Scientists say much of the Indian ocean archipelago could disappear under rising sea levels by the end of this century, and for the last few years its president Mohamed Nasheed has been waging a high-profile campaign to convince the rest of the world to cut greenhouse gas pollution.

Well, as of today, president Nasheed is president no more.

Nasheed resigned today after weeks of growing protests, capped off by a police mutiny this morning.

Nasheed said he resigned rather than use force to remain in power.

The now-former president was a political prisoner who became the Maldives’ first democratically-elected leader in 2008.  

But economic reforms cost him public support and religious conservatives accused him of being anti-Islamic.

Ultimately pressure against his government boiled over in the last few weeks after Nasheed ordered the arrest of a top judge, whom the president accused of being in the pocket of the political opposition.

Local journalist John James Robinson says the growing turmoil wasn’t surprising.

“Democracy was a very new concept in the country which had had thirty years of autocratic rule,” Robinson says, “so a lot of the concepts such as independent institutions, an independent judiciary, were all very very new.”

Nasheed handed power to the country’s vice president.

An official in Nasheed’s office called today’s events a coup, but the new president says Nasheed merely bowed to the will of the Maldivian people.

The former vice president says he’ll try to form a national unity government to run the country until elections next year.

The Maldives won’t sink before next year, but given the island’s general precariousness, it’s an inopportune moment for a political crisis.

In 2009, members of the Maldives’ cabinet donned scuba gear and used hand signals at an underwater meeting staged to highlight the threat of global warming to the lowest-lying nation on earth.

It is hard to say when that might happen, but if it does, the uprising already has a house band in Mali with several road-tested anthems.

Anchor Marco Werman talks about SMOD, a Malian band, an acronym of the four members and friends Sam, Mouzy, Ousco and Donsky.

The band creates a desert-dry groove punctuated by acoustic guitar and percussion.

SMOD – Les Dirigeants Africains

Subscribe and follow The World’s Global Hit

• Global Hit Podcast on iTunes
• Global Hit Podcast via RSS
• Global Hit Archive (prior to June 2009)
• Global Hit on Facebook
• Follow @marcowerman
  

In 2009, I visited Lagos to profile Seun for the PBS series “Sound Tracks.” I met his band the Egypt 80 at Seun’s home the Kalakuta Republic, the house and “independent state” Fela built. The Egypt 80 was Fela’s band. Seun took it over and added some new personnel. “It’s three generations of people you know,” Seun says of the Egypt 80. “People in their 70s, people from their 50s to their 70s. 30s and 40s. People in their 20s. You know, it’s a typical family.”

These portraits I took of Seun and the Egypt 80. The pictures were taken mid-afternoon at the Kalakuta Republic. The rust-colored paint worked amazingly well with the natural light, and everyone was in a good mood.

Seun Kuti

"Baba Ani" Lekan Animashaun, keyboards

Kola Onasanya, congas

Wale Toriola, clavé, sticks

Ajayi Raimi, drums

"Shigogo" Segun Odubanjo, Seun Kuti's body-man

Oyinade Deniran, tenor sax

Kunle Justice, bass

Alade Oluwagbemiga, rhythm guitar

David Obanyedo, guitar

Fan and regular at the Kalakuta Republic

Fan and regular at the Kalakuta Republic

Fan and regular at the Kalakuta Republic

Ade Oloye, Seun's assistant

Joy Ayomide Opara, singer and dancer

Iyabo Adeniran, singer and dancer

Ademiluyi Yetunde-George, singer and dancer

Muyiwa Kunnuji, trumpet

GP Saxy Olugbade Okunade, trumpet and soprano sax

keyboard player Baba Ani's hands

How the Video was Made
Many of The World’s reporters are equipped with their own small video camera. They are used to filming other people and the stories they cover. This time, they had to film themselves – or get others to film them – doing their work.

Stand-ups, or reporters being filmed in a story, are common in television. But for radio reporters, used to holding a microphone at interviewees, it was something unusual and took a bit of getting used to.

