Well, the subject of our last word in business today may not change the world, but it is kind of snazzy. It is called the Air Umbrella. Now, picture an umbrella handle and nothing else, sort of like a wand.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Yeah. We are entering a magic world, here. That wand apparently keeps you dry by releasing a shield of air. The tech website Mashable says it's still a design concept, but in theory, you could adjust the power and size of your invisible air shield depending on how heavily it's raining.
For years the United States has urged the Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate a peace accord based on a two-state solution. Well, there are growing concerns within the international community that the chances of that ever happening are dimming.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The Palestinians angered Israel last week by securing a symbolically important vote at the United Nations General Assembly, upgrading their status from a non-member entity to a non-member state. Israel responded with reprisals.
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm David Greene.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, who took power last June, is facing a rebellion against his rule. It all started with a set of controversial decrees by the president that put him above the law until a constitution is in place. That move has polarized the country. Judges are on strike and critics say the president is pushing through an illegitimate constitution.
Originally published on Mon December 3, 2012 4:00 am
Representatives from more than 190 countries are convening in Dubai to discuss the treaty regulating global telecommunications. It hasn't been updated since 1988, when the Internet was in its infancy. There is fear that countries known to censor or restrict Internet access will push for global governance that could hamper speech and innovation. Renee Montagne discusses the issues with Ambassador Philip Verveer, who coordinates U.S. policy on global communications.
Originally published on Mon December 3, 2012 4:21 am
One of the rising stars in the Latin American literary world is Hector Abad. The Colombian-born author has released a searing book, Oblivion: A Memoir, in the U.S. that took him a generation to write. It's the story of his father, a beloved doctor who was murdered in the 1980s.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says it's up to congressional Republicans to take the next step in budget talks to avoid the pending automatic spending cuts and tax increases at the end of the year.
Appearing on the Sunday talk shows, Geithner said there's "no path to an agreement" until Republicans are willing to accept higher tax rates on the rich.
In an image from an Eye Tribe video, a man uses his eyes to play the Fruit Ninja game, slicing fruit in half as it appears on the screen.
Credit Gaze Group
The open-source software produced by the Gaze Group uses infrared light to track the pupils of users' eyes, allowing them to control the cursor on a mobile or desktop computer.
On Monday's Morning Edition, Hayden Planetarium director and pop-culture go-to science guy Neil deGrasse Tyson tells NPR's David Greene the story of how he came to lend a hand to Superman.
The 2013 Bentley Mulsanne features drop-down iPad workstations. More cars are being outfitted to operate as mobile offices.
Credit Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images
Attendees walk through the Los Angeles Convention Center floor during the L.A. Auto show on Nov. 29. Technology is taking the idea of working from the road to a whole new level.
Brad Hines is a building contractor in Los Angeles who spends a good eight hours a day in his 2008 Dodge Ram. He talked to us from his truck — hands-free, of course.
"I do everything in my truck. I drive from job site to job site. I take calls. I try to get on the computer and clean up daily reports. I answer emails on my phone. I use my truck as a mobile office," Hines says.
The idea of the mobile office is far from new — Willy Loman; the Avon Lady; plumbers; electricians. Now, technology is taking the idea of working from the road to a whole new level.
Some good news about texting: A review of studies published by the Cochrane Collaboration finds that smokers trying to quit the habit are helped in a big way by supportive messages sent via text.
Tamim Ansary directs the San Francisco Writer's Workshop. He is the author of West of Kabul, East of New York and Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes.
The story of Afghanistan — its history, its culture — is a narrative writer Tamim Ansary says he "carries in his bones." Ansary was born there to an Afghan father, educated in the United States, and an American mother.
He spent much of his 1950s childhood in the town of Lashkar Gah. There, his father worked on a massive irrigation project, funded by the U.S. and aimed at turning a dusty valley into fertile farms.
Cameron Harris, who has had Type 1 diabetes since he was 8 years old, explains the ins and outs of using glucagon for blood sugar lows. Harris hosts a video podcast series called "In Range" on YouTube.
