal facade, he ascended a central column, largely avoiding rows of pipes that could have slowed his climb.

Robert appeared not to use his harness

He did not appear to use the rope to pull himself up but instead gripped the glass and narrow metal ridges like a rock climber with his feet and bare hands, an Associated Press news agency correspondent reports.

On reaching the top, he waved triumphantly.

Robert, 48, has scaled more than 70 skyscrapers, including New York's Empire State Building and Chicago's Willis Tower in the US, and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, according to his website.

In 2004, he climbed Taiwan's Taipei 101, the world's tallest building at the time.

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BBC News - Can conflict minerals really be controlled?

BBC News - Can conflict minerals really be controlled?

28 March 2011 Last updated at 19:07 ET

Can conflict minerals really be controlled?

By James MelikReporter, Business Daily, BBC World Service

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act signed by President Obama in August 2010 will have implications beyond the canyons of Manhattan and the wider US.

This law is not just about making America's financial systems safer - it stretches thousands of kilometres to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Coming into effect on 1 April, it forces any manufacturer subject to US regulation to report on how it sources its so-called conflict minerals - such as cassiserite, coltan and wolfranite, which are mined in the DRC and widely used in mobile phones and laptops.

But how prepared are these countries to comply with the US ruling, and how easy will it be for US companies to trace the ultimate source of the minerals they buy?

Dubious links

Some of the proceeds from these rare minerals have been used to fund conflicts in the region, creating some of the worst humanitarian crises on record.

Some of the profit goes to the foreign companies that buy the minerals, which are then exported to places like Rwanda and South Africa.

Some of the money goes to Congolese export houses, and some of the money goes to the rebel groups who tend to press gang civilians into doing the mining for them.

DRC is a poor country, but many people have become very rich.

One basket, which a person can carry on their head, can contain minerals worth several thousand dollars.

It can be flown by plane, yet people can still make a profit from it.

Getting prepared

Paul Mabolia Yenga, a special adviser to the Ministry of Mines, and co-ordinator of the Kimberley process in the DRC, says the country is working very hard on this problem.

"On a local basis, we have agreements with the German Bureau of Geoscience on certification and transparency mechanisms," he says.

"We also have an agreement with organisations in the European Union, so all these agreements are part of an effort to have better traceability of our materials," he adds.

He emphasises that the DRC is a sovereign entity and it is doing everything it can to control the material going out of the DRC through the ministry of mines and the different services.

Daunting task

By some measurements as much as 80% of the minerals in Congo may be smuggled out, but Mr Yenga does not think those numbers are accurate.

"There is material going out, but the numbers are exaggerated," he insists.

Reflecting on the problems with diamonds, before the Kimberley Process came into force, he says there was a problem with neighbouring Congo Brazzaville.

"We all had our rules but people just put diamonds in their pocket and disappeared," he says.

"But when we had the international Kimberley Process, Congo Brazzaville was obliged to have some control. We are now trying to do the same with minerals."

He maintains that DRC is creating a data base with all the statistics for production and exports, to enable any anomalies to be tracked.

"We are also creating a mechanism for whistle-blowing to alert us to any improprieties," he adds.

Concerted efforts

The SEC rules mean that US companies will have to look very closely where their minerals are coming from, so there is a chance that DRC will lose business.

The mining industry in the DRC will suffer, because the US companies cannot say with total assurance that what they are receiving is legitimate.

"Our worry is that it is becoming a burden to the people of the US to buy the material out of Congo, because too many papers are going to get involved," Mr Yenga bemoans.

According to Rick Goss, of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC), whose members include Apple, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Nokia and Sony, the hi-tech industry has taken the lead on this issue.

"We have pioneered these concrete supply chain processes. There are other sectors of the US industry which are not as well prepared to deal with this requirement as the hi-tech sector is," he maintains.

"This is not an issue that the private sector can resolve on its own," he says.

"It is going to require the concerted effort and attention of international governments, and organisations such as the United Nations, to bring a lasting solution," he says.

