NPR Story
3:00 am
Tue August 30, 2011

Obama Nominates Krueger As Top Economic Adviser

Steve Inskeep talks to David Wessel of "The Wall Street Journal," about President Obama's choice of Alan Krueger as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, and the president's jobs plan.

NPR Story
3:00 am
Tue August 30, 2011

Irene Forces Laptop Users To Find WiFi Outlets

In addition to the frustration of food spoiling in refrigerators and darkened homes, the loss of the Internet is heightening the anxieties of power-less utility customers. In some towns, free WiFi coffee shops have become a hot spot for the disconnected. Craig Lemoult of member station WSHU reports.

NPR News' Brian Naylor is a correspondent on the Washington Desk.

In this role, he covers politics and federal agencies, including transportation and homeland security.

With more than 30 years of experience at NPR, Naylor has served as National Desk correspondent, White House correspondent, congressional correspondent, foreign correspondent and newscaster during All Things Considered. He has filled in as host on many NPR programs, including Morning Edition, Weekend Edition and Talk of the Nation.

During his NPR career, Naylor has covered many of the major world events, including political conventions, the Olympics, the White House, Congress and the mid-Atlantic region. Naylor reported from Tokyo in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, from New Orleans following the BP oil spill, and from West Virginia after the deadly explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine.

While covering the U.S. Congress in the mid-1990s, Naylor's reporting contributed to NPR's 1996 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism award for political reporting.

Before coming to NPR in 1982, Naylor worked at NPR Member Station WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, and at a commercial radio station in Maine.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maine.

Mara Liasson is the national political correspondent for NPR. Her reports can be heard regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Liasson provides extensive coverage of politics and policy from Washington, DC — focusing on the White House and Congress — and also reports on political trends beyond the Beltway.

Each election year, Liasson provides key coverage of the candidates and issues in both presidential and congressional races. During her tenure she has covered five presidential elections — in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008. Prior to her current assignment, Liasson was NPR's White House correspondent for all eight years of the Clinton administration. She has won the White House Correspondents Association's Merriman Smith Award for daily news coverage in 1994, 1995, and again in 1997. From 1989-1992 Liasson was NPR's congressional correspondent.

Liasson joined NPR in 1985 as a general assignment reporter and newscaster. From September 1988 to June 1989 she took a leave of absence from NPR to attend Columbia University in New York as a recipient of a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism.

Prior to joining NPR, Liasson was a freelance radio and television reporter in San Francisco. She was also managing editor and anchor of California Edition, a California Public Radio nightly news program, and a print journalist for The Vineyard Gazette in Martha's Vineyard, Mass.

Liasson is a graduate of Brown University where she earned a bachelor's degree in American history.

Credit Doby Photography / NPR

Carrie Johnson is a Justice Correspondent for the Washington Desk.

She covers a wide variety of stories about justice issues, law enforcement and legal affairs for NPR's flagship programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as the Newscasts and NPR.org.

While in this role, Johnson has chronicled major challenges to the landmark voting rights law, a botched law enforcement operation targeting gun traffickers along the Southwest border, and the Obama administration's deadly drone program for suspected terrorists overseas.

Prior to coming to NPR in 2010, Johnson worked at the Washington Post for 10 years, where she closely observed the FBI, the Justice Department and criminal trials of the former leaders of Enron, HealthSouth and Tyco. Earlier in her career, she wrote about courts for the weekly publication Legal Times.

Outside of her role at NPR, Johnson regularly moderates or appears on legal panels for the American Bar Association, the American Constitution Society, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and others. She's talked about her work on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, PBS, and other outlets.

Her work has been honored with awards from the Society for Professional Journalists and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. She has been a finalist for the Loeb award for financial journalism and for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news for team coverage of the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas.

Johnson is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Benedictine University in Illinois.

Crime In The City
11:01 pm
Mon August 29, 2011

Moscow, In A Time Of Fear

The novels of Tom Rob Smith are set mostly in the Soviet Union of the 1950s, a time and a place where oppression was palpable and any wrong move could get a person sent to a prison thousands of miles away.

Smith's first thriller, Child 44, was the story of a Soviet security agent whose job was to spy on fellow citizens. While many authors are virtual tour guides in the places where they set their novels, Smith had actually only been to Moscow once before — in 1997, on a high school trip.

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The Record
11:01 pm
Mon August 29, 2011

Songs Of The Summer: How To Win The Season

Credit Mike Weinberg / flickr.com
Summer songs: best if played outside before September 21.

Ann Powers spoke with David Greene on NPR's Morning Edition about summer songs — those tracks that, as she wrote last week, hit the perfect balance of fun cliches and light-hearted rhythm. They also often hit the top of the charts. But what do those summer songs do to draw us in?

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Around the Nation
11:01 pm
Mon August 29, 2011

Female Vets Navigate Post-War Stress, Home Duties

The first in a series about the challenges female veterans face as they transition to civilian life.

America's female veteran population has grown to an estimated 1.9 million, and the Department of Veterans Affairs projects 50,000 more servicewomen will join that population in the next five years. When they return, many will pick up where they left off, as mothers, wives and caretakers.

In Philadelphia, some female veterans are dealing with family responsibilities while still struggling to cope with the lingering effects of war.

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Closing Walter Reed
11:01 pm
Mon August 29, 2011

Walter Reed Center's Closure May Be A Boon To D.C.

Credit D.C. Planning and Economic Development Office
This satellite image shows how the Walter Reed Campus will be divided between the District of Columbia (purple) and the State Department (yellow). The District's 67-acre portion includes both the old and new hospital buildings.

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center has a storied past. It has been the country's leading Army hospital for more than 100 years, sitting on a complex that includes a Civil War battlefield. There was a time when 16,000 patients a year sought treatment for wounds of war or illness.

By the end of August, all the patients and doctors will have left, moved to Bethesda and Fort Belvoir as the Army consolidates its bases. But as one era closes, another opens: Washington, D.C., may be left with nearly 70 acres of prime real estate.

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Hurricane Irene Hits East Coast
11:01 pm
Mon August 29, 2011

Costs Of Irene Add Up As FEMA Runs Out Of Cash

Credit Paul J. Richards / AFP/Getty Images
FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, shown at a press briefing last week in Washington, says his agency will postpone some repair work on earlier disasters in order to pay for the immediate needs of Irene.

From washed-away roads in North Carolina to historic bridges flooded out in Vermont, Hurricane Irene took its toll up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

But the East is not the only region to suffer from natural disasters this year. There was a string of deadly tornadoes in the South this spring, floods along the Mississippi and in the Upper Midwest, and last May's devastating tornado in Joplin, Mo.

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