Bas van der Schot, Netherlands

Blood, blood and blood are the subjects of this cartoon slideshow about Syria. Cartoonists around the globe are responding to the blood being spilled in the violent crackdown on demonstrators — especially in the Syrian city of Homs. Bashar al-Assad is the villain and the images are graphic, in your face, and unsubtle.

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You don’t have to be a fan of Spider-Man to know that an arachnid’s silk is some pretty powerful stuff. After all, its tensile strength is close to that of high-grade steel. But is turns out that the strength of a spider’s web is about more than just the silk. Some new research from MIT suggests that its also the material’s combination of strength *and* stretchiness. In this week’s tech podcast, you’ll hear all about the research, and its possible implications for human building and design.

Also in this episode: you’ll hear about a German company that’s taken to the web, and to apps, to help drivers and passengers share rides. It’s called Mitfahrgelegenheit, or Carpooling.com for you non-German speakers.

We’ll also bring you the story of one Texas technology company, Eolas, that created quite a legal stir in the online world. Plus, how a virtual reality game helped one Afghanistan vet deal with the pain of horrific burns.

And we end with a lovely mini-documentary on that little block-filled game you love to hate: Tetris!

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

(Photo: Duk)

Since then the military has controlled the government and members of the Muslim Brotherhood control Parliament.

Marco Werman speaks with the BBC’s Yolande Knell about the power struggle within Egypt.

Read tweets about Egypt

Twenty-six-year-old Josh Leffler sits in a Cairo cafe smoking a water pipe while men play dominoes and watch TV nearby. The American teacher doesn’t look stereotypically Egyptian, but after four years of living in downtown Cairo, he does blend in. And he loves it.

“I can go to my regular café anytime of the day and I will always sit with people,” Leffler says. “If I go to a coffee shop in Los Angeles and do this it doesn’t quite work like that, and so this aspect of community, it’s really nice.”

Yet even for Leffler who has a community here, the past year has been tense. During the revolution he got detained a few times. And lately with the protests downtown he’s felt like some Egyptians look at him differently as a foreigner.

“After I was detained a couple of times I began to act much more careful,” he said. That includes keeping his camera hidden when walking on the streets.

Khaled Fahmy, the chair of the history department at the American University in Cairo said the anti-foreigner sentiment that Leffler is experiencing doesn’t come out of nowhere.

There have been foreign plots in Egypt before, like the notorious Lavon Affair in 1954, when Israel was accused of recruiting Egyptians to plant bombs inside Egypt. And Fahmy said Egyptians don’t forget..

“Egyptians are very aware, in their recent history, of outside interventions. So this is a sensitive point, more so than elsewhere,” he said. “But that’s not the issue. The issue now is that there is a deliberate use of this xenophobic language, of this suspicion of foreigners.”

Fahmy and other critics say the current government – the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF – is taking this very real sense of outside threat and whipping it up into fullblown xenophobia through State TV and radio.

“There is a deliberate use of this xenophobic language, of this suspicion of foreigners by SCAF and by the Minister of International Cooperation,” he said.

Hossam Baghat, Director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said there’s always been racism in Egypt. But these days his organization gets lots of complaints from people who have never been targeted before.

“In the past most of the complaints we received were by migrants, or refugees or asylum seekers with black skin that were subject to racially motivated harassment in Egypt,” Baghat said. “But since January of 2011 most of the complaints have been received by people who were targeted because of their fair skin or because they come from the West.”

There have been verbal and physical attacks, as well as citizen arrests. Baghat said foreigners are caught in the crossfire as the Egyptian government tries to undermine the continued protests.

“It presents the political protest movement in Egypt as being primarily pushed by the famous foreign agendas. And the foreign agendas are normally understood to mean western agendas,” he said.

Rasha Azaizy, spokesperson for the Egyptian Tourism Ministry, said there may seem to be a lack of security on the streets. But she didn’t see any hostility towards tourists or foreigners.

“It is not aimed at foreigners, it is just random,” she said. “And because of the language barrier, or the randomness of the whole thing. Stop and search is something that can happen in any city in the world. Egyptians are extremely warm and welcoming people. Very friendly.”

Azaizy said even with the unrest this year 10 million tourists came to Egypt, but that’s a drop of 30 percent. Even so, Historian Khaled Fahmy said it’s clear there is a concerted campaign against foreigners. And he said the Egyptian government shouldn’t just worry about the safety of tourists, but about the very foundation of Egyptian society.

“Egypt throughout its long history thrived not by being shunned off and shut out and inward looking, but rather by being open and engaged, and by interacting.”

As for American teacher Josh Leffler, he still considers Egypt his second home, and hopes to stay. But he added, “I’ll see how it goes.”

Boo’s book chronicles the lives of the inhabitants of the Annawadi slum, just outside the Mumbai airport.

Following several characters and families, it paints a grim portrait of day to day life for India’s poorest citizens, and explores the ways in which the outside world and the world of the slum intersect.

It is the final of the Africa Cup of Nations soccer tournament.

The finalists are Zambia and pre-tournament favorites Ivory Coast.

The fact that Sunday’s match is taking place in Libreville, the capital of Gabon is particularly poignant for the Zambian squad.

It was there, in 1993, that a plane carrying the Zambian national soccer team crashed, killing all on board.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with the BBC’s Farayi Mungazi about how the current team is dealing with the memory of the tragedy.

