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The boys were found there a week ago trying to bring those water levels down that they can get them out as they flee as possible the Japanese prime minister Shinzo abbé has canceled his overseas trip this week in the wake of torrential rains that have killed more than 100 people in western Japan rescue workers are digging through mud and rubble to reach those trapped by extensive flooding and landslides a government spokesman said several dozen people were missing the rains have now eased but survivors say supplies of bottled water are running low and electricity supplies have also been hit. A murder investigation has been launched following the death of a woman who had been exposed to the nerve agent Novacek in southern England prime minister to reason May said she was shocked and appalled by the killing of dawn Sturgis Aparna remains in a critical condition the pair were exposed to the nerve agent 9 days ago it's thought they may have handled a container left behind by those who attempted to kill the former Russian spy surrogate scrip owl and his daughter in March that attack has been widely blamed on the Kremlin You're listening to World News from the b.b.c. . The son of South Africa's former president Jacob Zuma is expected to be charged with corruption today to design a Zuma has been seen arriving at a police station in Johannesburg the charges are thought to be linked to an alleged bribery scandal involving the Gupta family to design a who's 34 has denied any wrongdoing. The number of people killed in a train derailment on Sunday in northeastern Turkey has risen to 24 more than 100 passengers are still in hospital investigators suspect that the train which was bound for Istanbul left the rails after heavy rains washed out the track bedding and today as at last check the railway line in April. A court in Myanmar has decided to press charges against 2 Reuters journalists who've been in detention for the past 7 months his Asia Pacific editor Celia Hatton one of the Reuters journalists while alone spoke to reporters after it was announced that the court would proceed with the case against him and his colleague just so we will face the court he said we will not retreat give up or be shaken by this the Reuters journalist in NY breaching the colonial era Official Secrets Act Their lawyer says the pair were targets of the sting operation as they've been investigating the killing of Rohinton Muslims in Rakhine state the prosecution said information carried by the reporters ranged from confidential to top secret foreign ministers from a number of Balkan nations are meeting in London on Monday they're expected to discuss regional security and measures to reduce economic stagnation corruption and poor governance Australian conservationists are celebrating the birth of the 1st time in the wild in 50 years of 3 letters of eastern quolls a capsized carnivorous marsupial the Qual was driven to extinction on the Australian mainland by disease and predators the creatures were reintroduced to the Buddha every national park near Sydney from the island of Tasmania earlier this year b.b.c. News. Welcome to talk on the b.b.c. World Service with me Stephen Sackur my guest today has made death the focus of her professional life developing a set of forensic skills which has won her international run they'll sue black is a professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology specialism is interpret the clues and stories that lie with the in human remains she has worked on some of the most difficult and sensitive exit mation and identification assignments of recent times ranging from mass murder sites in Kosovo to the tsunami hit beaches of Thailand unlike most of us she relishes the challenge of looking day in the face and her investigative skills I lied to her and told Michael knowledge have made her a key asset in a number of high profile cases. And sexual abuse it is a job which takes us into some of the darkest physical and mental places it is possible to imagine So why does she find it so rewarding well please join me and an audience here at the Hay Festival in Wales in welcoming Sue Black. Black a very warm welcome to hog How is it that you have found yourself in gauging day in a way that so few of us can imagine for many of us it's something we shy away from something we find very difficult and yet you confront it head on why do you think that is I think it's because I don't confront it. It isn't Sinatra sorry it's somebody who walks with you your entire life and my grandmother came from a tiny little village on the west coast called Glen now and she had as a West Coaster one of these people who'd been. And 2nd sight and believed in the world beyond and for her death was always her companion somebody she would talk with somebody that she felt she knew and she passed that on to me as a child and she would talk to me as a child about her friend Death and my maiden name was Gunn. My name is Susan marker guns so I became known as a submachine gun. And my father was a great shot and so from a very early age I would be getting rabbits and plucking pheasants that my father a chop because my mother wouldn't do it so that didn't phase to the physical reality. Of bodies albeit not human ones it was with you from a very early age. In your goal when you. Volunteered to work as a. Didn't volunteer my father was a Presbyterian Scots and he said when I was 12 years old what are you going to do for a job and I thought he meant a job when I was and what he really meant was what are you going to do now and he expected me to have a job because he expected me to pay half of my income to my mother for my board and lodging that was my responsibility and where children are listening to my dear do it either and so my friend Susan got me a job in a farm shop selling carrots and things and I hated it so I went across the yard into the butcher shop and loved it. Because you've written an extraordinary book about your life and career you say that I was up to my. Blog. And you clearly in a way relish Oh I love to if you go into a butcher shop it's the most wonderfully clean precise