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Medical Treatments
12:01 am
Thu February 16, 2012

Military Pokes Holes In Acupuncture Skeptics' Theory

In a fluorescent-lit exam room, Col. Rochelle Wasserman sticks ballpoint-size pins in the ears of Sgt. Rick Remalia.

Remalia broke his back, hip and pelvis during a rollover caused by a pair of rocket-propelled grenades in Afghanistan. He still walks with a cane and suffers from mild traumatic brain injury. Pain is an everyday occurrence, which is where the needles come in.

"I've had a lot of treatment, and this is the first treatment that I've had where I've been like, OK, wow, I've actually seen a really big difference," he says.

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Latin America
12:01 am
Thu February 16, 2012

Mexican Cartels Push Meth Beyond U.S. Market

Credit Johan Ordonez / AFP/Getty Images
Mexican police show the drug and weapons seized from Jaime Herrera Herrera, an alleged drug cartel member, in Mexico City on Tuesday.

Mexican Federal Police, some of them covered head to toe in white hazardous-materials suits, paraded Jaime Herrera Herrera in front of the media in handcuffs this week. Officials say he was the methamphetamine mastermind for Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who runs the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

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Business
12:01 am
Thu February 16, 2012

Retirement Communities Find Niche With Gay Seniors

Originally published on Thu February 16, 2012 8:43 am

When Pat Matthews turned 65, her declining health led her in search of a place that could offer increasing levels of care as she grew older.

And Matthews had one other requirement: She wanted to bring Carol Bosworth, her partner of nearly 20 years. At the very first place they visited, that was a problem.

"They didn't say we couldn't come. But they said that we would be best off if we were sisters," Matthews says. "We crossed them off our list, because that's not the way we want to live."

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Election 2012
12:01 am
Thu February 16, 2012

How Does Mitt Romney Stop Rick Santorum's Rise?

Credit Charles Dharapak / AFP/Getty Images
Rick Santorum gestures toward Republican rival Mitt Romney during the South Carolina GOP presidential debate in Myrtle Beach on Jan. 16.

What's the best way for Mitt Romney to stop Rick Santorum?

For the answer, we went to someone who has done it before.

Democratic strategist Saul Shorr helped Bob Casey defeat then-Sen. Santorum, R-Pa., in a landslide in 2006. Santorum lost by 18 points.

But Shorr says that was a general election; in a Republican primary, Romney will have a much harder job.

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The Two-Way
6:03 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Audits Are Under Way At Apple Supplier Foxconn's Plants

Credit Mike Clarke / AFP/Getty Images
A group of protesters demonstrate outside Foxconn's annual meeting in Hong Kong last year. Working conditions at the company's plants have brought criticism on Apple.

Audits of working conditions are under way at Foxconn's manufacturing plants in China, a key link in Apple's supply chain of iPhones, iPads and other devices. The effort will include visits to at least three sites, "each with more than 100,000 workers," says Auret Van Heerden, president of the Fair Labor Association.

"So we've taken a representative sample of over 35,000 workers," Van Heerden tells All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel, in an interview airing Wednesday.

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Europe
5:55 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Europe Wants Assurances For Latest Greek Bailout

Credit Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP/Getty Images
In Athens on Tuesday, Greek pensioners marched in protest against new austerity cuts. The eurozone insists Greece must stick to hugely unpopular austerity measures agreed to in return for a 130 billion euro debt bailout.

The European Union says Greece has made some progress, but not enough, to merit the new bailout it desperately needs to avoid default and keep the euro as its currency.

Greeks are increasingly bitter about the austerity measures the EU is imposing on them. And Greece's EU partners are losing trust that the Greeks will implement them.

Now, talk is growing about contingency planning if Greece fails to meet the bailout conditions and defaults.

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Shots - Health Blog
5:52 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Scientists Debate How To Conduct Bird Flu Research

Credit Cynthia Goldsmith / CDC
H5N1 avian flu viruses (seen in gold) grow inside canine kidney cells (seen in green).

Scientists working with bird flu recently called a 60-day halt on some controversial experiments, and the unusual move has been compared to a famous moratorium on genetic engineering in the 1970s.

But key scientists involved in that event disagree on whether history is repeating itself.

"I see an amazing similarity," says Nobel Prize winner Paul Berg, of Stanford University.

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Movie Interviews
5:33 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

'Undefeated' A Tale Of Football Team's Struggles

Originally published on Thu February 16, 2012 3:15 pm

By 2009, after years of losses, the all-black football team at Manassas High School in inner-city North Memphis, Tenn., was known as 'Whipping Boy Manassas' — one of the worst teams in the entire state. The new documentary Undefeated, recently nominated for an Oscar, captures the team's following season, and the struggles of its coach and players, on and off the field.

Co-directors Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin describe the team's recent history.

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The Two-Way
5:29 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Robert Rubin: Economic Future Is Most 'Uncertain' He's Ever Seen

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin says the U.S. economic outlook is the most "uncertain" he has seen in his lifetime.

Given that he was born during the Great Depression (1938), and lived through the Cold War, the 1970s' inflation, a brutal 1980-82 recession and the recent global financial crisis, that may be saying a lot.

Rubin, who was President Clinton's Treasury secretary, is now co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. He spoke Wednesday in Washington, D.C., at a conference called "American Competitiveness: What Works," sponsored by General Electric.

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It's All Politics
5:16 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Obama's Manufacturing Push Meets Some Expert Skepticism

Credit Susan Walsh / AP
President Obama extolled U.S. manufacturing at Master Lock in Milwaukee as some experts said a return to the nation's industrial past may not be the best path forward.

