Those priceless cultural artifacts are now mostly safe.

As we’ve seen over the years, a lot of African cultural treasure is in a fragile state of existence.

Whether it’s documents, or the visual arts, or music, preservation, archiving and cataloging has come late to Africa.

Francis Falceto is a Frenchman who has played a major role in the preservation of Ethiopian music. He curated an impressive series of recordings known as Ethiopiques.

There are now 28-discs in the series several of them feature music of the great Mulatu Astatqe.

You might recognize his music from Jim Jarmusch’s 2005 film Broken Flowers with Bill Murray.

One person who has been especially inspired by the music in the series is the founder of the Boston-based jazz ensemble Either Orchestra, Russ Gershon.

Falceto stopped by the studio on a trip to Boston to talk with anchor, Marco Werman about the ever-expanding collection and his new curatorial experiment, “Ethio Sonic,” which features bands from around the world playing Ethiopian music.

But what exactly does that mean?

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Jim Lewis, director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

She’s studying journalism in Kampala, Uganda but recently for one night she put down her books and headed out on the town to chronicle her night out.

Kemigisa was creating an audio diary out for a new series that aired this week on the BBC, “Girl’s Night Out.”

The series gives you a glimpse at a typical girls night out from five women in five countries as far flung as Ottawa and Ramallah to Rio and Melbourne.

Listen as each woman explores her trials and triumphs she navigates a typical night out:

The band’s name, Praagaash, means “From Darkness to Light,” and the teenage rockers credit The Beatles and Billie Joe Armstrong as some of their musical influences.

But now after a slew of threatening messages on Facebook and a fatwa issued over the weekend by a top Kashmir cleric, the girls have called it quits.

Anchor, Marco Werman, interviews Nazir Masoodi, bureau chief of NDTV, an Indian TV network, who has been speaking with the teenage band members now in hiding.

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Marco Werman: Still, entertainment in that world doesn’t quite work by the same rules as it does here. A case in point can be found not too far from Abbottabad across Pakistan’s disputed border with Indian-controlled Kashmir. That is a pretty rare sound in Muslim-majority Kashmir. It’s a song performed by the first ever all girl rock band in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The band is called Praagaash, which means darkness to light. The three high school rockers created quite a buzz this past December as the only female group at a battle of the bands show held in Kashmir. It seemed like a great start. Then came the threatening comments on their Facebook page, and this past weekend one of Kashmir’s top Muslim clerics issued a fatwa against the trio. Overwhelmed by the attention, the teenage rockers turned to Facebook and announced they quit. One of the band members explained her reasoning to the BBC earlier today: “We didn’t do anything wrong. We wanted to pursue music, but we just quit now because in Islam it’s not allowed, so we won’t do anything against their wishes because people are that unhappy, so we can’t continue. That’s it.” A top Indian official in Kashmir has offered the girls protection, and the three band members have decided to keep a low profile for now. Their managers told reporters they are scared and just want the controversy to go away. Nazir Masoodi is the bureau chief for NDTV news network in Kashmir. He’s been in contact with the teen musicians.

Nazir Masoodi: These girls literally have gone into hiding. Today they told me that they are not going to perform anymore. These are all teenage girls aged between 15 and 16.

Werman: Well, they’ve only performed twice. It sounds as if they didn’t really do anything. Is it just the fact that it’s a female band that earned them this fatwa?

Masoodi: Well, it is not the first time that Kashmir has had female musicians or artists. We have here a great tradition of music. Nobody has ever objected to the performance of women, but this is something-a rock band is some new form of music, and the one cleric in Kashmir is saying that this music is un-Islamic. It is forbidden in Islam.

Werman: Now I know in Pakistan there’s a lot of tension over musical expression, especially hard line clerics, but this fatwa came in India-controlled Kashmir. Do you find that odd?

Masoodi: That is most unusual in Kashmir. As I said, there’s a great tradition. We have here the Muslim singers who have been performing and singing the music, which is about the religious faith of the Hindus. And the Hindu singers, they are performing the music which is related to Islam. So, great tolerance-no one has raised a question mark on it all these years, but now all of the sudden three girls just perform twice, and there’s a huge outcry, and these girls have been forced to quit this band. If they go against it, they won’t feel safe anymore.

Werman: Why do you think Praagaash got the fatwa?

Masoodi: These girls have chosen guitar.

Werman: It’s the aesthetics of it. It’s a modern music. Is that right?

Masoodi: Yeah, it is a modern music, it is a rock band, and this is something perhaps it will take a while to digest. There have been offers from Bollywood. They have invited these girls. They say that no, they can’t do it simply because of fear. Kashmir has a history of violence. Thousands of people have died in this conflict, and that’s why the fear of guns has forced these girls into silence.