place a butcher knows exactly where to place his blade to cut ties a piece of meat there's a precision there's an art to it and then you layer time it's something that really is I think almost poetic and I knew that I. Going to be squeamish about things because it's always very cold in which a shop and we used to look forward very much indeed to the vans coming out from the Avatar particularly on the days when liver was being delivered because the livers were always warm and your hands were always cold so you can warm your hands up and use the Count blood to actually get your own going and if you're going to do that then you're never ever going to be somebody who's squeamish you decided to take this interest. In your academic life found yourself dissecting human bodies and that was a part of your training as a forensic anthropologist you've written very interesting about there and I want to I want to tease it out with you you said that eventually so many imprints itself on your soul and that when you have gone through this period of learning dissecting bodies learning about the structure of the nervous system everything taking it apart really feeling it you say you have mentioned you consider yourself a member of a privileged elite but what do you mean by that everybody interacts with the people around them on an x. Sternal surface so you interact with somebody's face or somebody's body somebody is hands from the eyesight we're given that rare rare opportunity to interact with people on the inside as well as on the outside and when you make that 1st cut into human skin with a scalpel It's an incredible Rubicon that you never can never cross it again the 1st time you make that count did you find it difficult but 1st cut into it is terrified I can remember my hands doing this and it's no accident when you decide to start on the chest because you don't have to come out and there's a big bone sits under there so you can't cut you can't make too many mistakes and I realized by the time I'd made the 1st cut actually had not had not caught her breath at all I was so scared that I was going to do something wrong that Clarkson's were. Going to sign somewhere and somebody was going to call me a fraud and haul me out and you know nothing happens but what an amazing world when you can peel away the skin and you can see what's underneath and each one of those sounds and tissue work together pretty well and harmony every single day of our lines to keep us alive is nothing short of American Let's get to what it actually means to be a forensic anthropologist because it seems to me there's some something really interesting really different about what you do from the pathologist who we know you know looks at the dead body and tries to figure out how it died the process of death what led to the death your lot so much about what led to the death your about the identity of the person who is now dead and you're using the remains the corpse the work backward and form a picture of the identity of that person how important is it to you to see it as something in a sense positive it which is very positive because what we have to do is we have to try to realign the dead body with the identity that person had holes they were in life and humans in a police investigation where you have a body and you don't know who that person is then you don't know which family to go and talk to his friends how to piece together the information that has led to that death most of us are going to die in a hospital or a hospice in our car or we're going to carry something that tells you who we are but when you find with information it's extremely important we can't investigate the murder until we know who you are you say called investigate a murder called you earlier an investigator despite all of your science training and your your your skills in anatomy. Do you see yourself at home to be an investigator only in terms of the evidence that's and front of us so we don't investigate the crime That's the police's responsibility. But we will interrogate and investigate the evidence that's placed before us and the evidence may well be the human body so if you have somebody who body parts are find because we had a dismemberment then we will identify which is which body part do they belong to the same person so there's the 1st investigation then we have to identify what implement may have been used to cut that body into pieces was the body lying on his back or lying on its front when that limb was removed was it with a knife was it with the saw and so these questions only do through the investigative process it's a question of looking sometimes for the tiniest clue I mean if we go into some of the. So the extraordinarily difficult cases that you've had to deal with let's go to. You being called him to go to Kosovo to help with the investigation into alleged war crimes and you found yourself in a village where I think 40 people including children had been governed. In one particular place and by the time you got there what was left so when we arrived there which is probably it was probably about 6 or 7 months later what you have in the 2 rooms are coming gold remains there very badly decomposed because you have $2830.00 degree heat you have partially burned trains there more or less covered by the tiles that have fallen from the roof and the wild roaming packs of dogs view this as a food source so the bodies will have been partly pulled apart and separated by the dogs as well so that's what you find is a boiling mass of maggots partly buried partly parents and partly dispersed by animals were you able to use your skills learned them to for those individuals son so what you have is what we have this meth the d.n.a. So. Everything which often doesn't you have to have a sample with which to compare that d.n.a. And we generally didn't for these individuals so that what we would do is we would go down on hands and these are in these white Teletubbies suits that make you look a whole lot fatter than even you know I am and you have black plastic song and you have the face mask and you have double layer gloves and 20 degree heat and you literally will go through the