"What we have is a humanitarian and political crisis in the Congo and it will take an international co-ordinated effort to address those underlying concerns," he says.

"It is clear from the illegal taxation, from the corrupt activities, that some of the mineral sourcing in the region is indeed being diverted to help fund some of the rebel activities and that is something our industry takes very seriously," he notes.

"Our primary commitment in this effort is to source legitimately and responsibly," he adds.

Will is work?

Can the new rules make it watertight?

There is no combination of private sector and public sector efforts which can lead to that conclusion, according to Mr Goss.

"There will not be a bulletproof solution," he says.

He says it will be impossible to make sure that not one single illicit shipment entered the supply chain.

"It is too complicated in terms of corruption - illegal taxation - to absolutely guarantee that an illegal shipment did not enter the supply chain, regardless of all private and public sector efforts," he warns.

The minerals could go elsewhere. Asian smelters are sourcing from any number of countries.

Are countries ready?

Rwanda has indicated that is it not ready to meet the deadline.

Analysts say Rwanda has the most transparent political system, but it borders the east of Congo, where a lot of the minerals are sourced.

This legislation was passed in July and they simply have not had enough time, according to the mining ministry.

The ministry has indicated that it is worried about losing income - about 30% of Rwanda's income comes from mining.

Smelters who melt down the minerals and then sell them to Apple or Microsoft are worried they will not be buying from them if they cannot produce a certificate saying their minerals are conflict free.

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) may be a convenient and low-cost means for rapidly determining a mineral's geographic origin.

The LIBS plasma emission spectrum provides a "chemical fingerprint" of any material in real-time.

Rwanda is faced with a catch-22 situation.

The country needs money to purchase the equipment which will make the system work, yet US companies may boycott minerals from the area because they cannot yet meet the necessary requirements.

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BBC News - 'A dream that never comes true'

BBC News - 'A dream that never comes true'

28 March 2011 Last updated at 06:51 ET

What is today's American Dream?

Toru Saito is an American citizen who was born in San Francisco. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941, and following America's entry into World War II, he and his family were imprisoned in the remote Topaz internment camp in Utah.

Toru was one of over 110,000 Japanese Americans interned without trial during the war on account of their Japanese ancestry.

He says the affects of his internment and the racism he experienced afterwards has meant that for him, the American Dream was never a reality.

"I have a saying, 'You can take the boy out of the camp but you can't take the camp out of the boy', and it's true. My life has been tainted by the concentration camp that I grew up in."

Toru was only four years old when he entered the camp but he remembers the look of fear on his mother's face.

"She speaks no English so she really didn't know what was going on, and I remember her face without words said, 'I'm under a lot of stress, I am fearful... so don't ask me any questions'."

"We were taken by soldiers who had United States Army on their uniform which was confusing to me. Why were we being herded by our own soldiers?"

The Topaz camp was in the middle of the Utah desert, a very different environment for the family to adjust to. The camp had 12 barracks, and provided little protection against the extreme weather of the desert. Medical facilities were primitive.

"There was no furniture and it was cold in the winter because the temperature went to 30 degrees below zero and in the summertime it was so hot you couldn't go in the buildings because they were black and there was no shade around," Toru remembers.

"There was barbed wire fencing all around and there were guard towers and all the guards were white… They weren't friendly to us and it was my first introduction to white Americans and that was a negative thing. They had guns with bayonets at the end and they were pretty scary."

Toru's family were interned for three years. "We were kept in the dark - we didn't know when we were going to be released. We missed home."

When it became clear the US was winning the war the Japanese prisoners at Topaz were told they could leave, and slowly they began to evacuate the camp.

The government gave each of them $25 and a bus ride to the railway station. Many internees had lost their homes, jobs and possessions. Toru says they had to rebuild their lives.

"Towards the end of our imprisonment in the camp… the government was pushing us to leave but we had no place to go because we had lost our homes.

"We had letters from our neighbours saying 'We don't want any Japs back on our street.'"

Without a country

He has had a recurring nightmare since that time.

