An undated photo, released by the Louisiana Attorney General's Office, of Dr. Anna Pou. (Louisiana Attorney General's Office / Getty Images)

By David Gura

Later today, on All Things Considered, NPR's Robert Siegel will speak to Sheri Fink, a staff reporter at ProPublica, "an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest."

This weekend, her article, "The Deadly Choices at Memorial" -- accompanied by some amazing photographs by Paolo Pellegrin -- will run in The New York Times Magazine.

Fink digs into what happened at the Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit the city:

The hurricane knocked out power and running water and sent the temperatures inside above 100 degrees. Still, investigators were stunned when health care workers charged that a well-regarded doctor and two respected nurses had hastened the deaths of some patients by injecting them with lethal doses of drugs.

"Mortuary workers eventually carried 45 corpses from Memorial, more than from any comparable-size hospital in the drowned city," she continues.

In 2006, NPR's Carrie Kahn reviewed secret court documents about these "mercy killings." (You can listen to her report here.)

By Frank James

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, spoke with All Things Considered host Melissa Block in an interview in which he criticized Attorney General Eric Holder's decision have a prosecutor review previous CIA interrogation practices for possible criminal charges.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra. (Al Goldis / AP Photo)

One of Hoekstra's main points: the controversial CIA activities have already been reviewed at the CIA, the Justice Department and in Congress, with some individuals sanctioned. So an additional review to his mind is redundant.

He said:

"Now this is all being opened up one more time for perhaps the fourth or fifth review. And I just don't see what new evidence there is that justifies the attorney general reopening these cases... The people within the organization have been held accountable. But in some ways it almost appears to be double jeopardy. It's going to be reviewed again."

Hoekstra also said Holder's review is a distraction at a time when U.S. military forces are preoccupied with bringing greater security to Afghanistan, among other missions.

The bottom line here is we are still under threat from radical jihadists. We've got troops on the ground that are fighting an ever increasingly strong enemy in Afghanistan and what we're seeing is the president's national security team kind of in disarray.

The president himself said I want to look forward. Now Eric Holder is looking back. Is Eric Holder freelancing? The director of the CIA, according to press reports, Leon, Leon Panetta has said, he was threatening to quit because he thought this was so inappropriate.

Continue reading "Justice Probe Will Make CIA More Risk Averse: GOP Congressman" >

By Frank James

What to do with the all the guns confiscated during police stops?

In Southern California, many guns are melted down into molten steel, then transformed from weapons of destruction into construction rebar and other building materials.

Steven Cuevas of NPR station KPCC, Southern California Public Radio has a report on a long-time program in Los Angeles called "Project Isaiah."

A snippet from his the script of his radio report:

STEVEN: The Tamco Steel Company in the city of Rancho Cucamonga started hosting these annual weapon meltdowns 16 years ago. The effort is called "Project Isaiah, inspired by a biblical passage from the Old Testament.

JIM CROMPTON: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks."

STEVEN: Tamco Steel vice president Jim Crompton.

CROMPTON: "Our modern version? They shall melt their guns and weapons into re-enforcing bar and build community for all to live in peace and harmony."

CUEVAS: About 16-thousand weapons were forged into re-enforced steel rebar for uses on freeways, bridges and buildings.

RANCHO CUCAMONGA MAYOR DONALD KURTH: "Where on earth does someone get bazookas?"

A piece of audio can be found here.

By Madeleine Brand

We begin five weeks co-hosting All Things Considered from California on Monday. Just like the Golden State, we've got a mix of stories.

Ina Jaffe reports on whether the state is ungovernable. There's a $26 BILLION budget deficit, Sacramento is issuing I.O.U.'s instead of checks, and state workers are being furloughed almost every Friday. Oh - and Mom (Assembly Speaker Karen Bass) and Dad (Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger) aren't speaking to each other.

To take a break from all that dysfunction, we spend some time with Charles Phoenix, the first in our series of "California Characters," people who embody some facet of the Golden State. Charles is a pop-culture historian, who's fascinated by kitschy Americana. I spoke to him at downtown L.A.'s Olvera Street, one of the first "themed environments" in the country.

Charles Phoenix: Olvera Street from Shereen Meraji on Vimeo.

