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10:03pm

Tue June 12, 2012
Sweetness And Light

The Language of Baseball: In Is Out And Foul Is Fair

Originally published on Wed June 13, 2012 8:14 am

Credit Keith Srakocic / AP
Pittsburgh Pirates fans reach for a foul ball hit into the stands by Mike Moustakas of the Kansas City Royals in the seventh inning of a game in Pittsburgh.

Baseball historians continue to poke around in the 19th century to better explain how the game was originated and developed, but I've always wondered if one of the prime movers wasn't a student of Shakespeare.

While I certainly don't know the terminology of all ball games, the popular ones I'm aware of — everything from basketball and football to golf and tennis — all use some variations of the words in and out when determining whether the ball is playable.

Only baseball is different.

"Fair is foul and foul is fair; Hover through the fog and filthy air."

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8:02pm

Tue June 12, 2012
Election 2012

As GOP Cashes In, Democrats Search For Billionaires

Credit Jason Reed / Reuters/Landov
President Obama at a Democratic Party election fundraiser in Chicago on June 1.

The big story of this year's election campaign is big money. Since the Supreme Court, through its Citizens United ruling, has made it easier for corporations, unions and rich individuals to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, Republicans have seized the advantage.

Right now, an analysis by NPR finds that Republican allied groups are outspending their Democratic counterparts by 8 to 1.

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7:15pm

Tue June 12, 2012
The Two-Way

From Our Readers: Less Hedginess, More Neology

Our use of the term "hedginess," coined by finance criminologist Bill Black, inspired commenter "Tim Myers" to engage in some neology of his own in order to prove his point:

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7:05pm

Tue June 12, 2012
The Two-Way

Dimon Will Tell Congress JPMorgan 'Let People Down' With Trading Loss

Originally published on Wed June 13, 2012 10:00 am

Credit Mario Tama / Getty Images
JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon.

"This portfolio morphed into something that, rather than protect the firm, created new and potentially larger risks. As a result, we have let a lot of people down, and we are sorry for it."

That's part of JPMorgan Chase President and CEO Jamie Dimon will tell the Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs tomorrow, when it looks into the botched trades that lost the bank $2 billion. Chase released Dimon's prepared remarks this afternoon.

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6:50pm

Tue June 12, 2012
Latin America

Venezuela's Chavez Aims To Beat Cancer, Election Foe

Originally published on Thu June 14, 2012 10:38 am

The crowds came out by the thousands in Venezuela on Monday, flooding the streets of Caracas in red T-shirts just as the nation's populist government had promised.

Hugo Chavez — the country's 57-year-old, bigger-than-life leader — then took the stage. He had arrived in an open truck, minutes after registering as a candidate for the Oct. 7 election.

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6:42pm

Tue June 12, 2012
Your Money

Credit Card Debt Cut: The Reason May Surprise You

Originally published on Tue June 12, 2012 7:17 pm

Credit iStockphoto.com

A Federal Reserve study showing that Americans lost wealth in the Great Recession turned up another, perhaps more surprising, result: Credit card debt fell sharply.

"The percentage of families using credit cards for borrowing dropped over the period; the median balance on their accounts fell 16.1 percent" between 2007 and 2010, the report concluded.

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6:06pm

Tue June 12, 2012
The Two-Way

Feds Say Mexican Cartel Used American Quarter Horse Racing To Launder Money

Credit Southwest Stallion Station
Mr. Piloto, which federal authorities are trying confiscate, is offered on a website for sire services.

Federal authorities arrested seven people, today, in connection with what authorities say was a multi-million dollar money laundering operation run by Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas.

The scheme allegedly used the millions earned through the illicit drug trade to purchase, train, breed and race American quarter horses in the United States. The Department of Justice said 14 had been indicted; among them is Zetas leader Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales and his brothers Oscar Omar Treviño Morales and José Treviño-Morales.

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5:55pm

Tue June 12, 2012
Middle East

At Syrian Military Hospital, The Casualties Mount

Originally published on Tue June 12, 2012 9:02 pm

Syrian activists have posted thousands of videos of civilians killed and wounded in the 15-month-old conflict. But there have been many casualties on the government side as well, and they are on display at a military hospital in the capital, Damascus.

For Abdul Kareem Mustapha, a 51-year-old colonel in the Syrian army, the war came for him at 8:15 a.m. on his way to his military post.

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5:55pm

Tue June 12, 2012
Planet Money

Remembering Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Laureate

Originally published on Wed June 13, 2012 11:08 am

Credit Raveendran / AFP/Getty Images
Elinor Ostrom in January 2011.

Elinor Ostrom, the only woman ever to win an economics Nobel, died today at age 78.

She was famous for challenging an idea known as the tragedy of the commons — the theory that, in the absence of government intervention, people will inevitably overuse a shared resource.

So, for example, if a village shares a pasture, it's in the individual interest of each farmer to graze his cattle as much as possible on the pasture even though, in the long run, overgrazing may ruin the pasture for everyone.

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5:55pm

Tue June 12, 2012
Politics

Where Are The Democratic Billionaires?