"I had this dream that the news came to our block that the soldiers are hanging people… They had built gallows in Block 1 and they were hanging all the Japanese and we were next because they were in Block 3.

"All my life I've had this dream… It was so powerful and frightening to me as a kid."

All these years later, former internees react in different ways to their imprisonment in the camps. Some have never spoken of it. Others have forgiven, if not forgotten. Toru remains very angry.

"When I went to school in the camps we learned the pledge of allegiance and at the end of the pledge it says 'with liberty and justice for all'".

"But as an adult I learned that our rights and our freedom didn't mean anything, our constitution didn't apply to us."

"We didn't get the dream - we got the back end of the dream. We got a lot of discrimination, a lot of hatred. A lot of my friends say in private that they are still very bitter about what this country did to them."

Toru says that when Americans talk today about achieving happiness and success and the Dream - the idea that all men are equal - he remains disenchanted.

"I think the American Dream is just that, it's a dream that for most of us never comes true. I worked in three county jails as a counsellor and in my six years of working in a jail, I never once had a Japanese prisoner, never once.

"We obey the laws, we are good citizens. We work hard on the job, we're good neighbours… and what do we get for it? We're thrown in camps. Our rights are violated."

"To this day we're referred to as Japanese Americans - Americans second, Japanese first. I've been told many times, 'You Japs should go back to Japan. I'm 73-years-old, I've never been there. This is my country but I feel like a man without a country."

Many U.S. Blacks Moving to South, Reversing Trend

March 24, 2011

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ROBERT GEBELOFF

WASHINGTON — The percentage of the nation’s black population living in the South has hit its highest point in half a century, according to census data released Thursday, as younger and more educated black residents move out of declining cities in the Northeast and Midwest in search of better opportunities.

The share of black population growth that has occurred in the South over the past decade — the highest since 1910, before the Great Migration of blacks to the North — has upended some long-held assumptions.

Both Michigan and Illinois, whose cities have rich black cultural traditions, showed an overall loss of blacks for the first time, said William Frey, the chief demographer at theBrookings Institution.

And Atlanta, for the first time, has replaced Chicago as the metro area with the largest number of African-Americans after New York. About 17 percent of blacks who moved to the South in the past decade left New York State, far more than from any other state, the census data show.

At the same time, blacks have begun leaving cities for more affluent suburbs in large numbers, much like generations of whites before them.

“The notion of the North and its cities as the promised land has been a powerful part of African-American life, culture and history, and now it all seems to be passing by,” said Clement Price, a professor of history at Rutgers-Newark. “The black urban experience has essentially lost its appeal with blacks in America.”

During the turbulent 1960s, black population growth ground to a halt in the South, and Southern states claimed less than 10 percent of the national increase then. The South has increasingly claimed a greater share of black population growth since — about half the country’s total in the 1970s, two-thirds in the 1990s and three-quarters in the decade that just ended.

The percentage of black Americans living in the South is still far lower than before the Great Migration in the earlier part of the last century, when 90 percent did. Today it is 57 percent, the highest since 1960.

“This is the decade of black flight,” said Mr. Frey. “It’s a new age for African-Americans. It’s long overdue, but it seems to be happening.”

The five counties with the largest black populations in 2000 — Cook in Illinois, Los Angeles, Wayne in Michigan, Kings in New York and Philadelphia — all lost black population in the last decade. Among the 25 counties with the biggest increase in black population, three-quarters are in the South.

The Rev. Ronald Peters, who moved last year from Pittsburgh to Atlanta, said it was refreshing to be part of a hopeful black middle class that was not weighed down by the stigmas and stereotypes of the past, as he felt it was in the urban Northeast.

“Too often, people turn on TV and all they see are black men in chains,” said Mr. Peters, president of the Interdenominational Theological Center, a seminary in Atlanta. “Atlanta is a clear example of a different type of ethos. The black community is not people who have lost their way.”

