Kano, in northern Nigeria, has been called the "epicenter" of the current polio outbreak. This part of Nigeria is the only place in the world where polio cases are increasing.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
The emir of Kano state is the highest-ranking Muslim leader in northern Nigeria. Wada Mohamed Aliyu, seen here, is the emir's point man on polio. Local imams boycotted polio vaccination in 2003 and 2004, but now solidly support immunization.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
The small farming village of Minjibir, in northern Nigeria, has seen six cases of polio this year. Polio was eliminated from the Western Hemisphere in the early 1990s. It was stamped out in Europe a few years later.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Ado Ibrahim carries his son Aminu through the village of Minjibir in northern Nigeria. Aminu, 4, was paralyzed by polio in August.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Adamu Ali carries his 4-year-old son, Omar, who was stricken with polio earlier this year. They live in the village of Minjibir.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A polio immunization poster is taped on a walk-in refrigerator at a new cold storage facility at a hospital in Kano. The oral polio vaccine must be kept refrigerated; that's been a challenge in a place with only intermittent access to electricity.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A nurse at the health clinic in Minjibir prepares to distribute free bed nets to combat malaria. Campaigns like this one, which offers services for malaria, attract local residents to the clinic. While they're there, residents are encouraged to get their children vaccinated against polio.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
At the health clinic in Minjibir, women wait for their children to receive the polio vaccine.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Sahya Idriss, a service provider at the health clinic in Minjibir, carries a vial of the polio vaccine.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A child is vaccinated against polio at the Minjibir health clinic. The procedure, in which two drops of vaccine are pinched into a child's mouth, only takes a few seconds. Children should get at least three doses of the vaccine, spread out over time.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Hawa Bello, a social mobilization consultant with UNICEF in Kano, meets with community volunteers. The volunteers are given a small stipend to guide polio immunization teams through their individual neighborhoods. It's the volunteer's job to make sure every child under 5 in a given neighborhood gets vaccinated.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Men of all ages gather at a welding shop run by polio victims. The men make hand-cranked tricycles and customized motor scooters for people paralyzed by polio.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Sani Mohamed is a welder and mechanic at a shop run by polio victims in Kano.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A man naps at a scooter and tricycle shop run by polio victims in Kano.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A child crosses a bridge over the cement-lined Gogo stream, which flows behind the main market in Kano. Sanitation workers regularly test the sewage here for the presence of the polio virus.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Sahya Idriss, a service provider at the health clinic in Minjibir, carries a vial of the polio vaccine.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Ado Ibrahim carries his son Aminu through a village in northern Nigeria. Aminu was paralyzed by polio in August.
Credit Wikimedia Commons
The city of Kano has been called the epicenter of the current polio outbreak. It's located in the central part of northern Nigeria.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Wada Mohamed Aliyu is the representative for the emir of Kano state, the highest-ranking Muslim leader in the area. Local imams boycotted polio vaccination in 2003 and 2004, but they now solidly support immunization.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A child is immunized against polio at the health clinic in a farming village in northern Nigeria. The procedure involves pinching two drops of the vaccine into the child's mouth. For full protection, the child needs three doses, spaced out over time.
Polio was eliminated from the Western Hemisphere in the early 1990s. It was stamped out in Europe a few years later. And now, even the Congo and Somalia are polio free.
But in Africa's largest oil-producing nation, Nigeria, polio has been a difficult, contentious foe.
As the presidential candidates make their cases to the nation, health care is taking up a lot of talking points. But one subject that's less likely to be debated forthrightly is end-of-life care.
A big driver of U.S. health care expenditure is what's spent in the last year of life. Those who argue in favor of rationing that care say the country cannot afford to provide unlimited health care — either the government or insurance companies have to ration end-of-life care as a policy response.
Originally published on Tue October 16, 2012 1:46 pm
Tonight's presidential debate in New York is shaping up like an episode of the old game show To Tell the Truth: Will the real Barack Obama/Mitt Romney please stand up?
There are a lot of questions about what personas and strategies the two candidates will choose to adopt. Partisans on both sides argue that their man's opponent is a shape-shifter.
