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Touch screen production proves toxic
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Touch screens on high-tech gadgets may be fun to use, but making them is another story. Kathleen McLaughlin is a reporter with Global Post based in China. She’s found that in at least one Chinese factory that produces touch screens, workers were exposed to a toxic solvent that violated local codes and was used without proper safety equipment. Host Jeb Sharp speaks with Kathleen McLaughlin. Download MP3 (Photo: Mikael Häggström)
Tech Podcast: Wikileaks, Hactivism, and Four Views of the ‘Net
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This week’s Technology Podcast highlights some of the material the BBC has been producing as part of its special series of reports, called SuperPower, on the Internet. We’ve got an interesting and in-depth look at the website Wikileaks, as well as a report on the rise on online activism, or “hacktivism” as some call it. You can also hear a series of four short opinion pieces from some big digital thinkers on the future of the global Internet.
Swearing in Irish, storytelling in Scots, rapping in Khmer
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Two takes on the Irish language: one from Patrick’s dad, who was a schoolboy in the early years of Ireland’s independence, when studying Irish was an exercise in nation-building. Then, an interview with Manchan Magan who made a TV series about traveling around Ireland speaking only Irish. Next, we hear from Alexander McCall Smith: his latest offering in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series is a children’s book in the Scots language. Finally, hip-hop artist Boomer Da Sharpshooter who grew up speaking English but now raps in Cambodia’s main language, Khmer. Download MP3
Guam loves Spam
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The US Pacific Island territory of Guam is notable not just for its US military bases, which are soon to be expanded. Guam is also the world’s leading consumer per capita, of Spam. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports about the Guamanian craze for processed meat. Download MP3 (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad).
Reporter’s Notebook: Return to Haiti
Reporter Amy Bracken is currently on assignment in Haiti, a country that she knows well, having lived and worked there extensively in the past. The World asked her to keep a diary of her experiences on this trip. In this, her first entry, she writes about being back in the country, and about how the Haitians are preparing for the rainy season. (Photo: Amy Bracken)
Tech Podcast: Living with and without the internet
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This week, the tech podcast brings you a study in contrasts. As part of a series of reports on the power of the Internet, the BBC brought mobile phone connections to these two farmers in rural Nigeria. They’d never surfed the web before. Listen in to find out how they got on. At the same time, the BBC asked some South Koreans to disconnect from the ‘net for an entire week. Painful, considering South Korea is one of the most connected countries on earth. Also this week, we hear about how Indians are finding the love of their lives…online.
Moorish grafitti and texting in Yiddish
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The Alhambra in Grenada, the crowning glory of Moorish Spain, has more than 10,000 prayers and poems in Arabic inscribed on its walls. We hear about an effort to catalog the inscriptions. Then it’s the second part of the BBC’s documentary on Yiddish. Reporter Dennis Marks takes us to New York, where the language is undergoing a modest revival: among Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights, with a family who text message in transliterated Yiddish, and with a musician a novelist who are re-interpreting the old language of Eastern Europe’s shtetls for new generations. Download MP3
The BBC’s Koneksyon Ayiti + Yiddish forever
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In the latest World in Words podcast: Eleven days after Haiti’s earthquake, the BBC began daily radio broadcasts in Haitian Creole. We hear how the broadcasts kept Haitians abreast of the news and put them in touch with loved ones. Also, the past, present and future of Yiddish. Once spoken by millions in Europe, it was nearly wiped out in the Holocaust and through assimilation. Today it survives, and not only as the language that gave English klutz, kosher, kvetch and many other evocative expressions. Download MP3
Tech Podcast 280: Cross Cultural Training Goes Online, & Reliving the Dot Com Bubble
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Here you see a graph of the tech-heavy Nasdaq stock index from 1994 to 2008. See that peak? That’s the “dot com” bubble. In this week’s podcast, we take a step back in time to those heady days just before that bubble burst. What was it like to live through that? We’ll hear from someone who survived. Also, new body scanners come to US airports, and cross-cultural business training finds a new home online. And we end with some very interesting research on voice recognition technologies.
Packing flashcards, Pandas and Polyglotty Olympics
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Our top five language stories this month: why the disappearance of the Bo language is a big deal; the Olympics are being broadcast for the first time in, among other languages, Cree; when pandas move from the U.S. to China, do they have to learn a new language?; lawsuits concerning Arabic flashcards in hand baggage and speaking Spanish in English-only school; and the Pentagon’s latest attempts to equip soldiers with real-time speaking translator-bots.Download MP3
Iceland’s debt clouds country’s future
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Iceland’s population is only about 317,000 people. Many are worried that the country’s current debt crisis will force the best and brightest to leave Iceland in search of work. Unemployment in Iceland has risen from one to ten percent just in the last year. But some young Icelanders, like Oern Haroldson (pictured), aren’t waiting for the government to get its economic house in order. The World’s Gerry reports. Download MP3
Oh Canada
Canadians don’t know how to celebrate? “You’ve to to be kidding me, eh?” says Andrea Crossan, producer and reporter for The World. Andrea was in her hometown, Vancouver, to cover the games for The World. Read her Reporter’s Notebook, and listen in to her coverage.
Tech Podcast: Germans prepare for RoboCup 2010
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In this week’s podcast, we feature a listener-generated segment on robotic soccer. Tell me, is there anything more awesome than teams of three kid-sized robots trying to score goals against one another? Absolutely not is the answer. We’ll hear from the FUmanoids, the German team that is currently the #2 team in the world. We’ll also talk about Google’s Europe woes, and about Latvia’s virtual “Robin Hood.”
Homeopathy in Britain
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British lawmakers have determined that homeopathy, a form of alternative medicine, is not medicine of any kind at all (beyond a placebo.) Britain funds four homeopathic hospitals in the UK, spending about six million dollars per year. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.
US diplomats to get new London digs
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The United States today unveiled the design for a brand new embassy in London. The US has had an embassy in central London for some 200 years. But space and security concerns are forcing a move to slightly less swanky, but more secure, digs across the Thames River. Later today, The World’s Laura Lynch reports on the winning design (pictured), submitted by Philadelphia-based firm Kieran Timberlake. Download MP3
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