Search results for

The recent meeting in Thailand on endangered species receives mixed reviews as it closes. U.S. delegates proclaimed the conference a success. But critics call the treaty -- the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species -- a "shark without teeth." They say poachers are bolder and better armed than ever, and many species, like forest elephants, are on the road to extinction. NPR's John Nielsen reports.

The pacifist constitution imposed on Japan after World War II restricted its military forces to self-defense so the nation could never again be an aggressor. The result has been a truncated role in geopolitics for the world's second largest economy. Many Japanese, especially younger people, want their country to assume a bigger role now. NPR's Rob Gifford reports.

This weekend, Major League Baseball holds its annual "fame school," a program officially known as the "Rookie Career Development Program." Future baseball stars learn how to handle the reporters, agents, business managers, fans and sportswear executives who have just begun beating down their doors. Last year, commentator Jake Halpern attended.

Since the 1960s, Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn has released 27 records — all of them on independent labels. His latest CD, You've Never Seen Everything, is a politically charged and energetic record that blends jazz themes with the sounds of electronica. Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers reports.

Bill Carter reports on the television industry for The New York Times and has written about TV for almost 30 years. His new book is called Desperate Networks and it has a mouthful of a subtitle: Starring Katie Couric, Les Moonves, Simon Cowell, Dan Rather, Jeff Zucker, Teri Hatcher, Conan O'Brien, Donald Trump and a Host of Other Movers and Shakers Who Changed the Face of Prime-Time TV.

In the 1950s, composer William Bolcom began an ambitious project to set the 46 poems in William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience to music. A massive work, the result premiered in 1984. Now, a recording of Bolcom's work has finally been released. NPR's Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr reports.

Despite large-scale anti-American violence in Baghdad, President Bush and top American generals assert that the United States is making steady progress in rebuilding Iraq. Citing gains in the nation's economy and overall security, administration and military officials say that Monday's attacks show Hussein loyalists' desperation. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls Sunday's deaths of 16 servicemen in the downing of a U.S. helicopter "tragic," but says "in a long hard war, we are going to have tragic days as this." U.S. military officials believe the transport helicopter was likely downed by a shoulder-fired missile. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.

President Bush makes his first public remarks concerning the recent surge of casualties in Iraq as he toured fire-ravaged areas of Southern California Tuesday. The president expressed his sadness and concern for the families of the dead and wounded but said the United States was protecting its national security by its presence in Iraq. NPR's Don Gonyea reports.

Many critics of the American electoral system focus on the nation's low Election Day turnout, a rate lower here than elsewhere in the free world. Some are now arguing about how big a problem voluntary non-participation poses, and what difference it would make if more people voted. NPR's Linda Wertheimer reports, as our series Whose Democracy Is It? continues.