Strange News
5:39 am
Mon November 21, 2011

It Can't Be That Bad: Boring Conference Sells Out

The second annual Boring Conference was held over the weekend in London. It began as a joke but tickets sold out this year. Organizer James Ward worried his event might be too interesting.

Strange News
5:31 am
Mon November 21, 2011

Accused Drug Smuggler Just Wanted Clean Hair

Neil Parry was arrested at an airport in Darwin, Australia, and was accused of stuffing drugs into bottles of shampoo. Parry spent three days in jail, but has now received $100,000 in compensation. Testing of the bottles of Pantene shampoo and conditioner showed they actually contained: just shampoo and conditioner.

The Two-Way
5:15 am
Mon November 21, 2011

Superfailure Looks Likely; Then What?

The headlines this morning all say pretty much the same thing:

-- "Deficit Effort Nears Collapse." (The Wall Street Journal)

-- "Debt Supercommittee Members Brace For Failure." (The Washington Post)

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Around the Nation
4:49 am
Mon November 21, 2011

2 UC Davis Officers On Leave After Spraying Incident

Video shot by Occupy protesters shows people linking arms and sitting down to block a sidewalk on the campus of California Davis. A campus police officer steps up with an oversized spray can and calmly douses them with pepper spray. Two campus police officers have been placed on administrative leave, the university says.

Africa
3:33 am
Mon November 21, 2011

Cairo Racked By Deadly Violence For A Third Day

Credit Mohammed Hossam / AFP/Getty Images
A protester in Cairo's Tahrir Square prepared to hurl a tear gas canister at Egyptian security forces as others ran for cover Monday.

Thousands of protesters clashed with police Monday in Cairo in a spasm of violence that has lasted for three straight days and left dozens of people dead – the worst since the popular uprising that toppled Egypt's government.

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Dan Gorenstein has been a reporter with New Hampshire Public Radio since 2001, when he moved to New Hampshire from the Midwest. He got his start in journalism at the Chicago Reporter; an investigative journal that examines race and class disparities in the Chicago area. He’s won numerous national and local awards, including the Society of Professional Journalist Sigma Delta Chi investigative reporting award. He covers public policy, politics, poverty, and occasionally, subjects that don't start with the letter 'p.' His stories appear frequently on National Public Radio.

Contact

As NPR's senior national correspondent, Linda Wertheimer travels the country and the globe for NPR News, bringing her unique insights and wealth of experience to bear on the day's top news stories.

A respected leader in media and a beloved figure to listeners who have followed her three-decade-long NPR career, Wertheimer provides clear-eyed analysis and thoughtful reporting on all NPR News programs.

Before taking the senior national correspondent post in 2002, Wertheimer spent 13 years hosting of NPR's news magazine All Things Considered. During that time, Wertheimer helped build the afternoon news program's audience to record levels. The show grew from six million listeners in 1989 to nearly 10 million listeners by spring of 2001, making it one of the top afternoon drive-time, news radio programs in the country. Wertheimer's influence on All Things Considered — and, by extension, all of public radio — has been profound.

She joined NPR at the network's inception, and served as All Things Considered's first director starting with its debut on May 3, 1971. In the more than 40 years since, she has served NPR in a variety of roles including reporter and host.

From 1974 to 1989, Wertheimer provided highly praised and award-winning coverage of national politics and Congress for NPR, serving as its congressional and then national political correspondent. Wertheimer traveled the country with major presidential candidates, covered state presidential primaries and the general elections, and regularly reported from Congress on the major events of the day — from the Watergate impeachment hearings to the Reagan Revolution to historic tax reform legislation to the Iran-Contra affair. During this period, Wertheimer covered four presidential and eight congressional elections for NPR.

In 1976, Wertheimer became the first woman to anchor network coverage of a presidential nomination convention and of election night. Over her career at NPR, she has anchored ten presidential nomination conventions and 12 election nights.

Wertheimer is the first person to broadcast live from inside the United States Senate chamber. Her 37 days of live coverage of the Senate Panama Canal Treaty debates won her a special Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award.

In 1995, Wertheimer shared in an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award given to NPR for its coverage of the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, the period that followed the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress.

Wertheimer has received numerous other journalism awards, including awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for her anchoring of The Iran-Contra Affair: A Special Report, a series of 41 half-hour programs on the Iran-Contra congressional hearings, from American Women in Radio/TV for her story Illegal Abortion, and from the American Legion for NPR's coverage of the Panama Treaty debates.

in 1997, Wertheimer was named one of the top 50 journalists in Washington by Washingtonian magazine and in 1998 as one of America's 200 most influential women by Vanity Fair.

A graduate of Wellesley College, Wertheimer received its highest alumni honor in 1985, the Distinguished Alumna Achievement Award. Wertheimer holds honorary degrees from Colby College, Wheaton College, and Illinois Wesleyan University.

Prior to joining NPR, Wertheimer worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation in London and for WCBS Radio in New York.

Her 1995 book, Listening to America: Twenty-five Years in the Life of a Nation as Heard on National Public Radio, published by Houghton Mifflin, celebrates NPR's history.

Business
2:00 am
Mon November 21, 2011

Using Battelle Technology And Don't Know It?

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

We take a lot of products and technology for granted, like bar codes, compact discs, even cruise control on cars. These products and hundreds of others would not exist if not for a non-profit whose name few people are familiar with. It's called Battelle Memorial Institute. It's one of the world's largest independent research and development groups. It's based in Central Ohio. Niala Boodhoo of the Midwest reporting project Changing Gears takes us to Columbus to a place where hundreds of companies go for R&D.

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