Democrats knew that they would be disadvantaged under the new campaign finance rules created by the Supreme Court. But the disparity between the amount of money Republicans can raise in unlimited anonymous donations and what the Democrats have been able to raise is huge.

5:44pm

Tue June 12, 2012
This Is NPR

'Dallas' Stars Heart NPR

Originally published on Tue October 16, 2012 1:46 pm

Credit Melissa Kuypers / NPR

Jesse Metcalfe and Josh Henderson are reigniting the Ewing family rivalry as on-screen step-brothers in TNT's reboot of Dallas. The actors talked with NPR's Allison Keyes on Morning Edition today about the show's new (and returning) characters. Fortunately, the rivalry doesn't get in the way of their love for NPR.

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5:35pm

Tue June 12, 2012
It's All Politics

Justice Department Sues Florida As Voter Battle Intensifies

Originally published on Tue June 12, 2012 8:02 pm

Credit Paul J. Richards / AFP/Getty Images
A Republican primary voter walks to her polling precinct in January in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Florida on Tuesday to stop it from trying to remove noncitizens from its voter registration rolls.

The department says the way the state is going about doing this violates federal law. Florida says it's partly the federal government's fault for not sharing citizenship data with the state.

It's all part of the escalating battle between the Obama administration and Republican-led states over voting laws.

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5:26pm

Tue June 12, 2012
All Songs Considered Blog

Vote For The Year's Best Music (So Far)

Originally published on Thu June 14, 2012 1:06 pm

Credit NPR

Around this time each year I begin to marvel at how we've already reached the halfway point. I haven't even taken down my Christmas lights yet and already everyone's reflecting on all the great music we've had so far.

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5:03pm

Tue June 12, 2012
The Record

Diplo: Building A Bridge From The Underground To The Mainstream

Originally published on Tue September 18, 2012 7:41 pm

Credit Jordan Strauss / Getty Images
The DJ and producer Diplo, who also records as Major Lazer, has produced songs for M.I.A., Beyonce and Usher.

The music made by Thomas Wesley Pentz, better known by his stage name, Diplo, is one part club-music mashup and one part pop music forecast. In 2009, he took bubblin' — a syncopated house style born in the clubs of Holland — as inspiration and collaborated with fellow DJ Switch, his partner in the group Major Lazer, to make the dance-floor hit "Pon de Floor." But he wasn't done with the bubblin' sound yet. In 2011, he used that song as basis for "Run the World (Girls)," a single by the pop star Beyonce.

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5:02pm

Tue June 12, 2012
The Two-Way

Five Keys To The NBA's Elemental Finals: Thunder Vs. Heat

Originally published on Tue June 12, 2012 6:18 pm

Credit J Pat Carter / AP
The Miami Heat's LeBron James and Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder (shown during an April game) will match up again tonight in the first game of the NBA Finals.

Think of tonight's NBA Finals tipoff as an atmospheric game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Does Heat smother Thunder, or does Thunder storm past Heat?

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4:33pm

Tue June 12, 2012
The Two-Way

George Zimmerman's Wife Charged With Perjury

Originally published on Wed June 13, 2012 9:07 am

Credit Handout / Getty Images
In this handout from the Seminole County Sheriff's Office, Shellie Zimmerman, wife of George Zimmerman, the man accused of shooting Trayvon Martin, is seen in a police mug shot on Tuesday in Sanford, Florida.

Shellie Zimmerman, the wife of George Zimmerman, has been charged with one count of perjury.

According to court documents, Shellie was charged for knowingly making a false statement during the bond hearing of George Zimmerman.

George Zimmerman has been charged with second degree murder in the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, has claimed he acted in self defense.

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4:16pm

Tue June 12, 2012
World Cafe

Sense Of Place: Trombone Shorty's Raging Parade

Originally published on Mon September 10, 2012 1:39 pm

Credit Rick Diamond / Getty Images
Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue perform at the famous New Orleans jazz bar Tipitina's.

This week, World Cafe invites listeners to discover the music of New Orleans with the series Sense of Place.

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4:14pm

Tue June 12, 2012
The Two-Way

Vatican Says American Sisters Are Under 'Supreme Direction' Of Holy See

Leaders of a group that represents most Catholic sisters in the United States meet with Vatican officials in Rome today. As we've reported, the sisters went to Rome to talk to the head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about a report that found the group was running afoul of church doctrine.

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3:54pm

Tue June 12, 2012
Asia

A Nobel Acceptance Speech — Two Decades Overdue

Originally published on Tue June 12, 2012 10:49 pm

Aung San Suu Kyi heads to Europe Wednesday, where she'll deliver a speech she was invited to give more than two decades ago: the one for her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, which she was unable to collect while under house arrest.

In Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, at the headquarters of Suu Kyi's party, spokesman U Nyan Win says she is busy writing speeches for her extended trip to Europe, including the visit to Oslo for the belated Nobel address this weekend.

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3:52pm

Tue June 12, 2012
The Salt

Will Beer And Brats Break Through Wisconsin's Partisan Divide?

Credit SaucyGlo / Flickr.com
Democrats may not bite at the brats and beer Gov. Walker is offering.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker beat back Democrats' efforts to kick him out of office last week in an election widely seen as a national referendum on labor policies.

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