Search results for

NPR's Gerry Hadden reports from Mexico City on the visit of Mexico's President-elect Vicente Fox to the United States. Fox meets in Washington today with Vice President Al Gore and later with President Clinton, and then tomorrow in Dallas with Republican Presidential nominee George W. Bush.

NPR's Brian Naylor reports on the congressional race in 36th district of California, near Los Angeles, between incumbent Steve Kuykendall and former seatholder Jane Harmon. It's one of the battleground seats in this election, and the Democrats are hoping to retake the seat and others like it as they try to retake control of the house.

Host Renee Montagne talks to Judi Bailey, President of Northern Michigan University in Marquette about the Thinkpad Initiative, a new program that provides laptops to all students at the university.

NPR's Richard Knox reports the National Institutes of Health has announced new guidelines allowing federally funded researchers to perform experiments with cells taken from human embryos. Research with embryonic cells is controversial. Scientists say cells taken from human embryos may be helpful in treating many serious diseases, including Parkinson's and diabetes. But some people have moral objections to the research because it involves destroying a human embryo. The NIH guidelines attempt to strike a balance by insisting that federally funded scientists can only use cells taken from embryos that are left over from fertility treatments -- embryos that would otherwise be thrown away.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports from Moscow that President Vladimir Putin said today he feels guilty and responsible for the sinking of submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea. He said Russia's defense minister, navy chief and commander of the Northern Fleet had all offered to resign, but he did not accept their resignations. Putin said there would be no rush to assign guilt until the facts of the accident are known. Yesterday, family members of the 118 sailors who died on the Kursk grilled Putin for hours about his handling of the crisis. Little of the meeting was shown on television. Lawyers for the Kursk families are threatening legal action against the government over the Kursk disaster.

Asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease. For some reason, rates of asthma keep going up every year. Researchers have been looking at the causes for this increase, which has been found to be much higher in the industrialized world. Everything from exposure to dust mites and cockroaches to diet has been implicated. Now, a new study from the New England Journal of Medicine concludes that there might be another cause: too much cleanliness. The more sterile the early environment for infants six months and younger, the more problems with asthma they seem to have later in life. NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.

Doug McLennan reviews the two CD set entitled "Serenity" by the Bobo Stenson Trio. (4:00) Serenity by the Bobo Stenson Trio is on the ECM label, http://www.ecmrecords.com

Robert talks to California Attorney General Bill Lockyer about settlement in the state's lawsuit against Publishers Clearing House. Lockyer says this is just the beginning -- that he's been talking with other state Attorneys General about closing a similar settlement deal with another major sweepstakes company.

The United States has acknowledge what it calls "less than honorable" actions against Native Hawaiians more than a century ago. Yesterday the federal government recommended that indigenous islanders be given the same sovereign status as most American Indians.

Amy Tardif of member station WGCU in Fort Myers reports on changes in Florida's fire inspection laws. Schools are now required to be inspected by fire marshals, but there's not been enough time to get all schools up to code.