When Kerri Sparling was 7 years old, she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Her family didn't know anyone with the disease, so they sent her to diabetes camp — "where every single camper had Type 1 diabetes," she says.
"That was my first sense of not only other people who had diabetes, but a true community," says Sparling.
As Congress and the White House battle over a tax and spending plan before the end of the year, one number is at the forefront: $250,000. That's the income level above which the White House wants taxes to rise. Host Guy Raz speaks with Reuters personal finance columnist Linda Stern about where that amount of money goes a long way, and where it doesn't. Plus NPR's Mara Liasson weighs in on the state of budget talks in Washington.
Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico tells host Guy Raz that next month might be the perfect time for Democrats to try a controversial technique to reform the filibuster.
London-raised Ahmed Jama won't give up on Mogadishu, Somalia, even though his restaurants have been attacked by suicide bombers more than once. In fact, he's leading the city's cultural revival, one dish at a time, by offering residents and visitors a taste of authentic Somali cuisine and hospitality. (This piece initially aired Nov. 26, 2012, on Morning Edition.)
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity cut a wheel scuff mark into a wind-formed ripple at the "Rocknest" site to give researchers a better opportunity to examine the particle-size distribution of the material forming the ripple.
The director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said last week that preliminary data showed the possibility that the agency's Mars Science Laboratory – the six-wheeled rover that landed on Mars in August — had found signs of carbon-containing molecules.
As part of the CIA's efforts to diversify its workforce, the spy agency is reaching out to a group that once was unable to get security clearance — lesbians and gay men.
Earlier this week, CIA officials held a networking event for the Miami gay community sponsored by the Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and the CIA.
Gary Ross has penned and directed some big Hollywood hits like Big, Pleasantville and The Hunger Games. But for the past 15 years, his obsession has been something much more personal: a Dr. Seuss-ian children's book called Bartholomew Biddle and the Very Big Wind.
It started when Ross got a call in 1996 from fellow screenwriter David Koepp. Koepp was up against a tight budget and approaching deadline with his debut directorial effort, The Trigger Effect. Its heroine had to read an as-yet-unwritten bedtime story to her child.
Ian MacKaye, co-founder of Dischord Records and the bands Fugazi and Minor Threat, and Amy Farina, formerly of The Warmers, form The Evens. Their third album together is called The Odds.
Over three decades, Ian MacKaye has tested a few possibilities of what punk can mean. His first band to make a national impact, Minor Threat, was a clear outgrowth of the hardcore scene in his native Washington, D.C. His second act, Fugazi, was subtler: four musicians, all songwriters, infusing punk's energy with rhythms pulled from funk, reggae and even classic rock.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, seen here on NBC's Meet the Press on July 10, 2011, took to the Sunday talk shows to make the administration's case on the negotiations over the "fiscal cliff."
Originally published on Sun December 2, 2012 12:50 pm
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner took to the Sunday talk shows to push the Obama administration's plan to avert the "fiscal cliff," saying that while he was optimistic about a deal with Republicans, there would be no agreement without an increase in tax rates for the top 2 percent of income earners.
Photographer Ken Regan with the Rolling Stones, 1977
Credit Ken Regan / Camera 5
Elvis Presley, early 1960s, with Nancy Sinatra. "I knew I would have to hustle in this competitive business if I wanted to make a name for myself .... But I had to make it to this one: Sgt. Elvis Presley, stationed for two years in Germany, was flying in to meet with the media at Fort Dix, N.J., on the eve of his discharge."
Credit Ken Regan
The Beatles with Ed Sullivan, 1964. "The audience in the 703-seat theater shrieked nonstop. This was at the deafening dawn of Beatlemania. You couldn't hear a thing. Some fans just seemed to be in shock, staring ahead, tears running down their cheeks."
