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Around the Nation
6:01 am
Fri May 24, 2013

NYC Mayoral Candidate Uses Wrong Skyline On His Homepage

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Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 7:01 am

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm David Greene. Some photos on Twitter ended Anthony Weiner's congressional career. The latest online image, not quite as damaging. Weiner launched his campaign yesterday to be mayor of New York City, and a gorgeous city skyline showed up on his homepage: the skyline of Pittsburgh, my home town. I'm honored if the Web designer is impressed with our city's skyline.

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Around the Nation
5:07 am
Fri May 24, 2013

Washington State Bridge Collapses, 3 People Injured

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Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 7:01 am

The collapse sent people and vehicles into the water Thursday night. Authorities say there were no fatalities. The bridge, about an hour north of Seattle, lost its northernmost span — taking out all lanes in both directions.

Parallels
3:11 am
Fri May 24, 2013

China's Air Pollution: Is The Government Willing To Act?

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Credit Ng Han Guan / AP
Skyscrapers are obscured by heavy haze in Beijing on Jan. 13. Air pollution remains a serious — sometimes overwhelming — problem, but researchers say environmental technology is available to solve it.
Credit Frank Langfitt/NPR
Environmental regulation can make a difference. In Shanghai, the government limits car ownership by auctioning off license plates each year at prices exceeding $14,000 apiece. Shanghai also benefits from its location on the water and winds coming off the East China Sea.
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Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 10:55 am

Denise Mauzerall arrived in Beijing this year at a time that was both horrifying and illuminating. The capital was facing some of its worst pollution in recent memory, and Mauzerall, a Princeton environmental engineering professor, was passing through on her way to a university forum on the future of cities.

"I took the fast train from Beijing to Shanghai, and looking out the window for large sections of that trip, you couldn't see more than 20 feet," Mauzerall recalled.

To Mauzerall, the lesson was surprising and inescapable.

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Planet Money
1:54 am
Fri May 24, 2013

Can This Man Bring Silicon Valley To Yangon?

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Credit Lam Thuy Vo / NPR
Credit Lam Thuy Vo / NPR
Educated in the U.S., Aung worked in Silicon Valley for a number of tech companies, including Google, before returning to Myanmar. Here he is at his office shortly after closing time. His employees keep to a tight schedule, starting early in the morning and leaving at 5:30 p.m. every day.
Credit Lam Thuy Vo / NPR
Aung gives one of his employees feedback during a monthly meeting. Giving regular feedback is one of the management techniques he brought from Silicon Valley to Myanmar. After the meeting, he hands his employees thick envelopes that contain their salaries in cash. Even though Nay eventually hopes to develop online and mobile payment services, most of his employees prefer to be paid in cash.
Credit Lam Thuy Vo / NPR
One of Aung's employees holds up the receipt of a payment he is about to deliver to one of Aung's partner hotels. Even though Aung enables tourists to handle their travel bookings online, he still has to deliver cash to his partners by hand.
Credit Lam Thuy Vo / NPR
One of the main challenges Aung faces in running an Internet startup in Myanmar is not having a consistent Internet connection. There are several Internet and electricity outages every day.
Credit Lam Thuy Vo / NPR
Nay Aung is the founder of Oway, a tech startup in Yangon, Myanmar. He used Taste Cafe as his unofficial office when he started his company — in part because it was one of the few places in Myanmar with a stable Internet connection.
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Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 8:29 am

Like a proud father, Nay Aung opens up his MacBook Air to show me the Myanmar travel website he has built. But we wait 30 seconds for the site to load, and nothing happens.

"Today is a particularly bad day for Internet," he says. This is life in Myanmar today: Even an Internet entrepreneur can't always get online.

