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Europe
5:55 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Europe Wants Assurances For Latest Greek Bailout

Credit Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP/Getty Images
In Athens on Tuesday, Greek pensioners marched in protest against new austerity cuts. The eurozone insists Greece must stick to hugely unpopular austerity measures agreed to in return for a 130 billion euro debt bailout.

The European Union says Greece has made some progress, but not enough, to merit the new bailout it desperately needs to avoid default and keep the euro as its currency.

Greeks are increasingly bitter about the austerity measures the EU is imposing on them. And Greece's EU partners are losing trust that the Greeks will implement them.

Now, talk is growing about contingency planning if Greece fails to meet the bailout conditions and defaults.

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Shots - Health Blog
5:52 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Scientists Debate How To Conduct Bird Flu Research

Credit Cynthia Goldsmith / CDC
H5N1 avian flu viruses (seen in gold) grow inside canine kidney cells (seen in green).

Scientists working with bird flu recently called a 60-day halt on some controversial experiments, and the unusual move has been compared to a famous moratorium on genetic engineering in the 1970s.

But key scientists involved in that event disagree on whether history is repeating itself.

"I see an amazing similarity," says Nobel Prize winner Paul Berg, of Stanford University.

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Movie Interviews
5:33 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

'Undefeated' A Tale Of Football Team's Struggles

Melissa Block talks to TJ Martin and Dan Lindsay, co-directors of the documentary Undefeated. Their film follows an inner-city high school football team in North Memphis, Tennessee, for a season and profiles their coach and players. It documents the struggles they have on and off the field.

The Two-Way
5:29 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Robert Rubin: Economic Future Is Most 'Uncertain' He's Ever Seen

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin says the U.S. economic outlook is the most "uncertain" he has seen in his lifetime.

Given that he was born during the Great Depression (1938), and lived through the Cold War, the 1970s' inflation, a brutal 1980-82 recession and the recent global financial crisis, that may be saying a lot.

Rubin, who was President Clinton's Treasury secretary, is now co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. He spoke Wednesday in Washington, D.C., at a conference called "American Competitiveness: What Works," sponsored by General Electric.

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It's All Politics
5:16 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Obama's Manufacturing Push Meets Some Expert Skepticism

Credit Susan Walsh / AP
President Obama extolled U.S. manufacturing at Master Lock in Milwaukee as some experts said a return to the nation's industrial past may not be the best path forward.

Manufacturing is as American as motherhood, baseball and apple pie. Who could be against Americans making more of what they consume and exporting more to the rest of the world?

Which is why President Obama was hardly taking a political risk Wednesday by going to a Master Lock factory in Milwaukee and extolling the company for repatriating manufacturing jobs from China.

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Middle East
4:31 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Iran Ups The Ante With More Nuclear Moves

Credit Iranian Presidency / AFP/Getty Images
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (right) listens to a nuclear expert during a tour of the Tehran Research Reactor on Wednesday. Iran announced that for the first time it has produced the fuel plates that power that reactor.

Iran has unveiled significant developments on two important components of its nuclear program: the centrifuges used to enrich uranium and the uranium used to fuel a research reactor.

The country has made no secret of its work in these areas. But the news on Wednesday suggests that Iran may be making progress in its nuclear program.

Iran also announced that it is cutting off oil sales to several European nations, only to reverse itself hours later.

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Energy
4:17 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Many Jobs May Be Gone With The Wind Energy Credit

Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 11:01 am

The wind power industry in this country has grown fast in recent years, but that could come to a screeching halt.

The industry depends on a federal subsidy to keep it competitive with other forms of electricity. It's a tax credit wind farms get for the power they produce. That credit expires at the end of the year, and it's not clear whether Congress will renew it.

The tax credit was initially created to encourage wind energy, since it is a clean and secure source of electricity. But these days the argument is all about jobs.

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Shots - Health Blog
4:16 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Kids Listen When Parents Say No To Teen Drinking

Credit iStockphoto.com
But what if Mommy says no?

Parents are divided on how best to handle teenage drinking. Should they prohibit it outright, or let teenagers drink with parental supervision?

Some parents think they might as well say OK, since the kids will drink anyway.

But researchers in the Netherlands have found that parental disapproval can be a powerful force to keep teens from succumbing to the impulse to drink.

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The Salt
3:38 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Goodbye To The King Size: Mars To Downsize Candy Bars In 2013

Credit John Rose/NPR
By the end of 2013, Mars says it will shave 30 calories, or about 11 percent (approximated here), off the current version of the Snickers bar.

Ready to say goodbye to a sliver of your Snickers? And how about a slightly slimmer Mars bar? By the end of 2013, chocolate-maker Mars says all of its chocolate bars will be under — or right at — the 250-calorie mark.

The 2-ounce Snickers currently sold in our NPR vending machine has 280 calories, and with the downsize it will lose about 11 percent of its size. The fun-size and the king-size bars currently range from 70 to 540 calories, which means the new 250-calorie limit spells the end of the king-size bar.

