Search results for

After months of hints and speculation, Colin Powell officially announced he will step down as Secretary of State. NPR's Tavis Smiley discusses Powell's past challenges and accomplishments with Ron Walters, professor of political science at the University of Maryland, and Phyllis Bennis, senior fellow at Institute for Policy Studies.

The new civil rights commission chairperson, Gerald Reynolds, is a former civil rights officer at the U.S. Department of Education and now a lawyer for an electric utility in Kansas City, Mo. He talks with Frank Morris of member staton KCUR.

NPR's Gloria Hillard reports on the efforts of a group of volunteers in Burbank, Calif., to prepare their float for the Rose Parade on New Year's Day.

NPR's Jennifer Ludden has a performance chat with American music icon Willie Nelson. Ludden caught up with Nelson while he was on tour promoting his new album It Will Always Be.

In his new novel Like We Care, novelist Thomas Matthews skewers hip-hop culture, the MTV generation and the corporate world that markets to them. Matthews tells NPR's Sheilah Kast he hopes his novel will alert parents to the ugly side of the music their children listen to.

NPR writers and critics pick the best albums of 2004. Included is music by Modest Mouse, Tinariwen, The Hilliard Ensemble, Brian Wilson, Guy Davis and Wilco.

Results from Iraq's Jan. 30 national assembly elections are almost final, and it appears the Shiite Muslim alliance received about 48 percent of the vote. The Kurdish parties won about 26 percent. The Shiite coalition victory falls well short of the two-thirds majority required to elect a presidential council, which in turn will select a prime minister.

Boyden Gray is the chairman and founder of the group Committee for Justice, formed to promote conservative judicial nominees. Gray was instrumental in getting Clarence Thomas appointed to the Supreme Court. Wednesday, we heard from Ralph Neas of the liberal group People for the American Way.

A recent story on people who've decided to give their bodies to science inspired Baltimore neurosurgeon Michael Salcman to send us a poem he wrote about his first day of medical school in 1965.

NPR's Juan Williams joins NPR's Alex Chadwick to talk about Karl Rove taking on new responsibilities within the White House and the man likely to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean.

Michele Norris talks with Evan Hendricks, editor and publisher of Privacy Times and author of Credit Scores and Credit Reports, about why people should be concerned about identity theft and what they can do to avoid it.

More than 150,000 people attended the funeral of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was killed along with 14 others in a bombing earlier his week. Many Lebanese blame Syria for the assassination and the U.S. has withdrawn its ambassador to Damascus. NPR's Eric Weiner reports.

For a closer look at the unemployment crisis in African-American communities, NPR's Ed Gordon is joined by Walter Fields, publisher of TheNorthStarNetwork.com and director of political development for the Community Service Society of New York, and Bernard Anderson, professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania and former assistant secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.

The international Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming takes effect Wednesday. The United States has not signed onto it, but countries in Europe have. Carbon trader Dirk Forrister is helping them figure out how to buy and sell carbon credits.

The Kyoto Protocol, an international environmental pact to counter global warming, goes into effect in 140 nations Wednesday. NPR's Richard Harris speaks with NPR's Madeleine Brand about the terms of the agreement and its possible effects.

Melissa Block and Michele Norris read from listener letters received in the last week. Topics include responses to a profile of an army widow, of future body donors for medical schools, and a story on pet fish medicine.

An upcoming British television special attempts to recreate alleged techniques used at the American prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In The Guantanamo Guidebook, former American Delta Force interrogators subjected seven volunteers to sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and intense questioning over the course of 60 hours. NPR's Madeleine Brand talks with Chris Guelff, who volunteered for the show.

Dog psychologist Cesar Millan has trained problem pooches and their frustrated owners for many years. His communication techniques with canines have even earned him a National Geographic television show called The Dog Whisperer. NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates recently joined Millan to watch him in action.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday, two civil liberties groups charged a Christian ministry with adding religious activities to a state-sponsored prison vocational program. NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports on the faith-based backlash at Pennsylvania's Bradford County Prison.

A judge’s split ruling on a ballot measure triggered appeals from both sides, as deadlines loom over disputed petition signatures from inactive voters and out-of-state gatherers.

Behind Heisman Trophy-winner Fernando Mendoza, the Hoosiers put the finishing touch on a rags-to-riches story, winning the College Football Playoff in the Hurricanes' home stadium.

Students face increased mental health risk while dealing with the challenges of a hurricane.

"Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize… I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace," Trump wrote in a message to the Norwegian Prime Minister.

The high-speed rail collision in southern Spain happened Sunday when the tail end of a train jumped the track, causing another train to derail. The official death toll rose to 41 by Tuesday morning.

Warming temperatures are forcing Antarctic penguins to breed earlier and that's a big problem for two of the cute tuxedoed species that face extinction by the end of the century, a study said.