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4:58pm

Thu January 19, 2012
It's All Politics

In South Carolina, The Cain Train Is Back

Credit Arnie Seipel / NPR
The Herman Cain tour bus in South Carolina.

NPR's Arnie Seipel came upon something unexpected in Charleston, S.C. and he sent this picture of it:

Yep. The Cain Train is back in South Carolina and he's getting help from comedian Stephen Colbert, who as we've noted, announced his intention to run for President of South Carolina.

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4:24pm

Thu January 19, 2012
Europe

Rock And A Hard Place: What To Do With Concordia

Credit Vincenzo Pinto / AFP/Getty Images
Technician Andera Faccioli positioned a laser-equipped device to determine whether the Costa Concordia has shifted position off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy.

What do you do with a 1,000-foot wreck that's full of fuel and half-submerged on a rocky ledge in the middle of an Italian marine sanctuary? Remove it. Very carefully.

The wreck of the cruise liner Costa Concordia, which ran aground last week, is not unlike a car accident. The first order of business is determining whether it's worth repairing or it gets junked. Then there are the questions of how best to go about it – and who pays.

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4:22pm

Thu January 19, 2012

4:00pm

Thu January 19, 2012
Monkey See

Fox International Finds That Not Everyone Wants To Buy What Hollywood Sells

Originally published on Thu January 19, 2012 10:16 pm

Credit Eniac Martinez / Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Stephanie Sigman as Laura, a beauty queen drawn into a Mexican drug gang, in the film Miss Bala.

Remember that movie Sarah's Key? Did you miss it? It was last year's highest grossing foreign-language film, but it made less than eight million dollars. The fact is that selling foreign language films to U.S. audiences is a notorious challenge. Nevertheless, Fox, one of the world's most powerful media conglomerates, is beefing up its investment in foreign films.

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3:43pm

Thu January 19, 2012
Asia

In Malaysia, Student Challenges Limits On Politics

In Asia's modern history, college students have played a leading role in pushing for political reform and challenging authoritarian regimes.

Adam Adli is one of these student activists, and is becoming a prominent political figure as he fights to abolish a 40-year-old law that bars college students in the prosperous Southeast Asian country from participating in politics.

The 22-year-old was among the crowd of thousands chanting "reformasi," or reform, outside Malaysia's high court in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Jan. 9.

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3:32pm

Thu January 19, 2012
It's All Politics

Last GOP Debate Before S.C. Primary Could Produce Political Fireworks

If there's ever been a presidential debate with as much news happening in the hours leading up to the event, it's hard to remember when.

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3:32pm

Thu January 19, 2012

3:12pm

Thu January 19, 2012
Shots - Health Blog

New Restrictions On Abortion Almost Tied Record Last Year

If it seemed like 2011 was a big year for laws restricting abortion, it was.

In fact, according to "Who Decides? The Status of Women's Reproductive Rights In the U.S.," the 21stannual report compiled by the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, the 69 laws enacted restricting a woman's reproductive rights were just one short of the record set in 1999.

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3:09pm

Thu January 19, 2012
Middle East

In Egypt's New Parliament, Women Will Be Scarce

In Egypt's recent parliamentary elections, the first since Hosni Mubarak's ouster and the fairest in the country's history, Islamists won big.

And one group suffered a shocking disappointment — women.

Although the final numbers haven't been announced, it appears there will be only about eight women out of the 508 seats – or less than 2 percent.

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3:00pm

Thu January 19, 2012
Technology

Apple Carves Inroads In Educational Publishing

Apple announced it is getting into the electronic textbook business. The tech company is releasing new tools that make it easier for publishers to create new, interactive textbooks designed to be used on Apple's iPad.

2:46pm

Thu January 19, 2012
The Two-Way

Pakistan's Prime Minister Appears Before Country's Supreme Court

Credit Sajid Mehmood / NPR
The prime minister's legal counsel Aitzaz Ahsan (center) outside the Supreme Court, following the appearance of Prime Minister Yousef Reza Gilani before a seven member bench. Gilani faces contempt charges for his government's refusal to re-open a corruption case against President Asif Ali Zardari.