Werman: Nazir Masoodi with NDTV news network. He’s the bureau chief in Kashmir based in Srinagar telling us about a fatwa declared on the rock trio Praagaash. Nazir, thank you very much. You can see a video of the teenage trio Praagaash rocking out before they disbanded. That’s at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Here’s a video of one of the their performances — there have only been two:

Evidence of a number of wounds were found on Richard III’s skeleton but the face area was largely unmarked, apart from a sliced cheekbone.(Photo: University of Leicester and Jeff Over)

In Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” the king was described as a hunchback with a withered arm, who murdered his own nephews in his climb to the throne.

Who can forget Sir Laurence Olivier’s version of the Shakespearean drama, in which Olivier, playing the murderous king, cries out as he faces his certain death?

“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

History says he met his demise in the Battle of Bosworth, in 1485.

Now, after scientists announced they’ve found and identified Richard III’s bones, new questions are emerging about the king and his true nature.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with novelist Anne Easter Smith about the differing views of King Richard III.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH-Boston. Researchers in Britain say they’ve solved a 500-year-old mystery. They say the bones they unearthed from beneath a parking lot in the English city of Leicester are those of King Richard III. The medieval monarch died in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. He was known to be buried in Leicester, though the exact location was lost to history. But some dogged research led to the skeleton and DNA from a very distant living relative of the king led to a positive ID. Now a lot of what we think we know about the old king comes from Shakespeare. His Richard III was a hunchbacked, scheming, brutal tyrant. To refresh our memory, here’s Adam Long, a founding member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, with a now updated version of the play.

Adam Long: Here’s the greatest story you ever heard,
About a king named Richard the Third,
An ugly hunchback with stature diminished,
Rudely stamped, deformed and unfinished.
Started out as a prince who was almost unknown,
Not even hardly in line for the throne,
And a big-headed brother made poor Richard glummer,
Turning discontented winter into glorious summer.
Little Richard was bitter and fuming and steaming,
The poisonous hunchback was plotting and scheming
And seething and ready to pop his cork.
He would steal the throne from that son of York.
And so in pursuit of satisfaction
Richard put his murderous plan into action,
Sent Clarence to the Tower quite easily
With a misunderstanding over the letter G.
Then he wooed Lady Anne, Warwick’s youngest daughter,
Though he’d killed her husband and killed her father.
Two murderers carried out Richard’s wishes,
Killed Clarence, who dreamed of jewels, skulls, pearls, and fishes.
The crown was so close he could reach out and pluck it.
Then old King Edward the Fourth kicked the bucket.
And soon poor Edward the Fifth was dead.
That sneaky old Richard just lopped off his head.
He beheaded Lord Rivers, Sir Thomas, Lord Grey,
Heads were flying every which way.
He killed Lord Hastings I forgot to mention,
When Hastings objected to his ascension.
Then they made Richard king and he was feeling groovy.
It was worse than a Quentin Tarantino movie,
He was killing children, killing all day,
Lord Buckingham fled but got killed anyway.
Somebody had to stop that hellion.
Richmond invaded and led the rebellion
With his shining armor and his battle cry.
Some ghosts told Richard, “Despair and die!”
Richard fought like a fiend in the face of that force
And he called for a horse, his kingdom for a horse.
But Richmond was mighty and killed Richard Three,
And that is the fate of all tyrants, you see.
Richard lost his crown and his throne and his jester,
And wound up buried in a car park in Leicester.
Thus Richard spent his winter of discontent
Buried beneath three feet of cement.

Werman: Very good. Remember the story now? That was Adam Long of the Reduced Shakespeare Company updating his version of Richard III. The discovery of the king’s bones beneath that car park in Leicester could spark some historians to rethink his story. Anne Easter Smith is a novelist and self-proclaimed Ricardian. Richard III has appeared as a character in many of her novels. She says how he came to be buried in Leicester was quite dramatic.

Anne Easter Smith: After the Battle of Bosworth he was flung over a horse and taken back to Leicester stark naked, all his wounds showing, and Henry gave him over to the monks of this church, and then they buried him. And then the monastery was destroyed so we lost track of where Richard was really buried.

Werman: Now most of us know Richard III from Shakespeare’s drama, where he’s described as a hunchback with a withered arm who murders his nephews to usurp the throne. Is that a fair depiction of the king?

Smith: Absolutely not. Shakespeare was writing for the Tudors and he was borrowing Tudor historians’ accounts of Richard, who had necessarily written them to denigrate the king, because Henry VII had really come in and taken his crown. They said he had been two years in his mother’s womb and come out with a full head of hair and full head of teeth, and Shakespeare put that in his play.

Werman: So you see Shakespeare’s writing as kind of revisionist history.

Smith: It’s propaganda for the Tudors, is what it is.

Werman: The murders of the nephews, though, that’s still unsolved, correct?

Smith: Yes, and unfortunately finding his bones is not going to help that in any way. We have no idea what happened to them, if they were murdered, or if they were spirited away somewhere, we really don’t know.

Werman: So the skeleton seems to indicate that he actually had quite a severe case of scoliosis, so that kind of takes the hunchback thing away, but he still probably walked with a pretty substantial bent, right?

Smith: What they’re saying is that it would mean that he had one shoulder higher than the other, but that he was not deformed, because a lot of people were writing about him and there was nothing mentioned about deformities. He was apparently quite good looking, not very tall, looked like his father, gray eyes and dark brown hair. And in fact, a portrait that was done of Richard round the end of the 15th century, today, when they were going to be restoring it, they were x-raying it to see where exactly lines were and things to restore it, and they found that somebody had painted on a hunchback. The original did not have one.

Werman: So is that kind of the visual artist’s version of Shakespeare, working again for the Tudors, kind of propaganda?

Smith: That’s right. And of course, you know, Shakespeare was like our TV today, our TV and movies. People flocked to see the plays and they just believed what they saw. It would be like somebody who’d never read anything about JFK’s death going to see Oliver Stone’s JFK and thinking, oh, this is truth.

Werman: For you, Anne, what kind of King was Richard III? Not in Shakespeare’s view, but what kind of king was he?

Smith: He reigned for only two years but he was very concerned about the justice system, and he enacted a couple of statutes that still stand today, one of them to do with improving bail, for people who didn’t have a lot of money. And he also took away taxes that Edward had brought in to fill his war chest.

Werman: So now his bones can be laid to rest. Do you know where that’s going to be, and will be get Catholic last rites? He was a Catholic king.

Smith: I think he’s going to be buried in Leicester Cathedral and I would think he would be given a Church of England burial. I just don’t know that they would give him a Catholic burial there.

Werman: Novelist Anne Easter Smith telling us about Richard III, her favorite obsession. Anne’s upcoming novel, Royal Mistress, featuring King Richard comes out in May. Anne, thanks very much.

Smith: Very much my pleasure. Thank you, Marco.

Werman: We have pictures and video of Richard III’s bones and the parking lot excavation. Check those out, plus listen again to Adam Long’s Reduced Shakespeare version of Richard III. That’s all at TheWorld.org.

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“You won’t like it here,” was the rumored message.

This comes in response to the impending expiration next year of work and travel restrictions imposed on Romanians and Bulgarians.

Now the Romanians have just unveiled their own cheeky ads aimed at Brits. If life is so bad in Britain they quip, “Why don’t you come over?”

Anchor, Marco Werman talks with Mihai Gongu, creative director and copywriter at GMP who wrote the Romanian ads.

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Marco Werman: Let me tell you now about another ad campaign that’s ruffled feathers this week. The tagline here is “Don’t come to Britain.” At least that’s what the rumored ad campaign would like Romanians and Bulgarians to think. The campaign hasn’t gone live yet, it’s just one of a slew of possible ideas that the British government is considering to slow immigration from Romania and Bulgaria when travel restrictions are lifted next year. But Romanians are striking back with an ad campaign of their own. Mihai Gongu is a creative director and copywriter at GMP, which produced some cheeky comebacks. Mihai, start by sharing some of the slogans that you’ve come up with this week.

Mihai Gongu: Yeah, I mean we’re trying out hand at British humor and some of the lines were “Charles has bought a house here in Romania” and “Harry has never been photographed naked once,” you know.

Werman: That’s pretty good.

Gongu: Or for instance, you know, “Our draft beer is less expensive than your bottled water” and so on. So there are a lot of possible arguments why they should conceive to come over to Romania instead because it’s–we may not like it in Britain, as they are saying, but we love it in Romania, I can guarantee you.

Werman: And Romania is also bragging in your campaign that you’ve got millions of women who look like Kate Middleton and even more who look like her sister.

Gongu: Exactly.

Werman: So what’s been the reaction in Romania?

Gongu: In the first 24 hours, I think 300,000 Romanians have seen the posters and commented on them, and shared them and so on, so that’s quite impressive, I think.

Werman: And you think those strong numbers are a reaction to the rumors of the British ad campaign?

Gongu: Yes, I do. I think our campaign has started to like start a bit of a bush fire and to get the Romanian pride going. And we actually made the online generator where people could make their own poster.

Werman: How did you feel yourself, not as an advertising person, but as a Romanian when you heard about the proposed British campaign and this tagline, “Don’t come to Britain?” Was it insulting?

