Anchor Marco Werman treats us to a Japanese remix of some Michael Jackson hits. Listen
The World Health Organization reported today that the H1N1 swine flu virus has now sickened just shy of 60,000 people. That’s the number of confirmed cases worldwide. Of those, just five are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fears Africa could be hit hard by the pandemic. The CDC watches for new diseases in Africa, and it’s keeping a close eye on the continent’s crowded slums. The World’s Andrea Crossan reports from Nairobi, Kenya.
A list of all the music featured in between our reports from June 25, 2009
Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues that cooking is the key technology that allowed us to become human. He’s spent decades doing research on primates in Africa, and he says cooking gave us access to a wider range of foods, helped our brains grow, and – because we no longer had to eat berries and leaves for six hours a day — gave us leisure time to develop tools and technologies.
Tributes from stars and fans have been pouring in for singer Michael Jackson, who has died aged 50 after suffering a cardiac arrest at his Los Angeles home. The BBC has received a flood of comments on Michael Jackson’s death from around the world.
All great anti-utopian novels focus on a disturbing aspect of the present, pushing it to its most horrific conclusions. In “1984,” it’s the panoptic police state. In “Brave New World,” the sexualization and Americanization of England. In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the subjugation of women through the sanctification of childbirth. In Ninni Holmqvist’s “The Unit,” the issue in question is the way the childless, especially the childless elderly, are looked down upon as irrelevant.
Cartoonists note the sudden death of pop star Michael Jackson with images both respectful and, well, irreverent. Iranian mullahs define theocracy. The fly on President Obama’s arm gets a name. And even in death, Ed McMahon tries to find a new sidekick.
