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Sueann Ramella
Sueann Ramella
Morning Edition Host & Producer
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Thom Kokenge
All Things Considered Host & Producer
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Robin Rilette
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Gillian Coldsnow
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John Paxson
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Steve Reeder
Steve Reeder
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National and World News from NPR

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Media
12:49 am
Thu April 5, 2012

The Roots Of An Empire: Rupert Murdoch's Australia

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Credit Keystone / Getty Images
Rupert Murdoch takes over the Daily Mirror, a Sydney tabloid, in May 1960. Sometimes soft-spoken, but invariably hard-driving, Murdoch acquired major papers in every Australian state. He bought TV stations and established the first truly national daily.
Credit Rob Griffith / AP
News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch delivers the Boyer Lectures in Sydney, Australia, on Nov. 2, 2008.
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First of four parts

Ultimately, all roads lead home for Rupert Murdoch.

"The story of our company is the stuff of legend: from a small newspaper in Adelaide to a global corporation based in New York, with a market capitalization of about $44 billion," he said last October, when he addressed a News Corp. shareholders meeting in Los Angeles.

Australians view the company's history differently.

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Environment
12:35 am
Thu April 5, 2012

Shake It Off: Earth's Wobble May Have Ended Ice Age

Credit Veronique Durruty / Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images
A wobbling of the Earth on its axis about 20,000 years ago may have kicked off a beginning to the end of the last ice age. Glaciers in the Arctic and Greenland began to melt, which resulted in a warming of the Earth, a new study says. Above, Greenland's Russell Glacier, seen in 1990.
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The last big ice age ended about 11,000 years ago, and not a moment too soon — it made a lot more of the world livable, at least for humans.

But exactly what caused the big thaw isn't clear, and new research suggests that a wobble in the Earth kicked off a complicated process that changed the whole planet.

Ice tells the history of the Earth's climate: Air bubbles in ice reveal what the atmosphere was like and what the temperature was. And scientists can read this ice, even if it's been buried for thousands of years.

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U.S.
12:33 am
Thu April 5, 2012

Ohio Tears Through Blighted Housing Problem

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Credit Joshua Gunter / The Plain Dealer
The remains of a Cleveland house after demolition in February. Ohio has set aside $75 million to raze abandoned homes across the state.
Credit Brian Bull for NPR
Ohio has set aside $75 million to fund the demolition of vacant houses across the state, like this abandoned home in Cleveland.
Credit Google Maps
A Google Maps Street View image of 11423 Fairport Ave., taken in August 2009, shows the home before it fell into disrepair.
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By editor

Cleveland resident Cedric Cowan was asleep on an overcast spring morning when the roaring sounds of splintering wood and falling rubble jolted him awake.

Cowan lives in a neighborhood hit hard by foreclosures. He initially thought someone was moving into the house on the other side of Fairport Avenue.

Instead, he woke that morning to find a crew tearing down the two-family house.

Over the course of three hours, an excavator smashed, crushed and ripped apart the abandoned house while a worker sprayed the rubble with a hose to keep the dust down.

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Election 2012
12:32 am
Thu April 5, 2012

Longtime GOP Sen. Lugar Faces Stiff Tea Party Fight

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Credit Tamara Keith / NPR
Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (right) speaks with potential voters on March 31 in Evansville, Ind.
Credit Reuters /Landov
Sen. Richard Lugar (right) meets with workers at the Oerlikon Fairfield manufacturing plant in Lafayette, Ind., on Feb. 24.
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Six-term Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana is facing his first primary challenge since winning the job in the 1970s. The race is attracting big money from outside groups and superPACs, and is seen as a test of the strength of the Tea Party movement versus the power of incumbency.

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Governing
12:31 am
Thu April 5, 2012

Boycotts Hitting Group Behind 'Stand-Your-Ground'

Credit Julie Fletcher / AP
Selina Gray of Sanford, Fla., shows her sign at a rally protesting the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teen shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer. Authorities have cited the state's "stand your ground" law as a reason charges have not been filed in Martin's death.
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Two of America's best-known companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, have dropped their memberships in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a low-profile conservative organization behind the national proliferation of "stand your ground" gun laws.