Extending the political crisis that has churned up a media frenzy and put the nation on edge, Pakistan's Supreme Court has given the Prime Minister ten more days to answer contempt of court charges

Prime Minister Yusef Reza Gilani drove himself to the imposing Supreme Court building framed by stormy skies this morning. Facing contempt charges, he stood in the well of the packed court and defended his refusal to re-open a graft case against his boss, President Zardari.

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2:44pm

Thu January 19, 2012
The Two-Way

Moldovan Crew Member: Italian Ship Captain 'Did A Great Thing'

A woman who was seen dining with the captain of the Costa Concordia the night the luxury liner crashed off the Italian coast is defending him. The AP reports that the woman, whom Italian authorities want to interview, is Dominican Cermotan, a 25-year-old Moldovan, who worked for Costa as a hostess but was not on duty the day of the incident.

"He did a great thing, he saved over 3,000 lives," Cermotan told Moldova's Jurnal TV, according to the AP.

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2:39pm

Thu January 19, 2012
The Salt

Surviving China's Cultural Revolution On Seasonal, Local Food

Any cook who has had to make do with very little knows there's a sort of pride in whipping up a tasty meal from a bare pantry.

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2:15pm

Thu January 19, 2012
The Two-Way

Wait A Minute ... Or Three Years: Leap Second's Fate Put Off

The timekeepers at the International Telecommunication Union's Radiocommunication Assembly, who were supposed to decide this week whether to keep or eliminate the leap second, have decided to take some more time to decide.

Three years, apparently, the BBC reports.

The experts, it says, "were unable to reach a consensus, so moved the matter to a meeting in 2015."

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1:40pm

Thu January 19, 2012
The Two-Way

After Digging Out Snow, Washington Is Hit With Ice Storm

Washington, which over the past few days has gotten an unusual amount of snow, is getting another round of unexpected weather. Here's the Seattle PI's lede this morning:

"First snow, now ice."

And the ice, which coated the roads, trees, and power lines is continuing the havoc that the snow brought.

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1:05pm

Thu January 19, 2012
The Two-Way

Auction Of Audubon Set On Friday Could Mark New Record For Books

A rare four-volume set — John James Audubon's Birds of America — stands a good chance of becoming the most expensive such books ever auctioned on Friday.

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12:46pm

Thu January 19, 2012
The Two-Way

Endoscope Captures First Glimpse Inside Crippled Japanese Reactor

The images are blurred by steam and obscured by radiation. But they are the first look we've gotten inside Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor that was crippled by a tsunami last year.

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12:11pm

Thu January 19, 2012
Mitt Romney

Who Exactly Is 'The Real Romney'?

In a new biography, two longtime Boston Globe reporters write about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a complicated man who also "loves dichotomies ... strong versus weak, stagnation versus prosperity, leadership versus drift."

On their hunt for The Real Romney, Scott Helman and Michael Kranish traced Romney's life from his childhood in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., to his career at private equity firm Bain Capital, and then to his work in politics — first as the governor of Massachusetts and then as a presidential candidate in 2008 and 2012.

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12:08pm

Thu January 19, 2012
Music Interviews

Kathleen Edwards: A Breakup Song's Bigger Picture

Credit Tanja-Tiziana Burd
Kathleen Edwards' new album is Voyageur.

Kathleen Edwards is a singer-songwriter from Canada who just released her fourth album, Voyageur. There's a lot of heartache and self-doubt on the record, and that makes sense — much of it was written around the time of Edwards' divorce from her husband and musical collaborator. The song "Pink Champagne" would seem to be a case in point: It takes place at a wedding where a young bride is second-guessing her decision. But Edwards says the message of that song isn't quite so literal.

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12:05pm

Thu January 19, 2012
The Two-Way

Nevermore? Mysterious Visits To Edgar Allan Poe's Grave Declared Over

For decades, until 2010, someone appeared at Edgar Allan Poe's grave site in Baltimore before dawn on Jan. 19 — his birthday.

The mysterious visitor, who was never identified, would leave behind three roses and a half-filled bottle of cognac as a tribute to the man who wrote The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher and other classic poems and tales.

Last night, there was no visit.

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