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It's All Politics
4:24 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Romney Tries To Turn The Outsourcing Table On Obama

Credit Charles Dharapak / AP
Mitt Romney greeted supporters in Salem, Va., Tuesday, as his campaign tried to frame President Obama as the real outsourcer of U.S. jobs.

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 6:43 pm

Mitt Romney's campaign has an obvious challenge: how best to combat charges from the Obama campaign that when the all-but-official Republican nominee was in the private sector, he was heavily involved in offshoring the jobs of U.S. workers?

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NPR Story
4:23 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Facebook's E-mail Change Rankles Users

Originally published on Wed June 27, 2012 6:52 pm

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish.

What do your friends see on Facebook when they look for your email address? It might not be what you think. In the past few days, Facebook automatically changed the email contacts it displays without clearly notifying users about what it was doing.

As NPR's Laura Sydell reports, lots of people on Facebook are not happy.

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Latin America
4:20 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Mexico Picks A President Amid Drug War, Weak Economy

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 9:06 pm

The clear front-runner in Mexico's poll on Sunday is Enrique Pena Nieto, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ran Mexico for 71 years until ousted from power in 2000.

Pena Nieto, 45, insists his party has changed its old authoritarian ways, and he's promised a new approach in the drug war, while saying he will take care of the country's failing education system and boost the salaries of hard-working Mexicans.

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Crisis In The Housing Market
4:20 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Sinking Under A $10,000 Monthly Mortgage Payment

Originally published on Wed June 27, 2012 6:50 pm

The nation's housing crisis has touched countless people. Increasingly, the well-off are among them.

Housing counselors around the country say they are seeing more people struggling to keep their million-dollar homes. It's a twist on a familiar story of hardship — but one that involves some very big numbers.

Moving Up, Falling Down

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NPR Story
4:20 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Blog Sees Success In Supreme Court Focus

Originally published on Sat June 30, 2012 6:02 pm

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This Thursday, when the Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in the health care case, many fingers will be anxiously clicking on the website ScotusBlog. It'll be live blogging starting at 8:45 in the morning, even though opinions don't come down until 10.

ScotusBlog was started in 2003 by lawyer Tom Goldstein, who's argued many cases before the Supreme Court. And he joins me to talk about his website and how it works.

Tom, welcome back.

TOM GOLDSTEIN: Thanks for having me.

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The Two-Way
4:19 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

University Of Virginia Reinstates President, After Public Outcry

The governing board of the University of Virginia decided to reinstate the president it had ousted earlier this month.

The AP reports 15-member board voted unanimously to give Teresa Sullivan her job back, after it faced scathing criticism for its original decision, which students and faculty thought had been reached in a secretive manner.

"I want to partner with you in bringing about what's best for the university," Sullivan said after the vote.

The AP adds:

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Shots - Health Blog
3:58 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Swine Flu May Have Killed Far More People Than Thought

Credit Tang Chhin Sothy / AFP/Getty Images
Cambodian women wear masks as they walk in a market in Phnom Penh in Oct. 2009. That month a second Cambodian died from swine flu, health officials said.

The swine flu pandemic that raced around the world in 2009 seems like ancient history now.

One reason it's easy to forget is that the H1N1 strain of flu virus turned out to be milder than was originally feared. Still, there's no doubt the flu killed a lot of people around the world. But how many?

The answer isn't so easy to come up with. Only a small fraction of cases were actually confirmed with lab tests, even in highly developed countries like the U.S.

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The Two-Way
3:16 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Egyptian Court Overturns Military's Power To Arrest Civilians

An Egyptian court decided today that the military should not have continued power to arrest civilians.

Reuters reports:

"The Muslim Brotherhood and other opponents of military rule were furious when the army-backed interim government empowered soldiers to arrest civilians, effectively reinstating Hosni Mubarak's hated state of emergency, which lapsed on May 31.

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The Two-Way
2:07 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

How Do They Know Those Sprinters Finished In A Dead Heat?

Credit USATF / Getty Images
In this handout photo provided by the USATF, Jeneba Tarmoh (bottom, lane 1) and Allyson Felix cross the finish line at exactly the same time in the women's 100 meter dash final during Day Two of the 2012 U.S. Olympic Track & Field Team Trials at Hayward Field on Saturday in Eugene, Ore. It's their torsos, not head, hands, feet or arms, that matter.
The Two-Way
2:03 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Obama's Baseball Taunt Gets Boos From Donors, Or Were They 'Yoooooks'?

Credit AP
New Chicago White Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis is shown during pre-game warmups prior to a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins on Monday.

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 3:05 pm

Middle East
1:53 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Syrian Youth Lead Rebellion, And Teach Their Elders

Credit AFP/Getty Images
A Syrian youth flashes the victory sign as he stands in front of a building that was covered with anti-government graffiti — though local authorities painted over it — in the town of Duma, outside Damascus, in February.