Peggy Echt and Matthew Price who plan an NPR-themed wedding. Photo courtesy of Michael Martin

 

You never know what fans of our radio programs might need.

All Things Considered got an unusual request from a listener today. Michael Martin of Atlanta sought the staff's help for a wedding. It seems the theme of the nuptials will be "NPR."

Peggy Echt and Matthew Price, both 26 years old, plan to marry in Atlanta Sunday, June 28. The couple has invited about 110 guests, seated at 10 tables, each one being named for a different NPR program.

We've been asked to provide trivia questions for the All Things Considered table. The 12 guests at each table will ask tablemates to answer. The idea is to break the ice.

If you are attending the wedding, and are seated at the "ATC" table, here's a chance to cheat:

1. Which actor on HBO's "The Wire" was a former All Things Considered production assistant?

A. Officer James "Jimmy" McNulty Played By Dominic West

B. Howard "Bunny" Colvin Played By Robert Wisdom

C. Felicia "Snoop" Pearson Played By Felicia Pearson

D. All of the above

(ANSWER: "B" Bob Wisdom, Columbia graduate and DC resident, worked on the program in the early 1980s)

2. When the program was first conceived, which names were considered and discarded?

A. Other Folks' Troubles

B. What's the Point?

C. Hear and Now

D. None of the Above.

(ANSWER: "D")

Continue reading "NPR-Themed Wedding Gets An NPR Assist" >

Tennessean Mark McPherson was surprised to find this photo of himself posing with a piranha in a Russian magazine. Photo courtesy of westnashvillegringo.blogspot.com

 

By Frank James

All Things Considered recently featured an amusing story about a suburban St. Louis woman who was surprised to learn that a photo of her family was featured in a large Czech grocery store ad.

The Czech store apparently got the photo off either the woman's web site or some social networking sites.

That story led a listener, Mark McPherson of Nashville, Tenn. to recount his own similar experience.

I had to laugh when I heard the story of the family whose photo was used in the Prague grocery store. I had a similar experience a couple of years ago. A russian airline's inflight magazine copied a photo of me holding a piranha from my fishing business website. I was living in Brazil at the time. A friend of mine was visiting Russia and just happened to open the magazine and was quite surprised to see my photo. Here is a link to my blog post about it:

http://westnashvillegringo.blogspot.com/2007/07/to-russia-with-love.html

I have to believe this is way more common than any of us can imagine.

I agree. This kind of pictoplagiarism probably happens a lot. It's interesting that the two examples of this we know of involve Eastern Europe. Don't know if there's any greater meaning to be gleaned from that.

If any of you has come across this type of activity with your own photos, let us know, especially if it's of this variety, where a business swiped the use of your photo without asking permission or giving credit.

By Frank James

Any parent who, with varying degrees of trepidation, allows his or her kids to use the Internet, which would pretty much be any sentient parent, should check out today's All Things Considered technology segment.

Host Michele Norris talked with Austin Statesman-American technology reporter Omar Gallega about various ways to protect kids from insidious websites or to monitor their Internet activities to greater or lesser degrees.

For instance, one technology turns every parent into a domestic version of the National Security Agency, allowing you to monitor your kid's every keystroke. As a parent of tweens I must admit it has a certain appeal.

While Omar cites several other technologies parents can use, links to which you can find on his blog "All Tech Considered," he also said that one of the best things parents can do is talk to their children about how to use the web and what to do and not do.

But we parents know such conversations can only accomplish so much. Which is what makes the parental spyware so appealing.

By Frank James

It's difficult to imagine lowrider aficionados one day converting Toyota Priuses or Smart Cars into the hopping pieces of metal and rubber so important to their subculture.

So it's hard to know where future lowriders are going to get their raw material.

Even so, lowrider buffs don't seem much affected by General Motors' bankruptcy. That's especially true since their toys are firmly rooted in Detroit's past, not its present, as reported by Corey Takahashi in an All Things Considered piece today.

Takahashi went to a lowrider show in San Bernardino like the one in this YouTube video:

Continue reading "Lowriders Keep GM's Glory Days Hopping " >

By Frank James

If you knew the elected judge presiding over your legal case had received $3 million in political support from your opponent in the litigation, you might be more than a little dubious that your side of the matter would get a fair hearing.

