National Security
1:00 pm
Tue November 8, 2011

GOP: Holder Hearing Leaves Unanswered Questions

Credit Mark Wilson / Getty Images
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sworn in before testifying during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the controversial "Fast and Furious" gun-trafficking program on Tuesday.

Attorney General Eric Holder spent almost three hours on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, getting a grilling from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee about a flawed gun-trafficking operation that let hundreds of guns flow across the Southwest border.

But even after the Justice Department oversight hearing, Republican lawmakers say there are lots of questions that remain unanswered.

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Around the Nation
1:00 pm
Tue November 8, 2011

Rockford, Ill., Shuts Off Streetlights To Save Money

Originally published on Tue November 8, 2011 8:15 pm

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

Budget cuts are showing up on the streets of another Midwestern city. In Rockford, Illinois, they're turning out the lights. The city is in the middle of removing 2,300 streetlights, all in an effort to save money. That's about 15 percent of all the lights in town.

Corina Curry has covered the story for the Rockford Register Star and joins us now. Welcome to the program, Corina.

CORINA CURRY: Thank you very much.

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Presidential Race
1:00 pm
Tue November 8, 2011

Cain Speaks On Sexual Misconduct Allegations

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain undertook his first serious interviews since the allegations by a Chicago woman on Monday of sexual misconduct when she was seeking help from Cain during a job hunt. NPR's Tamara Keith joins Robert Siegel to explain.

Health
1:00 pm
Tue November 8, 2011

Volokh Discusses Cigarette Warning Messages

Robert talks to Eugene Volokh, an expert on compelled speech at the UCLA School of Law, about the status of graphic warning symbols and messages on packs of cigarettes.

The Two-Way
12:29 pm
Tue November 8, 2011

Coming Up: Herman Cain Interview

"I can categorically say I have never acted inappropriately with anyone, period," Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain just told ABC News' Jonathan Karl on a live ABC/Yahoo webcast.

Responding to the latest accusation by a woman — Sharon Bialek of Chicago — who says he sexually harassed her in the late 1990s, Cain said the charge is "baseless, bogus and false" and that Bialek is lying.

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NPR Story
12:16 pm
Tue November 8, 2011

Leibovitz Takes 'Pilgrimage' For Artistic Renewal

Photographer Annie Leibovitz is famous for her portraits of celebrities. From John Lennon curled around Yoko Ono to a pregnant Demi Moore, she's made a career out of capturing people. But for her latest collection, Pilgrimage, she instead turns the camera on places that have special meaning for her.

Many of those meaningful sites are the homes and landscapes that prominent people once inhabited, such as Georgia O'Keefe's homes in Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, New Mexico and Ansel Adams' darkroom in Carmel, California.

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The Two-Way
12:04 pm
Tue November 8, 2011

'Superstar Conservative' Judge Writes Opinion Upholding Health Care Law

"An appeals court judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan just wrote an opinion affirming the constitutionality of the federal law overhauling health care," our colleague Scott Hensley writes over at the Shots blog.

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Education
11:40 am
Tue November 8, 2011

Does New Orleans Welcome Disabled Students?

Credit Larry Abramson / NPR
Noah Kelly, 10, and his full-time aide, Daniel Thomas, at Lafayette Academy, a charter school housed in a former district school building in New Orleans.

Originally published on Tue November 15, 2011 3:49 pm

New Orleans has become the center of an education revolution, where more than 70 percent of students attend a charter school.

The number of students taught in traditional district-run schools is shrinking fast. That's because parents in post-Hurricane Katrina can pick and choose from a smorgasbord of schools with different approaches and cultures.

By many measures, this educational marketplace has improved student achievement. But as this experiment moves ahead, it's led to questions about whether the district is truly open to the most challenging students.

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Shots - Health Blog
11:32 am
Tue November 8, 2011

Conservative Appeals Court Judge Writes Opinion Upholding Health Law

An appeals court judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan just wrote an opinion affirming the constitutionality of the federal law overhauling health care.

That makes three appeals court decisions in favor of the law and one against, if you're keeping track.

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The Two-Way
11:29 am
Tue November 8, 2011

As Asteroid Approaches, Here's How To Watch It

Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech
This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was obtained on Nov. 7 when the space rock was at 3.6 lunar distances, which is about 860,000 miles from Earth.

As we reported at the end of October, 2005 YU55, an asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier, is set to have a very close rendezvous with planet Earth. It'll be closer than the moon and today at 6:28 p.m. ET, it will make its closest approach.

Don't worry. NASA is confident it will miss us. Here's a video NASA put together that explains the trajectory and shows an animation:

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