Shots - Health Blog
3:25 am
Mon July 16, 2012

Is HIV Still A Death Sentence? Young People Weigh In

Credit Charles Sykes / AP
Young activists distribute condoms at an AIDS awareness event in Ashbury Park, N.J.

Originally published on Mon July 16, 2012 8:11 am

Think of this like a snapshot — a few perspectives of HIV-negative 20-somethings.

To start, we posted the following query on NPR's Facebook page:

"Thirty years ago, a positive HIV status was considered a death sentence. As treatments for the disease have advanced over the past three decades, we're wondering how younger people view the disease today."

Hundreds of people e-mailed and commented with their reactions. We also gathered reactions from young folks we met on the street.

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Shots - Health Blog
3:24 am
Mon July 16, 2012

Treatment Gives HIV's Long-Term Survivors Hope, But Takes A Toll

Credit Amy Sancetta / AP
HIV treatment regimens, like the pills in this patient's hand, keep AIDS at bay, but can take a harsh physical toll over the course of many years.

Originally published on Mon July 16, 2012 12:43 pm

Crystal Roberts-Lee has lived a tough life, and her HIV has, in some ways, been the least of her worries.

She was addicted to heroin and cocaine. Her daughter went to prison. A scorpion tattoo crawling across her neck marks the day her husband died from AIDS. Now, at 59, Roberts-Lee is the healthiest she has ever been.

"After I take my medicine, it's just a normal day for me," she says. "I go on with whatever I have to do. If I'm just out and about, I feel like I'm just like the next person."

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Credit Jay Paul

Allison Aubrey is a correspondent for NPR News. She contributes to The Salt, NPR's James Beard award-winning food blog. And her stories can be heard on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She's host of the NPR video series Tiny Desk Kitchen and has contributed to Shots, NPR's health blog.

Through her reporting Aubrey can focus on her curiosities about food and culture. She has investigated the nutritional, and taste, differences between grass fed and corn feed beef. Aubrey looked into the hype behind the claims of antioxidants in berries and the claim that honey is a cure-all for allergies.

In 2009, Aubrey was awarded both the American Society for Nutrition's Media Award for her reporting on food and nutrition. She was honored with the 2006 National Press Club Award for Consumer Journalism in radio and earned a 2005 Medical Evidence Fellowship by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Knight Foundation. She was a 2009 Kaiser Media Fellow in focusing on health.

Joining NPR in 1998 as a general assignment reporter Aubrey spent five years covering environmental policy, as well as contributing to coverage of Washington, D.C., for NPR's National Desk.

Before coming to NPR, Aubrey was a reporter for PBS' NewsHour. She has worked in a variety of positions throughout the television industry.

Aubrey received her bachelor's of arts degree from Denison University in Granville, OH, and a master's of arts degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Shots - Health Blog
8:52 pm
Sun July 15, 2012

Thriving Gut Bacteria Linked To Good Health

Originally published on Tue July 17, 2012 10:19 am

There's no magic elixir for healthy aging, but here's one more thing to add to the list: good gut health.

A study published in the latest issue of Nature finds diet may be key to promoting diverse communities of beneficial bacteria in the guts of older people.

To evaluate this, researchers analyzed the microbiota, or gut bacteria, of 178 older folks, mostly in their 70s and 80s.

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Environment
5:37 pm
Sun July 15, 2012

From Coal To Gas: The Potential Risks And Rewards

Originally published on Mon July 16, 2012 8:58 am

This past week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a report linking climate change to some of the extreme weather events of 2011, like the devastating drought in Texas and record high temperatures in Britain.

None of this bodes well for the future, but there is a glimmer of hope. It turns out that U.S. carbon emissions are down nearly 8 percent since 2006.

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News
5:35 pm
Sun July 15, 2012

Who Killed Jean McConville? A Battle For IRA Secrets

Originally published on Sun July 15, 2012 11:15 pm

A legal showdown is evolving. It affects an American university, the British government, a brutal Irish paramilitary organization and the murdered mother of 10 children.

Journalist Ed Moloney is fighting to keep secret interviews with former paramilitary members of the Irish Republican Army out of the British government's hands. Those interviews are kept under lock and key at Boston College as part of an oral history project that Moloney started in 2001.

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Jeff Lunden is a freelance arts reporter and producer whose stories have been heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, as well as on other public radio programs.

Lunden contributed several segments to the Peabody Award-winning series The NPR 100, and was producer of the NPR Music series Discoveries at Walt Disney Concert Hall, hosted by Renee Montagne. He has produced more than a dozen documentaries on musical theater and Tin Pan Alley for NPR — most recently A Place for Us: Fifty Years of West Side Story.

Other documentaries have profiled George and Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, Harold Arlen and Jule Styne. Lunden has won several awards, including the Gold Medal from the New York Festival International Radio Broadcasting Awards and a CPB Award.

Lunden is also a theater composer. He wrote the score for the musical adaptation of Arthur Kopit's Wings (book and lyrics by Arthur Perlman), which won the 1994 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical. Other works include Another Midsummer Night, Once on a Summer's Day and adaptations of The Little Prince and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for Theatreworks/USA.

Lunden is currently working with Perlman on an adaptation of Swift as Desire, a novel of magic realism from Like Water for Chocolate author Laura Esquivel. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Remembrances
1:47 pm
Sun July 15, 2012

'Oklahoma!' Actress Celeste Holm Dies At 95

Originally published on Sun July 15, 2012 6:10 pm

Academy Award-winning actress Celeste Holm has died. A star on both stage and screen, Holm was best known for roles in Gentleman's Agreement, All About Eve and Oklahoma! She was 95.

Holm died early Sunday morning in her Manhattan apartment with her husband, family and close friends by her side. She had been hospitalized a couple weeks ago following a fire in actor Robert De Niro's apartment in the same building.

If there was one role that put Holm on the map, it was as the coquettish Ado Annie, in the 1943 hit musical, Oklahoma!

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The Two-Way
12:24 pm
Sun July 15, 2012

Red Cross Declares Civil War In Syria

Credit Pierre Torres / AFP/Getty Images
UN observers inspect a bombed-out school in the Syrian village of Tremsah, where as many as 200 people may have been killed after an armed conflict erupted last week.

Originally published on Sun July 15, 2012 4:43 pm

The conflict in Syria has now reached the level of civil war, the Red Cross announced Sunday.

The declaration means international humanitarian law now applies throughout the country, and is the responsibility of all parties, whether rebel or government.

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The Two-Way
10:34 am
Sun July 15, 2012

Disastrous Flood Response Ignites Russian Rage Online

Credit Sergey Ponomarev / AP
An Emergency Ministry soldier helps to repair religious icons in a church hit by flood water in the town of Nizhnebakansky, about 750 miles south of Moscow, on Tuesday.

Originally published on Wed July 18, 2012 12:54 pm

Russians are slowly beginning to recover from the devastating flooding that soaked the southwestern region of Krasnodar. The floods, which struck in the early morning hours on July 7, reportedly killed more than 150 people.

It wasn't long before outrage flowed. Masha Lipman, a researcher with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow, says the government had advance notice of the disaster, but didn't pass along the message.

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