Spc. Ben Purvis (center) helps train Afghan troops on how to use mortars in the eastern province of Kunar in June. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, points to several factors in the rise of "insider attacks" on American forces. He says relations between U.S. and Afghan troops are good overall.
Gunmen wearing Afghan police and army uniforms have killed 40 U.S. and NATO troops so far this year, and the top American commander in Afghanistan says there is no single reason — and no simple solution.
Taliban infiltrators, disputes between NATO and Afghan security forces, and even the timing of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, are all factors, according to Gen. John Allen.
"We think the reasons for these attacks are complex," says Allen, who spoke by video link from Kabul on Thursday. Ten of the American deaths have come in just the past two weeks.
Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, arrives to announce his choice of running mate aboard the U.S.S. Wisconsin in Norfolk, Va., on Aug. 11.
Credit Max Whittaker / Getty Images
Then-nominee Barack Obama's speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, at Invesco Field at Mile High in Denver, Colo., was carefully staged against a backdrop of classical pillars.
During the next two weeks, the major political parties will assemble their faithful in Tampa, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., to officially nominate their presidential tickets. These conventions were once places of high political drama. But over the decades, as the primary system has determined the candidates well in advance, conventions have become political theater. With that in mind, there's much to be said on staging in politics — not substance, but style.
This summer, All Things Considered has asked listeners and guests to share a personal memory: the memory of one song discovered through their parents' record collection.
Grocery auctions have been growing in popularity as a way to get a lot of food for not a lot of money.
Credit Matt Sindelar for NPR
Workers hold up five pound bags of frozen chicken nuggets before bidding opens. Grocery auctions have been growing in popularity since the recession as an outlet for food that's past its prime. Around 80 people attended this one at the Chesapeake Auction House in St. Leonard, Md.
Credit Matt Sindelar for NPR
The auctions usually last four hours, and many bidders stay the entire time. The food they bid on won't be sold in stores because it may be expired or have damaged packaging.
Credit Matt Sindelar for NPR
Betty Thomas types bids into the auction house's computer. Most of their grocery auctions bring in $10,000-15,000.
Credit Matt Sindelar for NPR
Many of the bidders bring large coolers to carry home their haul, which often includes frozen meat.
Credit Matt Sindelar for NPR
Kathy Cartwright of Accokeek, Md., is a regular at the grocery auctions. She says her family has stopped buying meat at the store, and relies on what they can get at the auction. Most of the meat is sold frozen.
Credit Matt Sindelar for NPR
The type of food at the grocery auction varies, but this one included frozen meat, chips, juice, laundry detergent and more. Auctioneer Larry Forman and his wife Kay (not pictured) have hosted the grocery auctions for 10 years.
Credit Matt Rourke / AP
Runner Tom Howard holds up the merchandise at a grocery auction in Dallas, Pa., in 2009. These auctions are becoming more popular as people look for deals on food that's past its prime.
Christians pray for Rimsha on the roof of their priest's compound. Hundreds of the girl's Christian neighbors have fled their homes, fearing attacks by Muslims.
Credit Faisal Mahmood / Reuters/Landov
A family rides past the house of Rimsha Masih, a Pakistani Christian girl arrested on blasphemy charges, on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, on Thursday. Rimsha is accused of burning pages of Quranic verse — a crime punishable by death in Pakistan. Her case has reignited debate over the country's blasphemy law and the growing influence of Muslim extremists.
Until last week, Pakistani Christians and Muslims on the outskirts of Islamabad lived side-by-side in peace — and in the tight quarters that come with extreme poverty.
Then an Islamic cleric heard a rumor: A Christian girl named Rimsha Masih may have set fire to pages of Quranic verse.
The girl's priest, Father Boota, says a Muslim neighbor claims to have witnessed it.
"He was the one who raised the alarm, and then there was a shopkeeper — he also started shouting, and he also started making calls, 'Get the Christians! Wage a jihad against them!' " the priest says.