Gongu: I wouldn’t say it was insulting. It was you know, a bit inspiring you know. We felt that it’s high time that Romanians give a [inaudible 02:07] answer and try to be the fighting partner in this unique war, you know, because typically the way that we are depicted in some of the media in Europe is negative, you know. So we were trying to defend also the decent, honest, hard working Romanians all over Europe who are paying their taxes and doing a decent job, you know?

Werman: So the campaign has gone viral and Romanians have even started posting their own slogans on Facebook. Tell us what some of those are.

Gongu: My favorite was something like if you come over to Romania, in centimeters you’ll be taller in kilograms, thinner and so on because you are playing with this conversion.

Werman: I mean it’s not like you need to start a campaign. It’s gone viral as we said on its own. Is Romania ready to receive all those guys in search of the millions of Kate Middletons you’ve got there?

Gongu: Yes, and the campaign has just started. And you’ll see some nice surprises in the near future, you know? We actually genuinely invite the British to come over here and we can welcome them, no problem. It’s a big country, Romania, for all them.

Werman: Yeah, so the Brits are saying stay away, but you’re saying that’s okay, come visit us instead.

Gongu: Exactly, yeah, exactly. They are saying you won’t like it here, their tagline. And the answer was okay, we might not like Britain, but you will love Romania.

Werman: Okay, Mihai Gongu, creative director and copywriter at GMP in Bucharest, Romania. Thank so much.

Gongu: Thank you so much as well.

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Below are a few selections from the ad campaign:

While last month Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asserted that the US is facing a possibility of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor.”

Still, he refrained from using the term “offensive.”

But with reports about alleged US involvement in developing Stuxnet, a virus that attacked Iranian nuclear facilities, what is the US’s role in this burgeoning cyberwar?

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Jim Lewis, director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington.

Most recently, Russia announced it’s scrapping an agreement with the US to cooperate on cross-border crimes like terrorism and human trafficking.

That’s just the latest sign of a growing chill in relations between Moscow and Washington.

Now things may be taking a dramatic turn. Wednesday a new TV series, The Americans, premiers on FX. The show harkens back to the Cold War days.

It’s 1981, Reagan is newly president.

And in the middle of the drama, right next door in an all-American household with a white picket fence and all lives the seemingly innocuous family, the Jennings.

Except the Elizabeth and Philip Jennings are Russian spies.

Anchor, Marco Werman talks with writer and co-creator of the series, Joe Weisberg.

Weisberg is a former CIA agent and everything he writes he says must be vetted first by the CIA.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Recent headlines from Russia have some wondering if the Cold War is back on. Just today Russia announced it’s scrapping an agreement with the US to cooperate on cross border crimes like terrorism and human trafficking. That’s just the latest sign of a growing chill in relations between Moscow and Washington. Perfect timing then for The Americans, a new TV series premiering tonight on the FX channel. The year is 1981. The Cold War is definitely still on and in the house next door, the one with the white picket fence, lived the Jennings, a suburban family with typical suburban concerns.

[Show clip]: Car won’t start, I’m gonna have to take a bus to the metro. Oh, dad. Yeah? Mary got two goals and an assist last night.

Werman: Except dad, Philip Jennings and his wife, Elizabeth, are Russian spies. Sound familiar? The plot is reminiscent of those Russian sleeper spies, the ones whose cover was blow in 2010 after years of living seemingly boring lives in places like suburban New Jersey. Writer and former CIA agent Joe Weisberg is co-creator of the series. He says he was, in fact, inspired by that real life spy drama.

Joe Weisberg: In the middle of that scandal I got a call from the heads of DreamWorks television asking me if I’d like to develop a show based on what was going on. And I said sure and then I wandered the street for a couple of weeks thinking how do you fit that into a television show? It’s got a real big problem which is we’re not enemies with the Russians anymore, so there aren’t really any stakes, who cares? And after about two weeks I thought oh, it’s easy, you just put it back in the Cold War.

Werman: There is also the story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, electrocuted for conspiracy to commit espionage, but that predates the Jennings by several decades. I mean that story showed the cruel depths of the Cold War. Do you think The Americans, your drama, is going to kind of underscore just how insidious the whole spying business was? Or is this more kind of the Sopranos as a spy game?

Weisberg: We think of it on different days different ways. We think about the Rosenbergs and what a strange tragic story that was, and how the couple was so ideologically committed and they were willing to die. And the fact that espionage has, you know, just presents that kind of drama that people with that kind of commitment will do anything for the cause.

Werman: You’re not just a writer, but you’re also a former CIA agent. Were you undercover and how much of this is based on your own experience?

