10:13am

Mon August 8, 2011
Opinion

Weekly Standard: Finger-Pointing Pundits Go Crazy

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Zack Munson writes for The Weekly Standard.

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9:42am

Mon August 8, 2011
The Two-Way

From Cuba To Florida: A 61-Year-Old Starts The 103-Mile Swim

Credit Adalberto Roque / AFP/Getty Images

Diana Nyad attempted it once before. It was 1978 when she was 28, but 42 hours into what's supposed to be a 60-hour swim, her team pulled the plug. Nyad, a world-class endurance swimmer, had been defeated by nature: the water temperature was a tad cool and the wind produced sizable waves.

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9:05am

Mon August 8, 2011
Opinion

Foreign Policy: History Doesn't Quite Repeat Itself

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David Kenner is an associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Something was stirring in the Syrian city of Hama. The Assad regime appeared to be losing control; it had issued vague warnings about an Islamist takeover, but had gone ominously silent for over a week. A government-planned trip to the city was canceled. Syrian officials warned privately that any attempt by intrepid journalists to visit Hama would be "life-threatening."

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8:54am

Mon August 8, 2011
Opinion

New Republic: A Lesson From The Great Depression

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John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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8:53am

Mon August 8, 2011
Opinion

Weekly Standard: Time To Celebrate Health Care?

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Jeffrey H. Anderson was the senior speechwriter for Secretary Mike Leavitt at the Department of Health and Human Services.

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8:43am

Mon August 8, 2011
The Two-Way

Riots In London Over Police Shooting; Saudis Recall Ambassador From Syria

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Good morning!

As we said earlier, we'll be watching the markets as they react to the United States' rating downgrade and the greater worries about the global economy. But, here are some other stories making headlines:

-- London Riots: For the first time in decades, London witnessed intense riots this past weekend. The riots started after police shot and killed Mark Duggan a 29-year-old father of four. The AP reports:

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8:30am

Mon August 8, 2011
Business

Uneasy Financial World Awaits Wall Street Reaction

Wall Street was poised Monday for a day of potential turmoil after global stocks slid in the wake of a first-ever downgrade of U.S. credit and major intervention by the European Central Bank to help stave off defaults in Spain and Italy.

European markets lost early momentum and moved sharply lower amid mounting concerns over eurozone debt woes and the pending opening of U.S. markets, when traders will have their first chance to respond to Standard and Poor's decision Friday to lower its triple A rating for the U.S.

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NPR correspondent Chris Arnold is based in Boston. His reports are heard regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. He joined NPR in 1996, and was based in San Francisco before moving to Boston in 2001.

Arnold is spending the academic year of 2012 - 2013 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He will join a small group of other journalists from the U.S. and around the world for this highly respected journalism fellowship. Arnold will be studying, among other things, the future of home ownership in America.

Since 2006, Arnold has spent much of his time reporting on the financial crisis and its aftermath. He has focused on the housing bubble and its collapse. And he's reported on problems within the nation's largest banks that have led to the banks improperly foreclosing on thousands of American homeowners. For this work, Arnold earned a 2011 Edward R. Murrow Award for the special series, "The Foreclosure Nightmare." He's also been honored with the Newspaper Guild's 2009 Heywood Broun Award for broadcast journalism. He was chosen by the Scripps Howard Foundation as a finalist for their National Journalism Award, and he won an Excellence in Financial Journalism Award from N.Y. State's society for CPA's.

Arnold has also recently focused on the now government owned mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In a series of stories in partnership with reporter Jesse Eisinger at ProPublica, Arnold exposed investments at Freddie Mac that raised serious concerns about a conflict of interest between Fannie and Freddie's massive investment portfolios, and their mission to make homeownership more affordable. The stories generated widespread attention, and led to calls for an investigation by members of Congress.

Arnold has covered a range of other subjects and stories for NPR – from Katrina recovery in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, to immigrant workers in the fishing industry, to a new kind of table saw that won't cut your fingers off. He traveled to Turin, Italy, for NPR's coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics. He has also followed the dramatic rise in the numbers of teenagers abusing the powerful and highly addictive painkiller Oxycontin – more than 1 out of 20 high school seniors report using the drug.

In the days and months following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Arnold reported from New York and contributed to the NPR coverage that won the Overseas Press Club and the George Foster Peabody Awards. He chronicled the recovery effort at Ground Zero, focusing on members of the Port Authority Police department, as they struggled with the deaths of 37 officers - the greatest loss of any police department in U.S. history. Arnold followed the lives of those who lived and worked around Ground Zero - from bond traders and Chinatown garment sewers to small business owners - as they sought to put their lives back together again.

Prior to his move to Boston, Arnold traveled the country for NPR doing feature stories on entrepreneurship. His pieces covered technologists, farmers, and family business owners. He also reported on efforts to kindle entrepreneurship in economically disadvantaged areas ranging from inner-city Los Angeles to the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota.

Arnold has worked in public radio since 1993. Before joining NPR, he was a freelance reporter working out of San Francisco's NPR Member station, KQED.

7:57am

Mon August 8, 2011
The Two-Way

Developing: In Wake Of S&P Downgrade, Watching The Markets

The markets are trying to digest a lot, this morning: First, is the news from Friday that Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States' credit rating. Second, is that this morning the European Central Bank started buying Italian and Spanish government bonds.

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6:34am

Mon August 8, 2011
Economy

Economists Cast Opinions During Fishing Trip

Turmoil in the financial markets has coincided with an annual fishing trip for economists and top executives deep in the woods of Maine near the Canadian border. While the economists were together, Standard and Poor's took the unprecedented step of downgrading the U.S. government's credit rating.

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