Originally published on Wed February 15, 2012 5:30 pm

Manufacturing is as American as motherhood, baseball and apple pie. Who could be against Americans making more of what they consume and exporting more to the rest of the world?

Which is why President Obama was hardly taking a political risk Wednesday by going to a Master Lock factory in Milwaukee and extolling the company for repatriating manufacturing jobs from China.

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Middle East
4:31 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Iran Ups The Ante With More Nuclear Moves

Credit Iranian Presidency / AFP/Getty Images
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (right) listens to a nuclear expert during a tour of the Tehran Research Reactor on Wednesday. Iran announced that for the first time it has produced the fuel plates that power that reactor.

Iran has unveiled significant developments on two important components of its nuclear program: the centrifuges used to enrich uranium and the uranium used to fuel a research reactor.

The country has made no secret of its work in these areas. But the news on Wednesday suggests that Iran may be making progress in its nuclear program.

Iran also announced that it is cutting off oil sales to several European nations, only to reverse itself hours later.

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Energy
4:17 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Many Jobs May Be Gone With The Wind Energy Credit

Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 11:01 am

The wind power industry in this country has grown fast in recent years, but that could come to a screeching halt.

The industry depends on a federal subsidy to keep it competitive with other forms of electricity. It's a tax credit wind farms get for the power they produce. That credit expires at the end of the year, and it's not clear whether Congress will renew it.

The tax credit was initially created to encourage wind energy, since it is a clean and secure source of electricity. But these days the argument is all about jobs.

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Shots - Health Blog
4:16 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Kids Listen When Parents Say No To Teen Drinking

Credit iStockphoto.com
But what if Mommy says no?

Parents are divided on how best to handle teenage drinking. Should they prohibit it outright, or let teenagers drink with parental supervision?

Some parents think they might as well say OK, since the kids will drink anyway.

But researchers in the Netherlands have found that parental disapproval can be a powerful force to keep teens from succumbing to the impulse to drink.

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The Salt
3:38 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Goodbye To The King Size: Mars To Downsize Candy Bars In 2013

Credit John Rose/NPR
By the end of 2013, Mars says it will shave 30 calories, or about 11 percent (approximated here), off the current version of the Snickers bar.

Originally published on Wed February 15, 2012 5:56 pm

Ready to say goodbye to a sliver of your Snickers? And how about a slightly slimmer Mars bar? By the end of 2013, chocolate-maker Mars says all of its chocolate bars will be under — or right at — the 250-calorie mark.

The 2-ounce Snickers currently sold in our NPR vending machine has 280 calories, and with the downsize it will lose about 11 percent of its size. The fun-size and the king-size bars currently range from 70 to 540 calories, which means the new 250-calorie limit spells the end of the king-size bar.

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It's All Politics
3:33 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Why Romney's Shaggy Dog Story Won't Die

Credit Shannon Stapleton / Reuters/Landov
A man holds a sign during a "Dogs Against Romney" demonstration outside the 136th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at New York's Madison Square Garden, on Tuesday.

It's the story that continues to, well, dog Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney. And, according to some experts, it could jeopardize his standing with voters who care about animals. And yes, it turns out, that is not an insignificant voting bloc.

The incident happened back in 1983, and it's been public since 2007. But it seems that only now a critical mass of voters is hearing it for the first time.

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The Two-Way
3:21 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Drinking Takes Center Stage As London Prepares For Olympic Spotlight

Credit Leon Neal / AFP/Getty Images
Prime Minister David Cameron calls binge drinking "one of the scandals of our society." Here, a man drinks a pint of beer through a makeshift "Vuvuzela of Ale" in London, in a file photo from 2010.

Britain has a drinking problem. And it's not just a question of alcoholism, but how the country should grapple with what some call an ingrained tradition and others call a $4.24 billion nightmare. That's how much the National Health Service says it pays each year in alcohol-related incidents.

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Middle East
3:20 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Syria's Neighbors Fear That Fighting Could Spread

Now that the uprising in Syria has turned into a heavily armed conflict, many in the region are worried that the violence will spread beyond its territory.

Syria borders Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, as well as Lebanon, where clashes erupted last Friday in the northern coastal city of Tripoli.

Sunni Muslims in one Tripoli neighborhood began protesting against Syrian President Bashar Assad. They put up a huge banner on the side of a mosque that had a picture of Assad, wearing a military uniform, with a big red X across his face.

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NPR Story
3:00 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Letters: On Aleksey Igudesman And Hyung-ki Joo

Melissa Block and Robert Siegel read emails from listeners about violinist Aleksey Igudesman and pianist Hyung-ki Joo.

Asia
2:43 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

American-Born 'Linderella' Is The Pride Of China

Credit Peter J. Thompson / MCT /Landov
New York Knicks star Jeremy Lin (shown here during first-half action against the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday) has taken the NBA by storm. Now, Chinese basketball fans are claiming the California native as their own.

How do you say "Linsanity" in Chinese? Lin Shuhao feng.

And how do you quantify it? Jeremy Lin has more than a million followers so far on the Chinese version of Twitter.

The legend of Lin, the Asian-American point guard for the New York Knicks whose success story draws comparisons to a fairy tale, continues to grow. On Tuesday night, he scored 27 points, including the winning shot, in the Knicks' victory over the Toronto Raptors.

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Shots - Health Blog
2:40 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

FDA Warns About Fake Avastin In US

Credit Genentech
Packaging for fake Avastin that was just flagged by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Food and Drug Administration says counterfeit Avastin, a costly drug cancer drug, has made its way to doctors in the United States.

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