Space
5:35 am
Tue June 18, 2013

Remembering Astronaut Sally Ride's Historic Journey

Originally published on Tue June 18, 2013 1:55 pm

Thirty years ago Tuesday, Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space. She was aboard the shuttle Challenger. Less than three years later, it would explode on takeoff, killing seven crew members.

Shots - Health News
4:14 am
Tue June 18, 2013

3-D Printer Brings Dexterity To Children With No Fingers

Originally published on Tue June 18, 2013 1:52 pm

Author Interviews
3:08 am
Tue June 18, 2013

Spy Reporter Works Her 'Sources' To Write A Thriller

Credit Katarina Price / Gallery Books
Mary Louise Kelly spent two decades traveling the world as a reporter for NPR and the BBC.

Originally published on Tue June 18, 2013 1:52 pm

Mary Louise Kelly used to cover the national security beat for NPR, but lately she's turned her attention to teaching and writing fiction. Her new novel, Anonymous Sources, follows rookie journalist Alexandra James as she investigates a shady banana shipment and a clandestine nuclear plot. The tale is fiction, but it draws on Kelly's own experiences reporting on the spy beat, including things she couldn't say when she was a journalist.

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Parallels
3:07 am
Tue June 18, 2013

Libyan Radio Station Promotes Democracy, One Rap At A Time

Originally published on Tue June 18, 2013 1:52 pm

Many of the militia fighters who rose up and ousted former dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 have refused to lay down their arms and are still challenging the post-revolutionary government.

Yet the militias are facing a challenge of their own. They now come under verbal attack on one of Libya's newest radio stations, Radio Zone.

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Law
3:07 am
Tue June 18, 2013

Why The FISA Court Is Not What It Used To Be

Credit AP
A copy of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order requiring Verizon to give the National Security Agency information about calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.

Originally published on Tue June 18, 2013 1:52 pm

The furor over recently exposed government surveillance programs has posed an abundance of political challenges for both President Obama and Congress. Relatively unmentioned in all of this, however, is the role of the courts — specifically, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, and how its role has changed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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8:43 pm
Mon June 17, 2013

Federal officials to open disaster loan office in Grand Rapids

Lead in text: 
Property owners affected by April flooding in Kent, Allegan, Barry and five other counties are eligible to apply for loans
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Federal officials on Tuesday are slated to open a service center in Grand Rapids for property owners applying for disaster relief loans. The U.S. Small Business Administration said last week it would offer loans to uninsured homeowners and businesses affected by record April flooding in West Michigan.
8:22 pm
Mon June 17, 2013

Palisades Nuclear Power Plant back in service

Lead in text: 
Plant had been shut down since May 5th because of leak in water tank
The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant near South Haven is back in service after 43-day outage caused by a leak in a water tank.
The Salt
6:40 pm
Mon June 17, 2013

Dirty Spuds? Alleged Potato Cartel Accused Of Price Fixing

Credit iStockphoto.com
Clearly, he's as surprised by the allegations as the rest of us.

Originally published on Tue June 18, 2013 4:09 pm

Editor's Note: Many of you noted that the price for a 10-pound bag of potatoes cited in the lawsuit seems ridiculously high. So we look into the matter further — you can read what we found in this follow-up post.

High-tech spying with satellites. Intimidation. Price fixing.

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Hobbies
5:56 pm
Mon June 17, 2013

You've never seen Frisbee like this...

Credit The Flying Aces

On June 20th, the Flying Aces will entertain a Kalamazoo Public Library audience with Frisbee tricks. Their presentation also includes a history of the flying discs and information about the newest techniques and products.

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Credit Robert Dodge

Trey Graham edits and produces arts and entertainment content for NPR's Digital Media division, where among other things he's helped launch the Monkey See pop-culture blog and NPR's expanded Web-only movies coverage. He also helps manage the Web presence for Fresh Air from WHYY.

Outside NPR, Graham has been a lead theater critic at the Washington City Paper, D.C.'s alternative weekly newspaper, since 1995, which means he's seen a good deal of superb theater and a great deal of schlock. He's still stage-struck enough to believe that the former makes up for the latter.

Graham began his career as a writer and editor at The Washington Blade; his subsequent tenure at USA Today included a stint as the newspaper's music and theater editor. A past fellow at both the O'Neill Critics Institute and the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater, Graham won the George Jean Nathan Award for distinguished drama criticism in December 2004.

Graham is also a regular panelist on Around Town, the venerable arts roundtable program on Washington PBS affiliate WETA-TV, and the author of the theater section of the newest Time Out Guide to the nation's capital. He's written about books, travel, movies and the arts for publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Born in New Orleans (during Mardi Gras, no less) and raised in South Carolina, Graham has lived in Washington, D.C., since 1990 ­ except for a couple of years in Zimbabwe, which turned out to be way more fun than a politically perilous, economically disastrous situation has any right being.

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