Democrats are convinced that part of the reason Romney won their first debate earlier this month is that he shamelessly lied about his own positions in tacking to the center.
Female Marines unload their rifles after a patrol with Afghan soldiers in Helmand province in June. The Marine Corps leadership has started an experiment to determine whether female Marine lieutenants have what it takes to become infantry officers and lead on the battlefield.
I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, we've been talking a lot about the national debt this election year, but did you know that Americans, as a group, owe more than a trillion dollars in student loan debt? In a few minutes, we'll speak with a former college professor, who says faculty advisors need to be doing more to help students think that through. That's in just a few minutes.
The Tea Party may have took the 2010 midterm elections by storm, but many analysts are now asking if the party's influence has cooled off. Host Michel Martin looks at the Tea Party's prospects for this election with NPR's Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving and Shelby Blakely, journalist coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots.
An audience member holds up his hand at a Mitt Romney town hall meeting in Dayton, Ohio, in March. Audience members will be allowed to ask questions at the second presidential debate, being held Tuesday night in Hempstead, N.Y.
As this election year began, political pundits insisted the No. 1 issue would be the economy. They expected the candidates to offer voters detailed plans for encouraging job growth.
Now, with the election just three weeks away, many Americans are still scratching their heads, wondering what exactly President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney would do to improve the economy.
Originally published on Tue October 16, 2012 1:46 pm
It was Bill Clinton who made the town hall-style debate famous, and looking back to his performance in the first such fall faceoff in 1992, it's easy to see why.
Clinton commanded the stage and used the format — in which voters, not journalists, ask the questions — to "feel the pain" of the audience. Now, President Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney get a shot at the same format.
However, it's the president who comes at it from a distinct disadvantage, says Chris Arterton, a professor of political management at George Washington University.
Originally published on Tue October 16, 2012 11:45 am
Cuba announced another set of significant reforms today. This time, President Raúl Castro announced the country is lifting exit visa requirements for most of its citizens.
Beginning January 14, Cuban citizens, with the exception of some professionals like doctors, will no longer need to apply for permission to leave and they won't need a letter of invitation from someone living abroad.
Adolescent brains have gotten a bad rap, according to neuroscientists.
It's true that teenage brains can be impulsive, scientists reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans. But adolescent brains are also vulnerable, dynamic and highly responsive to positive feedback, they say.
Gary McKinnon, who the U.S. government says perpetrated the biggest military computer hack of all time, will not be extradited to the U.S. from Britain, CNN reports.
The network adds:
"Home Secretary Theresa May said McKinnon's Asperger syndrome and depressive illness meant 'there is such a high risk of him ending his own life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with his human rights.'
Originally published on Tue October 16, 2012 8:41 am
Vikram Pandit, the chief executive officer of Citigroup, has stepped down, the company's board announced today.
"The Board also announced it has unanimously elected Michael Corbat CEO and a director of the Board," Citigroup said in a statement. "Mr. Corbat previously served as Citigroup's CEO of Europe, Middle East and Africa."
Originally published on Tue October 16, 2012 7:26 am
After a zinger of a vice presidential debate last week, the bosses have a lot to live up to tonight. Just in case you haven't been paying attention: President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney face off in the second of three presidential debates.
It starts at 9 p.m. at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. The town-hall style debate will be moderated by CNN's Candy Crowley.
After what has been universally called a strong Romney victory during round 1, the spotlight is on Obama.
Yesterday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Christopher Johnson and Nathaniel Claybrooks, two black men who had auditioned for The Bachelor, who claimed that the show discriminates against people of color both in choosing the primary bachelor/ette and in choosing the people he or she will have to choose from.
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Nearly 700 years after he ruled the Mali Empire, King Mansa Musa has been awarded the title of richest person in history. Personal fortune: $400 billion. That's according to a new inflation-adjusted list compiled by Celebrity Net Worth. West Africa's salt and gold were the source of Musa's great wealth, which he used to build magnificent mosques. More modern names on the list: The Rothchilds and John D. Rockefeller. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
Bank of America will release quarterly earnings tomorrow and once again, foreclosures will be part of the equation. The Charlotte-based bank's role in the 2008 housing crash has landed it on a fair number of lists of most hated institutions in America.