Weisberg: I was undercover with the CIA for about four years. I was primarily in training the whole time I was there. In particular what influenced this story was having a look at the people I worked with and what it was like to live undercover with a family, including often kids who don’t know what you’re doing because if you tell a 7-year-old Mom or Dad works at the CIA, they go to school and tell their friends and your cover is blown.

Werman: Right.

Weisberg: So thinking about how that affected families made me want to tell a story about a family in that situation.

Werman: I’d be curious to know, Joe, how you feel the CIA is portrayed generally in entertainment?

Weisberg: What you see all the time is this kind of vast conspiratorial mindset on the one hand, or this absurd glamorization on the other hand. And what is very rarely gotten to is the kind of brilliant beautiful bureaucracy that think is most interesting about the real CIA. It’s something that I’m always looking for the TV show or the movie that will capture that.

Werman: So maybe you can just kind of layout for us if you’re a CIA agent, what are the rules once you become a screenwriter that you still kind of have to submit stuff to the CIA for approval?

Weisberg: When you leave the agency one of the things they do is bring you into a room and you sit across the desk from a CIA employee, and he takes out an envelope and out of the envelope comes the very secrecy agreement you signed when you joined. And it turns out that, although I had forgotten this, that under the line where you signed your name when you joined, there’s another line and that line is for you to sign again when you leave, just to remind you that you are committed to this secrecy even for the rest of your life.

Werman: Committed twice.

Weisberg: Right.

Werman: What do you think Russian audiences will make of this show?

Weisberg: I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent thinking about that. It’s not yet sold to Russia, so we don’t know for sure if it will air there or not. There are a lot of different audiences there. I wonder what the sort of liberals there will think. I wonder what the general population will think. And of course, Putin, who is in the KGB and in the Foreign Intelligence Service of the KGB, what will he think, you know? It’s a show that I think is very kind of fair minded towards the KGB, but I don’t know that Putin would necessarily see it that way. And of course, the you know, the liberals there, do they want to see a show that is fair minded towards the KGB? It could be very upsetting to them. I think it could be used politically in a lot of different ways. It’s very hard to predict.

Werman: Joe, I gather you’ve got another spy drama in the works. Do you miss the clandestine life of an agent?

Weisberg: I have to say that I do not. I find writing about it very suitable.

Werman: Right, vicarious is good enough.

Weisberg: Yeah, much better.

Werman: Joe Weisberg, writer and former CIA agent, co-creator of the new series that premiers tonight on FX, The Americans, thanks so much, Joe.

Weisberg: Thank you very much, Marco.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Women have been organizing to combat these attacks, patrolling the square and rescuing fellow female protesters from violent situations.

But sometimes, the rescuers are being attacked themselves as they try to help.

Anchor, Marco Werman speaks with Salma el-Tarzi a member of Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment, a group of volunteers on the ground responding to the attacks on women in Tahrir Square.

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Marco Werman: The latest protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square have been marked by reports of sexual violence against women there. Unfortunately, this is not new. There were several reports of violence against women in the square during the Egyptian revolution two years ago and many since then too. But over the past year groups of female volunteers have formed to patrol Tahrir Square during protests looking for women in need of help. Often though the volunteers themselves end up being assaulted or harassed. Salma el-Tarzi is a member of Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment, one of the groups helping women in the square.

Salma el-Tarzi: We have several hotlines, we have an operation room and we have several teams on the ground distributed in different areas of the square.

Werman: I imagine though that for every person who’s calling your hotline there are many others who don’t call, I gather. You even witnessed somebody being assaulted.

el-Tarzi: Last Friday we could actually see assaults happening from the location where we were and some of them were not even reported to us on the hotline, but we could see them with our eyes and we tried to intervene.

Werman: Why this spike in these incidents? Why is this happening?

el-Tarzi: We believe that a very big part of these assaults are organized. Sexual assault has always been a tactic used by the system to intimidate to women and to punish women who take part in protests or in manifestations. So

Werman: And what system and who’s organizing these assaults?

el-Tarzi: The system is the same system, the system did not change yet. All what is different is that the head of the system changed.

Werman: Can you just clarify, so then you believe that the government of Egypt is perpetuating this violence?

el-Tarzi: To a certain extent, yes. This is not new. We have had similar cases and similar assaults during the past two years, and even starting from 2005 where there was a very famous case of a female protestor and the journalist who got stripped and assaulted sexually during demonstrations against a constitution amendment during the rule of Mubarak. So it’s not a new tactic used by the system to intimidate women taking part of protests and manifestations.