Credit Ken Regan
"When The Beatles returned to America in August, 1965 ... I got one of my favorites. Walking the aisles, one audience member caught my eye: an older man sitting with his fingers plugged in his ears to mute the high-pitched squeals. As I moved in for this terrific shot, I got a closer look and realized I was photographing the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein."
Credit Ken Regan
The Rolling Stones on Saturday Night Live, 1978. Bill Murray blow-drying Ron Wood's hair.
Credit Ken Regan
Sonny and Cher, 1966. "I truly lucked out with the kind of access that almost no longer exists. 'I Got You Babe' had been a number one hit in the summer of 1965, but the sassy, animated couple — Sonny was 34, Cher was 19 — couldn't have been more cooperative, friendly, and open."
Credit Ken Regan
Woodstock, 1969. "Woodstock was not just the mother of all rock festivals, it was a photographer's paradise."
Credit Ken Regan
Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger confer at a benefit played in Tarrytown, N.Y., for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc., 1969. "He's the son of populist folk pioneer Woody Guthrie, but Arlo Guthrie, when he was only twenty-two, had found his own voice with his sardonic, counterculture anthem, 'Alice's Restaurant.' "
Credit Ken Regan
Mick Jagger's 29th birthday party. "At the party I photographed Mick and Keith with Bob Dylan at a time when Dylan sightings were extremely rare. Why was he there? Maybe the folk-rock icon was curious to meet up with rock 'n' roll's greatest icons-in-the-making."
Credit Ken Regan
"Once ... I thought, God, that smells really good, like eggs or something. I went into the kitchen — this was still midday — and there was Keith, standing over a frying pan at the stove, without a shirt on, cooking up some eggs. I had to do a triple take: he never got up much before six or 7 p.m. Thank God I had my camera because this was a one-in-a-million shot."
Credit Ken Regan
Tour of the Americas, on the plane between San Antonio and Kansas City, June 1975, (left to right) Bianca Jagger, Ron Wood, Charlie Watts and Keith Richards.
Credit Ken Regan
"In 1977, Peter Frampton was filling 90,000-seat stadiums as a good-looking songwriter and fluid, blues-rock guitarist who made upbeat lollipop rock. I shot him in several situations ... [including] at a sold-out concert in Philadelphia's JFK Stadium."
Credit Ken Regan
Westbury Music Fair, January 1970, Jim Morrison and The Doors
Credit Ken Regan
Janis Joplin at the Fillmore East, March 1968
Credit Ken Regan
"In 1970, Time sent me down to Hendersonville, Tenn., near Nashville, for a story on Johnny Cash. I spent a couple of days with Johnny and his wife, June Carter Cash, photographing them at their home. The shoot was both a challenge and a thrill."
Credit Ken Regan
Bob Dylan checking a Halloween mask in the mirror, Plymouth, Mass., Rolling Thunder Revue tour, 1975.
Credit Ken Regan
"Merry players" on the beach, Bob playing trumpet. Thanksgiving, 1975, Sturbridge, Mass.
Credit Ken Regan
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan practicing backstage, Rolling Thunder Revue tour, 1975. "Rolling Thunder was unlike any tour before it or since — an antic, in-the-moment carnival of impromptu happenings starring an ever-shifting cast of offbeat characters. Bob had given me free rein to shoot it all — onstage, backstage, offstage, dressing rooms, parties, trailers, whatever was going on."
Credit Ken Regan
Rolling Thunder Revue tour, Montreal, 1975. ' "What's with the whiteface?" I asked Bob as he was being made up before a show. Nobody could figure that out. He said, "Well, I'm playing these halls and it's really dark. I want the people way in the back to be able to see my eyes." Okay. Whatever."
Credit Ken Regan
Iggy Pop in New York for the Dec. 10, 1984, issue of People magazine. "By the time I shot Iggy for People in late 1984, he had calmed down quite a bit. He was 37, and a cool, terrific, and very amenable subject."
