Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. The battle for Aleppo, Syria's largest city, continues into a second week. Rebels control more and more smaller towns, the defection of senior military officers and diplomats continues, all signs that the government's grip on power is slipping, and many analysts suspect that President Bashar al-Assad's fall is inevitable.

The City of New York is planning to add 2,000 more yellow taxi cabs onto its streets. They'll be wheelchair accessible and raise a bunch of money for the city. The new licenses could fetch up to $1 billion at auction. And the hope is that the extra taxis will make life better for the many New Yorkers without cars.

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced on Tuesday an agreement to avoid a government shutdown shortly before the November election," The Hill writes. "He said he, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and President Obama have all agreed to the deal."

Boehner confirmed the news in an email his staff just sent to reporters:

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. The history of journalism is replete with sometimes celebrated figures who made stuff up: Janet Cooke, a rising star at the Washington Post, Stephen Glass at The New Republic and now Jonah Lehrer, who resigned his job yesterday as a staff writer at the New Yorker. And you may have heard Jonah Lehrer as a guest on several NPR programs.

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on several past programs, including the difficulties of living with the stigma of HIV and AIDS, and the lessons communities learn after traumatic events transpire