World Tour - Flooding in Sudan, and language wars in Mongolia

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with Africa correspondent Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Flooding in Sudan—We start today here in Africa.

AUDIO: [TALKING, SPLASHING]

Sudan has declared a state of emergency after record floods hit the nation.

AUDIO: [SHOVELING]

Local residents shoveled dirt into bags and stacked them into waist-high walls to try to keep the water out of their homes.

Heavy seasonal rains have drenched the region, swelling the banks of the Nile River. It rose 75 feet at the end of August, its highest level in 100 years. The floods have killed almost 100 people, injured dozens, and damaged more than 100,000 homes.

The rainy season lasts until October, so more flooding could be on the way.

Mongolian parents protest new education requirements—Next, we go to China.

AUDIO: [CHANTING]

Students in the Chinese-controlled region of Inner Mongolia gathered last week to protest a new education policy.

The Chinese government recently unveiled new guidelines for schools in the region, removing the Mongolian language from many classrooms. Elementary students must now learn subjects like history, politics, language, and literature in Mandarin, the official state language.

Ethnic Mongolians view the changes as a threat to their cultural identity and fear it will lead to the disappearance of the Mongolian language. Many parents refused to send their children back to school in protest.

Government officials say adopting a national standardized curriculum will improve pathways to higher education. Beijing has implemented similar policies in other ethnic areas like Tibet.

Birmingham stabbing—Next, we go to Europe.

One man died and seven people were wounded in a series of stabbings in the United Kingdom over the weekend. The attacks took place early Sunday at several locations around Birmingham. One witness said the attacker walked up to people seemingly at random.

AUDIO: She screamed, screamed high. Looked around and he was stabbing her, still stabbing her.

Police have arrested a 27-year-old male suspect. They have not released a motive but have ruled out gang violence and terrorism.

Most guns are banned in the United Kingdom, but knife attacks have risen 6 percent in the last year. 

Woodland sound map—Finally, we end today in a birch forest in Scotland.

AUDIO: [BRANCHES CREAKING, BIRDS CHIRPING]

That’s the sound of a strong wind making the tree branches creak and crack. The recording is part of an online, interactive map created by users who submit sounds from around the world.

In May, organizers in the United Kingdom asked people to record sounds and submit them. The group compiled the submissions into an interactive map.

Some of the sounds already uploaded include nightingales in Slovakia… 

AUDIO: [SOUND OF NIGHTINGALES]

…and lemurs in Madagascar.

AUDIO: [SOUND OF LEMURS]

Users continue to upload new clips, so the map is always expanding. Musicians with the organization plan to use sounds from the map to compose original music.

That’s this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

(AP Photo/Marwan Ali) A man carries belongings as he wades through of a flooded road in the town of Shaqilab, about (25 km) southwest of the capital, Khartoum, Sudan, Monday, Aug. 31, 2020. 

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