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An index of the day's stories: DO DRUG ADS WORK? -- President Clinton, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Barry McCaffrey, were in Atlanta today launching a massive 195 million dollar media campaign against the use of illegal drugs. One of the new ads is an update of the very successful "This is your brain on drugs..." campaign. This time, the government is paying for prime time television slots, instead of the free late-night airing that is often missed. The campaign is definitely an attention-getter, but NPR's Jon Hamilton reports that critics doubt that ads really keep young people from using drugs. (5:00) DRUG AD DECONSTRUCTION -- Noah talks with Paul Capelli, the president of The Ad Store and the creative director of the new promotional spots for the national anti-drug campaign. They discuss how documentary-style ads were created to discourage young people from smoking marijuana. Capelli says that he thought the project was doomed to failure, but he called upon his experiences as a young man and developed a project in which real people talked about their own situations, rather than using a more advertising-oriented approach. He contacted documentary filmmakers to work on the ads. We'll hear excerpts from some of these ads and talk about why Capelli now believes that the ads really can reach young people. (7:00) ABORTION CLINIC VIOLENCE -- Linda talks with NPR's Kathy Lohr about a recent rash of abortion clinic violence. The latest tactic is pouring foul-smelling acid into clinics, which forces them to temporarily close. This has happened in women's health facilities in Florida, Louisiana and Houston. (4:30) ALGERIA -- NPR's Sarah Chayes reports from Algiers that a bomb placed in a city market exploded today, killing ten people and wounding dozens of others. It was the first terrorist attack in the capital city in weeks and came just a day after Algerian security forces claimed to have killed a key leader of the Islamist underground. (3:00) KOSOVO VILLAGE -- NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports on reaction by Kosovo Albanian leaders to yesterday's Contact Group meeting in Bonn. The Kosovars feel the six nations of the Contact Group underestimate the support the Kosovo Liberation Army enjoys among the local people. Many activists say the international community is wrong in continuing to work with moderate leader, Ibrahim Rugova toward a settlement to this latest Yugoslav crisis. (4:30) IRAN -- NPR's Eric Weiner reports from Tehran that millions of Iranians were glued to their television sets today, watching the latest installment of the bribery and embezzlement trial of Tehran's reformist mayor. The mayor, who has done much to dress up Iran's drab, over-crowded capital in recent years, denies any wrongdoing. His supporters say the trial is really about a power struggle between Iran's conservative clerics and moderate president Mohammed Khatami. (3:30) ANCIENT CHURCH -- Linda talks with Thomas Parker, Professor of History at North Carolina State University. Professor Parker is in Aqaba, Jordan, where a team of archaeologists are uncovering the remains of what is being described as an early Christian church. Constructed of mud bricks not far from the Red Sea coast, the church was probably constructed by the Ayla Christian community. By dating artifacts found in the vicinity of the church, Professor Parker estimates the church was built in the late 3rd or early 4th century C.E. (4:30) BLACK THEATRE FUNDING -- When August Wilson criticized mainstream foundations for not funding African-American theatre at the National Black Theatre Summit in March, mainstream white theatres began to get nervous. Theatre funding from the National Endowment for the Arts is half what it was five years ago and the influential Kennedy Center/American Express-sponsored Fund for New American Plays no longer exists. All non-profit theatres are scrambling for new money sources, and Wilson's call has pitted black theatres against white in a desperate struggle for money. Phyllis Joffe reports on the internal dissent as the second Black Theatre Summit at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta gets underway this Sunday. (8:00) PRODUCT LIABILITY -- NPR's Peter Kenyon reports that Senate Republican leaders have withdrawn a product liability bill that was being blocked by Democrats. The measure would have limited the liability of wholesalers and retailers of products that cause harm. It also would have limited punitive damages against companies with fewer than 25 employees or with annual revenues of less than five million dollars. The measure, which has been debated in various forms for years, was opposed by trial lawyers and consumer groups. (4:00) FOOD SAFETY -- NPR's John Nielsen reports on the congressional debate over what to do to protect consumers as more fruits and vegetables are imported from countries whose safety regulations aren't considered watertight. While a recent outbreak of food-borne illness from Guatemalan raspberries might have been avoided with better regulations, no one can seem to agree on how to write those regulations. (3:45) FIRE DAMAGE ASSESSMENT -- NPR's Adam Hochberg reports that as President Clinton tours damage from wildfires in central Florida, farmers say it may take years for them to recoup crop losses. State officials are still adding up the damages and warn that more fires could develop. (3:30) TEEN BABY KILLERS -- NPR's Tovia Smith reports on today's sentencing of two teenagers who dumped the body of their newborn son in the trash. A Delaware judge sentenced Amy Grossberg, who will turn 20 tomorrow, to serve two and a half years in prison and ordered her to perform 300 hours of community service. Her 20-year-old boyfriend, Brian Peterson, was sentenced to two years in prison and required to perform 300 hours of community service. The case, and similar incidents around the nation, has sparked a debate over how society should punish and treat teenagers who kill their own babies. (4:00) PSYCHOSIS -- The practice of killing newborns within 24 hours of birth is not that unusual. The crime is usually committed by young mothers...but not always. Rare instances of older mothers and occasionally fathers committing neonaticide have been observed. An estimated 150 to 300 occurrences of neonaticide are noted each year in the United States. Psychiatrists who have worked with young women who've done this say it is not unlike the opposite of a "hysterical pregnancy," where women, and sometimes men experience all the symptoms of being pregnant when they aren't. They are so disassociated from what happened, they have no memory of what actually did happen. They also tend to speak of themselves in the third person years after the incidents. NPR's Vicky Que spoke with a number of specialists who have studied the problem to give us some sense of who the girls committing these crimes are, and why they killed their infants. (4:00) NORTHERN IRELAND NEWS -- NPR's Michael Goldfarb reports from London on today's meeting between British prime minister Tony Blair and leaders of the Protestant Orange Lodge in Northern Ireland. The session produced little apparent progress toward resolving the stand-off over this year's ban on the Orangemen's traditional march through the Catholic neighborhood of Portadown. The Orangemen remain camped out, vowing to march in defiance of the ban. Since the authorities stopped the parade last Sunday, the province has seen five nights of violence. (3:30) ORANGE ORDER MUSIC -- Noah talks with The Reverend John Dunlop, the author of A Precarious Belonging. Dunlop was involved in setting up the independent commission on parades for Northern Ireland, and the two talk about the culture and history of the parades of the Orange Order. They take their name from King William of Orange, whose Protestant forces defeated the Catholic forces of King James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. The marches planned for this weekend commemorate that battle, and are the focal point of the calendar for members of the Order. The Orange Order is the main Protestant cultural group in Northern Ireland, boasting more than 80,000 members. Dunlop explains that the parading music can be played in a particularly aggressive or militaristic style, which can be intimidating when the parades pass through Catholic neighborhoods. (9:00) LETTERS -- Linda and Noah read from listeners' comments. To contact All Things Considered, write to:
All Things Considered Letters
To contact us via the Internet: atc@npr.org (2:30) IMPOSSIBLE MOVIE ROMANCES -- Movie critic Bob Mondello says that Hollywood has lately been raising the bar for romance, making it nearly impossible. He says it seems that the old-fashioned boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl romance must not be very appealing to studio executives, since most movie romances now involve practically insurmountable hurdles to relationships. (5:00) |
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