Heidi Accola works a stand at the farmers market in Baraboo, Wis. She runs a 1-acre organic farm with her husband, but she says they don't talk politics at home because it gets too heated.
Credit Melissa Block / NPR
A bumper sticker on the car of Bob Greenwood of Baraboo, Wis. "Recall Santa" reflects the bitterly divisive recall election this year, which Republican Gov. Scott Walker survived easily.
Wisconsin is a prime battleground state in this year's presidential election.
Republicans hope the pick of native son Paul Ryan as their vice presidential nominee will bolster their chances to turn the state red in November. Wisconsin hasn't voted for a Republican for president since 1984. Barack Obama won the state by a blowout 14 points in 2008. And a run of Wisconsin polls this week shows him widening his lead over Mitt Romney.
So what do Wisconsin voters have to say about their choices — and their mood?
British artist Dominic Wilcox has designed a pair of shoes called "No Place Like Home," inspired by Dorothy's red slippers in The Wizard of Oz. The shoes are equipped with GPS and tell the wearer how to get to his or her destination with a click of the heel. Audie Cornish and Robert Siegel have more.
Just a few months ago, most observers believed Republicans had a pretty decent chance to take control of the U.S. Senate. Now, that doesn't seem as likely.
Robert Siegel talks to regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of The New York Times. They discuss Mitt Romney's "47 percent," new polls on the presidential race, and close Senate races.
Jerome Horwitz, the developer of the antiretroviral drug AZT, died earlier this month. Audie Cornish speaks with Paul Volberding, Director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of San Francisco about how AZT revolutionized AIDS research.
Arefa with her host family, sisters Jami Valentine (left) and Staci Freeman. Doctors in the U.S. have been treating Arefa's third-degree burns, and also performed skin-graft surgery for the top of her head. Each morning still requires a fresh dressing.
Credit Courtesy of Solace for the Children
Valentine and Freeman greet Arefa after she arrived at LAX in June.
There is limited medical infrastructure in war-torn Afghanistan, so severely wounded children are sometimes brought to the U.S. for medical care. Doctors in America say that for one little girl, her struggle to stay alive for three years until finding her way from central Afghanistan to a hospital in Los Angeles is nothing short of a miracle.
Egyptians destroy an American flag pulled down from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Sept. 11, during a protest over the film that insulted the Prophet Muhammad.
The protests and violence aimed at U.S. interests in the Middle East have set off a domestic debate about what the U.S. could or should do to relate to new political movements in the region. The Obama administration says it will continue to engage the region. The campaign of Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, says the U.S. needs to do more to lead.
But there are others who say that both parties have it wrong, and that U.S. policies from both Republican and Democratic administrations have failed.
Cuban-Americans know a thing or two about what can happen when a government seizes wealth and redistributes it, as Fidel Castro's regime did five decades ago in Cuba.
So Mitt Romney had an especially receptive audience Wednesday night at a rally of Cuban-Americans in Miami, when he launched his campaign's latest line of attack on President Obama.
"He said some years ago something which we're hearing about today on the Internet," Romney told the crowd. "He said that he believes in redistribution."