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It's All Politics
3:33 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Why Romney's Shaggy Dog Story Won't Die

Credit Shannon Stapleton / Reuters/Landov
A man holds a sign during a "Dogs Against Romney" demonstration outside the 136th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at New York's Madison Square Garden, on Tuesday.

It's the story that continues to, well, dog Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney. And, according to some experts, it could jeopardize his standing with voters who care about animals. And yes, it turns out, that is not an insignificant voting bloc.

The incident happened back in 1983, and it's been public since 2007. But it seems that only now a critical mass of voters is hearing it for the first time.

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The Two-Way
3:21 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Drinking Takes Center Stage As London Prepares For Olympic Spotlight

Credit Leon Neal / AFP/Getty Images
Prime Minister David Cameron calls binge drinking "one of the scandals of our society." Here, a man drinks a pint of beer through a makeshift "Vuvuzela of Ale" in London, in a file photo from 2010.

Britain has a drinking problem. And it's not just a question of alcoholism, but how the country should grapple with what some call an ingrained tradition and others call a $4.24 billion nightmare. That's how much the National Health Service says it pays each year in alcohol-related incidents.

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Middle East
3:20 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Syria's Neighbors Fear That Fighting Could Spread

Now that the uprising in Syria has turned into a heavily armed conflict, many in the region are worried that the violence will spread beyond its territory.

Syria borders Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, as well as Lebanon, where clashes erupted last Friday in the northern coastal city of Tripoli.

Sunni Muslims in one Tripoli neighborhood began protesting against Syrian President Bashar Assad. They put up a huge banner on the side of a mosque that had a picture of Assad, wearing a military uniform, with a big red X across his face.

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NPR Story
3:00 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Letters: On Aleksey Igudesman And Hyung-ki Joo

Melissa Block and Robert Siegel read emails from listeners about violinist Aleksey Igudesman and pianist Hyung-ki Joo.

Asia
2:43 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

American-Born 'Linderella' Is The Pride Of China

Credit Peter J. Thompson / MCT /Landov
New York Knicks star Jeremy Lin (shown here during first-half action against the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday) has taken the NBA by storm. Now, Chinese basketball fans are claiming the California native as their own.

How do you say "Linsanity" in Chinese? Lin Shuhao feng.

And how do you quantify it? Jeremy Lin has more than a million followers so far on the Chinese version of Twitter.

The legend of Lin, the Asian-American point guard for the New York Knicks whose success story draws comparisons to a fairy tale, continues to grow. On Tuesday night, he scored 27 points, including the winning shot, in the Knicks' victory over the Toronto Raptors.

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Shots - Health Blog
2:40 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

FDA Warns About Fake Avastin In US

Credit Genentech
Packaging for fake Avastin that was just flagged by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Food and Drug Administration says counterfeit Avastin, a costly drug cancer drug, has made its way to doctors in the United States.

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The Two-Way
2:33 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

U.S. Agrees To $350,000 Settlement In Conn. Immigration Raid Cases

Advocates on all sides of the immigration debate are digesting the latest big, and perhaps historic, development: The U.S. government agreed to pay a $350,000 settlement to 11 Connecticut men arrested in raids in 2007.

The plaintiffs claimed immigration agents violated their rights during the early morning raids, which snared nearly three dozen people.

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The Two-Way
2:04 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Dutch Finance Minister Says His 'Patience Has Run Up' With Greece

Credit Yves Logghe / AP
Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees De Jager addresses the media prior to the start of the Eurogroup ministerial meeting at the European Council building in Brussels on Feb. 9.

NPR's Eric Westervelt scored an interview with Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager. And Eric reports that he did not mince words.

The Netherlands and Germany, which have AAA credit ratings, hold great sway in whether Greece will receive a $170 million bailout from the European Union and the IMF. Without it, Greece would default on its debt and would almost certainly exit the monetary union. Eric asked Jager if Greece needed to do more beyond the tough set of austerity measures Parliament passed on Sunday and this is what Jager told him:

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The Two-Way
1:20 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Auto Dependability Hits 22-Year High In New Study

Toyota and Ford won the most awards in the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study, which came out today. Vehicles made by Toyota led the way with eight awards, while Ford models received three. In general, vehicle dependability was the best since the study first began in 1990, according to J.D. Power.

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NPR Story
1:00 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

How Santorum's Surge Is Changing The 2012 Race

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum swept caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado and the Missouri primary, gaining considerable ground on Mitt Romney's primary lead. NPR's Ken Rudin and Dan Balz, of the Washington Post, recap the week in politics.

NPR Story
1:00 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

China's V.P. Strengthens Ties In Muscatine, Iowa

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, the heir apparent to the presidency, visited Muscatine, Iowa Wednesday. He spent a week with a family there in 1979 to learn about American agriculture. Des Moines Register reporter Kyle Munson discusses the relationships foreign leaders form with U.S. towns.

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