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Food
1:49 am
Fri May 24, 2013

Guava Paste And Tamarind? What To Do With Weird Food Gifts

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Credit Courtesy of Harrison Gowdy
Harrison Gowdy of Dayton, Ohio, has accumulated various Indian spices, guava paste and coconut oil — among other things.
Credit Courtesy of Lisa Keating
Mollie Katzen, author of Moosewood Cookbook
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Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 7:59 am

This is an installment of NPR's ongoing Cook Your Cupboard, a food series about improvising with what you have on hand. Have a food that has you stumped? Submit a photo and we'll ask chefs about our favorites.

Harrison Gowdy of Dayton, Ohio, has developed a reputation among friends and family of liking everything and wasting nothing.

"Sometimes I'll even find things like Swiss chard dropped off on my doorstep," she says. And sometimes she receives foods that stump her.

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StoryCorps
1:46 am
Fri May 24, 2013

Military Moms: A Bond Borne From Shared Loss

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Credit StoryCorps
Sally Edwards (left), 80, and Lue Hutchinson, 71, visited StoryCorps in Cincinnati. Their sons, Jack Edwards and Tom Butts, are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Credit Courtesy of Sally Edwards
Jack Edwards, a Marine captain in the Gulf War, was killed in February 1991.
Credit Courtesy of Lue Hutchinson
Tom Butts circa 1991 on top of a Black Hawk helicopter. The Army staff sergeant was killed in the Gulf War.
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Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 7:22 am

In 1991, Kentucky residents Sally Edwards and Lue Hutchinson had sons serving in the Gulf War. Sally's son, Jack, was a Marine captain. Lue's son, Tom Butts, was a staff sergeant in the Army. The two men never knew each other, but today, their mothers are best friends.

Both soldiers were killed in February of 1991. Jack was 34. "They were the cover for a medical mission. The helicopter lost its top rotor blade, and they didn't make it back," Sally says.

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Deceptive Cadence
1:03 am
Fri May 24, 2013

Igor Stravinsky's 'Rite Of Spring' Counterrevolution

Credit Erich Auerbach / Getty Images
After his shocking ballet, The Rite of Spring, Igor Stravinsky branched out in surprising directions.
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Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 7:54 am

As the 100th anniversary of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring approaches, commentator Miles Hoffman reminds us that — as earthshaking as that infamous debut was — the composer soon branched out into a variety of musical styles that would surprise his fans and critics.

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Around the Nation
7:23 pm
Thu May 23, 2013

Boy Scots Vote To Allow Gay Members, But Not Leaders

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Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 5:01 am

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

The Boy Scouts ban on openly gay scouts is coming to an end. That's the result of a vote held today by the leadership of the Boys Scouts of America.

WAYNE PERRY: Our vision is to serve every kid. We want every kid to have a place where they belong, to learn and grow and feel protected.

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Science
5:49 pm
Thu May 23, 2013

'Extremely Active' Atlantic Hurricane Season Predicted

Credit NASA / Getty Images
Hurricane Sandy churns off the Atlantic coast on Oct. 29. NOAA officials are forecasting seven to 11 hurricanes, compared with about six in a typical season.
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Originally published on Thu May 23, 2013 7:23 pm

Unusually warm ocean temperatures and favorable wind patterns mean the Atlantic is likely to see "an active or extremely active" hurricane season this year, say officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The agency expects between seven and 11 hurricanes and as many as 20 named storms during the 2013 season, which runs from June 1 through November.

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Shots - Health News
5:27 pm
Thu May 23, 2013

Why You Have To Scratch That Itch

Credit Oktay Ortakcioglu / iStockphoto.com
The origin of itch has confounded scientists for decades.
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Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 10:20 am

Everybody itches. Sometimes itch serves as a useful warning signal — there's a bug on your back! But sometimes itch arises for no apparent reason, and can be a torment.

Think of the itchy skin disorder eczema, or the constant itching caused by some cancers. "A very high percentage of people who're on dialysis for chronic kidney disease develop severe itch that's very difficult to manage," says Dr. Ethan Lerner, an associate professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School.

Scientists now say they've got a much better clue as to how itch happens.

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