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Meet Winston, the 11 month old carrier pigeon who is faster than broadband Internet in South Africa. At least, that’s what one company in South Africa set out to prove. You can hear more about that in this week’s podcast. You can also take a ride on the Battambang Bamboo Railway in Cambodia, and follow along with Briton Andy Pag as he tries to circumnavigate the globe in a tricked out bio-truck. We ask you: where else can you find this kind of podcast? Wow.
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“The Stalin Epigram” is offered as a novelist’s homage to Osip Mandelstam, the poet who embodied both a new era in Russian poetry and the martyrdom of Russia’s intelligentsia under Stalinism. But the book turns out to be a crown of thorns, a posthumous offense to a poet who has few defenders at the ready to fence for his honor.
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On this week’s podcast, we’re off to Linz, Austria to hear about some of the exhibits at annual Ars Electronica Festival. One you can see here at left: that’s right, turn your own urine into fertilizer. If you like that one, wait until you hear the other story from Linz…Also, we hear about the 3D re-creation of pre-war Nagasaki, Japan. And we end with a brief history of GPS drawing, brought to you by listener Brett Stalbaum.
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Download MP3More than 10,000 refugees have fled across the border from Myanmar into China amidst fighting between the Burmese military and a Chinese ethnic group. China is telling the Myanmar’s military government to deal with conflict and stabilize the border region. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports.
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Download MP3Today a Chinese state-run newspaper appeared to confirmed that dead prisoners supplied almost two-thirds of the human organs used in transplants in China. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad has the story from Beijing.
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Anchor Katy Clark speaks with author Diane Wei Liang about her memoir, “Lake with No Name: A true story of Love and Conflict in Modern China.” The author grew up during the Cultural Revolution and was later a part of China’s student pro-democracy movement.
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For today’s Geoquiz we were looking for a major industrialized nation where a lack of daycare options for young families has become a main topic in this year’s election. The answer is Japan. Reporter Akiko Fukita tells us why the promise of more child care centers carries such weight with voters.
We’re staying on government benefits for the Geo Quiz. We’re looking for country that’s heading into elections this weekend. This is a major industrialized nation that’s played a crucial role in the world economy over the past 60 years. It’s also a country that’s ageing – fast!
Each week, The World brings you the best in political cartooning from across the globe. In this week’s cartoon slideshow, artists take aim at Afghanistan’s upcoming elections, the continued detention of Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, and those noisy town hall meetings about health care reform in the United States.
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North Korea has freed a South Korean worker detained for allegedly insulting the North’s communist leadership. The engineer, Yoo Seong-jin, was handed over to officials of his company, Hyundai Asan, and has since crossed back into South Korea. Jason Strother reports. >>> More coverage from the BBC.(Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
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Today in New York City, teenagers from seven non-English-speaking countries competed to become the best speller in English. It was the First Annual Global SpellEvent Championship, organized by Franklin Electronic Publishers. The winner received a scholarship worth $10,000. >>>Click here for more information on the event.
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In this week’s World in Words podcast, Israel’s government tries out some new words to describe its West Bank settlement program. We consider those, and take a look at previous rhetorical attempts to justify Israel’s expansion into Palestinian territory. Then, a conversation with the University of Arizona’s Kathy Short, who manages an ever-expanding collection of children’s books from around the world. Finally, an update on Brooklyn’s finest fake French band, Les Sans Culottes. After more than a decade together, the band is finally performing in France. Download MP3
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Listen to Patrick Cox’s 2005 series on Hiroshima’s hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivors. Most of those still alive were children when the United States dropped the bomb on August 6, 1945. Now for many, childhood memories are flooding back. This series considers the unique mental health affects on survivors of the A-bomb. Parts 1 and 2 are above. Read on for Parts 3 and 4.
A hidden culprit in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was degraded shorelines. Now Indonesia’s moving to protect its coasts by restoring thousands of miles of mangrove swamps. Ari Daniel Shapiro has the story.