Increasingly blacks are moving to places with small black populations. Just 2 percent of the black population growth in the last decade occurred in counties that have traditionally been black population centers, while 20 percent has occurred in counties where only a tiny fraction of the population had been black.

Segregation declined during the decade. Among the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, 92 showed segregation declines with most of the largest occurring in growing areas in the South and West, Mr. Frey said.

The South was the fastest growing region over all, up 14 percent from 2000. Its white population increased as well, though whites grew substantially in the West as well, something that was not the case for blacks. Growth of Asian and Hispanic populations — which grew the fastest over all — was widely distributed throughout the nation.

“The center of population has moved south in the most extreme way we’ve ever seen in history,” said Robert Groves, director of the Census Bureau.

Northern blacks were a big part of Southern gains. There are now more than one million black residents of the South who were born in the Northeast, a tenfold increase since 1970.

Blacks who moved to the South were disproportionately young — 40 percent were adults ages 21 to 40, compared with 29 percent of the nonmigrant black population. One in four newcomers had a four-year college degree, compared to one in six of the black adults who had already lived in the South.

Cicely Bland, 36, a publishing company owner who left her home in Jersey City in 2006 for Stockbridge, an Atlanta suburb, said life was better because it was more affordable. Her choice was as much about cultural affinity as it was job opportunities.

“The business and political opportunities are here,” she said. “You have a lot of African-Americans with a lot of influence, and they’re in my immediate networks.”

Over all, the black population grew by 11 percent in large metropolitan counties, but by 15 percent in adjacent smaller counties in the metropolitan area, suggesting a strong movement of blacks to the suburbs. The top 10 fastest-growing areas were suburbs, census officials said.

Not everyone was well off. Katherine Curtis, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who specializes in demography and inequality, said blacks who returned to the states where they were born tended to have a higher poverty rate than those who went to other Southern states. One reason could be that they moved back for family, not economic opportunity, she said.

The black population grew by 11 percent over the decade, faster than the 1 percent growth in the white population, but far behind the 43 percent growth in the Hispanic population, whose increase made up more than half of all population growth in the decade.

But there were declines among blacks under 18, down 2 percent for the decade. The population of white children was down 10 percent, with 46 states experiencing declines in the white youth population, Mr. Frey said. Children from minority groups are now about 46 percent of the total population under 18, compared with 53 percent for whites.

In Atlanta, Mr. Peters, who grew up in New Orleans, viewed the changes as a source of pride for Americans, saying the South had changed a lot in his lifetime.

“One of the things that I grew up with was looking forward to the day that there would be a New South,” he said. “This is it. The New South represents a more inclusive community, what we can become as a country.”

Sabrina Tavernise reported from Washington, and Robert Gebeloff from New York. Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta.

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HOMMAGE:Maître Capello, figure populaire du petit écran, est mort

LEMONDE.FR avec AFP | 22.03.11 | 11h28  •  Mis à jour le 22.03.11 | 18h11

Figure populaire du petit écran, intraitable sur la grammaire, Maître Capello, de son vrai nom Jacques Capelovici, mort dimanche 20 mars, a incarné à travers "Les Jeux de 20 heures" sur FR3 le maître d'école pointilleux et sévère que de nombreux téléspectateurs gardent en mémoire.

retrouver ce média sur www.ina.fr

Le sourcil broussailleux et le visage rondouillard, Maître Capello excellait dans le rôle d'arbitre de la langue française, traquant sans pitié les fautes de grammaire lors du célèbre jeu télévisé de FR3.

Diffusé pendant plus de dix ans de 1976 à 1986, ce jeu mettait en scène célébrités et candidats en province qui s'affrontaient sur des questions de culture générale.

Jacques Capelovici apparaît aussi régulièrement dans d'autres émissions de télévision pour des interventions ponctuées de son fameux "de bon aloi".

AMATEUR DE PALINDROME

Maître Capello avait forgé le palindrome "Esope reste ici et se repose", qui figure dans le Larousse, ou "Eric notre valet alla te laver ton ciré". Eric, ajoutait-il, peut être avantageusement remplacé par Luc.