floor fingertip until you find the 1st bit of a body or a bone and then you'll start to create the outline of that individual you lift that individual and generally by this point most of the soft tissue is gone see you're looking at and you're identifying Yes it is a male what sort of age is the male What sort of height is the male is there anything about them in terms of their dentition or a disease that they've had or a broken bone that they have that might help their family identify them or are they still wearing some clothing and there's something in the pockets you have described this is one of the greatest experiences of your life. I'm struggling to relate to that because it just sounds like your vision of hell to me I do I can see why it would be a vision of hell and certainly I'd never done anything on that sort of a scale before most of the work that I've done within the u.k. Had been on single single burials or are maybe in a single murders so the scale of it was an enormous education for me but also knowing that that this was going to an international criminal court meant that even in the most adverse of circumstances we still had to be able to work to the standards that were always expected to work to so the challenge was to make sure that our standards didn't slip Do you see what you do. In part to restore dignity to people. Do you see it as an act of humanity because in the end we're talking about human beings who have in the case of Kosovo but another crime seems that you've worked on human beings who have suffered from the most terrible. I mean some evil if we can put it that way and you see yourself as restoring something we have to be very careful because when you're out there as a scientist you're expected to be objective it's not your job to become emotional advice that it's not your job to become involved in it you have no guilt it's not your responsibility you don't have a job as you do have when you or don't you can't it's not your place this is about justice and justice is will determine who is guilty and who is innocent My job is not to judge anybody my job is to gather evidence analyze evidence presented evidence and let somebody else the side own guilt if you allow yourself to become emotionally involved in these situations you become a less effective objective scientists and you may well be called to court in The Hague and you have to stand there with all clear conscience saying I believe this is my opinion not I desperately want to get him and put him away for the rest of his life that's not our job and you have to fight against that if that's in you you have to fight against it we're going back to my question what point about humanity has it colored your view of what we human beings are really low you can what we're really capable of. I think we've always known what the human is capable of but what I find is that in these Her renders circumstances and they really are truly awful there is always wonderful humanity so you might have a waiter who has lost her husband artillery and her entire family and when you come along to examine that grave she's still there with you for you with a cup of tea her way of expressing her thanks for what you're doing and I've never found a horrendous situation in the world that has an absence of some humanity somewhere and that's what you have to look for because that's what really reassures us of what humans are genuinely capable of and you can't constantly. I wonder if you've ever been just overwhelmed by the scale of something that you've had to face I'm thinking of the tsunami for example probably many of us remember how awful it was to hear that news in the very end I think of 2004 that this tsunami destroyed so many coastal areas from Sri Lanka Thailand Indonesia catching holidaymakers in local people and hundreds of thousands of people died and you were called by which I think you decided to send yourself even before you were really called you went to Thailand to help in the victim adventure cation if it bit but it was so overwhelming it was and what people were doing was they were collecting bodies and they were putting them on the back of trucks and they were driving them into the cities and leaving these bodies at the temples and so in searing heat you would have these bodies that in front of you were rows upon rows just decomposing in the heat as you almost watch them bloating to the point that the skin would break and we had you know as you can imagine just flies everywhere maggots everywhere rats everywhere it was really if there was a hell on earth I think it was those early days in Thailand in particular let me change tack a little bit and talk about crime and here we are at a festival devoted to literature and crime fiction is a huge thing and I know you've become great friends with a fellow Scot Val McDermid who's a great crime writer but she writes a lot in quite gory detail about violent crime and you've I believe offered her some advice and I just wonder whether sometimes you fear that you run the risk of feeding a somewhat voyeuristic tendency in us to want to know about how to dismember a body what happens to a body is it as it sort of erodes over time we sort of intrigue where repelled but are you feeding a voyeurism in all of and I just. Definitely there there's no doubt that we all like a good murder mystery and if people are going to be scared by crime I'd rather they were scared by true crime than by absolute an utter fictional crime that makes things totally unbelievable when you are as important if you're talking about how a body can be dismembered you're think it's important to get the details so you know how difficult it will is because there are so few people will ever become a dismember ever that chance is that what I'm doing is educating them is extremely slim but those people who read forensic novels are probably more forensically aware than any any part of the public has ever been before and they can quickly smell live something that doesn't signed rights so what I have is a huge amount of respect for the crime writers who actually go away and research what is it really like so that what they're doing is they're