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3:40 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Mass Killing Makes For One Of Syria's Bloodiest Days

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By editor

Originally published on Fri July 13, 2012 9:24 pm

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. There has been another mass killing in Syria. Anti-government activists say more than 200 people may have been killed in one of the worst days of bloodshed since the uprising began almost 16 months ago.

United Nations monitors confirm that the Syrian army shelled a village in the central province of Hama. Activists say, after that bombardment, pro-government militiamen moved in, killing many more villagers.

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It's All Politics
3:05 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Texas Voter ID Law Now In Hands Of Three-Judge Panel

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The fate of Texas' new voter ID law is now up to a three-judge federal panel in Washington, D.C.

Lawyers for Texas and the Justice Department wrapped up five days of arguments in U.S. District Court Friday, with each side accusing the other of using deeply "flawed" data to show whether minorities would be unfairly hurt by a photo ID requirement.

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Opinion
2:55 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Wish You Were Here: The Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk

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Credit Steve Snodgrass / Flickr
The Dolle's sign is part of the magic of the boardwalk at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware.
Credit KK Ottesen /
Writer David Rowell is enchanted by Rehoboth's boardwalk.
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By editor

Originally published on Thu July 19, 2012 3:16 pm

David Rowell is an editor with The Washington Post. His first novel, The Train of Small Mercies, is just out in paperback.

When I was growing up in North Carolina, my family went to the same beach every year; it had the sand, the water and pretty much nothing else. Mostly that was OK, but the idea of a boardwalk, which I caught glimpses of on TV or in movies, seemed wondrous to me — like a carnival rolled out from a wooden carpet.

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The Two-Way
2:42 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Germany's Merkel Pledges To Protect Religious Circumcision

Credit Gero Breloer / AP
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, right, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, gestures next to Rabbi Avichai Appel, left, a board member of the Orthodox Rabbinical Conference of Germany, during a news conference in Berlin, Germany on Thursday.
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By Eyder Peralta

Originally published on Fri July 13, 2012 2:49 pm

In Germany, the past few weeks have been marked by an intense debate over religious liberties.

Today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel jumped into the fray saying her administration would work to protect religious circumcision.

"It is absolutely clear to the federal government that we want Jewish, we want Muslim religious life in Germany. Circumcisions carried out in a responsible way must not be subject to prosecution in this country," Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters.

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All Songs Considered Blog
2:31 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

First Watch: Loudon Wainwright III, 'The Here & The Now'

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Loudon Wainwright III at the beach with his grandson Archangelo, the son of Martha Wainwright.
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By editor

Originally published on Fri December 14, 2012 3:40 pm

Maybe we should all write our autobiographies and boil them down to 5 minutes. Loudon Wainwright III makes it look so easy in this music video for his song "The Here & the Now." There's a poignancy here that is so bittersweet and a trajectory that is both unpredictable and undeniable.

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World Cafe
2:31 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Shawn Colvin On World Cafe

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Shawn Colvin.
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By editor

Originally published on Mon August 20, 2012 3:05 pm

Three-time Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin is a contemporary folk legend. Colvin started playing guitar at the age 10 and went on to cut her teeth on the folk circuits of Illinois and San Francisco before moving on to the Fast Folk cooperative of Greenwich Village in New York City. During her solo music career, Colvin has appeared in off-Broadway shows and episodes of television shows such as The Simpsons and Treme.

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Poverty In America: The Struggle To Get Ahead
2:02 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Struggling Families Lift Themselves Out Of Poverty

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Credit Pam Fessler / NPR
Support group members Pamela Travis (from left), Dominique Martin, Yovanda Dixon, Shanna Chaney and Ramona Shewl hold a meeting as part of the Family Independence Initiative. The Oakland nonprofit encourages low-income families to form small groups to help each other get ahead.
Credit Pam Fessler / NPR
Yovanda Dixon washes vegetables in her San Francisco home to prepare a demonstration for her support group.
Credit Pam Fessler / NPR
Yovanda Dixon (left) shows fellow group member Pamela Travis some of the bath oils she sells outside a San Francisco grocery store as part of her business Scentuality.
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Originally published on Fri July 13, 2012 9:24 pm

It's been almost 50 years since President Lyndon Johnson declared a "War on Poverty." But today, the poverty rate in the U.S. is the highest it's been in 17 years, affecting some 46 million people.

The economy is partly to blame, but even in good times, millions of Americans are poor.

That's been a longtime concern for Maurice Lim Miller. He ran social service programs in the San Francisco Bay Area for 20 years. Then one day, the painful truth hit.

"The very first kids I had trained back in the early '80s, I saw their kids now showing up in my programs," he says.

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World
1:45 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Al-Qaida: Now Vying For Hearts, Minds And Land

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Credit Reuters/Landov
Militiamen from the Ansar Dine Islamic group, an al-Qaida affiliate, ride on a vehicle in northeastern Mali in June. Mali is one of the places where al-Qaida-linked groups are trying to take over territory and win over local residents to their cause.
Credit Reuters/Landov
Members of Ansar al-Sharia, another al-Qaida-affiliated group, man a checkpoint at the southern Yemeni town of Jaar in April. Government troops recently retook areas in the country's restive south from militant control after a two-month offensive.
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Originally published on Fri July 13, 2012 9:33 pm

Al-Qaida has been subtly testing a new strategy. In the past couple of years, the group's affiliates have been trying their hand at governing — actually taking over territory and then trying to win over citizens who live there. It happened with various degrees of success in Somalia and Yemen, and recently in the northern deserts of Mali.

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Deceptive Cadence
1:35 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Around The Classical Internet: July 13, 2012

Credit Charles Ludeke for NPR
Conductor Kent Tritle in Times Square. (And that's WNYC's John Schaefer in the Saratoga T-shirt.)
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By Anastasia Tsioulcas
  • So we did this thing in Times Square, and some people have seen the video.
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The Record
1:32 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

You Can't Always Get What You Want: On Music And Expectation

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Credit Nabil Elderkin / Courtesy of the artist
The singer and songwriter Frank Ocean, whose first full-length studio album, Channel Orange, was released on iTunes this week.
Credit Jason Frank Rothenberg / Courtesy of Motormouth Media
The Dirty Projectors, whose album Swing Lo Magellan was released on Tuesday.
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By editor

Originally published on Tue September 18, 2012 6:31 pm

Birthdays come but once a year, but for music lovers, what I like to call "that birthday feeling" is a semi-regular thing. I'm talking about the rush, tinged by anxiety, greeting the first download click on an album you've been longing to hear for months. It's a complicated wash of emotions, boosted by conflicting hopes and assumptions. You're about to get exactly what you've wanted; but what if it's not exactly what you want? And boy, that bike Mom promised to buy had better be cherry red.

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