The World’s News Editor, Chris Woolf, normally based in the Boston newsroom, was in our London office during the day of filming and shot the program elements while there.

There was also a stylized end sequence, where all reporters not in the program on the day of the shoot, were given a chance to be feature in the video. This required each reporter to film themselves in a very particular way which took a bit of coordinating.

The day of the shoot was pretty normal – though shortly before, the hours of work that was put into that day’s program had to be discarded because of breaking news.

In order to get the right footage with everyone doing the same thing on that right day, it was a case of just picking any day in the calendar and seeing what happened.

In the end, what you see is a normal day in the life of The World.

They’re also keenly motivated by the state of the planet. Last year, Pink Martini met and performed with Japanese pop music legend Saori Yuki. The relationship deepened in 2011 with the destruction of the March tsunami in northeast Japan. Plans then gelled for Yuki to perform again with Pink Martini in the U.S. for a tsunami benefit concert.

When Lauderdale and Yuki came to The World’s studio recently, she sang a priceless version of “Auld Lang Syne” in Japanese. Here though is Lauderdale and Yuki telling the backstory of how they accompanied her last year when she sang a translated Japanese version of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”.

Great Books For The Holidays

This year’s recommendations come from writers and journalists including Granta editor John Freeman and writer Yiyun Li.
More>>>

Kids Books for the Holidays

This year’s selection includes new titles that feature stunning artwork, as well as some updated classics.
More>>>

What are you reading this holiday season? Share your recommendations with us here.

Music Picks for 2011

The World’s Marco Werman and April Peavey discuss their favorite CDs and interviews of the year.
More>>>

Top DJ Music Picks of 2011

The World’s guest DJs from around the globe for their favorite music picks of 2011.
More>>>

What are your favorite music picks of 2011? Share them with us here.

Also see Top DJ Music Picks of 2011

The World’s Marco Werman and April Peavey discuss their favorite CDs and interviews of the year.

April Peavey’s list

• Various Artists – Chicas! Spanish Female Singers 1962-1974
• La Vida Boheme – Nuestra
• Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow
• Vinicius Cantuaria & Bill Frisell – Lagrimas Mexicanas
• Dengue Fever – Cannibal Courtship

Marco Werman’s list

• Sola Rosa – Get It Together
• Beirut – The Rip Tide
• Just a Band – 82
• Frente Cumbiero – Frente Cumbiero Meets Mad Professor
• Michael Kiwanuka – EP Sampler
• Various Artists – Red Hot + Rio 2

Subscribe and follow The World’s Global Hit

• Global Hit Podcast on iTunes
• Global Hit Podcast via RSS
• Global Hit Archive (prior to June 2009)
• Global Hit on Facebook
• Marco Werman on Twitter

We videotaped the segment, fully intending to post it at www.theworld.org on Thanksgiving Day.

Trying to make iMovie sync up the quality audio with the audio from the video proved difficult. So, after several days of research and development, I offer you this video version of the Tinariwen Global Hit from last week.

Better late than never.

Milos Karadaglic (Photo: Marco Werman)

The World’s Marco Werman introduces us to Montenegrin classical guitarist Milos Karadaglic. He’s 28 and wants the classical guitar to regain its rightful place in symphony halls.

Sound Tracks Presents Quick Hits with Milos Karadaglic

Watch Thursday in the Park with Milos on PBS. See more from SOUND TRACKS.

Watch Interview with Milos Karadaglic on PBS. See more from SOUND TRACKS.

Watch Milos Karadaglic performs Granada on PBS. See more from SOUND TRACKS.

• Global Hit Podcast on iTunes
• Global Hit Podcast via RSS
• Global Hit Archive (prior to June 2009)
• Global Hit on Facebook
• Marco Werman on Twitter

Read the Transcript
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: Those healthier options have been widely available for some time in Europe. Mark Bittman is the author of Food Matters and a food columnist for the New York Times. He says the Europeans have much to teach us about healthy food.