Werman: Are you hopeful for the future? I mean you have this organization, on the other hand it sounds like your organization has a huge challenge facing it.

el-Tarzi: It does and I think the positive thing is that finally someone is taking a proactive step to stop what’s happening and to talk about it openly. Despite what happened on the 25th, we keep on receiving phone calls for more volunteers and people who want to help. And this gives us a lot of hope that at least we are starting somewhere.

Werman: knowing the risks and the violence, what brings you and other women back to the square?

el-Tarzi: We are being attacked for being women and not going back to the square and not taking part in this would mean that we got defeated and it means that the only safe place would be at home. And we refuse to stay at home. This is part of the struggle and this is a very personal fight.

Werman: Salma el-Tarzi, a member of Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment in Cairo, thank you very much for speaking with us.

el-Tarzi: Thank you.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

While Asian Americans voted for President Obama this past election in record numbers, when it comes to the immigration reform it seems that the Latino vote dominates the conversation.

Andrew Lam, a Vietnamese-American writer and editor at New America Media talks with anchor, Marco Werman about how people in the Asian community are talking about immigration reform.

This is a highly debated subject among many groups says Lam, especially those Asian immigrants who came to this country as refugees.

“Some people feel that people who are undocumented are stepping in front of them in line for citizenship whereas they were law abiding and waiting patiently for years.”

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: One of the factors pushing immigration reform to the fore this year is the decisive Latino support President Obama got at the ballot box last November. But immigration is not just a Latino issue. Many other immigrant groups are affected. Asian Americans, for example, they also supported President Obama in large numbers. Andrew Lam is a Vietnamese American writer and editor at New America Media in San Francisco.

Andrew Lam: I think for the most part being that most Asian Americans are immigrants, two out of three are in fact naturalized citizens, there is a natural sympathy toward the plight of immigrants, but there is also conflictive narratives within communities like my Vietnamese American community. People feel as if people who are undocumented are stepping in front of them in the line for citizenship, whereas they were law abiding and they were waiting patiently for years for that sort of thing. And so I think in some way there’s no clear understanding yet of what the whole reform really means.

Werman: So has that setup a tension within the Asian American community?

Lam: Well, you know, I’m not sure if it’s tension, but it’s certainly a debate on whether or not giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship is the best thing or should they have you know, more of an obstacle course given the fact that legal immigrants have a harder time.

Werman: Andrew, how does the debate play out for you personally? I mean where do you fall in the whole discussion?

Lam: Well, you know, I was a Vietnamese refugee when I came here in 1975. I kinda side with sympathy toward undocumented because in some way, you know, refugees also fled Vietnam without exit visa. We enter other countries like the Philippines and Thailand without a permit, and so we crossed illegal lines in order to improve or survive, and then it was only because by luck of the draw that we were given entry to United States and we make our lives there.

Werman: Why was there such strong support for Obama among Asian American voters and how much did it have to deal with hopes that substantive immigration reform would happen under Obama?

Lam: I think it’s just not immigration issues alone. I think, you know, if I look at Obama in relation to being stronger now in you know, the Pacific Rim area and you know, going to Burma, there’s a lot of immigrants who having strong hope for great change in the homeland as well because many of us fled from a kind of dictatorship. And so I think we look at Obama now in a strange way as like a strong foreign policy person, along with immigration reform.

Werman: So you’ve been here for a couple of decades.

Lam: More than three.

Werman: Yeah, so what is your own perspective on the ebb and flow of support for immigration reform because it’s changed a lot from administration to administration since you arrived in the US. I mean where do things stand today?

Lam: I think America’s relationship with immigrants is a kind of love/hate relationship. You know, in the good time that we need you, we want you, so give us your huddled masses. And when the economy goes sour the immigrant becomes the beating post, you know, the boogeyman. I think that kind of pendulum had always been the tradition of American love/hate relationship with immigrants. So in some way I’m not surprised that after Obama’s reelection and the stock market seems to go up, and suddenly there is a renewed interest that suddenly the Republican coming out with another set of plans and that they acknowledge that immigration reform is a must, whereas before the election it was some moot point no one wanted to talk about. You know, it’s so quickly how that pendulum swings.

Werman: Andrew Lam, a Vietnamese American writer and editor at New America Media in San Francisco, thanks very much for your thoughts.

Lam: No problems.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Writer and activist Nahla Samaha was among them.

Samaha didn’t march on Tahrir Square two years ago, she was giving birth at the time to her twin girls. She did, however, watch the revolution unfold from her hospital room in Cairo.

“I actually thought why were these people wasting their time demonstrating or protesting? It’s not like it’s going to get them anywhere.”

She continued to watch the revolution unfold from her TV set until last December when she watched the clashes at the presidential palace.

“That’s when I decided to take to the streets.”