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Religion
12:29 am
Thu April 5, 2012

Vatican, Israel Spar Over Disputed Last Supper Site

Credit Richard T. Nowitz / Corbis
This room, known as the Cenacle on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, is venerated as the site of Jesus' Last Supper. Jews and Muslims also consider the building to be a holy site, and it has been a source of contention for years. Israel and the Vatican may be nearing an agreement.
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By editor

If there's one building in Jerusalem that represents the city's tangle of religions, this is it. The ground floor is a Jewish holy site said to house the tomb of the biblical King David. The second floor is the Cenacle, a Christian holy site, the room believed to be the site of Jesus' Last Supper. On the roof, there's an old minaret from when this place was marked a Muslim holy site.

One building, three religions, decades of property disputes. And the fight isn't over.

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Europe
12:28 am
Thu April 5, 2012

Two Decades After Siege, Sarajevo Still A City Divided

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Credit H. Delich / AP
Twenty years ago this week, the Bosnian war began with the siege of Sarajevo, the capital. In this photo, smoke billows from a building in downtown Sarajevo, April 22, 1992, after a Serbian mortar attack.
Credit Peter Andrews / Reuters /Landov
A man carries a bag of firewood across a destroyed bridge near the burnt library in Sarajevo, in this picture taken January 1, 1994 (top), while a man carries a box over the same bridge, now repaired, April 1, 2012, in this combination picture made April 4, 2012.
Credit Mike Persson / AFP/Getty Images
On April 6, 1992, a Bosnian special forces soldier (third from right) returns fire from Serbians opposed to Bosnian independence as civilians seek cover in downtown Sarajevo. The day marked the beginning of the 44-month siege of Sarajevo, which left 100,000 dead.
Credit Oleg Popov / Reuters /Landov
A Bosnian teenager carrying containers of water walks in front of destroyed trams at Skenderia square in the besieged Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, in this picture taken June 22, 1993 (top), and a woman passes through the same square, April 1, 2012.
Credit Tom Stoddart / Getty Images
In this photo from 1992, women run across "Sniper Alley" under the sights of Serb gunmen during the siege of Sarajevo.
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April 6 marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the Bosnian war and the siege of Sarajevo. It was the longest siege of a capital city in modern history, and produced the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.

Over three-and-a-half years of war, 100,000 people were killed, and half of Bosnia's population of 4.4 million — made up of a plurality of Muslims — fled their homes.

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Starting Up: Silicon Valley's Origins
12:20 am
Thu April 5, 2012

America's Magnet For Innovation, And Investments

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Credit Cindy Carpien / NPR
Virginia Klausmeier (left) makes her pitch for Garage Technology Ventures to invest in her clean diesel fuel company, Sylvatex, to Bill Reichert and Joyce Chung, two of the firm's general partners.
Credit Courtesy of Arthur Rock
Credit Courtesy of Arthur Rock
Arthur Rock in the 1970s. In 1968, he helped Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce found Intel — the only company he invested in that he was certain would succeed, he says. Rock was later a founding investor in Apple Computer.
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Part 2 of our Silicon Valley history series

Think of the most technologically innovative companies of the past 50 years, such as Intel, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter. Each company has a Silicon Valley address — and each one got backing from venture capitalists. Over the past decade, more than 35 percent of the nation's venture capital has gone to Silicon Valley startups.

High-tech and venture capital go hand and hand in the valley where technology and venture capital grew up together.

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The Two-Way
3:50 pm
Wed April 4, 2012

Coroner Says White Powder, Spoon Found In Whitney Houston's Hotel Room

Credit Getty Images / Getty Images
Pop diva Whitney Houston was found dead in her Beverly Hills hotel room on the eve of the 54th Grammy Awards.
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By Eyder Peralta

A final report from Los Angeles coroner is shedding some light on Whitney Houston's last hours.

According to the report, the pop super star complained of a sore throat and an assistant suggested she take a bath. By the time the assistant got back to the room after running an errand, she found Houston lying face down on in the tub "in approximately 13-inches of water," People Magazine reports.

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The Salt
3:21 pm
Wed April 4, 2012

Milk Not Jails Makes Partners Out Of Farmers And Ex-Cons

Credit Jim Commentucci / The Post-Standard /Landov
A dairy farmer drives some of his Holstein cows out to pasture in the Madison County, N.Y. town of Lenox.
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What's plentiful in upstate New York? Cows and prison inmates, to name a few things.

Reformists in the two communities don't make natural allies, but organizer Lauren Melodia is trying to do just that.

"I was living in this prison town, and at the same time, the dairy industry was in a lot of turmoil," Melodia tells The Salt. "We thought this [dairy] might be the perfect ally in trying to build a different economy in upstate New York, and shift some of the economic dependency away from the prison system."

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