And a narrow 5 to 4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court would be disposed to agree with you.

As Nina Totenberg explains on All Things Considered today, the high court ruled that a judge in such a case should recuse himself.

An excerpt of her report:

The case, as the court noted, is an extreme one. It was brought by Hugh Caperton, the owner of a small West Virginia mining company who claims he was illegally run out of business by the Massey Coal Co., the fourth largest in the nation. A West Virginia jury agreed and ordered Massey Coal to pay Caperton $50 million dollars in damages.

With the case pending before the state supreme court, Massey's CEO spent $3 million to help elect a lawyer named Brent Benjamin to that court and to defeat a sitting justice. That was more than all other contributions and spending for Benjamin combined.

And when the Caperton versus Massey case came before the state supreme court, the new justice refused three times to recuse himself , repeatedly casting the deciding vote to reverse the jury's award.

Caperton appealed to the U.S. Supreme court, contending that he had been denied his constitutional right to due process of law before a fair and impartial tribunal, and today the Supreme Court agreed by a 5-to-4 vote...

Continue reading "Supreme Court Rules Judges Must Avoid Apparent Conflicts" >

By Frank James

When we think of Tiananmen Square, we think of the idealism and courage of the students and workers who confronted the might of the Chinese government.

Zhou Fengsuo at a 1996 Tiananmen Square observance in Washington D.C. RICHARD ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images

They ultimately lost their confrontation with after Chinese soldiers killed hundreds. The true death toll still isn't known on this, the 20th anniversary.

But truth crushed the earth will rise again, as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, and that certainly is the sense one gets from listening to All Things Considered host Melissa Block's interview with Zhou Fengsuo, who was a student-leader at Tiananmen and now lives in San Francisco.

Zhou recalls the exhilarating days leading to the deadly climax, a period when university students and workers by the tens of thousands flooded into the square to demand an end to official corruption. He remembers how relatively peaceful the vast crowd was.

He also recalls his sense of foreboding when it became clear the military was about to crackdown, the fear when they finally did and the horror of leaving the square only to see 40 dead bodies, some of them students like himself, lying on a street outside a hospital.

But the spirit of Tiananmen wasn't killed, Zhou told Melissa.

An excerpt from their discussion:

MELISSA: When you think back on Tiananmen it's a chapter that's been almost completely erased from Chinese history. There's a whole generation of Chinese young people now who don't know anything about what happened. What does that say to you about the legacy of Tiananmen Square?

ZHOU: The dreams are still there, the dreams for a country with freedom, where people can live with dignity is still there. In particular, the call for end of corruption still resonates among most Chinese today. Whenever they want to fight corruption, they will think about 1989.

In fact this declaration of personal wealth of officials, every year people keep pushing for it. Even this year in official people's parliament, they're pushing for it. But everyone knows where it's from. It's from 20 years ago...

Continue reading "Spirit of Tiananmen Square Lives: Survivor " >

By Mark Memmott

Is General Motors conceding it won't be No. 1 again in U.S. sales?

No way, GM CEO Frederick "Fritz" Henderson just told All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel:

Henderson conceded that GM has made its share of mistakes in recent years, but vowed it will transform into a company "that's focused around the customer":

Yesterday, GM filed for bankuptcy protection and President Barack Obama said the federal government is adding another $30 billion to the financial assistance it's given the company (which the government now has a majority stake in).

Earlier today, GM Chief Financial Officer Ray Young told Morning Edition that he expects GM will be profitable again in two to three years.

Robert's interview with Henderson is due on today's ATC. Click here to find an NPR station near you.

Update at 2 p.m. ET: There's now also a story about Henderson's comments.

Salamatu Adama-Aouad, aka "Coach Mom," with her 13-year-old son, Kennyi Aouad, and All Things Considered host, Melissa Block. Kennyi finished fifth in the National Spelling Bee last night. Chelsea Jones/NPR

 

By Melissa Block

The high point of my day: getting to meet a bubbly, funny 13-year-old spelling whiz named Kennyi Aouad, from Terre Haute, Indiana.

Last night, I watched Kennyi on TV as he joked and bantered his way through the final round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The pressure on these kids is enormous: they're in prime time, on ABC, with their parents onstage and millions watching.