Credit Ken Regan
In the fall of 1977, I did a home take and a People cover (with Mick and Keith) of a very mellow, domesticated Keith Richards with his girlfriend of ten years, Anita Pallenberg, and their eight-year-old son, Marlon."
Before the official start of his second term, the president himself has to deal with a major legislative challenge, the across-the-board spending cuts and tax increases that will take effect next year unless the White House and Congress can reach a compromise. But in lieu of banging out a deal with congressional leaders face to face, the president is taking his case for how to solve the crisis on the road.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.
President Obama has less than two months before the start of his second term. Often, that means a lot of shuffling in the presidential cabinet. The recent resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus means there's an open spot at Langley. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she will leave that office at the end of the year.
High on a hill overlooking Pakistan's scenic Swat Valley sits a recently excavated cemetery. Italian archaeologist Luca Maria Olivieri walks across the site and lays a sun-beaten hand on a clay slab jutting out from a high, dun-colored wall. It's an ancient grave.
Olivieri says the remains still have to be carbon-tested, but archaeologists believe the graves contain members of a Dardic community, which dominated this part of Pakistan 3,000 years ago.
It's believed Alexander the Great fought one of his battles here, in the village of Udegram.
Matchmaker Santa is only one of many cornball films in which Santa (Donovan Scott) helps a woman (Lacey Chabert) find a boyfriend (Adam Mayfield). This is the one where the vanilla extract was key.
Credit Alexx Henry Studios / Hallmark Channel
Why yes, this is a promotional image for a real holiday Hallmark movie called Annie Claus Is Comin' To Town. That's Annie Claus, Santa's daughter, inside the snow globe being stared at by her father.
My well-documented weird affection for Hallmark movies brings me — along with NPR.org movies editor Trey Graham — to Weekend Edition on Sunday to talk to NPR's Rachel Martin about the high-profile theatrical holiday film as well as the corny basic-cable incarnations that are appropriate to this season.
In 1994, a cover by the late Jeff Buckley helped save "Hallelujah" from musical obscurity.
Credit
Credit Mary Ellen Matthews / Courtesy of Atria Books
Alan Light is an American music journalist. He has served as a rock critic for Rolling Stone and the editor-in-chief for both VIBE and Spin.
Credit Gareth Cattermole / Getty Images
Rufus Wainwright performs in London earlier this year. His cover of "Hallelujah" is among the best-known versions of the oft-interpreted Leonard Cohen song.
On Dec. 1, Kazakhstan celebrated a new holiday: "First President's Day." The central Asian country feted its long-time leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, though outside observers have criticized what appears to be a growing cult of personality around the president in the oil-rich country.
President Francois Hollande argues that homework puts poor children at a disadvantage, but others argue the extra work is needed to help those students succeed.
Credit Fred Dufour / AFP/Getty Images
As part of an effort to overhaul education in France, President Francois Hollande is proposing the elimination of homework.
In the name of equality, the French government has proposed doing away with homework in elementary and junior high school. French President Francois Hollande argues that homework penalizes children with difficult home situations, but even the people whom the proposal is supposed to help disagree.
Afghan families walk along a dusty road in Kabul, the Afghan capital, last month. In the latest in a series of dramatic inflows and outflows, more Afghans are leaving the country than returning, fueled by unease about next year's withdrawal of NATO forces.
Credit S. Sabawoon / EPA/Landov
Passengers wait for their luggage at Kabul International Airport in March. Visas are difficult to come by, so many Afghans rely on smugglers to make their way out of the country.
Originally published on Sun December 2, 2012 6:00 am
Convulsed by war and civil strife for decades, Afghanistan has experienced some of the largest ebbs and flows of migration anywhere in the world.
It began with the Soviet invasion in 1979, which sent millions of Afghans fleeing to Iran and Pakistan. When the Taliban were driven from power in 2001, many Afghans began returning home.
Now, the country has hit another milestone: For the first time since 2002 and the beginning of the current war in Afghanistan, the country has a negative migration rate — more Afghans are leaving than returning.