Il aimait aussi taquiner l'acrostiche, ces poèmes dont les initiales de chaque vers, lues verticalement, composent un mot ou une expression se rapportant au sujet du poème. Il citait volontiers ce petit bijou de George Sand à Musset : "Cette insigne faveur que votre cœur réclame/Nuit à ma renommée et répugne à mon âme."Arrière-grand-père d'un petit Hadrien, Maître Capello soulignait qu'il s'agissait de l'anagramme d'"enhardi".

Cet agrégé d'anglais rectifiait aussi la prononciation des mots anglais : on doit dire"smash" au tennis et non "sma(t)sh" comme beaucoup de commentateurs sportifs. Mais il partait surtout en guerre contre le mauvais usage du français. Nul besoin de"marcher à pied, marcher suffit, à moins de marcher sur la tête ou les mains...", relevait-il.

On ne dit pas "commémorer un anniversaire" mais le "célébrer". "Ce que l'on commémore, c'est un événement"; on ne "rentre pas en 6^e", on "y entre" ; on"essuie un tableau mais on ne l'efface pas", expliquait-il ainsi doctement à la télévision dans une émission de Michel Drucker en 1984.

Son surnom de "Maître", passé à la postérité, il l'a d'abord acquis lors de ses années de professeur. Au lycée Lakanal de Sceaux, où il enseignait l'anglais, ses élèves l'appelaient déjà "Maître".

"Depuis un an, il était très fatigué. Il ne marchait plus et était en soins palliatifs dans une maison médicalisée", a confié sa fille Françoise, confirmant une information publiée sur le site de Télé 7 Jours, son dernier employeur. "Son départ est une délivrance pour lui. Il s'est vu très vite diminué et, les derniers jours, il était dans le coma", a-t-elle ajouté.

Les obsèques de Jacques Capelovici seront célébrées lundi 28 mars à 14 h 30 au cimetière du Montparnasse, où il sera inhumé dans le caveau familial.

Maître Capello a publié ses grilles de mots fléchés dans Télé 7 jours jusqu'en décembre dernier. "Il avait préparé des grilles jusqu'à cette date, mais il ne travaillait plus depuis un an en raison de sa vue devenue trop basse, a expliquéFrançoise Capelovici. Il s'est rendu compte qu'il ne pouvait plus corriger les épreuves et a demandé au magazine de trouver un successeur."

En 1983, l'animateur des "Jeux de 20 heures", Jean-Pierre Descombes chante"Maître Capello", chanson hommage au juge-arbitre de l'émission qui vient le rejoindre avant la fin de sa chanson.

retrouver ce média sur www.ina.fr

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BBC News - The 'lost' footage of Bob Marley's early career

The 'lost' footage of Bob Marley's early career

By Ron BholaBBC World Service

A film charting the rise of Bob Marley and The Wailers to international stardom is set to get its first public viewing. The footage taken in the early 1970s was lost for almost 30 years. Ron Bhola went to meet the film's creator, Esther Anderson.

It was New York, late 1972, and Esther Anderson was attending an event hosted by Island Records, when Bob Marley walked in.

"He didn't smile but he was very handsome with strong features, he reminded me of Jimi Hendrix," she remembers.

Bob Marley was a guest of record producer Chris Blackwell, who had recently signed his group The Wailers to Island Records. The band was on a promotional tour for The Wailer's first album, Catch a Fire, although at that point sales were low.

Ms Anderson had just finished co-starring in A Warm December with Sidney Poitier. Due to the success of that movie, Bob Marley told her he knew about her and had been following her progress in the newspaper The Gleaner back in Jamaica.

After hearing The Wailer's first album, Ms Anderson realised the huge potential of the group.

'An outsider'

"I hear the lyrics I hear the sound, and I know this is an original sound and original lyrics," she says.

The world in 1973 was a very different place - the idea of a Jamaican supergroup in the vein of The Beatles or The Rolling Stones was radical.

