This week, first lady Michelle Obama was doing something she loves to do, talking about nutrition with kids. She hosted the first state dinner for children, welcoming 54 of them and their parents to the White House.
"This is the hottest ticket at the White House, right here, because of all of you," Obama said to the children, who ranged in age from 8 to 12.
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.
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 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.
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.
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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.
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.