Jorge Castro, a visiting professor of ecology from Spain, sips water in the shade of a burnt tree in New Mexico's Bandelier Wilderness area, adjacent to the Bandelier National Monument. This site was devastated by last year's Las Conchas fire.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Driving along the Forest Service roads on the edge of the Bandelier National Monument, you can see the destruction wrought by the Las Conchas fire. The megafire burned more than 150,000 acres of forest — about twice the area of Manhattan.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Craig Allen, a research ecologist with the United States Geological Survey, points to the devastation in Bandelier's Cochiti Canyon, which was burned by the Las Conchas fire. According to Allen, these megafires are "the new normal."
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Wildflowers and weeds dot a once-forested landscape. The suppression of natural forest fires during the past century has set the stage for devastating megafires, setting new records in size and intensity.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Castro sits in a field that used to be forested by Ponderosa pine trees in the Dome Wilderness, an area adjacent to Bandelier.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
The skeleton of a lone tree torched in the Las Conchas fire
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Cochiti Canyon lies south of the Santa Fe National Forest, located near the Bandelier National Monument. The canyon was ravaged by a firestorm that spread out of the Las Conchas fire.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Allen (left) and Castro look across the wasteland of a plateau reduced to ashes during the Las Conchas fire. Because the fires stripped vegetation from hillsides, these areas are now vulnerable to flash floods during the summer rains.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
The skeletal remains of a tree are seen in front of a boulder in the Dome Wilderness area.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Allen surveys the moonscape of a plateau devastated by the Las Conchas fire.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Collin Haffey, a biotechnician with Bandelier National Monument (left), and Allen examine a tiny Ponderosa pine tree sprouting up in the burn zone in the Dome Wilderness. Indigenous species of trees have failed to return to the area since the Las Conchas fire.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A budding Ponderosa pine tree sprouts up in the burn zone, a sliver of hope for potential forest regrowth.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Jorge Castro, a visiting professor of Ecology from Spain, sips water in the shade of a burnt tree in New Mexico's Bandelier Wilderness area. Last year's Las Conchas fire devastated the area burning over 150,000 acres of forest.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Craig Allen, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, walks up a bluff overlooking Cochiti Canyon, which was destroyed by last year's Las Conchas megafire.
Fire scientists are calling it "the new normal": a time of fires so big and hot that no one can remember anything like it.
One of the scientists who coined that term is Craig Allen. I drive with him to New Mexico's Bandelier National Monument, where he works for the U.S. Geological Survey. We take a dirt road up into the Jemez Mountains, into a landscape of black poles as far as you can see.
Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., says Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the GOP vice presidential candidate, asked him to end his Senate bid after recent comments he made referring to "legitimate rape."
Republican Rep. Todd Akin's decision to stay in the U.S. Senate race in Missouri is likely to leave him with support from the state's evangelical community, but not much more, says a political scientist at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.
The daily fighting in Syria included this gun battle Wednesday involving rebels in the northern city of Aleppo. Still, the rival sides recently worked out a prisoner swap in which two women were freed from state custody, while the rebels released seven pro-government fighters.
The bitter fighting in Syria seems to grow worse by the day, yet the rebels and the government do occasionally manage to work out something that requires each side to trust the other: prisoner swaps.
In one recent exchange, two women held by the government were freed in exchange for seven men who were fighting on behalf President Bashar Assad's regime.
The "Loving Happiness Band," supported, in part, by the Communist Party, plays for a crowd on Nanjing Road.
Credit Frank Langfitt / NPR
In 1999, Shanghai turned Nanjing Road, the city's most famous shopping area, into a walking street. On summer nights, thousands fill the street, surrounded by colonial architecture and riotous neon signs.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai was one of the world's most exciting — and notorious — cities. But all that came to an end in the middle of the last century, when the Communists took charge.
Over the past decade or so, though, a vibrant Shanghai has re-emerged. Today, it's a dynamic city of 23 million, with a skyline that dwarfs Manhattan's.