Today, Samaha feels split about her dual roles as activist and mother. She talks with anchor Marco Werman about that divide and whether she and her family will stay in this new Egypt or leave for a more stable life.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Egypt today marked two years since the start of its revolution. Once again thousands of anti-government protesters marched to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, but this time they chanted against Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, and demanded quicker democratic reform. Writer and activist Nahla Samaha was among the protesters in Tahrir Square today

Nahla Samaha: The atmosphere was amazing. People from all walks of life.

Werman: Young people? Old people? A mix?

Samaha: Young people, old people, even some people brought their toddlers. Senior citizens, rich, poor.

Werman: What about the reaction from passersby who were not taking part in the demonstrations?

Samaha: As we walked through streets with residential buildings, and all the residents were looking out their windows and balconies, we would chant up to them, “[foreign language],” which means “come down, come down,” asking them to join as well. A lot of people in the balconies were waving flags, applauding us, so there was a general sense of support.

Werman: Nahla, two years ago you were not protesting, but for an activist you have a pretty good excuse.

Samaha: Two years ago I was delivering my twins in a hospital here in Cairo, and I was watching on TV at the hospital, and I had no idea what was going on, and I actually thought, you know, why are these people wasting their time demonstrating or protesting? It’s not like it’s going to get them anywhere.

Werman: What was the turning point then for you? When did you get involved?

Samaha: All my friends were going to the [foreign language] during the core time of the revolution. It was everywhere, on all the political talk shows, social media, so there was no way of avoiding it. And then during last December’s clashes at the [foreign language], which is the presidential palace, we were actually watching it on live TV, watching the violence up close. That’s when I decided to take to the streets.

Werman: So how did it feel marching today?

Samaha: On a regular day walking down the street I might be slightly on the defensive. I don’t interact much with Egyptians on the street from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. There’s a great divide between the social classes in Egypt, but a demonstration or a march brings together people from different social classes, eliminates all these differences, and unites us all in one desire to live freely, democratically, and not in fear.

Werman: So Nahla, your twin girls are turning two. When you look to their future in Egypt, what do you see?

Samaha: Unfortunately, I’m not too optimistic about the immediate future. They are my priority, and if they cannot get the kind of quality of life and safety and security and education that I would like them to get here in Egypt, then we will most likely try to find a good life somewhere else.

Werman: So if you do leave, what will you tell your daughters, say, in 20 years, when they ask you why you didn’t want to stay in your country of birth?

Samaha: What I will tell them is what my parents told me when at some point we left as well, and I had moved to Canada as a young kid, because I wanted to give you a better life. Whether it was the right or wrong decision, it was the best decision I could make. I really am hoping I don’t have to leave, because as much as things like education and health care are better in other parts of the world, there is nothing like being in your own home country, you know?

Werman: Yeah, it may sound easy to say right now to them, but those are really complex considerations.

Samaha: Definitely, especially coming from our culture, living somewhere else, where you have to sort of reconcile two different cultures, one outside the house and one inside of the house. It’s difficult for child growing up, having been through it myself, but this might be a choice my husband and I will have to make at some point.

Werman: Nahla, thank you very much for speaking with us.

Samaha: No problem, not at all.

Werman: That was Egyptian activist Nahla Samaha speaking to us from Cairo. You can see her video from today’s demonstrations in Tahrir Square at TheWorld.org.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

This Friday, Samaha marched to Tahrir Square and sent these videos:

This is an off-shoot of his Small Fates project in which he started tweeting short stories based off of forgotten news items.

But these most recent tweets take a literary view of aerial assaults.

They are an assault, of sorts, in what Cole terms the “empathy gap.”

Cole talks more with anchor Marco Werman about what he means by that and why he chose to write about literary figures like Ishmael, Buck Mulligan, and Okonkwo.

“First and foremost it’s about identifying,” he says. “We come to hold the characters as in some way like us. Meanwhile if we hear that a drone strike killed three people in Yemen as happened on Inauguration Day that is so abstract, it almost means nothing and therefore we feel almost nothing.”

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Today we heard Nigerian American writer, Teju Cole, read some short, short stories that he’s tweeted about drones. Cole gained notoriety a few years ago for his first novel, Open City. Tweeting about drones might seem like an add, abbreviated follow-up, but to Cole, Twitter is a perfect platform to instantly reach his followers, more than 70,000 of them, and spark a conversation; and his tweets, focusing on civilians who died as a result of drone strikes, have a literary twist as well.

Teju Cole: Call me Ishmael, I was a young man of military age. I was immolated at my wedding; my parents are inconsolable; Mother died today, the program saves American lives.

