World

A police officer blocks photos from being taken outside Zhongnanhai, the central headquarters for the Communist Party of China, in Beijing last year.

World News

China's Debate: Must The Party Follow The Constitution?

8:01pm September 18, 2013

by Frank Langfitt

If you demand democracy in China, you can quickly find yourself at odds with the government. So these days, reformers are trying to use the constitution to make the party accountable to the people. But that didn't keep a Shanghai professor from getting suspended.

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The Brazilian city of Olinda has a novel approach to taming its ever-growing traffic problem: traffic clowns known as palhacos.

World News

Brazil's Traffic Is A Circus, So Send In The Clowns

8:01pm September 18, 2013

by NPR Staff

The northeastern city of Olinda is trying to tame its chaotic roads with "traffic clowns," who hit the streets in full costume, encouraging drivers to slow down, don a helmet or buckle their seat belts.

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World News

New Zealand Men Give New Meaning To The Words: Beer Tap

6:46am September 18, 2013

With the sponsorship of a brewery, the men rigged a friend's home so that beer flowed from all the taps.

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World News

Why Lilly Collins Is The 'Most Dangerous Celebrity'

6:43am September 18, 2013

Fantasy film star Lily Collins seems harmless but beware of looking for more about the starlet on the Internet. According to antivirus software company McAfee, she is the Most Dangerous Celebrity. Plugging Collins' name into a search engine has a 14 percent chance of turning up a computer virus.

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Brazil's President Postpones U.S. Visit Over Spying Concerns

4:27am September 18, 2013

by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff has put off her state visit to the United States over allegations that the National Security Agency spied on her, ordinary Brazilians and the state oil company. This was supposed to be the first state visit by a Brazilian leader in two decades.

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A woman looks at clothes inside a shop in Rio de Janeiro. Consumption has been a huge driver of the Brazilian economy, but the boom years are over, and economists say the outlook isn't good.

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As Economy Cools, Brazilians Find Themselves Trapped In Debt

8:44pm September 17, 2013

by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

Brazil's banks started giving easy credit about eight years ago. The country was booming, and a new consumer class was created, fueling growth. But that boom is now over, and Brazilians are some of the most indebted people in the world.

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Inspector Mohammad Saleem Taqi takes a photo of sanitation workers as they clear out debris in sewers. The government feeds the photos into a map to track the city's effort to stop dengue fever.

How Smartphones Became Vital Tools Against Dengue In Pakistan

2:14pm September 17, 2013

by Beenish Ahmed

Two years ago Pakistan's Punjab province was hit with one of the world's worst dengue outbreaks. This year the number of recorded cases has plummeted. Many leaders credit a mobile phone app that tracks mosquito populations and city workers' efforts to contain them.

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Rice farmers pull a harvest festival cart down country lanes in Narita city, Chiba prefecture. The area is home to Tokyo's main airport, but also has many agricultural areas.

Japan's Rice Farmers See Trade Deal As Threat To Tradition

9:38am September 17, 2013

by Anthony Kuhn

Each summer, the rice farmers of Narita, Japan, gather to pray for bountiful harvests with dancing, music and elaborate festival carts. This year, some farmers feel their way of life is under threat from a major trade agreement.

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Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking cover

Kitchen Time Machine: A Culinary Romp Through Soviet History

9:38am September 17, 2013

Author Anya Von Bremzen's new memoir, Mastering The Art of Soviet Cooking, is a tragic-comic history of a family and a nation as seen through the kitchen window. Everything we ate in the Soviet Union was grown ... by the party state," she says. "So, with the food, inevitably, you ingested the ideology."

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World News

U.N. Report Doesn't Assign Blame To Syrian Chemical Attack

9:38am September 17, 2013

U.N. weapons inspectors have issued their report on last month's chemical weapons attack in Syria. Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells Steve Inskeep that the report bolsters U.S. and European charges that the Assad regime deployed the sarin gas.

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