MARK BITTMAN: Much of Europe has been resistant to the kind of industrial agriculture that’s really dominant in the United States now, especially in the production of animals. So you have what you might call mega-dairies being defeated in England and CAFO’s, Consolidated Animal Feeding Operations, also being kept out of agriculture areas around the continent because people want smaller or medium-sized farms and they don’t want to give up their agriculture to industry.

WERMAN: Why is that in Europe? I mean, why is it happening there and here we kind of have this Food Inc. view of food production?

BITTMAN: We are less rooted in a food culture than most of the countries over there and it was the work of big food companies after World War II to convince us that it was in our interests to have convenient food and lots of it produced in imminently marketable and imminently edible forms and we were vulnerable to that because we weren’t really steeped in a, more or less, homogeneous food culture the way a lot of people are over there.

WERMAN: And yet we hear that fast, convenient food is becoming a very large part of Europe’s diet and the rest of the world’s diet. You still remain thankful to Europe though?

BITTMAN: Well, it’s all a matter of degree. The English-speaking world, the United Kingdom and former colonies and former members of the Commonwealth, excluding India, lead the world in obesity. So, the U.K. is not that different from the United States, but it is in the U.K. where McDonald’s, for example, only sells cage-free eggs. The mega-dairies are being defeated and you’re not seeing those kinds of things and supermarkets sell 15% of chickens that are raised under reasonably decent, or relatively shall I say decent, conditions as opposed to 1% here. So those are indications that things are somewhat better there.

WERMAN: You mentioned obesity in the U.K. It’s interesting because Britain’s conservative leader, David Cameron, is considering backing a tax on unhealthy food. The Danes have already imposed a surcharge on foods with more than 2.3% saturated fat and Hungarians are doing something similar. Do you think this idea of fat taxes is going to take off globally and here in the U.S.?

BITTMAN: The fact that Cameron says he’s talking either about a soda tax or a fat tax is pretty interesting. You know, the Danish thing is very well intentioned, if a bit misguided, because taxing the saturated fat in butter is really not going to change much. But I think one of the really progressive things that could happen in food in the next 10 years or so would be, to put it generally, to discourage the consumption of unhealthy foods, foods that are objectively bad for us and encourage the consumption of good foods.

WERMAN: And, Mark Bittman, I spent some time this past summer on a friend’s organic farm in France and what really struck me about the experience was the pervasive sense that eating anything that wasn’t from the region was almost criminal. I mean, no one said it but you felt it. Like the local cornichon factory, the local pickle factory, they’re now getting their cornichon from Pakistan. I’m just wondering if you think small farms in Europe and ones in the U.S., will they always be able to push back effectively against globalization?

BITTMAN: The examples that you just gave are really interesting because they point to two ends of a spectrum and I think most of us need to be somewhere in between. I think it’s nuts to think that food that doesn’t come from your region is criminal and I think it’s equally nuts to be importing staples from half-way around the world when you could be growing them nearby. Somewhere in between there is a happy medium of regional agriculture that supplies most of our needs and importation of things that you can’t get or you can’t grow or that are grown much more easily elsewhere, like coffee, olive oil, and rice and things that here in the Northeast, for example, we don’t do well.

WERMAN: You spend a lot of time with food writers, Mark, and cooks and chefs from all over the globe. I know a lot of the world has harvest festivals, but what do these food writers make of the American Thanksgiving, our take on it? Do they see it as over the top?

BITTMAN: You know, I see it as an honorable and wonderful holiday. I see it is as a celebration of the harvest, which is certainly something that we need to be reminded of. I also see it as a time when we obsess about our overeating, whereas we don’t think that much about our overeating during the rest of the year, which is something of a shame.

WERMAN: Just like we’re doing right now.

