Youth Radio
4:25 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

Calif. School District Finds Gentler Path To Discipline

Credit Robyn Gee
A gavel rests in a makeshift courtroom at Richmond High School in Richmond, Calif. The local school district has cut the number of student suspensions in half in six years by adopting a youth court program and other new discipline methods.

Originally published on Thu June 7, 2012 5:57 pm

Each school year, more than 700,000 California students — predominantly black and Latino — are suspended or expelled.

Robert, a talkative sixth-grader in the city of Richmond, has been suspended three times from his elementary school in the West Contra Costa Unified School District. If he gets suspended one more time, he says, he might get expelled. [NPR has withheld his last name because he is a minor.]

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Poetry
4:25 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

New U.S. Poet Laureate: A Southerner To The Core

Originally published on Thu June 7, 2012 4:54 pm

The United States named its 19th poet laureate today: Natasha Trethewey, a professor of English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta. She is the nation's first poet laureate to hail from the South since the initial laureate — Robert Penn Warren — was named by the Library of Congress in 1986.

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Movie Reviews
4:03 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

'Dark Horse': Love Among The Deeply Damaged

Originally published on Fri June 8, 2012 12:41 pm

For Abe (Jordan Gelber), there is one simple truth in life: "We're all horrible people."

He articulates this insight in Todd Solondz's new film Dark Horse, while on a painfully awkward date with Miranda (Selma Blair), a chronically depressed woman he meets at a wedding reception, where both of them look on glumly at everyone else dancing and having a good time.

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Movie Reviews
4:03 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

'Bel Ami': Period Drama Skips The Small Talk

Credit Magnolia Pictures
The once-penniless Georges Duroy (Robert Pattinson) maneuvers his way to the top of Paris society by wooing and bedding the city's best-connected women — among them the influential Madame de Marelle (Christina Ricci.)

Words, words, words: Novels, especially 19th-century ones, are full of the damned things, which can be an inconvenience for filmmakers doing adaptations.

Directors Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, theater veterans making their cinematic debut with Bel Ami, try to downplay language, which seems a promising idea. But the strategy fails for several reasons, the foremost of which is their leading man.

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Movie Reviews
4:03 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

Paul Williams is 'Still Alive,' And Taking Every Gig

A diminutive giant of the 1970s, Paul Williams composed some of the decade's sweetest and most enduring songs — including The Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" and "Rainy Days and Mondays," Helen Reddy's "You and Me Against the World," Three Dog Night's "An Old Fashioned Love Song," and "Rainbow Connection" for The Muppet Movie.

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Movie Reviews
4:03 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

In 'Patagonia,' Pristine Rivers And A Plan For Dams

The way the Andes divide Patagonia, Argentina gets most of the land and Chile most of the water. As shown in Patagonia Rising, a new documentary, the landscape on Chile's side of the border is similar to coastal British Columbia or the Alaska panhandle: chilly, forested, mountainous and very wet.

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Shots - Health Blog
4:00 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

Abortion-Rights Advocates Pin Hopes On Defense Bill

Credit Alex Wong / Getty Images
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), center, speaks as Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), right, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) at a April news conference on Capitol Hill.

Since Republicans took back the U.S. House in the 2010 elections, abortion has been a fairly constant theme. The House took eight separate abortion-related votes in 2011 — the most in a decade, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America.

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Favorite Sessions
3:54 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

Cold Specks: Singing The 'Graceful' Blues

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Cold Specks' Al Spx.

Al Spx was studying English Literature at the University of Toronto when she came across a line from James Joyce's Ulysses: "Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil lights shining in the darkness." The phrase "cold specks" sparked a fire of inspiration, and Spx knew immediately that she had found the perfect name for the songs she was writing on the side.

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Movie Interviews
3:18 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

Damon Lindelof Risks The Wrath Of Loyal Fans Again

Originally published on Thu June 7, 2012 6:35 pm

Damon Lindelof was a producer on the 2009 reboot of Star Trek, which seemed to win over loyal Trekkies. And this weekend Lindelof will earn the devotion — or wrath — of Alien fans. He helped write the screenplay for the new film Prometheus, an origin story for Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi classic.

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Latin America
3:11 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

Mexico's Once Dominant Party Poised For A Comeback

Originally published on Thu June 7, 2012 4:54 pm

First of two parts

As Mexico approaches its election day on July 1, polls indicate the candidate for the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is well ahead and appears likely to return his party to power.

The PRI governed Mexico for seven decades until 2000, when it was tossed out by an electorate tired of a corrupt political machine. Now, discontent with the current leadership and the rampant drug-related violence has created an opening for the PRI to come back. Still, some Mexicans are queasy about the prospect of the party's resurgence.

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