Fifteen miles from the border of Mexico, the city of El Centro in California's Imperial Valley has something most hard luck small towns don't: the Blue Angels.
For 45 years, the city has been the winter training home of the Navy's flight demonstration squadron. The "Blues," as the locals call them, have been an enduring source of pride for the desert community.
The "hay bales" is a dusty crop field a stone's throw from the runways of El Centro's Naval Air Facility. Lisa Gallinat has been watching the Blue Angels from here ever since she was a kid.
Sandra Fluke, a third-year law student at Georgetown University, testifies Thursday about contraceptives and insurance coverage during a hearing before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee.
Congress is in recess this week, but that didn't stop House Democrats from holding a hearing to take testimony from a Georgetown law student who was barred from testifying in last week's hearing about President Obama's policy on contraceptives, health insurance and religiously affiliated organizations.
There's a civil war going on in California. It's the north vs. the south — Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley. And much like that other American Civil War, there are two different economic worldviews at stake. One of the highest-profile battles was fought last month, when large Internet sites like Wikipedia staged an online blackout to protest anti-piracy bills in Congress.
The north won that battle, and for now, the legislation is on hold. But the war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley over how to deal with intellectual property is far from over.
If you think astronauts just want dehydrated dinners and freeze-dried ice cream, think again. After a few days in space, they start reaching for the hot sauce.
In fact, they may start craving foods they didn't necessarily like on Earth.
Luis Jimenez, CEO of EternoGen, is one of the winners of the UM System's Enterprise Investment Program. Jimenez and Mark Lee, president CEO of CLB Horizons, were selected today, Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012.
Today the University of Missouri System announced the recipients of a $600,000 investment in two university research teams. The money will be use to further commercialize and expand lab research, which could translate into economic growth in Missouri.
Heller McAlpin is a New York-based critic who reviews books regularly for NPR.org, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.
There are few people further apart on the issue of new voter photo ID requirements than Laura Murphy and Hans von Spakovsky.
She's director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office. He's with the Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department official under George W. Bush.
So when the two went head-to-head Thursday on the issue at the National Press Club in Washington DC, there were a few sparks.
Originally published on Thu February 23, 2012 3:31 pm
Benom Plumb, a 31-year-old music industry executive from Nashville, thinks the country is on the wrong path, and that Ron Paul is the only candidate who can turn things around.
As for the other Republicans, Plumb doesn't mince words: Mitt Romney? Too slick. Rick Santorum? Too religious. Newt Gingrich? Untrustworthy. "They are all liars and cheaters, if you ask me," he says.
Mitt Romney says his experience in private equity taking over troubled companies would make him a good manager of America's economy. So we're reporting on companies that Bain Capital bought while Romney was in charge of the firm. This morning, we told the story of one that went bust. Here's the story of one that succeeded.
Veteran war correspondent Marie Colvin often traveled by herself to the front lines of conflicts to interview civilians trapped by war. Colvin, who was killed Wednesday in the Syrian city of Homs, is shown here in Cairo in an undated photo.
War correspondents traditionally covered conflicts by traveling with armies. Here, Associated Press reporter Chris Tomlinson, (right) is shown with U.S. forces in Iraq in 2003. But in many modern wars, reporters operate independently on the rebel side of the fighting, which raises the risks.
New York Times journalist Anthony Shadid often wrote about ordinary citizens caught up in war zones. Shadid (center), who died last week in Syria, is shown here talking to Egyptians in Cairo during the revolution that toppled then-President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.
Originally published on Thu February 23, 2012 4:26 pm
War correspondents have always been at the short end of the actuarial tables. Life insurance salesmen do not pester them. No war is safe, and no correspondent is bulletproof.
But the rules of the game have been changing, and the recent deaths in Syria of two prominent correspondents, Anthony Shadid of The New York Times and Marie Colvin, an American working for Britain's Sunday Times, show how this line of work has grown even riskier.
