When John Paton Davies died, he left some unfinished business. His daughter, Tiki Davies, knew he had signed a contract to write a memoir but never finished it. One of her sisters had a carbon copy of the manuscript, which Tiki Davies started typing into a computer.
TIKI DAVIES: What was interesting to me about retyping it is that it's very much in his voice. He was very funny and an elegant speaker as well as a writer. And so I felt as though I had him back for the couple of months I did this.
The home of the Red Sox may be a Boston landmark but it also holds a place in baseball history. The big green wall in left field is known as the Green Monster. Some fans are paying more than $1,000 to sit on top of the Green Monster when the Red Sox play Friday night.
Drummer and singer Levon Helm was a founding member of The Band. Helm and his group played as a backup band for Bob Dylan in the 1960s. Later the band became famous enough to simply be called The Band.
Any documentary about a singer-songwriter can provide great music, but with "Marley" you also get a remarkable personal story. We have a review from our critic Kenneth Turan.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Bob Marley, who was only 36 when he died in 1981, could be a dusty musical footnote by now. Instead, the enormous popularity of this transcendent reggae superstar shows no sign of going away, and "Marley," a moving and authoritative new documentary, explains why.
Earlier this week, two women took a new approach to raising awareness about Syria's crackdown. The wives of the British and German ambassadors to the United Nations appealed directly to Syria's first lady with a video on YouTube. The narrator calls on Asma Assad to "stop being a bystander" — and to stop her husband and his supporters from continuing the conflict.
More refugees are fleeing the fighting in Syria. Lynn Neary talks to European Union Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response Kristalina Georgieva about what officials are doing to help the internally displaced, and those who have fled to neighboring countries.
The Florida judge in the case of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed teenager Trayvon Martin in February, set bail this morning of $150,000. Zimmerman took the stand during the hearing and told Martin's parents that he was sorry for the loss of their son. Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder, but he claims self-defense. Cable TV news channels carried the bail hearing live.
Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper division is accused of phone hacking and bribing police officers. That scandal has already cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Now News Corp. is fending off media reports that a specialized unit engaged in industrial espionage on behalf of the company's global satellite and cable TV operations.
Originally published on Fri April 20, 2012 7:24 am
By editor
Vegetarians and others were highly distressed after finding out that Starbucks uses a red coloring in some of its drinks that's made from crushed bugs. An online protest campaign delivered thousands of angry emails to Starbucks headquarters.
One day after President Obama delivered a speech on the U.S. economy in Lorain County, Ohio, Mitt Romney went there Thursday to respond to the president. Romney is chasing the president to accuse the incumbent of failing to live up to his campaign promises.
Originally published on Fri April 20, 2012 7:18 am
By editor
Nokia gave its new Lumia smartphone a splashy launch this month. The phone runs on a new Microsoft operating system and is a key part of the Finnish company's efforts to regain market share. But on Thursday, Nokia admitted that its new phone isn't connecting with consumers.
Some other news. The Federal Reserve and other banking regulators have granted banks a two-year grace period to come into compliance with the Volcker Rule. That's one of the provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill passed a couple of years ago. It restricts American banks from making trades that put the bank and depositor funds at risk.
But as NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports, regulators are struggling to iron out the details.
Two billionaires took the stand this week — both named Larry. Google's Larry Page and Oracle's Larry Ellison have very different styles and personalities. And that came across in court.
Yesterday, we reported on the fundraisers that lobbyists hold for Congressmen every day in Washington. Today, we hear what happens inside those events. The stories are part of our series on money in politics.
The British Library in London has just paid about $14 million to purchase Europe's oldest intact book, known as the St. Cuthbert Gospel. It's a copy of the Gospel of St. John, thought to have been produced in northeastern England sometime during the seventh century.
King Juan Carlos of Spain is discharged from Hospital San Jose in Madrid on Wednesday after undergoing hip replacement surgery. He fractured his hip during a recent elephant hunting trip to Botswana. The trip cost nearly $60,000 and has caused a furor in the country, which is suffering record unemployment and is being squeezed by austerity measures.
Credit Lauren Frayer for NPR
Members of the animal-rights group Igualdad Animal protest outside the Madrid hospital where Spanish King Juan Carlos was recovering after hip surgery this week. The king, who went elephant hunting in Africa, is the honorary president of the World Wildlife Fund in Spain.
Many working mothers say their employers don't support them when they need to tend to a sick child. In this file photo, a single mother holds her child at a health clinic in Colorado.
Credit Courtesy Marianne Bullock
A few years ago, Marianne Bullock lost her job after she took time off to take care of her daughter, who was suffering from a stomach virus.
The past week's political firestorm in the presidential race focused on stay-at-home moms, but two-thirds of women with young children now work. Nearly half are their family's primary breadwinner. What some feel is being lost in the political debate are the challenges they face in the workplace.
For the past two weeks, the campaigns of both President Obama and GOP rival Mitt Romney have accused each other of waging a war on women. But what's really going on is a war for women's votes.
The president, like Democrats before him, has an advantage with female voters — who make up 53 percent of the American electorate. Romney is trying to close the gender gap by using his most powerful and popular surrogate: his wife.
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig burns in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. The rig's crew were new to their positions just before the explosion. Such staffing reorganizations are increasingly common as the industry grapples with a staffing shortage.
Credit Jeff Brady / NPR
George King (left) with student Marvin Harris in a training lab at a Lone Star College campus in The Woodlands, Tex. Harris plans to work in the oil and gas industry upon completing his program.
Two years after the Deepwater Horizon accident killed 11 men and sent oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, the oil industry says it has learned valuable lessons from the disaster that are making drilling safer today.
But there's still a pressing issue looming for the oil industry: Oil field workers are retiring in huge numbers, leaving a workforce that's younger and — more importantly — less experienced.
Americans seem happier with Congress these days. That's what Gallup's two latest polls show: Congress, with an approval rating of 17 percent, has gained a whole seven points since February.
Still, they shouldn't get too cocky on the Hill, because this just means that 79 percent of Americans disapprove of the institution. That's down from a record high 86 percent in December of 2011. We suppose that's like saying in December almost everyone disapproved of Congress and now mostly everyone disapproves.
Here's Gallup's historical chart of Congress' approval rating: