Night Witches

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We take you back to World War II for today’s Geography Quiz. We’re looking for the first nation to put female pilots into combat. This nation had three regiments of female pilots, and during the war they flew more than 30,000 missions. Their enemies called them the Night Witches, and they are the subject of a new documentary by the BBC’s Lucy Ash. Download MP3

• Night Witches radio documentary
• Night Witches Audio Slideshow
• Lucy Ash on the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent
• Video footage of the Night Witches

Recreating Nagasaki in 3D

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Students at the University of Nagasaki are attempting to recreate a community that a nuclear weapon destroyed. The Urakami neighborhood in Nagasaki was ground zero for the second atomic bomb the U-S dropped on Japan in World War Two. That attack killed 39-thousand people. And it destroyed most pictures of life in Urakami before the war. The students are recreating pre-war Urakami, with the help of memories and 3D technology. Akiko Fujita has our radio story.

• View a video about the 3D reconstruction

World War II anniversary

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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended ceremonies in Poland today marking the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II and rejected claims that Russia had a role in sparking the conflict. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Svetlana Savranskaya director of Russian programs at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. >>>BBC coverage

Apology campaign for British Nazi code-breaker

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There’s a campaign under way in Britain to press the government to issue an apology in the case of Alan Turing. Turing is considered the father of the modern computer and contributed to the defeat of Germany during World War Two by cracking secret Nazi codes. Turing committed suicide in 1954 after being prosecuted for being homosexual. Anchor Lisa Mullins finds out more about the campaign from Richard Gill, a professor of mathematical statistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

Green Homes in Canada, and New Fuel Efficiency Standards in the U.S.

Jason Margolis assumes command of the podcast this week. We take you north to Canada to hear about an effort to “green” a million wartime-era homes. Then, we offer a global assessment of the new fuel efficiency standards announced by the Obama Administration. Listen