respecting their readers to say this is reality I'm not just made this up this is actually how it would be and I have respect for that you've written a book which is full of extraordinary stories and you describe so many kill experiences you've had with death but what you don't do and I don't know whether you feel like doing it. Your own feelings about what happens after death if if when you've looked at all of these dead bodies it makes you more or less convinced that there is nothing else or whether you believe having seen so much there very is a lot of to life I have no idea but when I get there I suspect I won't come back to tell you and says far as I'm aware nobody has ever genuinely come back. Now I know that we have people who die in the operating theatre and are brought back by by medical life but there comes a point beyond which you don't come back we don't have zombies I spent my entire life with the dead now never seen a ghost in my life the living. Living spoke to me the living are weird Ok they don't move when you put them down they stay there and they don't get help and. Coldly rational about it I mean it's rational so I had a lovely conversation just before we came in here with Patsy and I she said to me what we wanted to fight what happens before we were born oh well why should we worry about the other end are there somebody switched a light on to give us life to somebody else which often to end it at the end of the day but why should we worry the world the world let's not get into why should we worry but I just don't know whether it's possible for you to apply the same rationality and logic for example to your own loved ones because we've all in this room experience probably most of us if not all of us experience death within our own families and I just wonder whether you when you experience a day in your own family I know you've lost both your parents whether your feelings . They did bodies has been different from the feelings you took with you to Kosovo or to Thailand or to those major police investigations you were told my mother giant healthy to death within 6 weeks and my father took a long time to die because of Alzheimer's and what was hard was their dying their death wasn't hard and them being dead wasn't hard it was watching what they went through in the dying process so whether that was painful whether it was protracted whether it was they were somewhere that they'd they'd never wanted to be but when death came for both of them it was an absolute and utter release for them and everybody and being dads they were. A lot smaller than they were in life they looked very small very shrunken but they were gone and there is something for a cool thing as world you do feel. Digging deep into sort of difficult things would do when you saw your shrink or. Did you feel that his soul my father let go and by that point my father had don't believe in a soul so I guess what I do is new because something happens and something changed I was there I held his hands when he took his last breath in life and I felt there was nothing more that I could have done for him as a daughter and that it was the most privileged place that I could ever have been and it was such a gentle process for him that he decided he'd had enough he stopped drinking he stopped eating he turned his face to the wall and he decided he was going to die and when he took that last breath and the rattle that you hear when they talk about the death rattle is pretty much the fluid that goes into the lungs that comes out of the last breath and I knew he'd gone and I had no trouble leaving my father's body but I would never have left my father believed still alive and in the last breath something changed but my father ceased to be and the body that was left was not my father it was just the vessel that he occupied for his entire life my father had gone he had died is there something beyond I don't know until I get there but. I fear you're not just told I think it is the last great adventure you're going to do it once in a lifetime. If you're going on a long journey you will always prepare for the journey what why do we not prepare for dying and I think I want to experience every single moment of it I want to know what it's like to die because I can't remember being born so I'd really like to know in those last stages this is what it feels like this is what it sounds like this is what it tastes like. And then presumably I'll remember none of it because I'll just die and when you give your body to science and dissection Absolutely I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't so I have an organ donor card that they can use my organs to keep other people alive for as long as they their abuse to anybody I suspect by the time I'm 65 they're so far down that nobody's going to want them anyway so I fill in my between the form to my anatomy department and I will hands my body to them when I die so that students can decide and then I I want them to be able to gather together my buttons you have to boil them down to get rid of all the facts and all the bits of muscle attached to it and then I want them to restring me into an articulated skeleton so that I can carry on living and teaching for the rest of my debt I've got a lot of interviews in which I called Think of them all finite way of ending an end to you so I think you'll just say suit black it's been an enormous pleasure to have you on thank you very much for your. Distribution of the b.b.c. World Service and the u.s. Has made possible by American Public Media producer and distributor of award winning public radio content a.p.m. American Public Media with support from Epson the Epson eco tank 4750 printer comes with 2 years of age in the box for all your business printing needs cartridge free printing with the eco tank more information at Epson dot com slash eco tank. The trade war between the u.s. And China is in full swing but even before this other tariffs were hurting American companies along about October November things started going crazy and what we can learn from how previous tariffs played out and what's to come this afternoon on All Things Considered from