Now Playing

Loading streams...

Podcasts & RSS Feeds

All ContentRSS
View all podcasts & RSS feeds

NPR News

Pages

Books
12:56 am
Tue February 7, 2012

Amid Debt Crisis, A Trail Of Broken 'Promises'

Credit Nephi Niven / Public Affairs Books
Philip Coggan
Share
E-mail
Comments
By NPR Staff

Financial writer Philip Coggan traces the current global financial crisis to the 1970s, when the U.S. went off the gold standard.

"Up till then, every form of money had some link to precious metal: gold or silver," Coggan, author of a new book, Paper Promises: Debt, Money and the New World Order, tells Morning Edition co-host Renee Montagne.

Read more
Around the Nation
12:47 am
Tue February 7, 2012

China's Heir Apparent Rekindles Early Ties To Iowa

Credit AFP / AFP/Getty Images
During his pending trip to the United States, Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping hopes to reunite with Iowans he met back in 1985, during an agricultural mission to America. Here, Xi attends a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden last August.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By Kate Wells

China's Vice President Xi Jinping is coming to America. Next week, he'll meet with President Obama at the White House. He'll lead a trade delegation to California. And he also plans to make a stop in Muscatine, Iowa.

Why Muscatine? It turns out that Xi wants to catch up with old acquaintances — he first visited the town (population 22,886) in the 1980s, as part of an agricultural mission.

Back then, the man who is likely to soon become China's president had dinner with Sarah Lande and her husband.

Read more
It's All Politics
9:01 pm
Mon February 6, 2012

Romney Brings Up Religion To Attract Social Conservatives

Share
E-mail
Comments
By

Originally published on Tue February 7, 2012 5:52 am

GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney is reaching out to social conservatives in a new way. At a rally in the gym at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo., Monday night, Romney rolled out some new material: the rights given to people by God.

"I am just distressed as I watch, as I watch our president try and infringe upon those rights," Romney said to the capacity crowd. "The first amendment of the Constitution provides the right to worship in the way of our own choice."

Read more
Latin America
9:01 pm
Mon February 6, 2012

Drought Ravages Farms Across Wide Swath Of Mexico

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Jason Beaubien / NPR
A vulture picks at a dead steer. Ranchers say many cattle have died because of the drought that has ravaged much of Mexico.
Credit Jason Beaubien / NPR
Genaro Rodarte Huizar, 76, says his corn and bean crops have failed for the past two years. He survives off money sent home by his children, who work in the United States.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By

In the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, 76-year-old Genaro Rodarte Huizar rides his donkey along a dry riverbed. On his left is a dried out pasture; on his right is what used to be a cornfield; now it's just long furrows of gray, dusty dirt.

Rodarte says that for the past two years, the crops that he's planted here have failed. Normally, he plants beans and corn to feed his family, and oats to sell. He says he hasn't harvested anything because the land is too dry and there's no water.

Read more
Middle East
9:01 pm
Mon February 6, 2012

Jews With Ties To Iran And Israel Feel Conflicted

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Gali Tibbon / Getty Images
Iranian-born Menashe Amir (shown here in 2006) hosts a call-in show on Israel Radio's Farsi service, one of the few forums for direct discourse between Iranians and Israelis.
Credit Vahid Salemi / AP
Iranian Jews look at the Torah scroll during a morning service for Shabbat, on the Jewish festival of Passover, at the Pol-e-Choubi Synagogue, in Tehran, Iran, April 23, 2011. Iran has the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside Israel. Growing conflict between the two countries is affecting Iranian Jews in both places.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By

As tensions between Israel and Iran ratchet up, one community is caught in the middle: Iranian Jews living in Israel. There are some 250,000 people of Persian descent living in Israel, and they maintain strong ties with their homeland.

As a result, they are uniquely conflicted over the possibility of war between the two countries.

In a small cluttered apartment in Jerusalem, Naheet Yacoubi cooks a traditional Persian meal for her Shabbat dinner. Originally from Tehran, she came to Israel when she was a child.

Read more

Pages