But Kennyi had a joyful, loose spirit that was thrilling to watch. Dan Steinberg put it perfectly in his Washington Post blog: "If you weren't rooting for Kennyi Kwaku Aouad, your heart is filled with potting soil."

As we discuss in my interview on today's All Things Considered, Kennyi didn't win the Bee. He was knocked out by a doozy of a word -- palatschinken, which as I now know are thin egg batter pancakes stuffed with jam -- and finished fifth.

No matter. Kennyi's a charmer. He came in to our studios with his mom, Salamatu Adama-Aouad: "Coach Mom," as Kennyi calls her. And after Kennyi and I were done with the interview, his mom filled me in on Kennyi's amazing backstory.

Turns out this phenomenal speller could read fluently by age three, but he didn't speak until he was five. Ms. Adama told me Kennyi would utter sounds, but it all sounded like gibberish. He was headed for special ed classes. Then, he started with speech therapy and occupational therapy and now, thanks to years of hard work with his mom and his speech therapist, here he is in Washington, DC, one of the top young spellers in the country.

Ms. Adama thinks absolutely that Kennyi's years of work on his spelling helped him overcome his speech problems. "For him to come and be so confident -- that's a bonus of the spelling."

She said she wasn't at all nervous watching her son up there on stage, working his way through words like gyascutus, hypallage, and grisaille.

"You just have to do your best," she told me, before adding with a mother's unmistakable, unshakable pride: "He's the winner."

By Mark Memmott

Good morning.

The last Thursday in May is shaping up to be pretty newsy.

President Barack Obama meets at the White House with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. On Morning Edition, NPR's Michele Kelemen and Lourdes Garcia-Navarro previewed the meeting with reports about what people in the Middle East want to hear from the two leaders and about the West Bank "boom town" of Ramallah:

Also on Morning Edition, NPR's Frank Langfitt talked with host Steve Inskeep about the likely-to-happen-soon bankruptcy filing by General Motors. Frank says it's unlikely American taxpayers will ever get back all the billions of dollars they've given to the automaker:

As the Detroit Free Press puts it, GM's bankruptcy is "all but inevitable."

And sticking with the theme of stories that aren't going away anytime soon, NPR's Nina Totenberg filed an inside look at how Obama came to select federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to be his Supreme Court nominee. Nina's Morning Edition, report included behind-the-scenes details about the head fakes Sotomayor gave to the news media -- highlighted by a dead-of-the-night drive from New York to Washington:

As for some of the other stories making headlines, they include:

In Seoul today, a man reads the news about U.S. and South Korean forces being put on alert. Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

-- The New York Times -- "South Korea And U.S. Raise Alert Level": "One day after North Korea warned of a possible attack against the South, the United States and South Korea ordered their forces here to their highest alert for three years, increasing surveillance flights and satellite reconnaissance to counter what officials termed a 'grave threat.' "

-- CNN.com -- Tsunami Alert Raised, Then Lifted, After Quake Near Honduras: "A powerful earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.1, was reported off the coast of Honduras early Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The National Weather Service placed Honduras, Belize and Guatemala under a tsunami watch, but later lifted it. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

-- USA TODAY -- "Stimulus Projects Bypass Hard-Hit States": "States hit hardest by the recession received only a few of the government's first stimulus contracts, even though the glut of new federal spending was meant to target places where the economic pain has been particularly severe. Nationwide, federal agencies have awarded nearly $4 billion in contracts to help jump-start the economy since President Obama signed the massive stimulus package in February. But, with few exceptions, that money has not reached states where the unemployment rate is highest, according to a USA TODAY review of contracts disclosed through the Federal Procurement Data System."

-- The Guardian -- "United Undone By Brilliant Barca": For those who love soccer, but might have missed the news ... Barcelona defeated Manchester United 2-0 yesterday to win Europe's Champions League.

Finally, looking ahead to something we'll have later today: A reminder that NPR's interview with journalist Roxana Saberi, who was held in an Iranian prison for four months, is set to be online around 1 p.m. ET and then to air this afternoon on All Things Considered. Here's a preview from ATC host Melissa Block, who spoke with Saberi yesterday:

Contributing: Chinita Anderson of Morning Edition.

