Planet Money
5:48 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

What's It Mean That Romney Was CEO, Anyway?

Credit Evan Vucci / AP

Originally published on Mon July 16, 2012 9:47 am

Mitt Romney faces new scrutiny over his time at the helm of Bain Capital, the private equity shop he ran from 1984 until — well, that's exactly the question.

The political fight of the moment is just when Romney stopped running Bain Capital, which specialized in buying troubled companies and turning them around.

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It's All Politics
5:19 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Why New Swing State Of Virginia May Determine Presidency

Credit Susan Walsh / AP
President Obama clasps hands with Sen. Mark Warner (left), D-Va., and Democratic Senate candidate Tim Kaine during a campaign stop Friday in Virginia Beach, Va.

Originally published on Fri July 13, 2012 5:30 pm

Yes, Virginia, you are this election year's Santa Claus.

And it could be your bag of 13 presidential electoral votes that will be the key to deciding who occupies the White House in January.

Proof of Virginia's gathering importance?

President Obama is in the midst of a two-day Virginia campaign swing. Republican candidate Mitt Romney dispatched former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to counterattack Friday.

The airwaves are awash in campaign ads, and there's a veritable who-has-more-campaign-offices arms race well under way.

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The Two-Way
5:14 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Richard Zanuck, Producer Of 'Jaws' And 'Driving Miss Daisy,' Dies

Credit AP
Richard Zanuck at 29 in 1964.

Richard Zanuck, the Oscar-winning producer of films like Jaws and Driving Miss Daisy, died today from a heart attack.

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Shots - Health Blog
5:09 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Governors Spar Over Medicaid And Health Exchanges

Credit Cliff Owen / AP
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell says Medicaid should be overhauled before it's expanded.

Originally published on Fri July 13, 2012 10:24 pm

The nation's governors — well, many of them, anyway — are gathering in Colonial Williamsburg, Va., for their annual summer meeting this weekend.

It's no easy trick for the National Governors Association to get Republican and Democratic chief executives on the same page, or even the same room.

This year, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, it's even harder.

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Guy Raz is the weekend host of NPR News' signature afternoon newsmagazine All Things Considered. Raz was named host of the program in July 2009, after serving as an NPR foreign and domestic correspondent for nearly a decade.

Every Saturday and Sunday, weekend All Things Considered introduces listeners to the stories behind the headlines and the voices of people who are changing the world. Guests of the program are just as likely to include Bill Gates talking about innovation as Eminem explaining his rhyme schemes. The program features music and interviews from artists like Bjork to the maestro of the San Francisco Symphony Michael Tilson Thomas.

Weekend All Things Considered is a different kind of newsmagazine. It's a place where you'll hear Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick discussing his late father's jazz career, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg talking about being awkward or a variety of international leaders discuss the topics of the day. Raz is the creator of the show's popular "Three-Minute Fiction" writing contest. Each round, he invites a well-known author to judge original works of fiction submitted by the listeners.

Raz joined NPR in 1997 as an intern for All Things Considered and he worked his way through the ranks of the organization. His first job was the assistant to NPR's legendary news analyst Daniel Schorr. Raz then served as a general assignment reporter covering stories ranging from the early 2000 presidential primaries to a profile on the Doors' song "Light My Fire."

In 2000, at the age of 25, Raz was made NPR's Berlin bureau chief where he covered eastern Europe and the Balkans. Later, he was transferred to London as the bureau chief and covered the war in Iraq. Raz left NPR in 2004, to work as CNN's Jerusalem correspondent chronicling everything from the rise of Hamas as a political power to the incapacitation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Two years later Raz returned to NPR to serve as defense correspondent where he covered the Pentagon and the US military.

During his six years abroad, Raz reported from more than 40 countries, with a focus on Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He profiled and interviewed dozens of world leaders, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres, General David Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen.

For his reporting from Iraq, Raz was awarded both the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Daniel Schorr Journalism prize. His reporting has contributed to two duPont Awards and one Peabody awarded to NPR. He's been a finalist for the Livingston Award four times. For his reporting from Germany, Raz was awarded both the RIAS Berlin prize and the Arthur F. Burns Award. In 2008, he spent a year as a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University where he studied classical history.

Raz's written work has appeared in Salon, Washington City Paper, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor and the German daily, Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

NPR Story
4:46 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

What's Killing 'King Coal' In West Virginia?

Originally published on Fri July 13, 2012 10:24 pm

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This week, one of the biggest coal mining companies in Central Appalachia, Patriot Coal, filed for bankruptcy protection. Over the past three months, a wave of layoffs has hit coal country hard, and this past month, the share of all U.S. electricity generated from coal hit its lowest level since the 1940s. Our colleague Guy Raz visited Webster County in the middle of West Virginia to find out what's killing King Coal.

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Opinion
3:55 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Wish You Were Here: The Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk

Originally published on Thu July 19, 2012 4:16 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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It's All Politics
3:50 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

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

Originally published on Fri July 13, 2012 4:05 pm

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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The Two-Way
3:49 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.

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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Poverty In America: The Struggle To Get Ahead
3:02 pm
Fri July 13, 2012

Struggling Families Lift Themselves Out Of Poverty

Originally published on Fri July 13, 2012 10:24 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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