BITTMAN: You know, it’s very hard to say anything negative about Thanksgiving and I don’t think there’s much reason to, but I think it’s important to spend some time thinking about what it means to have a feast at the end of the harvest, what it meant to people who were looking at three or four or five months of not eating as well as they were in the months from June until November and what it means to have super abundance largely of things that we probably shouldn’t be eating.

WERMAN: Food writer Mark Bittman. Great to have you on our Thanksgiving show.

BITTMAN: It’s great to be here, Marco. Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 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.

The sample came from a Fukushima city farm about 37 miles (60km) from the plant.

The government is considering banning shipments from the area it was found.

Marco Werman talks with reporter David McNeill in Tokyo.

Read the Transcript
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: In Japan, the government today banned shipments of rice grown near the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant. The plant’s been spewing radiation since it was wrecked by the March 11th tsunami but, until now, the rice grown in the region was deemed safe. Now, it’s been found to have high levels of radiation – 630 becquerels per kilo to be exact. The government limit is 500. David McNeill of Britain’s Independent Newspaper is following the story in Tokyo. He puts the numbers in perspective for us.

David McNeill: A lot of people would consider the government numbers quite high although, of course, the government says that it’s within sort of international limits. But a lot of people don’t trust the government when they give these limits. So the fact that it’s gone over on an already high limit is worrying people especially when the governor of that province last month reassured people that rice from the province was safe. And you have to remember that this is, sort of, one of Japan’s bread baskets. You know, Fukushima was quite famous for producing not just rice but all kinds of fresh food before the disaster. It’s the fourth largest rice-producing area of Japan. You know, there’s been a string of scares about this sort of level, borderline high or over-the-limit radiation in tea, in fish, in beef. But this is the first time really that it has hit rice, of course, which is Japan’s staple. It’s sort of equivalent to wheat in America. It’s that kind of impact and it is scary, obviously, to people who live on rice.

Werman: Right. I mean, of all the foodstuff to be banned in Japan it would be rice. I mean, the country is all about rice; it’s sacred there. There’s even an expression that God is in every grain of rice. What will this ban do then to the Japanese psychically as far as their view of Fukushima and the nuclear disaster there?

McNeill: Well, we have to be careful and say that this ban is for one area of one prefecture. It’s for an area covering about 150 – 160 rice paddies or rice farms. Although it is an important, sort of, psychological blow to this attempt to make sure that the radiation is not getting into food, it is only a limited thing. I think what people are doing at the moment in practice is… First of all, sales of food from that prefecture and from the surrounding prefectures are down. What people are doing, you see them in the supermarkets now all the time, is they check very carefully where the food is produced and they tend to go for foods that’s from the south of the country now, away from that nuclear disaster and from the extreme north, up in Hokkaido. I think they will continue to do that. They will continue to treat the government’s reassurances with skepticism. They will continue to hope that… I mean, you have to say Japan is not Soviet Russia; this is not Chernobyl. They really have a very sophisticated medical health system and checking system, and so on. But they will continue to look at these figures with some skepticism, I think.

Werman: What will it do economically to the northeast of Japan which has already been devastated by the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear crisis?

McNeill: Well food production, as I said, is an important component of Fukushima’s economy. Already, food production from that prefecture has been devastated. I was looking at statistics last week, you know, rice sales, sales of fruit and vegetables are down by 60, 70, 80 percent. A lot of farmers have been wiped out and a lot of other farmers are on the border line. There’s a struggle over compensation and how do you pay adequate compensation for loss of produce and so on. That’s going to be an ongoing battle for the next year and years to come.

Werman: David McNeill, Tokyo correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, thanks very much for your time.

McNeill: You’re very welcomed.

Werman: You can find more of our coverage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster including a series of reports from my visit to Japan in June following the earthquake. That’s all at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 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.

Two new reports that came out in the past week prompted us to call up Geoff and get an update on the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The conversation led us to the issue of radiation release, and what is known about how soil and crops in Tohoku have fared.

Here’s Geoff’s view.
Food radiation by The World