Shots - Health Blog
4:22 pm
Fri October 14, 2011

What Twitter Knows About Flu

Credit Giorgio Magini / iStockphoto.com

Flu shots, anyone?

Twitter may turn out to be a great tool for tracking epidemics and how people deal with them.

Some scientists tracked tweets about swine flu back in 2009 and 2010, then looked at how the tweets lined up with vaccination rates.

By comparing the Twitter data with vaccination estimates from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the group saw patterns between what people were saying about flu shots and whether or not they were getting sick.

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Arts & Life
4:11 pm
Fri October 14, 2011

Remakes Rethink: Is Hollywood Really Out Of Ideas?

It's been a big year for Hollywood remakes — more than a dozen, not counting sequels. There were new versions of Conan the Barbarian and Arthur this summer. Fresh incarnations of Footloose and The Thing open today. And soon we'll see Hollywood's take on the Swedish hit The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Cue the standard complaint: Hollywood has run out of ideas.

Hold on, though. Let's think this through.

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It's All Politics
4:03 pm
Fri October 14, 2011

Rick Perry Offers His Version Of 'Drill, Baby, Drill'

Credit Jeff Swensen / Getty Images

Texas Gov. Rick Perry lays out his energy plan at a US Steel plant in West Mifflin, Pa., Oct. 14, 2011.

Ask yourself what sort of energy plan you would likely get from a conservative governor from the oil and gas patch who gets a lot of political and financial support from the fossil-fuel industry and who is openly hostile to the federal government and that's pretty much the energy plan Texas Gov. Rick Perry proposed Friday.

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Alex Kellogg is a correspondent on NPR's National Desk who covers diversity-related issues and how these act as social, political and economic forces shaping our country. One focus for Kellogg in this newly created position is on the convergence of ethnicity, race, politics, media and government.

Kellogg came to NPR in late 2010 from The Wall Street Journal. Based in Detroit, he covered Michigan and the auto industry for The Journal. He was part of a team of reporters who won a 2010 New York Press Club award for "Detroit in Decline," a 2009 series focusing on the collapse of the U.S. auto industry into the government's arms. His 2010 work as a general assignment reporter on the decline of the city of Detroit was praised by the Columbia Journalism Review and in 2011 he earned first place feature writing awards from the New York Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists.

Kellogg began his career in journalism during a study abroad in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, where he landed an internship and later a job as a producer at Reuters. This experience allowed him to travel extensively in East Africa and the Horn as a working journalist long before he finished college.

As a staff reporter or freelance writer Kellogg's work has appeared in print publications such as The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune,The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Detroit Free Press, The Washington Post, and The Crisis and websites such as BET.com, CNN.com, dailykos.com, the Drudge Report, The Huffington Post, the National Review Online and Yahoo News.

A graduate of Harvard College, Kellogg covered stories across both the United States and Africa before finally receiving his bachelor's degree in 2004. He is the founder of The Deshaun Hill and Harvard Stephens Memorial Scholarship, which is awarded to two African-American undergraduates at Harvard each year.

In addition to his passion for reporting and writing, Kellogg is an avid music collector and a basketball junky. In 2007, a travel essay he wrote was published by the Sierra Club in "A Leaky Tent is a Piece of Paradise," an anthology of young writers.

Around the Nation
3:28 pm
Fri October 14, 2011

The Changing Face Of Seeing Race

Let's go back to 1967.

That was the year interracial marriage made headlines. Just take the Hollywood classic Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. The film was a new kind of love story for Hollywood. The movie was about a black man who wanted to marry a white woman — a huge taboo at the time.

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Herman Cain
3:17 pm
Fri October 14, 2011

Cain Says He's Not Just A Flavor Of The Week

The former CEO of Godfather's Pizza has surprised a lot of people by rising to the top of the pack in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Herman Cain hasn't been traveling to many pancake breakfasts in Iowa or town halls in New Hampshire, but his polished speeches and debate performances have thrilled Republican voters.

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The Two-Way
3:11 pm
Fri October 14, 2011

S&P Downgrades Spain's Sovereign Debt Rating

Late last night, Standard & Poor's announced it was downgrading Spain's sovereign debt rating one notch from AA to AA-minus.

The Financial Times reports:

S&P's statement said that despite "resilience" in Spain's economy this year, there were "heightened risks to Spain's growth prospects" due to high unemployment, tighter financial conditions, a high level of debt and a broader eurozone slowdown.

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NPR Story
3:00 pm
Fri October 14, 2011

Obama Pushes Free Trade Agenda In Detroit

President Obama was in Detroit Friday, selling his free trade agenda. He brought the message to an auto plant and brought along the South Korean president. Guy Raz talks to NPR's Ari Shapiro for more.

Local
2:30 pm
Fri October 14, 2011

YANKEE AIR MUSEUM GETS SMITHSONIAN AFFILIATION

The Yankee Air Musem is now an affliate of the Smithsonian Institution.  Among other things, it means the museum at Willow Run airport can how host travelling Smithsonian exhibits.  Hear more from WEMU's Bob Eccles.

The Two-Way
1:51 pm
Fri October 14, 2011

Two More Parts Of Alabama Immigration Law Put On Hold, Rest Upheld

"The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has stayed the parts of Alabama's immigration law that require proof of lawful residency in the U.S. and track immigration information about newly enrolled students," The Huntsville Times writes.

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