African Union members have elected Djibouti's Foreign Minister Mahmoud Ali Youssouf as the next chair of the AU Commission. Mr Ali Youssouf defeated Kenya’s former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and former Foreign Minister of Madagascar Richard Randriamandrato. What are some of the challenges he faces?
Also, why is Gambia running short on medicines?
And are tech-savvy Gen Z's really more vulnerable to cyber attacks?
Presenter: Charles Gitonga
Technical Producer: Philip Bull
Producers: Patricia Whitehorne, Sunita Nahar, Nyasha Michelle and Stefania Okereke in London. Blessing Aderogba in Lagos.
Senior Journalist: Karnie Sharp
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi
At least 10 killed in severe floods. Negotiating an end to the Ukraine war. More federal firings. CBS News Correspondent Cami McCormick has today's World News Roundup.
Backing away from European security guarantees and seeking mineral rights in Ukraine as recompense for military aid: at the Munich Security Conference the Trump administration made its convention-trashing, transactional nature clear. What Europe will or even can do is not so obvious. And a tribute to Donald Shoup, whose studies on keeping cars moving focused on where they parked (17:45).
“A Raisin in the Sun” is a Chicago classic. The play by Lorainne Hansberry tells the story of a Black family looking to move out of a cramped South Side apartment and defy social and political limits to realize their dreams. There would be no “A Raisin in the Sun” without Lorraine’s father Carl Hansberry, a real estate broker turned civil rights activist who helped end restrictive covenant laws that prevent certain people from buying and living on a property.
Reset learns more about Carl Hansberry with Gabrielle Randle-Bent, dramaturg, University of Chicago professor and associate artistic director at the Court Theatre.
For a full archive of Reset interviews, head over to wbez.org/reset.
European leaders meet in Paris to discuss an emerging transatlantic chasm over security and the war in Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in the Middle East amplifying President Trump's vision for Gaza. And a review of Trump's first four weeks reshaping the U.S. government.
Today's episode of Up First was edited by Ryland Barton, Didi Schanche, Krishnadev Calamur Reena Advani and Adriana Gallardo. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent and our technical director is Carleigh Strange. Our Executive Producer is Kelley Dickens.
History was written down for the very first time in the ancient region of Mesopotamia. In Between Two Rivers, Moudhy Al-Rashid tells the story of the civilisations that rose and fell, through the details left on cuneiform tablets from 4000 years ago – from diplomatic letters to receipts for beer. And the drive that led ancient scribes to record the events and legends of the past.
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was probably born in AD69, and although little is known about his own life, his biography of the twelve Caesars vividly captured what it was like to be at the centre of power in the Roman Empire. The historian Tom Holland pays homage to his fellow history-writer, Suetonius, in a new translation of The Lives of the Caesars.
Archaeologists at the ancient Sumerian city-state of Ur believe they found evidence of a museum in the ruins, which suggests that the desire to display and preserve artefacts, and tell stories from the past, is nothing new. Gus Casely-Hayford is the curator of the V&A East which opens in the Spring, and is expected to offer a new way of viewing the past, and a chance to see behind the scenes of a museum.
It is the most expensive substance in the world by a wide margin.
When it was first proposed, it was actually proposed in jest. However, decades later, the joke turned out to have been true.
It is a fundamental part of the universe, and by all accounts, it should be everywhere, yet it can’t be found anywhere, and physicists aren’t really sure why.
Learn more about antimatter, how it was discovered, and what it is on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell something, political actors who want to analyze behavior, and law enforcement who seek to monitor and limit actions.
In The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism(NYU Press, 2025), law professor Ray Brescia explores the failure of existing legal systems and institutions to protect people’s online presence and identities. Examining the ways in which the digital space is under threat from both governments and private actors, Brescia reveals how the rise of private surveillance prevents individuals from organizing with others who might help to catalyze change in their lives. Brescia argues that we are not far from a world where surveillance chills not just our speech, but our very identities. Surveillance, he suggests, will ultimately stifle our ability to live full lives, realize democracy, and shape the laws that affect our privacy itself.
Brescia writes that “The search for identity and communion with others who share it has never been easier in all of human history. At the same time, our individual and collective identity is also under threat by a surveillance state like none that has ever existed before. This surveillance can be weaponized, not just for profit but also to promote political ends, and undermine efforts to achieve individual and collective self-determination”
The book identifies the harms to individuals from privacy violations, provides an expansive definition of political privacy, and identifies the ‘integrity of identity’ as a central feature of democracy. The Private is Political lays out the features of Surveillance Capitalism and provides a roadmap for “muscular disclosure”: a comprehensive privacy regime to empower consumers to collectively safeguard privacy rights.
Professor Ray Brescia is the Associate Dean for Research & Intellectual Life and the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Professor in Law & Technology at Albany Law School. He is the author of many scholarly works including Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession (from NYU Press) and The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (from Cornell UP). He is also the author of public facing work, most recently “Elon Musk’s DOGE is executing a historically dangerous data breach” on MSNBC. He started his legal career at the Legal Aid Society of New York where he was a Skadden Fellow, and then served as the Associate Director at the Urban Justice Center, also in New York City, where he represented grassroots groups like tenant associations and low-wage worker groups. Ray’s blog is “The Future of Change” and you can find him on LinkedIn.
