Search results for

In the small border town of Roma, Texas, the award-winning high school band Mariachi Santander is helping keep the traditional music of Mexico alive. The students gain pride and national recognition in the process. For Weekend Edition Sunday, NPR's John Burnett reports.

Senate debate begins this week on ways to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Fifteen years ago, Congress passed such a measure, only to repeal it a year later under a storm of criticism. NPR's Julie Rovner reports for Morning Edition.

Researchers and activists are in Barcelona this week to talk about the global AIDS epidemic. But another epidemic of similar size is sweeping the globe: tuberculosis. A major push is on to expand TB treatment, and as NPR's Richard Harris reports from Kenya, the treatment is working, even under some of the most challenging conditions.

Old computer monitors and TV picture tubes dumped in landfills can leach hazardous amounts of lead into groundwater, according to a scientific study. The research is playing a key role in the fight to keep electronics out of landfills and has intensified a controversy over who should pay to recycle them. NPR's Emily Harris reports for Morning Edition.

A group of scientists reported finding a six or seven million-year-old skull in Chad, Central Africa. The specimen, the oldest hominid skull ever found, will shed new light on a mysterious period in human history. The new species has been nicknamed Toumao, a name for children born before the dry season in the African desert.

Thirty years ago, the Flatlanders released their first record to almost universal indifference. Now, with the release of their second album, Now Again (New West Records), they're one of the nation's most talked about country bands, thanks to nationally syndicated radio host Don Imus. From member station KUHF in Houston, Ed Mayberry reports.

Forty years after Andy Warhol's first exhibition, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is hosting a retrospective of the artist's work. The exhibition boasts 200 works spanning Warhol's career, including examples of his most famous series like Campbell's Soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. Eric Roy of member station KCRW reports for Morning Edition.

Running 135 miles across Death Valley and halfway up a mountain -- all in the middle of summer -- sounds a bit crazy, if not life-threatening. NPR's Andy Bowers reports for All Things Considered on the motivations of some of the 79 runners who this July competed in what's often called the toughest foot race in the world: the Badwater Ultramarathon.

In a series of reports for Morning Edition, NPR Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford profiles five people from across China who symbolize the massive changes the country is undergoing as it makes its transition away from communism. The series debuts with Henry Li, who owns one of Beijing's hippest night spots.

In what could be a crucial test of its authority, Afghanistan's new government is signaling it is prepared to use military force to control the power of one of the war-torn nation's strongest warlords, Padsha Khan Zadran. See NPR reporter Eric Westervelt's photos of the warlord and some of his troops and weapons.