Father Mina celebrates the Christmas Nativity Liturgy, the start of Christmas, at the Coptic Orthodox Church of St. George on Jan. 6 in Brooklyn, N.Y. Coptic churches around the country have witnessed a surge of Christians fleeing Egypt since the start of the Arab Spring.
It's not hard to find online shoppers these days. Take the hipster cafe in San Francisco's Mission District where Shirin Oskooi opens her laptop and ticks off her latest Amazon purchases.
Next to her is Craig Sumner. He opens an Amazon invoice to see how much sales tax he was charged on his latest pair of Levis: none.
A job fair was held at the The Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., last month. The U.S. unemployment rate declined in August in part because the number of "discouraged workers" climbed.
Credit Courtesy of Geoff Dutton
Geoff Dutton, an unemployed software developer, has given up on finding a job. He says the market has shifted, and he could not keep up. "I wasn't up on the new version of everything anymore," he says.
The U.S. population is growing. In normal times, the labor force — working or not — would be growing too. But these are not normal times, and the labor force is actually smaller than it was four years ago, meaning millions of people who should be there aren't.
The reasons people drop out of the workforce are myriad. People go back to school. Others have health issues or family priorities that keep them from looking for work. But some stop looking because they are discouraged.
As U.S. embassies and consulates face protests in the Muslim world over an anti-Islamic film, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is walking a fine line. She is distancing herself and the State Department from the video that has sparked anger among Muslims, but stressed the US commitment to free speech.
"To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible," she said Thursday in Washington, D.C. "It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage."
Our friends at Weekend Edition are trying something different starting this weekend. They're calling on NPR reporters to answer some of your questions on different topics.
Originally published on Tue October 16, 2012 3:03 pm
The NPR Music site took center stage at the Apple iPhone 5 announcement yesterday. Mashable and The Verge captured this moment showing the NPR Music homepage featuring The Avett Brothers' First Listen.