To help with the publicity for a re-launch of the Wailers album, Ms Anderson decided to photograph and film Bob, as they travelled with Island Records' lawyer and his girlfriend, and Jim Capaldi from Traffic, across the Caribbean.

"Bob wasn't famous then and you see it in the pictures... he's like an outsider, he's not really with them," she says.

Returning to Jamaica, she carried on filming with her Super 8 camera, taking photographs of all the members of The Wailers.

One moment captured on camera stands out for Ms Anderson.

"A human moment I call it," she says as she points to one of her photographs showing Bob Marley helping a man fit a tyre to his car.

"The taxi broke down. Bob got out of the car. He picked up the tyre and he started to help the man change the wheel," she says.

"Here is this guy who thought he wasn't big enough to help a fellow human being. I just found that so amazing and so human and unaffected."

Under the mango tree

Another of her photographs shows Bob Marley sitting under a mango tree.

"Bob used to call this his office," says Ms Anderson, "because he said, 'a man sitting behind a desk can con you in every kind of way.' So, if Chris wanted a meeting with him he'd have to have it under the mango tree."

Much of the footage was recorded at Island House, then Island Records' office, at 56 Hope Road, Kingston, Jamaica, which is now home to the Bob Marley museum.

This would be part of a documentary to get what Ms Anderson describes as an intimate portrait of the musicians, to help The Wailers get into the mainstream. It was to be targeted at university students in the US.

"I was shooting the film to be shown in the universities because that's how we crossed over all our artists. The students embraced the music in America first," says Esther Anderson.

But it wasn't easy. She had to use the money she had earned from A Warm December to fund the shoot.

"I had no budget. Chris said go ahead but I had to do it on my own. So I gathered a crew and equipment and I started to film," says Ms Anderson.

The original Wailers, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Neville Livingston (later re-named Bunny Wailer), spent the days at Hope Road "talking about philosophy, the sufferings of the people". Esther Anderson captured all this with her filming and photographs.

Rasta and Reggae

She encouraged Bob to meet true Rastafarians, arranging a picnic with Ras Daniel Hartman, premier Rasta painter of Jamaica and star of the 1972 film The Harder They Come.

With her camera she captured Bob Marley and Ras Daniel Hartman together. From behind the lens she recognised that the marriage between the two, Rasta and Reggae, would show the world where the music came from.

Her images reflected this realisation and have become among the most iconic portraits of Bob Marley. Her innovation was to marry Rastafarianism's colours and lifestyle within her compositions of the band.

"The red, green and gold and all of that were my ideas," she says. "I shot the thing and put it together and sent it over [to London]."

The images were used for the first poster of Bob Marley, T-shirts and the album cover of Catch a Fire.

Ms Anderson remembers taking the iconic picture of Bob smoking a spliff that is still used to sell his image.

"That picture was taken on a beautiful morning. I made him take his shirt off because I loved the colour of his skin. The sunlight hitting on his body reflecting back on my lens. I used Kodak Ektachrome which gives that lovely golden light.

By March, 1973 Esther had left Jamaica to accompany and help manage The Wailers' tours of the UK and the US. She left the film and the video tapes with Island Records for safe keeping while she toured with The Wailers in the UK and US. She says that by the time she returned, the films had "disappeared".

The recordings were lost until 2000, when a British documentary maker turned up at her door.

Jeremy Marre had come to interview her for his own documentary, Rebel Music. It was then she realised that among the archive material he had were tapes that actually belonged to her.

Reunited with her footage, Ms Anderson is now, after 38 years, presenting her film, Bob Marley - The Making of a Legend.

Bob Marley died 30 years ago, although his music is bigger than when he was alive. As she finishes off the last-minute editing, Ms Anderson says she regrets his untimely passing despite his "prodigious legacy of work".

And what does she think he would be doing were he still here? "He would have continued to have been writing great songs, probably breaking a lot of women's hearts and having many babies, just the same as Charlie Chaplin," she laughs.BBC News - The 'lost' footage of Bob Marley's early career

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