By Frank James

It's often been said that hospitals are the worse place in the world for sick people because of the infections that can be picked up there.

NPR's Joanne Silberner reports on All Things Considered today that some researchers think they are seeing a correlation between the widespread practice of giving hospitalized patients heartburn drugs and many of those patients later developing pneumonia.

Here's an excerpt from her report:

SILBERNER:Last year $14 billion worth of proton-pump inhibitors were prescribed in the U.S., according to health-care information company IMS Health. About half of all hospitalized patients get a drug like Nexium or Prilosec or Prevacid to suppress acid production in the stomach.

Shoshana Herzig of Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston wasn't sure that's such a good idea. Several studies of non-hospitalized patients suggest that the drugs increase the risk of pneumonia, possibly by dampening the immune system, or allowing bacteria from the stomach to infect the lungs.

Continue reading "Heartburn Drugs Boost Hospital Pneumonias?" >

By Mark Memmott

Stephen Carter, who went to Yale Law School with new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and now teaches there, says he is "disgusted" by talk among some of his friend's critics that she might not be up to the job intellectually.

Speaking with All Things Considered co-host Michele Norris for an interview that will be part of today's show, Carter said there's a pattern -- the two African-American and one Latino Supreme Court nominees have each had their intellectual abilities questioned He calls Sotomayor one of the nation's best legal minds:

Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs editor at the conservative New Republic and a law professor at George Washington University, wrote earlier this month that he'd been told by "former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York" (who remained anonymous) that Sotomayor might not be an effective "intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices."

Rosen told Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep today that he believes "the politics of this were so compelling" -- principally the fact that Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice and has a compelling life story -- that it was her life story as much as her legal experience that led to her nomination.

Click here to find an NPR station near you that broadcasts ATC and ME.

Flying Fish Breweries Turnpike Beer. Robert Smith/NPR

 

By Frank James

Those East Coasters traveling the New Jersey Turnpike this Memorial Day weekend should be sure to check out the piece on All Things Considered today about a microbrewery with an interesting gimmick, producing beers inspired by the turnpike's many exits which as, one who traveled that highway many times can attest, always seem too far apart.

NPR correspondent Robert Smith talked to Gene Muller, founder of the Flying Fish Brewery, and gets him to describe the special taste of the beer called "Exit 4" which is the exit you take it you're headed to Camden and Cherry Hill, N.J. or Philadelphia.

Here's a little taste, if you will, of the report:

MULLER: When you sip Exit 4, you'll get banana and clove in the nose, you'll get beautiful hop character to it, little bit of sweetness to the malt and some nice hop bitterness as a closing note to it.

SMITH: Hey bitterness is how I feel when I drive the turnpike. So I guess they nailed it. Gene Muller, founder of Flying Fish brewery says he's heard all the wisecracks and really that was the point of their new series of beers.

Continue reading "New Jersey Turnpike Inspires Microbrews" >

Allison Adams of Decatur, Ga. with Ethel, one of her chickens. Kathy Lohr/NPR

 

By Frank James

Urban chicken coops are increasing in popularity and journalists are doing stories about the trend. Which will probably lead to even more city folk raising their pampered pet chickens, which will likely lead to even more chicken-in-the-city stories.

NPR reporter Kathy Lohr had a piece on All Things Considered today, for instance, on a new breed of chicken farmers who are raising poultry in their backyards.

An excerpt from the web story that accompanies her radio report:

Allison Adams, writer and avid organic gardener, has a flock of seven hens in the backyard of her home in Decatur, Ga., not far from Atlanta. A few years ago, Adams saw an article about raising chickens and then approached her neighbor with the idea.

"I love fresh eggs. I love having fertilizer production right in the backyard, so I thought, 'Well, if it's legal, I should probably investigate it,' " Adams says.

The NPR story was relatively upbeat compared to one that ran last week in the Washington Post which contained a certain Stephen King element.

Continue reading "If You Must Be A Chicken, Be An Urban One" >

By Frank James

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was kept busy today reinforcing one of his boss's main messages: that the prison camp at Guantanamo could be closed and the detainees now there transferred to federal prisons on the U.S. mainland where they could be held without any risk to Americans.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Following today's White House briefing, Gibbs sat with All Things Considered host Michele Norris in his office where he pushed hard on that theme during an interview.

