Another story about China now. This one has to do with the countrys economy. Most of Chinas phenomenal growth is taking place in regions along the coast. For the inland, many people have been left behind. But now China's west and mid-west are startin...
In spite of all the advancement in law enforcement in recent decades, many murders still go unsolved. Commentator Stacy Horn says that right now in New York you have a 40% chance of getting away with murder. Its not just New York. Statistics show tha...
Fridays are divorce days in Bellingham, Washington. If you want to dissolve your marriage in Bellingham, you have to show up in court on a Friday, with all of the other couples who are divorcing that week. Recently one of those couples was commentato...
In Vail Arizona, outside Tucson, a new school with a new idea: no textbooks, instead, every student at Empire High School, all 330 of them, has a loaner laptop for the year. While other students might read in books, Empire students will read on their...
This is Morning Edition from NPR news. I am Steve Inskeep and I am Susan Stamberg. Russian and Chinese forces today begin 8 days of joint military exercises. Some ten thousand troops are expected to take part, making this their largest joint military...
Now poet Ruth Forman would like to make some nominations of her own. Let us name our national treasures, current as today's newspaper. Come, let us name our national treasures: our uncles, our teachers, our lovers of the soul, much as we name our cri...
Close to home, another natural disaster is having a major impact on parts of the Midwest, it's one of the worst droughts in decades, thousands of Illinois farmers may lose as much as a third of their crops. And the federal government is expected to d...
Here is a very small piece of fiction from Ruth Forman. It's titled Bars on Windows. The window covered with rusted black iron bars looked like jail, he thought, though he'd never been to jail. He wondered when exactly the bars were added. They didn'...
This year there will be more than a million divorce filings in the United States. One of them has commentator Leon Wynter's name on it. I am now playing at age 51 the strangest role yet in my long strange trip: suburban single father, non-custodial ,...
Desertion is the title of a new novel by Zanzibar-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah. It opens in 1899 along the East African Coast. Alan Cheuse has a review. A white stranger, sick and wounded, staggers into a small East African town. A local shop owner...