Asia
12:01 am
Thu March 1, 2012

For India's Undocumented Citizens, An ID At Last

Credit Harish Tyagi / EPA
An Indian boy gets his eyes scanned for enrollment in a nationwide ID project in 2011. Many Indians, especially the poor, lack identification documents, which restricts their access to many government services.

Some 75,000 babies are born every day in India. The total population is 1.2 billion and climbing. That's a lot of people to keep track of, and the Indian government has struggled to keep up.

Many Indians, especially the poor, don't have any ID, which makes it increasingly difficult for them to be full participants in a society that is rapidly modernizing. But a new project aims to fix that.

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Education
12:01 am
Thu March 1, 2012

To Get Kids To Class, LA Softens Its Hard Line

Originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 8:52 pm

Los Angeles is easing its stance on truancy. For the past decade, a tough city ordinance slapped huge fines on students for even one instance of skipping school or being late, but the Los Angeles City Council is changing that law to focus on helping students get to class because it turns out those harsh fines were backfiring.

Two years ago, Nabil Romero, a young Angeleno with a thin black mustache, was running late to his first period at a public high school on LA's Westside.

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Theater
12:01 am
Thu March 1, 2012

'Carrie' Creators Resurrect A Legendary Flop

Originally published on Thu March 1, 2012 12:18 pm

Broadway history is littered with flop musicals — but if some shows are bombs, then Carrie, based on Stephen King's best-selling 1974 novel, was kind of a nuclear bomb.

The story of a teenager with telekinetic powers who wreaks bloody havoc on her small Maine town had already been successfully adapted as a film starring Sissy Spacek in 1976. But as a musical?

Frank Rich was theater critic for The New York Times when the show opened in April 1988. He called it a musical wreck that "expires with fireworks like the Hindenburg."

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Programming
12:00 am
Thu March 1, 2012

Peak of the Week: Thursday, March 1st

Various Artists
Chimes of Freedom

It's All Politics
6:08 pm
Wed February 29, 2012

Evangelicals Still Cool On Romney, Exit Poll Analysis Shows

Credit Charles Krupa / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pauses during a visit to St. Paul's Lutheran Church while campaigning in Berlin, N.H. Dec. 22, 2011.

A next-day analysis of the Republican presidential primaries in Michigan and Arizona won by Mitt Romney underscores one of his weaknesses with his party's base, especially with the ascent of his now-chief rival Rick Santorum: he fares more poorly with born-again and evangelical voters than with non-evangelicals.

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It's All Politics
6:08 pm
Wed February 29, 2012

Romney Says He Opposes Contraceptive Bill, But His Campaign Says Otherwise

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a reporter Wednesday that he opposes a measure being considered by the Senate that would allow employers to decline to provide contraception coverage to women.

"I'm not for the bill," Romney said during an interview with Ohio News Network reporter Jim Heath. "But, look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman, husband and wife, I'm not going there."

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All Tech Considered
5:57 pm
Wed February 29, 2012

New Ways To Think About Online Privacy

Credit Nina Gregory / NPR
Wired's Chris Anderson: "Privacy is complicated."

Originally published on Wed February 29, 2012 6:01 pm

As an editor who helps put Morning Edition on the air, I work overnight. There is something called sleep hygiene that some of us who work while you sleep have studied closely. Sleep hygiene is a set of practices that aim to help you sleep better — like not reading in bed, not watching TV there or playing Angry Birds or reading the news.

In light of the news of Google's new privacy policy, I got to thinking about privacy practices, something you might call privacy hygiene.

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The Two-Way
5:35 pm
Wed February 29, 2012

Priest Was Wrong To Deny Communion To Lesbian, Archdiocese Says

Credit Saeed Khan / AFP/Getty Images

There's been lots of talk on the Web and the news channels today about The Washington Post's front page account of what happened when Barbara Johnson went to Communion on Saturday during the funeral mass for her mother in Gaithersburg, Md.

The priest, Rev. Marcel Guarnizo said he would not give her the sacrament because she is a sinner.

Johnson is a lesbian.

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Rick Santorum
5:34 pm
Wed February 29, 2012

Is Santorum Missing JFK's Point On Religion?

When GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum was growing up, he says, John F. Kennedy was a hero in his Catholic home.

In a speech last year, he said he had always heard glowing reports of Kennedy's speech about religion to Protestant ministers in 1960.

"And then very late in my political career, I had the opportunity to read the speech and I almost threw up," Santorum told a group of college students last year. "You should read the speech. In my opinion, it was the beginning of the secular movement of politicians to separate their faith from the public square."

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Shots - Health Blog
5:30 pm
Wed February 29, 2012

Federal Judge Rules Graphic Cigarette Labels Violate Constitution

Credit FDA
One of the cigarette labels a federal judge says goes too far.

Originally published on Wed February 29, 2012 5:36 pm

Scary labels the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would require on cigarette packages later this year were nixed today.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon in Washington ruled the requirement that cigarette makers put the labels — some quite gruesome and all quite large — on their products would "violate the First Amendment by unconstitutionally compelling speech."

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