Werman: That’s got such an eerie effect, taking these great novels and their first lines and then morphing them with headlines from drone strikes. Some are recognizable; I think our listeners will recognize Moby Dick by Melville, and [inaudible]. What was the idea and why these particular novels?

Cole: I started thinking about something which, in my mind, I call the empathy gap between what was happening militarily with global war and terror, and the attitude, or in fact, lack of attitude that many people had towards what was going on. You know, my background is literature. I’m a writer and so my intervention tends to be literary. There is something about reading great books of literature that first and foremost is about identifying. We come to hold the characters as in some way, like us. Meanwhile, if we hear that a drone strike killed three people in Yemen, as happened by the way, on Inauguration day, that is so abstract it almost means nothing, and therefore, we feel almost nothing.

Werman: Teju Cole, when did you first become aware of drones?

Cole: I think I started to think about them towards the end of the Bush years and then in the past few years. They’ve really gotten ramped up. We have this strange situation now where so much of the killing is being done by people who are very, very far away from the battlefield and this puts us into a real ethical conundrum. What does it mean when we’re causing directly the deaths of civilians at basically zero risk to ourselves, to our soldiers? How does that affect the ethics of war?

Werman: You know, if I can be so bold as to put on my comparative literature hat for a moment; I could see some symbolism here that by that by taking these novels that many of us know so well and truncating them to a single line with this explosive afterthought about drones, you’re kind of doing to great books what drones often do to people, and via remote control.

Cole: Writing these things, thinking about these things, is a cause of great sorrow. This is not a clever Twitter intervention. I think the word “Twitter” might even put some people off because they think it’s just about writing about what you had for breakfast or something. No, this is a way of expressing some of the confusion and grief that we feel when we think about the very profuse state of what our leaders mean when they talk about keeping us safe.

Werman: You suggested that Twitter may strike some as a kind of banal platform to undertake this project, but this isn’t the first time you’re tweeting short stories. You’ve got this small [inaudible] project which are compact stories taken from overlooked news stories – why Twitter?

Cole: Well, that’s a good question in two ways. I think one is, “Why Twitter,” and the other is, “Why Not Twitter?” I have a desensitized followship on it and I have the opportunity to put into the minds of people who are reading the sentences of my own devising. This is a strange kind of power. I generally try not to do too much preaching on my Twitter account, but rather to tell stories to try to close that empathy gap between us and those people that we think of as “them.”

Werman: So do you think that by taking this literary view of drone strikes, if you will, it’s going to close that empathy gap?

Cole: I base it on maybe a handful of people, if you will, provoke a second thought.

Werman: Teju Cole, thank you so much.

Cole: Thank you very much. It was nice to talk to you, thank you.

Werman: As you heard, literary figures feature prominently in writer, Teju Cole’s drone tweeting. Cole also told us what Virginia Wolfe’s, Mrs. Dalloway, symbolizes in his project, and that’s at TheWorld.org.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Listen to what Cole had to say about his reasons for striking down, Virginia Woolf’s character Mrs. Dalloway:

Cole takes a literary approach. Mrs. Dalloway is blown up on the way to the florist. Ishmael is “immolated” at his wedding. Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” is made invisible for a very different reason.

The tweets were collected into one story by Graduate Student/Reporter Josh Begley, who himself is tweeting an account of every reported drone strike at @dronestream.

[View the story "Teju Cole: Seven short stories about drones" on Storify]

“There is something about reading great works of literature that is first and foremost about identifying. We come to hold the protagonists, the characters as in some ways like us.”

Killing off the canon is not something Cole takes lightly. But his aim is to grab people’s attention and empathy.

“I started thinking about something which in my mind I called the empathy gap between what was happening on the global war on terror and the attitude or lack of attitude that people had with what was going on.”

On Thursday, Anchor Marco Werman will talk with Cole about his latest attempt to bridge that gap.

It appears as if the mastermind behind the attack is a one-eyed Algerian militant named Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

He has been called “Mr. Marlboro” for the cigarette-smuggling ring he operates in the desert region of West Africa known as the Sahel.

Belmokhtar claimed in a video posted on the internet that the attack on the gas plant was in response to the recent French intervention in Mali, but Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sallel asserts that plans for the attack were hatched months ago.

Geoff Porter, the founder and director of North Africa Risk Consulting, talks to anchor Marco Werman about Belmokhtar’s background and why his motives may not be so clear cut.

Cavan McDonald, chief engineer of M.W. Kellogg, the company that designed and built the facility in Algeria, says that although the location is remote it is still well equipped with communications. He is frustrated by the lack of information coming out of the plant.

“To say that it’s the most remote place in the world is probably true but on the other hand it is extremely well equipped with communications,” says McDonald, “your blackberry will work fine.”