Audie Cornish talks with glaciologist Robin Bell, senior research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. They discuss the "break through" by Russian scientists into Lake Vostok, a huge ancient lake underneath the South Pole. After drilling for 30 years, the Russians announced Wednesday that they had finally reached the lake water.
It's been 30 years since Britain and Argentina went to war over the Falkland Islands. The British won, leaving the islands off the coast of Argentina in British hands. While the war may be over, tensions between the two countries about who owns the Falklands have risen in recent months. Host Robert Siegel talks with professor Mark Jones of Rice University for more.
What happened in Karm al Zeitoun? Over the past week, reports have emerged of at least three Sunni families were brutally slaughtered by regime-backed Allawite thugs known as "shabiha." Stories of a brief but brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in the mixed neighborhood of Homs, means some people's worst fears are coming true: The conflict is becoming sectarian. Allawites, too, report killings of their own by Sunnis. Each side says the other is pushing the people toward the brink of sectarian war.
Robert Siegel speaks with Daoud Kuttab, director general of a Palestinian media organization and the Community Media Network in Amman, Jordan, about the unity agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
Asked this afternoon if he thinks Israel will attack his nation anytime soon in a bid to destroy work Iran is doing on nuclear technology, the Persian nation's ambassador to the United Nations told NPR, "I don't think that is going to happen."
Just hours before the symbolic rekindling of the Salt Lake Olympic cauldron, officials in Utah today sought to rekindle the 2002 Olympic spirit, announcing they're considering another Olympic bid.
The disclosure at the Utah Olympic speedskating oval in suburban Kearns, comes exactly 10 years after the 2002 Winter Games began.
"Ten years ago, Utah 'Lit the Fire Within,' and today that flame still burns bright," said Gov. Gary Herbert (R). In fact, as celebrations of the 2002 anniversary begin, some Utahns are wearing their official Olympic volunteer coats again.
If that case of diarrhea just doesn't get better, your heartburn drug could be the reason.
The Food and Drug Administration just warned doctors and consumers that popular medicines called proton pump inhibitors may raise the risk for chronic diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that you'd rather not have colonizing your intestines.
Spooning strained peas into a baby is the traditional way to start solid food. But babies might be better off feeding themselves.
That's the surprising result of a new study that compared the food preferences and weight of babies who fed themselves finger food with those who were spoon fed.
Both groups of children had equal exposure to snack foods. But the babies who fed themselves preferred carbohydrates like toast, pasta, or potatoes, while the spoon-fed children went for sweets when given a choice.
President Barack Obama's campaign has urged top donors to support a super PAC run by former Obama aides. The president previously called the fundraising groups a "threat to democracy." The Center for Responsive Politics' Sheila Krumholz discusses the shift and NPR's Ken Rudin reviews the week in politics.
Many mid- and large-sized companies rely on computerized systems to scan resumes and narrow the field of job candidates. Some tracking software may overlook qualified applicants who haven't used the right keywords. The Wall Street Journal's Lauren Weber explains what it takes to get noticed.
The remaining GOP presidential candidates, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, New Gingrich and Ron Paul, are all fighting to sell a slightly different brand of conservatism. The definition of what it means to be conservative has changed over the years.
After a loved one dies, it's becoming more common to offer and receive condolences through a Facebook post or an email. New York Times contributor Bruce Feiler discusses the new customs that are evolving to guide the grieving process in the digital age.
Mitt Romney can take solace Wednesday in the words of Mark Hanna, the 19th century Ohio industrialist and political boss who once famously said: "There are two things that are important in politics, money and I can't remember the second."
The sign reads "British, get our of the Malvinas (Falklands)." It hangs outside the Government Palace, known as 'Casa Rosada', in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Argentina's president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said the country would file a complaint with the United Nations about Britain's "militarization" of the South Atlantic.
This is all part of a recent escalation of the two countries' long-running dispute about the Falkland Islands. Reuters reports:
GOP hopeful Rick Santorum carried wins in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri, on Tuesday. The White House also tries to manage a controversy over requiring many Catholic institutions to provide free contraception in their employees' health coverage. Host Michel Martin covers these topics and other political news with a diverse panel of politicos.
The breast cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, took a lot of heat last week for cutting grants to Planned Parenthood. The group reversed the decision this week, and Karen Handel resigned as vice president. Host Michel Martin continues the conversation on this week's major news with a diverse panel of politicos.
Donald Hall stands in the barn of the 200-year-old Wilmot farm that has been in his family for four generations. His latest poetry collection is called The Back Chamber.
Poet Donald Hall spends much of his time in his blue armchair, looking at the landscape out his window. The 83-year-old former poet laureate has lived for years on the same New Hampshire farm that his grandparents used to own, and still writes in the room he slept in as a child.
Chuck Prophet's new album, Temple Beautiful, takes its name from a former synagogue that hosted punk-rock shows in the late '70s and early '80s; it was next door to the temple overseen by cult leader Jim Jones. That may sound like a grim or black-humored reference point around which to erect an album, but with Prophet, grimness, humor, fact and fiction mingle freely. Before anything else, he's a guitar player with a melodically nasal voice whose phrasing favors the whimsical and the querulous.
January 2010: Muslim-Americans protest against terrorism outside a federal court building in Detroit, where "Christmas Day" bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was being arraigned.
There was a decline last year in the already "small" number of Muslim-Americans indicted for violent terrorist plots and the rate of radicalization among that group remains "far less than many feared" after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a researcher at North Carolina's Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security reports today.
