David Rowell is an editor with The Washington Post. His first novel, The Train of Small Mercies, is just out in paperback.
When I was growing up in North Carolina, my family went to the same beach every year; it had the sand, the water and pretty much nothing else. Mostly that was OK, but the idea of a boardwalk, which I caught glimpses of on TV or in movies, seemed wondrous to me — like a carnival rolled out from a wooden carpet.
Support group members Pamela Travis (from left), Dominique Martin, Yovanda Dixon, Shanna Chaney and Ramona Shewl hold a meeting as part of the Family Independence Initiative. The Oakland nonprofit encourages low-income families to form small groups to help each other get ahead.
Credit Pam Fessler / NPR
Yovanda Dixon washes vegetables in her San Francisco home to prepare a demonstration for her support group.
Credit Pam Fessler / NPR
Yovanda Dixon (left) shows fellow group member Pamela Travis some of the bath oils she sells outside a San Francisco grocery store as part of her business Scentuality.
It's been almost 50 years since President Lyndon Johnson declared a "War on Poverty." But today, the poverty rate in the U.S. is the highest it's been in 17 years, affecting some 46 million people.
The economy is partly to blame, but even in good times, millions of Americans are poor.
That's been a longtime concern for Maurice Lim Miller. He ran social service programs in the San Francisco Bay Area for 20 years. Then one day, the painful truth hit.
"The very first kids I had trained back in the early '80s, I saw their kids now showing up in my programs," he says.
Militiamen from the Ansar Dine Islamic group, an al-Qaida affiliate, ride on a vehicle in northeastern Mali in June. Mali is one of the places where al-Qaida-linked groups are trying to take over territory and win over local residents to their cause.
Credit Reuters/Landov
Members of Ansar al-Sharia, another al-Qaida-affiliated group, man a checkpoint at the southern Yemeni town of Jaar in April. Government troops recently retook areas in the country's restive south from militant control after a two-month offensive.
Al-Qaida has been subtly testing a new strategy. In the past couple of years, the group's affiliates have been trying their hand at governing — actually taking over territory and then trying to win over citizens who live there. It happened with various degrees of success in Somalia and Yemen, and recently in the northern deserts of Mali.
When McDonald's cut a deal to make itself the exclusive purveyor of french fries and the similar (but please don't say matching) chips at the 2012 Olympic Games in London later this month, it may not have anticipated the flurry of responses. Foodies raged, nutritionists nagged, and many called it another example of an American cultural takeover.
Ice Age: Continental Drift, which comes out July 13, is the fourth film in the animated franchise. Since Toy Story marked the beginning of the era of entirely computer-animated films, they've been a studio's safest bet for big earnings at the box office and beyond.
Credit Michael Nagle / Getty Images
Computer-animated films like Toy Story 3 are not only box-office draws, they also bring in money through toy sales and theme park rides.
Imagine you're a movie producer, and you've got a couple of hundred million dollars to gamble on a single massive blockbuster. Which genre do you suppose will be your safest bet — superhero? Action-adventure? Sci-fi? All of those have had huge successes, but they've also all had hugely expensive failures.
There's one genre, though, that's hardly a gamble at all. It's been almost foolproof since it first came into being in 1995: computer animation.
Arizona businessman Wil Cardon attends a luncheon in Scottsdale. Cardon faces six-term Rep. Jeff Flake in the Republican primary race for U.S. Senate.
Credit Andrea Hsu / NPR
Wes Harris, founder of the Original North Phoenix Tea Party, has been a registered Democrat, independent and now Republican. He says that while Tea Party activism had dropped off over the past two years, issues like health care and immigration are starting to draw people back.
Credit Jonathan Gibby / Getty Images
A Tea Party activist rallies in support of Arizona's tough immigration law in Phoenix in April.
Maricopa County, Ariz., where 3 out of 5 Republicans in the state live, has become a hotbed of Tea Party activism.
That's where the head of the Original North Phoenix Tea Party lives. His name is Wesley Harris, and he used to manufacture precision rifle barrels. These days, his son runs the business, while Harris spends most of his time as a full-time Tea Party activist.
Will these Green Bay fans be cheering as much as they did during the 2011 Super Bowl when their beloved Packer games are interrupted by local political ads this fall?
Along with the highlights, the trade rumors and news of misbehaving athletes, viewers of ESPN's SportsCenter are about to get a bigger dose of politics.
The sports giant says it will sell commercial time to candidates in local markets now instead of just nationally. Executives are selling it as a good fit for politicians.
Jewish settlers in the West Bank throw stones during clashes with Palestinians near the city of Nablus on May 19. A new report says violence by settlers directed at West Bank Palestinians is up sharply over the past three years.
Farming is the mainstay of the Palestinian communities around the West Bank village of Yanoun. Animals graze the land, and Palestinians make their living by harvesting citrus fruits and olives.
Last Saturday, Palestinians say, a group of Jewish settlers killed some of the sheep belonging to the Bani Jabr family. Palestinians say its part of a regular pattern of harassment in the area by settlers.
Walk into any tech company or university math department, and you'll likely see a gender disparity: Fewer women than men seem to go into fields involving science, engineering, technology and mathematics.
A lobster on a boat off Mount Desert, Maine, is measured to see if it is a legal size. There has been a glut of lobster this season, driving down prices.
This summer is shaping up to be a record season for lobster landings in Maine. That sounds like good news for a state where lobstering makes up a large part of the economy.
It may be welcome news for consumers and food retailers, but for the state's 5,000 lobstermen, it's a different story.
Hard To Make A Living
On Portland's waterfront, about five lobster boats are tied up at one of the piers. Half a dozen lobstermen stand around discussing the current problem of oversupply.