n.p.r. News. P.b.s. Strives to provide quality news with truth integrity and diverse voices if we give them the right tools they can get off the street to cast homeland security develop procedures to reunite. This escapee b.s. San Diego's n.p.r. Station. You're listening to k. P.b.s. a Public service of San Diego State University s.t.s. You celebrates 121 years supporting San Diego's economic growth. B.b.c. News with David Harper the operation has resumed to rescue 8 boys and their football coach who remain trapped in a cave complex in Thailand 4 boys were brought out on Sunday tight officials have not released their identities but say they're being kept in quarantine in hospital and have not yet been reunited with their parents David Davis the former British cabinet minister who had been leading negotiations to leave the European Union has been defending his decision on Sunday to resign he told the b.b.c. There's a new approach formulated by the prime minister to resign May when Britain was giving away too much too easily British police have started a murder investigation after the death of a woman who'd been contaminated by the nerve agent Navi chalk the prime minister said she was appalled by the killing of dawn Sturgis who came into contact with a chemical 9 days ago. The remaining President Klaus Yohannes has removed the anticorruption chief prosecutor from office giving way to a constitutional court ruling in May Mr Hannis issued a decree to remove. From the post saying constitutional court rulings should be a bait in a state that respects the rule of law he and the country's judicial watch dog had previously refused to endorse the ruling the son of South Africa's former president Jacob Zuma has arrived at a police station in Johannesburg where he is expected to be charged with corruption the charge charges against duties on a Zuma of oil to be linked to an alleged bribery scandal involving the Gupta family he's denied any wrongdoing a court in Myanmar has decided to press charges against 2 Reuters journalists who've been in detention for the past 7 months they deny accusations they breach ma'am are Official Secrets Act and for the 1st time in 50 years a rare marsupial called the Eastern quo has given birth in the wild in mainland Australia the choir was driven to extinction there but this year scientists reintroduced the animal from Tasmania b.b.c. News. And high af can pick up some glasses everything they can and mine right outside. Hello I'm on way to this is business daily from the d.v.c. And in this edition with focusing on lens on the I went business I just bought 2 pairs of prescription glasses that was my reading once Yes I can say it's great but visiting my local opticians here in London was somewhat overwhelming did I want very focused bifocals tented scratch resistant well mirrored coatings that's just the lenses there was also the frames to consider so much choice and this is so nice but the saying I feel look at the world through rose colored glasses ever get pretty much all the brains and lenses on show were manufactured by just 2 companies you've probably never heard of and now those same 2 companies a merge and to create the global. They really will have a virtual monopoly at optical retailers so why have so many competition authorities around the world given this merger the green light quite simply because the facts of the case did not lead us to to intervene that's why I'm looking at the. Rose colored glasses. That it is was most perfect all right yeah thank you very much like that Bye bye thank you my new glasses set me back about 200 dollars not cheap and they weren't even branded there's a reason the i way industries were some 115000000000 dollars globally today fat profit margins and we'll come back to those in just a moment 1st though how did I Where go from being just a medical device. A fashion accessory well in large part is down to this man. I've always hated depending on others I've always preferred calling the shots myself. Everything stemmed from my fear of being dependent on others That's Leonardo De Vecchio he's the octogenarian founder and chairman of the Italian company looks off to the world's biggest maker of eyeglass frames He's an industry titan revered and feared in equal measure he's also Italy's richest man and one of the country's biggest taxpayers no small achievement for someone who grew up in an orphanage became an apprentice to a toolmaker man before setting up his eyeglass frame company in 1961 in northern Italy exotic as main manufacturing base is still there in those sunny foothills of the Italian Dolemite But today the company makes frames for a huge range of luxury brands Armani Prada Burberry Ralph Lauren and more when you buy a pair Chanel glasses they're not made by Chanel but by looks or to go look such you can also owns Ray-Ban and Oakley and it's heavily involved in the distribution and retailing of I wear to its outlets or chains include Lens Crafters Pearl vision some grass huts and many many more in fact over the years it's actually talked for buying up competitors has sometimes appeared somewhat insatiable Here's Mr Della Vecchia again. The problem here. I've always had big problems with distributors because they made payments and placed orders when they wanted material I remember one year when one American importer came in November as usual to buy for the next sunglasses season and he ordered fewer glasses and the year before I lost sleep over that I wondered what would happen if other distributors started doing the same I realized then that even distributors weren't good enough for me the turning point came when I decided to buy out the distributors I liked most the next turning point came when we went straight to the consumer your eye. Having our own retail outlets we bought America's largest have retail chain back gives off security not of their vacuo recounting his story on the looks ought to go website some would describe its expansion as aggressive which is why looks up because decision to merge with the world's biggest manufacturer of lenses raised some eyebrows when it was announced last year that lens make a is a France and it controls