Shots - Health News
8:38 am
Sat May 18, 2013

The Unsafe Sex: Should The World Invest More In Men's Health?

Credit Noah Seelam / AFP/Getty Images
A man smokes a cigarette as he takes a break at a fruit market in Hyderabad, India. Smoking tobacco is eight times more prevalent among Indian men than women.

Originally published on Sat May 18, 2013 1:37 pm

On average, men aren't as healthy as women.

Men don't live as long, and they're more likely to engage in risky behaviors, like smoking and drinking.

But in the past decade, global health funding has focused heavily on women.

Programs and policies for men have been "notably absent," says Sarah Hawkes from the University of London's Institute of Global Health.

Read more
The Two-Way
7:33 am
Sat May 18, 2013

North Korea Fires Three Short-Range Missiles, Says The South

Originally published on Sat May 18, 2013 2:04 pm

After a relatively calm few weeks, North Korea fired three short-range missiles Saturday, a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman said.

NPR's Louisa Lim reports that North Korea fired the missiles in defiance of international sanctions. She filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"North Korea launched two guided missiles this morning and a third in the afternoon, according to South Korea's defense ministry — all landed in waters off the eastern coast of the Korean peninsula."

Read more
Music
7:23 am
Sat May 18, 2013

After Health Issues, Influential Conductor Back At Met Opera

Host Scott Simon speaks with New York Times classical music critic Anthony Tommasini about conductor James Levine's return to the Metropolitan Opera after a series of health problems kept him away for two years.

Books
7:12 am
Sat May 18, 2013

Author Elliott Holt says: 'Go West, Young Woman'

Originally published on Sat May 18, 2013 2:52 pm

In Elliott Holt's beautifully subtle debut novel You Are One of Them, the protagonist, an American in her 20s, moves to Moscow shortly after the Cold War. After a few months, she returns to the U.S. a changed woman.

Holt, who is 39, also lived in Moscow where she worked as a copywriter at an advertising agency, as well as in London and New York. Currently, she resides in Washington, D.C., and writes full time.

Read more
Three-Minute Fiction
6:19 am
Sat May 18, 2013

Plum Baby

Credit iStockphoto.com

Originally published on Sat May 18, 2013 2:56 pm

There isn't enough time in this world to grow your own tree. That tree is a plum baby still, never mind it's tall as the house those men are taking from us. It grew up with me. I say this to Mama Lee as she rests her hand on my shoulder like another shoulder. She nods and nods some more. She's been nodding all day like she's got two weights, one in her chin and the other in back of her skull that can't lie at rest.

We're standing in the yard facing the house in the dewy grass. The house is as old as Mama Lee's mama who died before I was born.

Read more
Environment
5:18 am
Sat May 18, 2013

Not Your Grandpa's RV: This Roving Lab Tracks Air Pollution

Originally published on Sat May 18, 2013 1:45 pm

If you're driving down the road someday and you come across a camper with a 50-foot periscope sticking up into the sky, you just might have crossed paths with Ira Leifer. His quirky vehicle is on a serious mission. It's sniffing the air for methane, a gas that contributes to global warming.

Leifer is an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But you'll more often find him off campus, in a garage, next to a string of auto body shops near the airport.

Read more
Author Interviews
5:18 am
Sat May 18, 2013

Dan Brown: 'Inferno' Is 'The Book That I Would Want To Read'

Originally published on Sat May 18, 2013 7:23 am

Robert Langdon is back. The Harvard art professor in custom tweeds — and an ever-present Mickey Mouse watch — wakes up in a hospital after getting grazed in the head by a bullet, wondering how he ended up in Florence. He's got a sinister artifact sewn into his coat and just a few hours to keep the world from a grim biological catastrophe.

Read more
Law
5:17 am
Sat May 18, 2013

Turning Up The Heat On Civil Rights-Era Cold Cases

Originally published on Sat May 18, 2013 2:26 pm

Six years ago, the FBI took on a challenge: To review what it called cold-case killings from the civil rights era. The investigation into 112 cases from the 1950s and 1960s is winding down, and civil rights activists are weighing the FBI's efforts.

The review comes with word this week of the death of a man who'd been named, by a newspaper investigation, as a possible suspect in one notorious case.

The Case

Read more
Media
5:13 am
Sat May 18, 2013

Media Covers Itself In Privacy Debacles

Originally published on Sat May 18, 2013 7:23 am

Host Scott Simon talks to NPR's David Folkenflik about the Justice Department's seizure of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, and Bloomberg's secret monitoring of its sources' and customers' activities.

Politics
5:13 am
Sat May 18, 2013

What A Week: White House Rattled By Controversy

Originally published on Sat May 18, 2013 7:23 am

NPR's Ari Shapiro joins host Scott Simon to talk about the Obama administration's week. The president was buffeted by revelations that the IRS had targeted Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status and that the Justice Department had subpoenaed reporter phone records. On top of that, Republicans continue to allege that the White House engaged in a cover-up of talking points about the attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Pages