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3:01 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

At 100, Woody Guthrie Still Resonates

Originally published on Fri July 13, 2012 9:16 am

Woody Guthrie would have been 100 years old on Saturday. The singer and songwriter wrote "This Land Is Your Land," among thousands of other songs.

Even though Guthrie died almost 45 years ago, his lyrics and message continue to appeal to new generations of Americans.

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The Salt
3:00 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

Wake Up Call To Grocery Stores: Young People Shop Around

Credit iStockphoto.com
The millennial generation doesn't shop at the grocery store the way their parents and grandparents do.

Originally published on Wed July 11, 2012 9:31 pm

Supermarkets have spent decades catering to the needs and wants of baby boomers, and now the millennial generation is disappointed with what they're finding at traditional grocery stores, and are shopping elsewhere in greater numbers.

In fact, a new market research report called Trouble in Aisle 5 reports that millennials buy only 41 percent of their food at traditional grocery stores, compared to the boomers' 50 percent.

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The Two-Way
2:59 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

Astronomers Discover Fifth Moon Orbiting Pluto

Credit NASA
This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows five moons orbiting the distant, icy dwarf planet Pluto. The green circle marks the newly discovered moon, designated P5.

Originally published on Wed July 11, 2012 3:03 pm

We now know that Pluto, the dwarf planet formerly known as a planet, has one more moon orbiting it. Using the Hubble Space telescope, astronomers have discovered Pluto's fifth moon.

NPR's Joe Palca filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"The new moon is tiny, something between six and 15 miles across. It showed up in nine separate images the space telescope made in the last month. The latest image came earlier this week.

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The Two-Way
2:35 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

'Wall Street Journal': Seven Years After Burst Bubble, 'The Housing Bust Is Over'

Credit Paul Sakuma / AP
A moving truck is shown at a house that was sold in Palo Alto, Calif. on Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal is calling it without any couching. The headline:

'The U.S. Housing Bust Is Over'

The lede:

"The housing market has turned—at last.

"The U.S. finally has moved beyond attention-grabbing predictions from housing 'experts' that housing is bottoming. The numbers are now convincing.

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Shots - Health Blog
2:27 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

Gene Mutation Offers Clue For Drugs To Stave Off Alzheimer's

Credit U.S. National Institute on Aging / via Wikimedia Commons
A PET scan of the brain of a person with Alzheimer's disease.

Originally published on Thu July 12, 2012 3:03 pm

Finally, there's some good news about Alzheimer's disease.

It turns out that a few lucky people carry a genetic mutation that greatly reduces their risk of getting the disease, an Icelandic team reports in the journal Nature.

The mutation also seems to protect people who don't have Alzheimer's disease from the cognitive decline that typically occurs with age.

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American Dreams: Then And Now
2:18 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

Korean Families Chase Their Dreams In The U.S.

Credit Martin Kaste / NPR
Hyungsoo Kim brought his sons Woosuk (left) and Whoohyun to California from Korea so the boys could get an American public-school education. In "goose families," one parent migrates to an English-speaking country with the children, while the other parent stays in Korea.

Originally published on Wed July 11, 2012 3:33 pm

Eleven-year-old Woosuk Kim sees his mother only three or four times a year. That's because he's part of what Koreans call a "goose family": a family that migrates in search of English-language schooling.

A goose family, Woosuk explains, means "parents — mom and dad — have to be separate for the kids' education."

Woosuk's father brought him and his little brother to America two years ago to attend Hancock Park Elementary, a public school in Los Angeles. The boys' mother stayed in South Korea to keep working.

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The Two-Way
2:04 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

House Votes To Repeal Health Care Law

With a vote of 244 to 185, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives just voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Obama's signature domestic legislation known colloquially as "Obamacare."

Of course, the vote doesn't matter, because the measure has a very slim chance of being adopted by the Senate.

The AP reports that this is the "33rd time in 18 months that the tea party-infused GOP majority has tried to scrap, defund or scale back the law since grabbing the majority."

The AP adds:

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Shots - Health Blog
1:55 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

Firefighters Prevail In Fight for Health Insurance

Originally published on Wed July 11, 2012 3:33 pm

It all started around a kitchen table in Custer, South Dakota. John Lauer, a 27-year-old seasonal firefighter for an elite U.S.

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Music Reviews
1:55 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

Sory Kandia Kouyaté: Guinea's Voice Of Revolution

Originally published on Wed July 11, 2012 3:33 pm

Sory Kandia Kouyaté was one of the most celebrated singers in West Africa when he died suddenly in 1977. He was just 44, and given his spectacular voice, it's a safe bet that Kouyaté would have been an international star had he lived just a few years longer. Now, some of his finest recordings have been collected on a two-disc retrospective called La Voix de la Révolution.

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The Two-Way
12:30 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

An Amazing Life: Robert de La Rochefoucauld, World War II Saboteur

Credit Amazon.com

Originally published on Wed July 11, 2012 12:31 pm

As brother Jim Memmott tweeted: "Good heavens, what a life."

Read this New York Times obituary of Robert de La Rochefoucauld and we bet you'll say something like that too. As the Times writes, in World War II the French count's exploits as an agent for the British:

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The Two-Way
12:30 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

Florida A&M President Resigns In Wake Of Hazing Scandal

Credit Gerry Broome / AP
James Ammons in 2006.

Originally published on Wed July 11, 2012 12:50 pm

The hazing scandal at Florida A&M University has cost the university president his job, the AP is reporting.

James Ammons submitted his resignation today just after the parents of Robert Champion added the university to a wrongful death lawsuit.

Champion, an A&M drum major in the famed "Marching 100" band, died in November after going through a violent hazing ritual on parked bus. Eleven marching band members have been charged.

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Presidential Race
12:26 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

Where They Stand: Obama, Romney On Immigration

Originally published on Wed July 11, 2012 1:51 pm

Below are President Obama's and Republican challenger Mitt Romney's policies and proposals regarding immigration. NPR will be comparing the two candidates on various issues in the run-up to the November election. If you have suggestions for other issues you'd like us to explore, please leave a note in the comments section below.

DREAM Act:

Obama:

Supports; also endorses letting foreign students stay in U.S. after college graduation.

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World Cafe
12:26 pm
Wed July 11, 2012

Bear In Heaven On World Cafe

Credit Shawn Brackbill
Bear in Heaven.

Bear in Heaven, the brainchild of Jon Philpot, spent the winter trimming down (from a quartet to a trio) and stocking up, releasing its third album I Love You, It's Cool this spring. To promote the record, Philpot posted it in its entirety on the band's website, but not before slowing the audio down 400,000 times. At its original tempo, Bear in Heaven's music is at once ambient and energized, resonating in synth-driven waves that swell and pulse through an electric sea.

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