some 40 percent of the world's prescription lens market so well except you guys are all about fashion and the statics I see though is well it has a different kind of reputation. To come. To the function tend to run up the core business is even more philanthropic. Driven away and they're out on a mission to improve the vision of the world. Who founded Lens Crafters in the 1980 s. America's largest I wear retail chain the one except a couple tout Mr Della Vecchia wouldn't speak to us he rarely gives interviews but the butler did do business with him you know he's a fascinating guy if you want to have a beer with him you'd have a good time but when it comes to business he's utterly ruthless with layer an art of eco it's my way or the highway tell us about what happened with Oakley in the States because that's pointed out by many as an example of how ruthless leaks out because being the guys that ran Oakley were really really good they were the 1st people with these mirror type lenses that are all different colors and things of that sort and they had super high quality products look Zadok boned sunglass out which is you know thousands of sunglass stores the largest selling brand in sunglasses hot was Oakley. And Leonarda Vecchio thought those other guys making all the money at manufacturing each Sure jingly too much so they started oh a color fight and one day Leonarda decided that he would send out a message to all of his retail stores worldwide and said Take every single Oakley product out of the store and the next couple days Oakley's stock price dropped by one 3rd so quite a blow oh yeah well of course Leonardo came along and made Oakley's owners an offer they couldn't refuse which was he bought the business. And I see what you mean by ruthless. Leonardo you've got to hand it to him he's done awfully well and he does not act illegally or anything of that sort but he's more ruthless than what I think is the way you ought to run a business what about s n a what I mean how is that going to work that marriage between the 2 can s. You know we're going to see some drama. Leonarda Vecchio who is the king of all exotica. He runs the thing with an iron fist if you will he likes calling it a merger it is not a merger s. Lore has acquired look Zaka But layer Nardo is still acting as though he runs it so do you welcome this takeover ohmage or whatever you want to call it I welcome it but I don't welcome the control that they will have there are some aspects of what esle or does that worry me major retailers are induced to enter into long term supply agreements minimum of 3 years that makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone else to enter the market and they lock in even the good private practitioners they have very very good equipment that used by optometrists and they'll say hey I'll give you one of these Edgers it's $30000.00 u.s. Dollars if you're cya 3 year lens supply agreement by 95 percent of your lenses from me so what do you think the consequences will be I think the high margins that are in the industry are going to move more and more toward the large chains worldwide. 7 percent of the industry was what you would call a chain when I started in the business in North America today it's over 50 percent that number keeps getting bigger and bigger and adds to the demise of the mobile optometry. That who founded the American large retail chain Lens Crafters speaking to us here on business daily from the b.b.c. Where we're looking at how a mega mud. In the eye where industry might affect competition and the consumer will come back against Dean later given those sorts of misgivings Why are competition authorities approving the creation of this I Web giant So far the merger has received the green light from authorities in the European Union and the United States only China's has said it still mulling it over that e.u. Approval surprised Gordon eyelet to he's an independent optometrists one of the few left here in the u.k. Many of the high street opticians will probably use as Lauren looks or ticket for 70 to 80 percent of their product that they sell here in the u.k. Some people will try and avoid those companies and so there are other suppliers out there but they are in the minority Why would someone trying avoid them because of the dominant way that they command your business for instance if you're buying a brand such as Ray-Bans very few opticians would be a liar to sell Ray-Ban without taking on at least a couple of other brands from the looks of took a staple and then sales targets and minimum order values are also put in place by those companies which means that much of your stock on display is dominated by one supplier that's quite aggressive it can be do you get along well with them. On the whole yes I think that as a lawyer in particular have done a lot of good for the profession that Eve done a lot of education of professionals and driven the market in terms of the technology of lenses did they wine and dine Yes and I know that they do that with some of Tom interests in France for example so historically esle or of always being quite generous with their education it's done subtly it's usually product launches or has it all run a thing called s.l.o. University where they're educating you about their provider in Paris as it at is. And the wining and dining that goes on there is to reward customers for being loyal to their business kind of a fine line is that it is absolutely Are you surprised that the competition authorities in the European Union allowed this merger to take place I was a little bit surprised but I understand that it may have been got around by the look sort of business model includes retail outlets and because if you then include all retail outlets in the European Union they make up a very tiny percentage if it was only related to optical outlets then that would give them a much higher threshold tell you that that's what they should have looked at then the competition authorities I think they probably should have if the merged company decides to become aggressive they can take a pair of spectacles from the factory gate to the consumer in their own store who then has their