He told Michele:

This argument that we can't house these people in a facility that protects our citizens doesn't make sense because I don't think anybody would argue that the four people that we picked up in New York last night are less dangerous than somebody else clearly they were actively trying to buy explosives.

I also haven't heard anybody say that we take those four prisoners and send them to Guantanamo. Obviously our prisons already contain Zacarias Moussaoui, the supposed 20th hijacker who was convicted of terrorism (and) those who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.

They're held in supermax facilities. They spend 23 of their 24 hours a day in solitary confinement in a jail and nobody's ever escaped from one of these supermax facilities. That's an option if we try these individuals in federal courts.

We have the capacity to hold very bad people very securely... The notion that we can't in a facility detain 250 plus dangerous people in this country is simply not a rational argument.

Continue reading "White House's Gibbs Talks Gitmo With NPR " >

By Franklyn Cater

After we heard the President's announcement today of new fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, we wondered what it will take for the automakers to meet those standards.

Aaron Bragman, an auto industry analyst for the economic forecasting firm IHS Global Insight, told Melissa Block, host of All Things Considered about some of the technologies they'll employ.

Along with the likes of turbo-charged engines and lighter-weight materials, Bragman says aerodynamics are very important. He points to the design for the much anticipated Chevy Volt -- an electric car with a little gas engine that charges the battery.

When designers first conceived of the car - the look they gave it was "very angular and aggressive," says Bragman. "When they put the concept car in the wind tunnel, they realized they would have gotten better numbers from its aerodynamic efficiency if they put it in backwards.

"So they had to redo the entire shell. They did it so that it's much more slippery now, and they're realizing that that aerodynamic efficiency is much bigger impact on the car's overall efficiency than the actual weight of the vehicle."

We looked them up! Here's the original kind of 'futuristic muscle car' look of the Volt.

The Volt as a concept car at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

 

And here's the production-ready body. Chevrolet claims it's "one of the most aerodynamic vehicles in GM history."

The new production-ready Volt at the 2009 New York International Auto Show last month. Jennifer Graylock/Associated Press

 

(Cater is a producer with All Things Considered)

By Mark Memmott

A quick update on the swine, or H1N1, flu:

It is "at least as virulent as regular seasonal flu" and appears to be "very transmissible," Rear Admiral Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Science and Public Health Program, just told All Things Considered's Melissa Block.

She also says the CDC now estimates there "might be something like 100,000 or more" cases (in the United States) at this time.

The interview is set for broadcast on today's ATC. Click here to find an NPR station near you.

For much more about the flu and other health news, check the NPR Health Blog.

By Mark Memmott

There are "three things a mayor must do to keep his constituents satisfied," Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner just told All Things Considered's Michele Norris.

Citizens want a "safe city ... a clean city ... (and) a competitive school system," the Democrat says.

By mowing the city's parks and cemeteries on weekends, and asking city residents to help, Finkbeiner hopes he's doing something to keep the city clean and is giving people "an opportunity to feel good about giving back to their community." Also, by the end of summer, he thinks, "I'll have some Toledoans who will have their batteries recharged."

By getting volunteers to do the work, the mayor is also tackling a serious budget problem:

Continue reading "Toledo's Mowing Mayor Is Cutting Costs, Recharging Batteries" >

By Mark Memmott

All Things Considered producer Graham Smith arrived in Kabul over the weekend. He's there with NPR Pentagon reporter Tom Bowman and NPR video producer David Gilkey. They'll be in Afghanistan about five weeks and are set to spend part of the time embedded with U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan.

This photo, taken in February, captures a typical traffic day in central Kabul. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

While there, the three will be sending us their thoughts, observations and photos. Here are some of Graham's initial impressions of Kabul. He starts with the view as he flew in and some comparisons to Baghdad, where he has also reported from in recent years:

We took an extra loop over the city because there was a plane on the runway. The city is totally ringed by mountains, so it was nice to look at. The farms around town have those beautiful terracing steps. Looked very peaceful from above.

Continue reading "First Impression Of Kabul: 'Much More Mellow' Than Baghdad" >