PRI's The World » Best of the BBC

69 days underground

The World — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:35:07 +0000

For more than two months, 33 men were trapped underground in Chile's San Jose mine. As the rescue attempt gathered pace in the Atacama Desert above, hundreds of relatives and dozens of international media organisations set up camp there. Now - with all the men brought to the surface safely - BBC News takes a look back at the miners' ordeal. >>>Watch the audio slideshow

Britain’s first car accident

Michael Rass — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:05:55 +0000

Almost 4,000 people are killed on the world's roads every day, according to the campaigning charity RoadPeace. So who was the UK's first fatal car accident victim - exactly 114 years ago - and what happened?

Audio slideshow: The Hubble is 20

Michael Rass — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:22:51 +0000

The world’s most famous space telescope has been peering into some of the deepest recesses of the universe for two decades – and is now celebrating its 20th birthday. In this Best of the BBC, you can take a look at some of the fantastic sights it has seen in that time with Professor Alec Boksenberg from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge – who was on the European team that helped build Hubble.

Watch the BBC slideshow
Hubble site

Audio slideshow: soccer kings of New York City

Michael Rass — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:30:18 +0000

Martin Luther King Jr High School has a troubled history. In 2002 it made news when a student shot two fellow students, seriously injuring them. Shortly afterward, MLK became one of the first in New York City to be closed due to low performance and high drop-out rates. The building now houses six smaller schools. Their 2,400 students still have to pass through a metal detector and file past two uniformed police officers to get to their classrooms. But its boys’ soccer team, still playing under the MLK banner is a big success: it has won 12 out of 14 city championships, its players also have one of highest graduation rates and are regularly awarded scholarships to prestigious colleges. The man behind the team’s success is Martin Jacobson, aka Coach Jake, and he can rely on talent from all over the world.

Watch the slideshow here

When the prime minister calls

Michael Rass — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:00:17 +0000

London seniors Joyce and Ted Hawkes were quite surprised when Downing Street called in 1997 to ask whether Britain’s new prime minister Tony Blair and his wife could come by for a cup of tea. They relived the moment with the host of the BBC’s PM program, Eddie Mair.

Listen to the interview on the PM page

Fallujah doctors report rise in birth defects

Michael Rass — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:30:48 +0000

Doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion. The city witnessed fierce fighting in 2004 as US forces carried out a major offensive against insurgents. Now, the level of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than in Europe. The US military says it is not aware of any official reports showing an increase in birth defects in the area. BBC world affairs editor John Simpson (pictured) visited a new, US-funded hospital in Fallujah where pediatrician Samira al-Ani told him that she was seeing as many as two or three cases a day, mainly cardiac defects. Download MP3

BBC online story with video

Actor George Takei remembers his internment

Ian Rosser — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:25:23 +0000

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At a stroke Executive Order 9066 branded Japanese-Americans the enemy within. In California alone tens of thousands were sent to the north of the state or the interior of the country, forced to live in barracks and penned in by barbed wire fences. Resentment grew, particularly among the young, and riots sometimes ensued. George Takei recalls the time he spent interned, the effect on his family and others – some of whom were driven to suicide – and the moment when he heard the war was over. He also tells interviewee Lucy Williamson about the time spent adjusting to freedom. It took decades for a formal apology from the US government to those labelled a threat, over two-thirds of whom were American citizens.

Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom

Michael Rass — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:00:57 +0000

It has been 20 years since the South African authorities agreed to free Nelson Mandela – the man who would lead the struggle to end the country’s policy of racial segregation, and create a multi-racial democracy. In this audio slideshow, using the BBC archives, you can see how he left behind his cell of 27 years, to become South Africa’s first black president.

Hero Pilot: ‘I thought I was going to die’

The World — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:00:23 +0000

A British airways pilot who crash-landed his passenger at London’s heathrow airport has described the moment he thought he would die along with 152 passengers on board. Captain Peter Burkill was in the final minute of his approach to land at heathrow when the plane lost power, forcing him to make an energency landing. He managed to get his Boeing 777 over the airport’s perimeter fence but came down short of the runway in January 2008. In his first media interview since the incident, he told the BBC he thought it was his time to die.

BBC story with video

Your World, Your Way – BBC users show off video skills

The World — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:00:08 +0000

The BBC World Service is asking its users to submit short video documentaries about their lives and the places where they live. The beauty of the project – called MyWorld – it is that there’s no need to use super-expensive specialist equipment – if there’s a good idea, a strong personality and a story to tell, it can shine through, even if the piece is shot using the camera on a mobile phone or a borrowed camcorder. All you have to do is get everything you want to say into two minutes. There are entries from all over the world on all kinds of subjects, such as Michael Schmacke’s one-minute piece about the Berlin Wall, and how some people in the city miss it now it’s gone.

Pakistan Earthquake – Four Years On

The World — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:00:12 +0000

Download MP3 In fall 2005, tens of thousands of people were killed in a massive earthquake which struck northern Pakistan. Then, as in the more recent quake in Haiti, international agencies launched massive aid progams to help the survivors. As the focus of media attention now begins to shift away from Haiti, the BBC's Aleem Maqbool has returned to Muzzafarabad, where he's found that reconstructing homes and rebuilding lives has been a slow process in the years since the TV cameras moved on. Download MP3

Ugandan witch doctors sacrifice children

The World — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:47:51 +0000

Polina Angela now campaigns against witchcraft.