eyes tested by their own optician the lenses are supplied by law so the company maintains all of the profit in that and that will necessarily impede competition on the high street and make it more difficult for smaller businesses to survive optometrist Gordon eyelets we put some of his concerns to the European Commission's competition authority Here's what their spokesman the cut of the Cardozo had to say Well the Commission didn't intervene quite simply because the facts of the case did not lead us to needs to intervene so we carried out an in-depth investigation then we queried about 4000 opticians throughout Europe as you know has a lot of sort of multi-year time in contracts and many a time interest in retailers in return for access to their exclusive lens technologies Did you ever consider the possibility that he'll may use these relationships to force retailers into stocking next optical products now at the expense of rivals Well yes of course these kind of concerns are exactly the type of issues we look at as part of our says. And we found that the merchant who would still not be able to shut out competitors as it would always run the risk that opticians would then switch to a different competing lens supplier because lenses are far more commodity then I wear it so as such people generally do not have a preference for very specific brand of lenses in the same way that they could for I wear the kind of joke out of those of the European Commission whatever the outcome of this merger there's no doubt the profit margins in the Iowa business are huge and the measure of these 2 companies how safe got them his dean Butler again it's a very very profitable business that's why I got in to the business quickly learned that if you were large enough to buy directly from manufacturers that the cost of lenses is generally about 8 percent of what you charge for them at retail Wow And the cost of cigarette smoke 92 percent markup Well it actually it's even a bit worse today the actual cost to manufacture of the limbs In other words the cost accounting that Esler would do is probably not much more than 20 u.s. Cents a lens now the local optician cannot buy them directly he buys them from what's called the wholesale abort tree now the wholesale aboard trees are all owned by guess who. S. War zones over 70 percent of the wholesale will board 3 capacity in North America. If you're an optician you're probably paying $8.00 a lens after it's been processed so when when I buy a pack loss is what I'm actually paid for found hanging over $100.00 for a pair of reading glasses what am I actually paying full you're paying for the opticians work a traditional private practice optician is only selling for 6 Perigal asses a day and they don't make a lot of money you really can't say these guys are getting rich off of the markup and eye glasses or not they could theoretically be doing way more business but they've been happy doing 4 to 6 a day because they weren't commercial it took people like me to commercialize what goes on in optics from a consumer's point of view is it all a bit of a con my point of view is that consumers are paying a lot more than they should have to pay for I where I'm 73 years old now if I was back at 30 years old I would start glasses in about an hour all over again and bring value back to the consumer do it online then you can't sell good quality glasses online people want to try the frames on and one of the dynamics of optical retailing it's really kind of funny to watch if you're in an optical store observe this people don't buy glasses by themselves but have a buying Committee. They him they need advice right but there are these apps that you can use now they take a photo of your face and then superimpose various frames on your face so you can see what it looks like you could easily sort of get an internet site that does it for you online that's true but there's one shortcoming to it it doesn't tell you how well it fits you can't feel it on the way in below or on your nose many don't know if the bottom of frame is going to touch your cheeks I don't think online purchase of eyeglasses is ever going to be much more in about 10 percent of the industry right now it's less than 5 percent Dean but let all of which bodes well for the merger of nukes article and se law and his plan to have a finger in the pot of pretty much every aspect of the business from the eye test to the frame to the lens chances are if you wear glasses will need to at some point in the future somewhere along the way this combined company would have played a role and that's certainly what Leonardo De Vecchio wants but you know my only regret is when I see someone walking down the street not wearing one of my friends . Because I want everyone to be wary by glass is going to prove. It's all clear now that's it from me man way to and today's producer Lawrence Knight Business Daily is back and. I. You see b.b.c. . You're listening to the witness history program on the b.b.c. World Service I'm Vincent died in 1988 the American photographer Robert maple thought was hugely controversial he was associated mainly with a series of ultra explicit photographs of male nudes the likes of which had previously only been seen in gay porn Robert Michael thought brought that material into the mainstream I've been talking to someone who knew Robert Well he is elder sister Nancy. Robert maple thoughts international fame came quite late in his short life in the b.b.c. Program arena the man best known for graphic male nudes explained what he'd been trying to do in his work when setting out to make a state now that isn't where our artist take part in. Caption something or certain time about a certain place. That can cash in. Black and white images such as man in polyester suit and self-portrait with whip that made Robert maple thought a big name in New York society he'd grown up on the city's unglamorous out of fringes only move to the house in 1989 my parents bought a brand new house and a brand new block Nancy Rooney as she now is remembers moving to Floral Park Queens as a small child ultimately there were 6 children in the maple for family and we just kind of hung on a block did what kids do without as day is jump rope played Mobbles my dad would take the bus to the subway like clock work he'd be home at 6 o'clock at night we'd all sit down have dinner together my mom she was a homemaker she was constantly cleaning the house I think actually Robert and I were closest. He was a bit of a tease that Al but in a funny way he had a great sense a Yama but in general we always got along nothing unusual about him whatsoever yet by the time he died Robert may call thought from the ordinary Catholic family on Long Island would be the most contentious figure in American Art He's highly sexualized imagery often focused on a kid's muscular black man. Good evening the odds of the nation are focused on Cincinnati the Contemporary Arts Center and director Dennis Barry are charged with obscenity for 7 pictures in the Robert maple fall art exhibit aren't ya ah ah ha suckers the taxpayer to fund garbage such as pictures by Robert maples or known for its homosexual when Robert had left high school aged 16 he announced he intended to study art his father Harry was not pleased I can remember him saying what I ever going to do with art Robert we'll be able to have maybe someday have a family or have a career but as far as taking art in college my father was very much against it and I think that one reason my father agreed to it for pay for college is Robert went to Pratt a college in actually Brooklyn your father had been there was when my father went there and that's where he got his electric eel engineering degree Robert did major in art seem to really enjoy it the 1st year he commuted it and it was meant to subway and the bus then he went to stay over and crash Robert once he moved to the city was not in touch with the family much at all and then he met Patti Smith. Robot was 20 when in 167 he met Patti Smith a writer and musician with a bold visual style later Patti wrote about their life living together in the award winning book. Just kids we took the subway to West 4th Street and spent the afternoon in Washington Square as a teen and revolutionaries distributed anti war leaflets everyone co-existed within the continuous drone of verbal diatribes bongos him barking dogs we walked toward the fountain when an older couple stopped and openly observed us Robert enjoyed being noticed oh take their picture said the woman to her bemused has been I think they're artists now go on he shrugged they're just kids once in a while they come out to my mom and dad they take the train out my father would kind of be embarrassed because Rob it would be dressed in black and Patti would have some kind of clothes on that wars wasn't what we were wearing. I remember one time saying she was a poet she even wrote some little poem for my mom and I don't know if anybody has it anymore but I wish I had it I like Patti my sister got married in 1970 and Robert brought Patti to the wedding and I remember sitting with Patti and really having a nice conversation with r. And talking to her and she was talking about her poetry and their life in the city and she just said to me well our life is very different than you was you wouldn't understand we were very boring I guess the suburban teenager had changed and Robert had decided he was basically my thought was he was on drugs that was my fear he just seemed like he was a little add of that but I did not think one bit about him being gay in fact we were told and we believed that Robert and Patti who married my mother used to send Patty an anniversary presents with Patty Mabel thought bottom my father kind of 7 I never saw any marriage license or anything like that so I think my father had his doubts in the 1970 is the relationship with Patti Smith and it was also the check. When Robert made his name as a fashionable photographer contact with his sister was rare and Nancy only realized he was getting famous when on a trip to the dentist she saw a piece about him in a magazine by the 1980 s. Robot had the fame he craved but he was also ill with aids in the last year of his life Nancy was allowed to go to see her brother that he's lost in Manhattan it was beautiful loft with all this artwork around it and and I remember asking Robert then I said Robert I you Gary and Sidney n. And I am. I said because I was never really sure and that's how I started really getting snow Robert but it was at the end of his life and he was sick and I feel so bad I still feel bad when I think about it because there was so many times I used to once in a while I'd call it say Rob you want to come out here for a birthday or something but he never went he never went to my sister's house he just shied away from the rest of the family kept to himself the 1st time Nancy went to see any of her brother's work was in a major show at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1988 Rob it was gaunt and plainly sick but it was one of the social events of the year we had never gone to we had never been invited by I remember going there and definitely being shocked at some of the photos and even the people there were a big difference from our Long Island upbringing did you go in and think oh my gold Oh yes the one that comes to my mind which I know is well known now is the whip in the butt. Now who remembers seeing that it was Roberts himself and I thought oh my God And I just walked away I couldn't believe it he was look at her right at me the following year Nancy was back at the Whitney for an event of remember and following Robert's death at the age of 42 Patti Smith sang in his memory little. Them. Once to fly how long. To find my hand and. Make him. Think about him simply as your brother Oh definitely Robert in his proud way I guess you know today coming on to the train and Long Island Railroad we sat next to this woman my one girl friend said oh how brothers Robert Maples you said oh my God he he Yes And so I know he's well known all over the world and the name maple for up has become famous now and I'm proud to have it as my maiden name. Patti Smith singing and before that Nancy Rooney was talking to me Vincent died for witness. 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