But, as Julie Rose of member station WFAE in Charlotte discovered, some of those most involved in cleaning up the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis are beginning to soften toward the bank.
Originally published on Tue October 16, 2012 9:45 am
Transcript
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And four major manufacturers say they will start offering financial support for the training of military veterans. The corporations are taking part in a program called Get Skills to Work Coalition. It has said its initial goal at training 15,000 vets.
NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Unemployment among veterans has been falling, as it has for everyone else. The jobless rate among vets serving after 2001 now stands at 9.7 percent, but that's still about 2 percentage points higher than the general population.
In the baseball playoffs tonight, the Detroit Tigers have a chance to put the reeling New York Yankees on the brink of elimination. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Giants have slowed the St. Louis Cardinals who'd been playing with the kind of magic touch that carried them to last year's World Series title. Last night in San Francisco, the Giants beat St. Louis 7-1 to even their National League Championship Series at one game each. NPR's sports correspondent Tom Goldman joins us to talk more baseball.
In Turkey's southern Hatay province, it is harvest time — the second harvest since the uprising began in neighboring Syria.
In the village of Hacipasa, Turkey, located right along the Syrian border, children play alongside tents on the edge of the farm fields. The tents belong not to Syrian refugees, but to Turkish farmworkers helping to bring in the cotton, tomatoes, peppers and pomegranates waiting to be harvested.
In America, vineyards are usually tucked in out-of-the-way rural areas, among country lanes. But in France, where great wine is a way of life, vineyards are everywhere — even in the middle of the country's biggest city.
High on the hills of the neighborhood of Montmartre in Paris is Clos Montmartre, the city's last working vineyard.
Kitsy Roberts and Janko Williams have traded a rent payment for a mortgage. The Seattle couple is planning to put a lot of sweat equity into their fixer-upper.
In many American communities, buying a home is now less expensive than renting. And with the economics tilting in favor of homeownership, many first-time buyers are jumping into the market.
After eight years of renting, Kitsy Roberts and her husband, Janko Williams, are practically giddy about their new Seattle home. And like proud parents, they are eager to show it off, from its historic details to its fresh paint.
Cuban President Fidel Castro replies to President Kennedy's naval blockade via Cuban radio and television on October 23, 1962. Kennedy enacted the blockade in response to the deployment of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba.
The small town of Bejucal, 20 miles south of Havana, looks much as it did in October 1962. Horse carts carry passengers and fresh-cut green bananas through narrow streets lined with pastel-colored homes.
The sleepy town doesn't seem like the kind of place to put an arsenal of nuclear weapons. But a military bunker here was the biggest storage depot on the island for the Soviet nuclear weapons 50 years ago.
As Mitt Romney and President Obama get ready for their second debate, a new bipartisan survey shows a surge for Romney in a key voter group following their first debate Oct. 3.
The random cellphone and land line poll of 600 likely rural voters in nine battleground states Oct. 9-11 has Romney at 59 percent among the survey's respondents. Obama's support is now down to 37 percent among rural battleground voters, a plunge of 10 points from the actual rural vote in those states four years ago.
Jason Lytle is the man behind the Modesto, Calif., band Grandaddy. The band released its debut in 1997, but it was Grandaddy's second album — The Sophtware Slump — that broke through with critics and fans. Even David Bowie called himself a fan when he approached the band members after seeing them play.
Former cyclist Scott Mercier has gained notoriety for refusing to go on a doping program 15 years ago. Here, Mercier (in blue jersey) rides just ahead of cyclist Chris Horner in 1997.
Reactions to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's recently released report on cyclist Lance Armstrong's use of performance-enhancing drugs have ranged from denial to anger and disappointment. Some have said Armstrong merely did what it took to compete with pro racers, all of them chemically enhanced. But that's just not true, says Joe Lindsey, a contributor to Bicycling magazine.