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 9:06 pm

The uprising in Syria began in the spring of 2011 when rebellious teenagers scrawled anti-regime graffiti on a wall in the southern city of Daraa.

The protest against their arrest, and the regime's brutal response, sparked the wider revolt. Throughout the unrest, the country's younger generation has been at the forefront of efforts to end the repressive regime of President Bashar Assad.

At a cafe in the heart of Damascus recently, a young man flips open his cellphone to show pictures of people killed in the uprising.

"Actually, they are my friends," he says.

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Education
1:17 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

What's Driving College Costs Higher

Credit iStockphoto.com

Originally published on Wed June 27, 2012 10:47 am

Just days before student loan rates are set to double for millions of Americans, President Obama and congressional leaders haven't reached an agreement on legislation to keep those rates at 3.4 percent.

The debate reflects the growing concern over the debt burden many take on to get a college education. About two-thirds of bachelor's degree recipients borrow money to attend college, and collectively, student debt has topped $1 trillion.

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The Two-Way
12:51 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Issa: Executive Privilege Implies White House 'Fast And Furious' Involvement

Credit Tim Sloan / AFP/Getty Images
This December 7, 2010 file photo shows U.S. Republican Representative Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 4:24 pm

In a seven-page letter (pdf) to President Obama, Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee, says that President Obama's claim of executive privilege implies high level involvement the "Fast and Furious" scandal.

Fast and Furious is the failed gunrunning operation that sold weapons to drug cartels in Mexico. One of the victims of one of those guns was U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was gunned down in Arizona.

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World
12:32 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Arab-Jewish Tensions Creep Into 'Peace Village'

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 10:28 pm

The Israeli village of Neve Shalom was founded decades ago as a place where Arabs and Jews could coexist in the volatile Middle East. The area has weathered regional wars and uprisings, but earlier this month, vandals targeted it and spray-painted anti-Arab epithets on the school's walls.

"We discovered first of all that a number of tires had been punctured, and then we noticed the damage at the school, slogans painted on the walls saying 'Death to the Arabs,' " says Howard Shippin, a longtime resident of Neve Shalom village. "Of course it's very disturbing."

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The Salt
12:07 pm
Tue June 26, 2012

Why Protesting Postal Workers Chose A Hunger Strike

Credit Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Postal workers and activists make signs for their hunger strike in front of the Rayburn House Office building in Washington, D.C.

Despite reports that a bit of starvation is just what the doctor ordered, a few of the postal workers expressing their dismay at Congress with a hunger strike are a little nervous.

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Middle East
11:33 am
Tue June 26, 2012

Are Women Worried About New Egyptian President?

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 12:55 pm

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, we look at another significant decision from the Supreme Court that might have been overshadowed by the ruling on immigration enforcement. The justices said life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders is cruel and unusual punishment. We'll talk with law professor Paul Butler about what that means for young people behind bars in this country.

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The Two-Way
11:09 am
Tue June 26, 2012

If News Corp. Splits Its Businesses, Many Investors Would Be Pleased

Originally published on Wed June 27, 2012 8:15 am

With a simple statement saying that "it is considering a restructuring to separate its business into two distinct publicly traded companies," News Corp. this morning confirmed the thrust of a story reported by its own Wall Street Journal, NPR's David Folkenflik tells us.

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Shots - Health Blog
10:00 am
Tue June 26, 2012

Convenience And Efficiency Fuel Boom In Retail Clinics

Credit Mike Derer / AP
Shanda Johnson, right, a nurse practitioner, interviews patient Bill Gilligan at a MinuteClinic at the CVS drug store in North Brunswick, N.J.

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 11:27 am

For years, there's been a debate about how walk-in clinics at stores fit into the health care mix. Are they an adequate substitute for a visit to the doctor?

Through it all, the number of clinics has kept growing, numbering 1,355 at the beginning of 2012, a 10.4 percent annual increase, according to consultants Merchant Medicine.

MinuteClinic, a division of CVS Caremark and the largest clinic operator by far, is on track to nearly double the number of clinics it operates to 1,000 by 2016.

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The Two-Way
9:42 am
Tue June 26, 2012

Home Prices Tick Up, Housing Market Recovery May Be Strengthening

Credit Spencer Platt / Getty Images
This "For Sale" sign was hanging outside a home in Brooklyn, N.Y., earlier this month.

Home prices rose in nearly all major U.S. cities in April from March, according to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices report.

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The Two-Way
9:03 am
Tue June 26, 2012

Turkey Warns Syria It May Respond Militarily If Provoked; Tensions Escalate

Credit Adem Altan / AFP/Getty Images
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier today in Ankara.

"Any military element that approaches the Turkish border from Syria and poses a security risk and danger will be regarded as a threat and treated as a military target," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his nation today.

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