The Salt
3:08 pm
Thu February 16, 2012

Yes, There's Arsenic In Your Rice. But Is That Bad?

Credit iStockPhoto.com
Rice plants absorb arsenic from soil, and some if it makes it to the bowl.

Is there arsenic in your rice? Probably. That's the news behind a study that found surprisingly high levels of arsenic in rice-based organic toddler formula and energy bars.

One toddler formula with organic brown rice syrup as the primary ingredient had arsenic concentrations six times the federal limit of 10 parts per billion for arsenic in drinking water.

Cereal bars that contained rice products like brown rice syrup or rice flour had arsenic levels ranging from 23 to 128 parts per billion, according to researchers at Dartmouth College, who tested the products.

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The Two-Way
3:06 pm
Thu February 16, 2012

Christmas Day Bomber Sentenced To Life In Prison

Credit U.S. Marshals Service, File / AP
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty in October to a plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009.

The man who tried to blow up a U.S. passenger plane three Christmases ago was sentenced to life in prison in a Detroit courtroom today. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 25, boarded Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam on Dec. 25, 2009, with a massive bomb hidden in his underwear. As the plane approached Detroit, he tried to detonate the explosives. They failed to go off.

Four months ago, on the second day of his criminal trial, Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty.

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The Two-Way
2:27 pm
Thu February 16, 2012

Amanda Knox Signs Book Deal Worth Millions

Originally published on Thu February 16, 2012 4:03 pm

Amanda Knox, the U.S. college exchange student who won an appeal to overturn her murder conviction in Italy last October, has signed a deal to write a memoir — for which she'll earn nearly $4 million, according to reports.

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The Two-Way
2:12 pm
Thu February 16, 2012

#Feb17: Excised From The Record

Credit Mahmud Turkia / AFP/Getty Images
A falcon statue, painted in the colors of the revolutionary flag and covered with the inscription "God is great", and is displayed outside the museum set up on Tripoli boulevard in Misrata on Feb. 12.

The plane landed at Benghazi airport, about an hour late, which seemed just about right to most people on board. Elderly women sported tattoos from their bottom lip to the tip of their chin; several men carefully removed plants that somehow survived being crushed in the overhead luggage bins.

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The Salt
1:58 pm
Thu February 16, 2012

Can A Diet Clean Out Toxins In The Body?

Credit iStockphoto.com
Experts say specialized diets won't help rid the body of toxins any more than what the liver and kidneys already do every day.

Between lingering New Year's resolutions and impending Lenten restraint, it's the season when many people are inspired to get healthy by refusing foods they normally delight in.

Increasingly, we're seeing elimination diets that promise weight loss and a tantalizing bonus: detoxification.

"Cleansing diets" trade on this most alluring idea: By limiting our intake of food to a few super-pure items, we can free up the body to get rid of all the gunk accumulated in our cells.

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Upcoming
1:52 pm
Thu February 16, 2012

Bonnaroo 2012

Bonnaroo 2012 will be June 7-10.

This year's lineup includes artists such as Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Phish, The Avett Brothers, Alice Cooper, Flogging Molly, and many more! 

Click here for more details.

The Two-Way
1:45 pm
Thu February 16, 2012

Man Has Heart Attack While Eating At The Heart Attack Grill

Credit Julie Jacobson / AP
Signs for "Bypass Burgers" and "Flatliner Fries" are seen in the window of the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas. A man who suffered a heart attack in the restaurant was wheeled out on a stretcher Saturday.
The Two-Way
1:25 pm
Thu February 16, 2012

Study Finds Goats Adjust Their 'Accents' Based On Social Surroundings

Credit Queen Mary University of London
A goat kid.

Surely you've noticed that when people move from place to place and stay for a while, they tend to pick up the local accent. We could use Madonna as an example, but we're pretty sure her British accent started before she jumped the pond.

Anyway, in a new study published in the journal Animal Behaviour, two scientists found young pygmy goats, which are known as kids, do something similar.

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The Two-Way
12:37 pm
Thu February 16, 2012

Methane, Soot Are Targets Of New U.S. Climate Initiative

Credit Todd Paris / AP
A new program led by the U.S. seeks to limit amounts of soot, hydrofluorocarbons and methane released into the atmosphere. In this file photo from 2009, a researcher ignites trapped methane from under a pond's ice cap in Alaska.

The United States and five other nations are embarking on a new program to limit pollutants connected to global warming. But they're not targeting carbon dioxide with this effort — instead, they're looking at methane gas, and soot.

NPR's Richard Harris filed this report for our Newscast desk:

"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the U.S. is teaming up with Canada, Mexico, Sweden, Ghana and Bangladesh to get countries thinking about some potent contributors to climate change."

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Credit Doby Photography / NPR

Andy Carvin (andycarvin.com, @acarvin on Twitter) leads NPR's social media strategy and is NPR's primary voice on Twitter, and Facebook, where NPR became the first news organization to reach one million fans. He also advises NPR staff on how to better engage the NPR audience in editorial activities in order to further the quality and diversity of NPR's journalism.

During his time at NPR, Carvin has been interviewed on numerous NPR programs, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Tell Me More and The Diane Rehm Show, as an expert on Internet policy and culture and related topics.

As co-founder of PublicMediaCamp, Carvin has helped NPR and PBS stations around the country bring local tech communities and public media fans together to develop collaborative projects both online and offline.

Prior to coming to NPR in 2006, Carvin was the director and editor of the Digital Divide Network, an online community of educators, community activists, policymakers and business leaders working to bridge the digital divide. For three years, Carvin blogged about the impact of the internet culture on education at the PBS blog learning.now.

During natural disasters and other crises, Carvin has used his social integration skills to mobilize online volunteers. On September 11, 2001, he created SEPT11INFO, a news forum for the public to share information and help refute rumors in the wake of the 9

11 attacks. Following the tsunami off the coast of Indonesia in 2004, Carvin served as a contributing editor to TsunamiHelp, one of the leading sources of tsunami-related citizen journalism. More recently, he worked with CrisisCommons, to help with their development of shared technology solutions to improve emergency management and humanitarian activities in response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

In 1994, Carvin created the pioneering online education resource EdWeb: Exploring Technology and School Reform, one of the first websites to the impact of telecommunications policy on education. Carvin is the founder and moderator of WWWEDU, the Internet's oldest and largest email forum on the role of the Web in education.

Well known as a leader in technology and innovation, Carvin was named by Washingtonian magazine as one of the 100 leading technology innovators in Washington, D.C., in 2009. In 2005, MIT Technology Review magazine included Carvin on TR35, an annual list of 35 of the world's leading high-tech innovators under the age of 35. The District Administration magazine named him as one of America's top 25 education technology advocates in 2001. Carvin received similar honors from eSchoolNews in 1999 when they named him a member of its Impact 30 list of education technology leaders.

After graduating with a bachelor of science in rhetoric and a master of arts in telecommunications policy from Northwestern University, Carvin received the prestigious Annenberg/Washington postgraduate policy fellowship.

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