Meet Polino Angela. He used to be a witch doctor and by his own admission he sacrificed more than 70 children during his career. For the past twenty years he has dedicated his life to convincing other witch doctors to abandon their lives of sorcery. In this documentary you will hear Polina’s frank and chilling account of his life killing children. It’s indicative of a wider problem in Uganda, where there’s been an apparent increase in cases of human sacrifice. For Crossing Continents, the BBC’s Tim Whewell traveled to the country to investigate these ritual killings.

Please note this program contains disturbing accounts throughout

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‘I boarded a plane with an aerosol can’

Ian Rosser — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:46:17 +0000

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After the foiled attempt on Christmas Day to bring down transatlantic flight 253 bound for Detroit, there have been many calls for better safety measures. More careful screening of passengers and their belongings passing through airports was immediately implemented. But as this BBC report from Colette Hume shows, security is still not exactly where it should be.

Read the Transcript
This 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: New anti-terrorism screening measures for international air passengers took effect yesterday. The procedures were a response to a Nigerian man’s alleged attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam on December 25th. And yet, the heightened security did not stop Colette Hume from boarding a flight from Sydney, Australia to the US yesterday, with a forbidden can of hairspray in her bag. Ms. Hume is a BBC reporter. She arrived in New York yesterday morning, uncaptured, and every hair in place. Briefly, Colette, how did the baggage handlers in two separate searches miss this full sized aerosol can?

COLETTE HUME: Well, as a seasoned traveler, I know only too well what you can and can’t take on an aircraft. Now the tin of hairspray got into my bag, I think, because I’d used that bag during an overnight stay to see friends out in New South Wales. I really didn’t even know it was there, and in fact, the first I knew about it is when I went through my bag, on the aircraft, when the doors had been shut, to look for a book. I simply couldn’t believe that I’d got through a scanning machine at Kingsford-Smith Airport in Sydney, and gone through a second hand search and not one security had picked up this bright pink aerosol can during those searches.

WERMAN: Right, this wasn’t some sort of “gotcha” phony journalism experiment that you pulled off. This wasn’t on purpose.

HUME: I really truly did not know this tin was in my bag. But you know, when I got onto the plane and found the aerosol and talked to some of my fellow passengers, we found that we had similar stories. They said they’d been checked through with various items that they didn’t really think they were allowed to take on flights previously, but certainly the one thing that is different now, even from flights I took leaving London early in December out to Japan, is that the atmosphere on airplanes is very, very different.

WERMAN: Right, very jumpy I imagine. Now I remember this movie, “Live and Let Die,” one of the James Bond films, in which Roger Moore creates an aerosol flame thrower. He has I think a can of deodorant, but he sparks it up with a cigar. So what is the problem with an aerosol can?

HUME: Well, I’m a journalist, not a pyrotechnic expert, but what I can tell you is this, the size of this aerosol can, it was more than 200 milliliters, is twice the limit of liquids allowed on US flights, indeed, all world flights. When I got off the flight at LA to recheck my baggage, I spoke informally to a member of ground staff at LAX. And you know, her eyes just widened, and she said, “No, ma’am, absolutely, you will not be able to take that on the plane.” Now fortunately, I was able to recheck it and it’s made its way with me to New York.

WERMAN: I thought maybe it would convince you once and for all not to use hairspray any more.

HUME: Well, from the serious angle in this, I think traveling, especially air travel, has changed beyond all recognition. You know, the old days of air travel where you could spend time hanging out with the flight assistants, maybe getting a cup of tea and talking to them during the flight, those days have disappeared.

WERMAN: Well, just on the record, Sydney Airport did say that it successfully screens millions of passengers each year, and that issues such as yours, Colette, are extremely rare and they are taken seriously. So, Colette, you are the exception. The BBC’s Colette Hume in New York. Colette, here’s to a new year of good flights. Thanks so much for your time.

HUME: Thank you very much.

WERMAN: And you can read more about Colette Hume’s airport security experience at The World dot org.

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Death and denial in Nigeria

Ian Rosser — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:00:16 +0000

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In Western countries people mostly take for granted that the police are there ‘to protect and to serve’. The BBC’s Caroline Duffield has found this might be quite different in Nigeria – at least in one city. A hospital in the south-eastern city of Enugu has experienced an overwhelming flow of dead bodies in recent months, so many that mass burials have taken place. There are suspicions that the police might be implicated, particularly the feared SARS unit – the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. This has been denied by the authorities.

World AIDS Day Posters

Matthew Exell — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:27:23 +0000

In this audio slideshow from BBC News we can look at some of the subtle and shocking ways that health campaigners have used images to raise HIV/AIDS awareness across the world. This is explained by Julia Nurse and William Schupbach, two of the librarians who helped assemble the images for the Wellcome Collection. The posters use various methods, from humorous to blunt messages, to convey to observers why the message remains so important more than two decades after the virus was discovered.