Africa
4:55 pm
Thu May 3, 2012

Diplomats Up Efforts To Avert War Between Sudans

Originally published on Wed May 9, 2012 9:43 am

Sudan and South Sudan are facing the threat of United Nations sanctions if they fail to stop fighting along their disputed frontier in the Horn of Africa.

A unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution, which condemns the surge of border violence, orders the two Sudans to cease hostilities within two days and resume negotiations within two weeks.

The U.N. resolution endorses an African Union road map it hopes will avert a return to war.

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Planet Money
4:37 pm
Thu May 3, 2012

What American Women Do For Work

Credit Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

Originally published on Thu November 1, 2012 5:09 pm

Forty years ago, only 1 in 3 American workers was a woman. Today, it's 1 in 2.

You know this already. But it raises interesting, subtler questions: What jobs did all those women get? And how did the gender breakdown change by industry over the past 40 years?

This graph answers those questions.

It shows how the gender breakdown changed in major sectors of the economy between 1972 and 2012.

The size of the circles shows how some sectors grew to include a larger share of the workforce, while others shrank in relative terms.

Two main themes jump out here.

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It's All Politics
4:14 pm
Thu May 3, 2012

Do Campaign Ads Seem More Negative This Year? It's Not Just You

Originally published on Wed May 9, 2012 9:43 am

If you thought the presidential primaries were extraordinarily negative, now there's statistical evidence that you were right.

A new analysis of TV ads finds that 70 percent of the messages were negative — a trend spearheaded by the heavily financed superPACs supporting the candidates. At this point in the 2008 election, 91 percent of TV ads were positive.

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Award-winning journalist Richard Harris reports on science issues for NPR's newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.

Harris, who joined NPR in 1986, has traveled to the ends of the earth for NPR. His reports have originated from Timbuktu, the South Pole, the Galapagos Islands, Beijing during the SARS epidemic, the center of Greenland, the Amazon rain forest and the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro (for a story about tuberculosis).

In 2010, Harris' reporting uncovered that the blown-out BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was spewing out far more oil than asserted in the official estimates. He covered the United Nations climate negotiations, starting with the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, followed by Kyoto in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2009. Harris was a major contributor to NPR's award-winning 2007-2008 "Climate Connections" series.

Over the course of his career, Harris has been the recipient of many of the journalism and science industries' most prestigious awards. The University of California at Santa Cruz awarded Harris the 2010-11 Alumni Achievement Award – the school's highest honor. In 2002, Harris was elected an honorary member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society. Harris shared a 1995 Peabody Award for investigative reporting on NPR about the tobacco industry.

As part of the team that collaborated on NPR's 1989 series "AIDS in Black America," Harris was awarded a Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton, a first place award from the National Association of Black Journalists and an Ohio State Award. In 1988, Harris won the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award for his report, "Anti-Noise: Can Technology Turn Noise into Quiet?" which explored a revolutionary technology that uses computer-generated noise to cancel out, not just mask, unwanted noise.

Before joining NPR, Harris was a science writer for the San Francisco Examiner. From 1981 to 1983, Harris was a staff writer at The Tri-Valley Herald in Livermore, California, covering science, technology, and health issues. Under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Harris spent the summer of 1980 as a Mass Media Science Fellow reporting on science issues for The Washington Star, in Washington, D.C.

Harris is co-founder of the Washington, D.C., Area Science Writers Association, as well as past president of the National Association of Science Writers.

A California native, Harris was valedictorian of his college graduating class at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980. He earned a bachelor's degree in biology, with highest honors.

Sarah McCammon joined Iowa Public Radio in January 2010, where she is the local host for NPR’s Morning Edition and is a reporter covering a variety of topics.  Sarah is an award-winning reporter and newscaster, as well as a frequent contributor to national public media programs including NPR  and Marketplace. As a print reporter, her work also has been published in the Chicago Sun-Times and the Kansas City Star.

Sarah is a Kansas City native, and worked in public radio in Nebraska before coming to Iowa.  She also previously worked as a print reporter in the Chicago area. Sarah also has worked in Washington, D.C., and spent a semester at Oxford University while completing her undergraduate degree in English/Communication.

Sarah's favorite public radio program is This American Life.

Business
4:10 pm
Thu May 3, 2012

Corn Farmers Hope, Cautiously, For A Bumper Crop

Originally published on Wed May 9, 2012 9:43 am

It's still too early to predict whether the 2012 corn harvest will set a record, but many corn farmers say the prognosis for a bumper crop is looking pretty good right now.

U.S. farmers are planting more acres of corn this year than they have in any year since the Great Depression. And with a mild spring across much of the nation's Corn Belt, many are hoping this autumn's yield will be one for the record books.

A Crop That 'Will Knock Your Socks Off'

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Europe
4:06 pm
Thu May 3, 2012

Will French Election Mark A Reversal Of Austerity?

Originally published on Wed May 9, 2012 9:43 am

The possibility that French President Nicolas Sarkozy may lose the presidential election Sunday is making waves across Europe. Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are the architects of Europe's new fiscal austerity pact.

But the man likely to replace Sarkozy has other ideas.

Socialist candidate Francois Hollande — who is favored in opinion polls by several percentage points — says Europe cannot emerge from the crisis based on austerity alone.

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Shots - Health Blog
4:02 pm
Thu May 3, 2012

Why Do Bike-Share Riders Skip Helmets?

Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 9:50 am

If you've ever shaken your head over urban bicyclists' apparent unanimous decision to forgo helmets, you're not far off the mark.

Among users of bike-sharing programs, like Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C., the problem is obvious.

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Environment
3:48 pm
Thu May 3, 2012

Greenland's Ice Melting Slower Than Expected

Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 9:50 am

A new study has some reassuring news about how fast Greenland's glaciers are melting away.

Greenland's glaciers hold enough water to raise sea level by 20 feet, and they are melting as the planet warms, so there's a lot at stake.

A few years ago, the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland really caught people's attention. In short order, this slow-moving stream of ice suddenly doubled its speed. It started dumping a whole lot more ice into the Atlantic. Other glaciers also sped up.

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The Two-Way
3:08 pm
Thu May 3, 2012

Student Forgotten In Holding Cell: 'Changes Have To Be Made'

Credit K. C. Alfred / UT San Diego
Daniel Chong appears at a news conference on Tuesday in San Diego.

Originally published on Wed May 9, 2012 9:43 am

Daniel Chong, a California college senior, was forgotten in a federal holding cell without food or water for five days.

Today, he told All Things Considered's Audie Cornish that the five days tested his sanity and his resolve to live.

"I didn't stay sane," Chong said. "Eventually, by the second or third night ... I went completely insane and was just trying to get a grip on reality, on what's happening to me."

Chong said at one point he thought about using his glasses to cut into his arm and kill himself.

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