Now Playing

Loading streams...

Podcasts & RSS Feeds

All ContentRSS
View all podcasts & RSS feeds

NPR News

Pages

Economy
5:12 pm
Sat July 14, 2012

A Tale Of Two Cities: Too Many Jobs, Or Not Enough

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Jacob Lopez / AP
Agriculture is a key job sector in Yuma, Ariz., where the seasonal workforce and migrant labor tend to boost the unemployment rate.
Credit Dale Wetzel / AP
Construction workers ease a steel girder into place as part of a remodeling and expansion of the North Dakota State Penitentiary in Bismarck, N.D. An energy boom has helped the state maintain a budget surplus.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By Stefania Ferro

Maria Arvizu continues to fill out job applications even though she has yet to deposit her last paycheck.

Arvizu, 53, relocated to Yuma, Ariz., to become a bus driver for the local school district last year. After school closed for summer break, she was caught off guard when she was laid off. She had expected to get another driving assignment and was denied collecting unemployment because she was still considered a school employee.

"I just keep looking for a job," Arvizu says.

Read more
Energy
4:29 pm
Sat July 14, 2012

Miners Weather The Slow Burn Of Coal's Demise

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Guy Raz / NPR
Equipment for transporting and housing coal sits idle in Cowen, W.Va. Since the natural gas boom, several mines in Webster County have either slowed or shut down operation, laying off hundreds of workers.
Credit Michael Tomsic/NPR
Rich Lewis worked as a miner for almost two decades before being laid off by Arch Coal. He says he's considering taking a job at another mine, but it's not certain that mine will stay open.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By

Originally published on Sat July 14, 2012 7:21 pm

At some point today, you will probably flip on a light switch. That simple action connects you to the oldest and most plentiful source of American electricity: coal.

Since the early 1880s — when Edison and Tesla pioneered the distribution of electrical power into our homes — most of that power has come from the process of burning coal.

Read more
Shots - Health Blog
4:12 pm
Sat July 14, 2012

Pennsylvania Cuts Medicaid Coverage For Dental Care

Credit Erika Beras
Marcia Esters hopes charity will pay for dental work that Medicaid used to cover.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Sun July 15, 2012 6:41 am

Marcia Esters needs crowns fused to six of her bottom teeth and new dentures. But because of changes made to Medicaid in Pennsylvania, she now has to pay for it all herself.

"It's thousands of dollars' worth of work that I cannot afford," she says.

Esters also uses a wheelchair. Because she couldn't get get her teeth fixed, she has spent the last few months eating pureed food and avoiding people.

"I don't go anywhere unless I have to," she says. "If you could look or feel halfway decent, it just helps, it really does."

Read more
Analysis
4:12 pm
Sat July 14, 2012

Week In News: The 'Swiftboating' Of Mitt Romney

Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Sat July 14, 2012 6:21 pm

Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GUY RAZ, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

MITT ROMNEY: I had no role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after February of 1999.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think most Americans figure if you're the chairman, CEO and president of a company that you are responsible for what that company does.

ROMNEY: That's ridiculous and disturbing to come from their campaign and beneath the dignity of the president.

Read more
Author Interviews
3:31 pm
Sat July 14, 2012

'Sunny Chernobyl': Beauty In A Haze Of Pollution

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Manan Vatsyayana / AFP/Getty Images
Garbage litters the banks of India's holy Yamuna River on World Water Day 2010. For decades, the Yamuna has been dying a slow death from pollution. According to Blackwell, even its most ardent defenders refer to it as a "sewage drain."
Credit AFP / AFP/Getty Images
According to Blackwell, environmental problems aren't always caused by the presence of something toxic. They can also be caused by the absence of something. Take, for example, Brazil, where intense soybean agriculture has been inching its way into the Amazon, posing a threat to forested regions.
Credit Victor Drachev / AFP/Getty Images
The abandoned village of Vezhishche in Belarus sits within the exclusion zone established after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The zone was one of Andrew Blackwell's first stops on his tour of the world's most ruined places.
Credit Peter Parks / AFP/Getty Images
The coal-centric economy of Linfen, China, has earned it a reputation for being one of the most polluted cities in the world.
Credit Elizabeth Dalziel / AP
Guiyu, China, is known for its electronics recycling workshops, but Blackwell says the town has a strangely rural, even agricultural, feel. "There are giant piles of keyboards, which reminded me a lot of bales of cotton," he says.
Credit Todd Korol / Reuters/Landov
Blackwell also visited the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, which would supply the oil for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline through the U.S.
Credit Victor Drachev / AFP/Getty Images
The abandoned village of Vezhishche in Belarus sits within the exclusion zone established after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The zone was one of Andrew Blackwell's first stops on his tour of the world's most ruined places.
Credit /
Credit Lucian Read / Courtesy of Rodale Books
Andrew Blackwell is a journalist and filmmaker living in New York City.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Sun July 15, 2012 3:04 am

In some of the dirtiest places on Earth, author and environmentalist Andrew Blackwell found some beauty. His book, Visit Sunny Chernobyl, tours the deforestation of the Amazon, the oil sand mines in Canada and the world's most polluted city, located in China.

Blackwell says his ode to polluted locales is a bid for re-engagement with places people have shrunk away from in disgust.

Radioactive To Its Core

His first stop was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, Chernobyl.

Read more

Pages