EGYPT INTERVIEW
EGYPT REPORT
SYRIA CARTOON CHAT
TSA READER

END TIME: 19:40

MUSIC:
SONG: The Mummer’s Dance
ARTIST: Loreena McKennitt
CD TITLE: The Book of Secrets
CD LABEL: Warner Bros.
CD #: 946719-2

START TIME: 21:00

BOO INTERVIEW

GEO QUIZ
SONG: Djarabi
ARTISTS: Toubab Krewe
CD TITLE: Toubab Kewe
CD LABEL: Upstream Records

END TIME: 29:29

MUSIC:
SONG: Valentina
ARTIST: Orquestra Do Fuba
CD TITLE: Soundtrip: Northeast Brazil
CD LABEL: Reise Know-How Sound

START TIME: 32:55

SOCCER INTERVIEW
CYCYLING REPORT
BACKPACKING MEMORIES WRAP
GEO ANSWER (DORDOGNE)

END TIME: 48:58

MUSIC:
SONG: Sangoma
ARTISTS: Malombo
CD TITLE: John Armstrong Presents South African Funk Experience
CD LABEL: Nascente

START TIME: 50:00

TRUMP INTERVIEW
GLOBAL HIT

END TIME: 58:14

France’s Guignols are like a cross between Saturday Night Live and the Muppets: all satire and latex.

In a recent video parody of Spanish athletes, disgraced cyclist Alberto Contador sings that he’s got bull’s blood in his veins. Tennis superstar Rafael Nadal croons about his stash of clean blood hidden in his fridge.

This is daily fare on French TV, but here on the south side of the Pyrenees its touched a nerve. Nadal has been among the most outspoken. Maybe because of this second Guignols video which shows him urinating in the gas tank of his own car, then speeding off at 200 miles an hour.

“This isn’t an attack against me,” Nadal told reporters during training this week, “but an attack against Spanish sports and the Spanish people.”

As such, Spain’s foreign minister has duly chimed in. Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said official complaints had been sent to French media outlets, and especially to Canal Plus, which hosts the Guignols.

But why the doping parody to begin with? The cyclist Contador was recently busted. But generally speaking Spanish athletes don’t get caught more than others. The crux of the matter seems to be Spain’s athletic success. It makes some French suspicious. In recent years Spain has come to dominate soccer, basketball, tennis and cycling. Impossible, goes the innuendo, without a little synthetic pick-me-up. For the Spanish, the French are just jealous.

One recent news report on Spanish public television pointed out how France hasn’t won a Tour de France since the 1980s, or even the French Open for that matter. Then the reporter rattles off a long list of Spanish victories.

Missing in this uproar is just how funny the Guignols’ rubber puppets are. Not to mention that they’re rubber puppets. Instead, Spaniards today are gloating over a damning piece of news next door.

A French prosecutor announced he was opening an investigation into Patrice Ciprelli, the husband and coach of legendary French cyclist Jeannie Longo. Ciprelli has admitted to purchasing the banned performance-booster EPO.

Molten is a veteran traveler who trained as a PE teacher.

In her youth Naomi wanted to explore the world and spent 18 years hitchhiking around the globe.

She recalls her adventures as a young woman in the 1950s traveling mainly on her own to many countries including New Zealand, Australia, India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and the North West Frontier.

The Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hạnh is a leading proponent.

He has a food meditation center in southern France.

Plum Village, as it’s called, attracts visitors who want to learn how to eat more mindfully, among other things.

Plum village winter retreat (Photo: Plum Village Online Monastery/Facebook)

So, for the Geo Quiz, we’re looking for the name of the French department or region where you can find Plum Village.

It lies between the Loire valley and the Pyrénées …

The answer is Dordogne, France. A Buddhist meditation center there called Plum Village attracts vistors from around the world who want to explore mindful eating. Lilian Cheung of the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life explains the basics of mindfulness to anchor Marco Werman.

Dr. Cheung shared one of the meditations she learned from monks at Plum Village. She says its a grace that’s said before each meal as a way to contemplate and honor the nourishing food:

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Trump wants the government to stop plans for a wind farm project off the coast of Aberdeen Bay.

The wind turbines would be seen from the luxury golf resort Trump is building in Scotland.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Scottish parliament member Willie Rennie about the wind farm battle.

There is always a lot of glitz and hype at the function, but this year there may be some protesters.

Some people are angry over a decision to strip 31 categories from the music industry’s top awards.

But there is still an award for Best Small Ensemble Performance.

And El Mundo, led by baroque guitarist Richard Savino, is nominated.

Richard Savino says he fell in love with the guitar when listening to the Beatles.

He played rock guitar for a long time.

But then he fell in love with the Baroque guitar.

It’s a small and narrow instrument, compared with its modern cousin. It is delicate, but it can get pretty boisterous when it is strummed, as it is often required in Baroque music.

Richard Savino founded his Baroque music ensemble El Mundo in 1999. The group plays Italian and Spanish music from the 17th to the 19th century.

Together they have recorded many albums, and their latest one “The Kingdoms of Castille” was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Small Ensemble Performance category.

The selections on the album take the listener through different regions of the world that were under Spanish rule in the early 18th century, from Italy to the new world.

Take a listen.

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PRI’s The World Latest Edition Feb 10, 2012 by The World

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Although those broadcasts may be fabrications, at least some shipments of arms are being smuggled into Syria, and into the hands of those who oppose the government, reporters say.

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is a correspondent for The Guardian newspaper based in Istanbul, Turkey. He’s met with arms smugglers in Syria.

He tells host Marco Werman many of the weapons are coming across the border from Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey.