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Pennsylvania Cuts Medicaid Coverage For Dental Care

Credit Erika Beras

Marcia Esters hopes charity will pay for dental work that Medicaid used to cover.

By editor

Originally published on Sun July 15, 2012 6:41 am

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Marcia Esters needs crowns fused to six of her bottom teeth and new dentures. But because of changes made to Medicaid in Pennsylvania, she now has to pay for it all herself.

"It's thousands of dollars' worth of work that I cannot afford," she says.

Esters also uses a wheelchair. Because she couldn't get get her teeth fixed, she has spent the last few months eating pureed food and avoiding people.

"I don't go anywhere unless I have to," she says. "If you could look or feel halfway decent, it just helps, it really does."

4:12 pm

Sat July 14, 2012

Week In News: The 'Swiftboating' Of Mitt Romney

By editor

Originally published on Sat July 14, 2012 6:21 pm

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Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GUY RAZ, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

MITT ROMNEY: I had no role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after February of 1999.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think most Americans figure if you're the chairman, CEO and president of a company that you are responsible for what that company does.

ROMNEY: That's ridiculous and disturbing to come from their campaign and beneath the dignity of the president.

3:31 pm

Sat July 14, 2012

'Sunny Chernobyl': Beauty In A Haze Of Pollution

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Credit Manan Vatsyayana / AFP/Getty Images

Garbage litters the banks of India's holy Yamuna River on World Water Day 2010. For decades, the Yamuna has been dying a slow death from pollution. According to Blackwell, even its most ardent defenders refer to it as a "sewage drain."

Credit AFP / AFP/Getty Images

According to Blackwell, environmental problems aren't always caused by the presence of something toxic. They can also be caused by the absence of something. Take, for example, Brazil, where intense soybean agriculture has been inching its way into the Amazon, posing a threat to forested regions.

Credit Victor Drachev / AFP/Getty Images

The abandoned village of Vezhishche in Belarus sits within the exclusion zone established after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The zone was one of Andrew Blackwell's first stops on his tour of the world's most ruined places.

Credit Peter Parks / AFP/Getty Images

The coal-centric economy of Linfen, China, has earned it a reputation for being one of the most polluted cities in the world.

Credit Elizabeth Dalziel / AP

Guiyu, China, is known for its electronics recycling workshops, but Blackwell says the town has a strangely rural, even agricultural, feel. "There are giant piles of keyboards, which reminded me a lot of bales of cotton," he says.

Credit Todd Korol / Reuters/Landov

Blackwell also visited the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, which would supply the oil for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline through the U.S.

Credit Victor Drachev / AFP/Getty Images

Credit /

Credit Lucian Read / Courtesy of Rodale Books

Andrew Blackwell is a journalist and filmmaker living in New York City.

By editor

Originally published on Sun July 15, 2012 3:04 am

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In some of the dirtiest places on Earth, author and environmentalist Andrew Blackwell found some beauty. His book, Visit Sunny Chernobyl, tours the deforestation of the Amazon, the oil sand mines in Canada and the world's most polluted city, located in China.

Blackwell says his ode to polluted locales is a bid for re-engagement with places people have shrunk away from in disgust.

Radioactive To Its Core

His first stop was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, Chernobyl.

1:18 pm

Sat July 14, 2012

U.N. Enters Syrian Town To Investigate Assault

By Dana Farrington

Originally published on Sat July 14, 2012 2:39 pm

United Nations observers have entered the Syrian town of Tremseh to investigate an attack reported to be the bloodiest so far since the uprising against President Bashar Assad.

The details of the incident are unclear, as The Associated Press reports:

1:16 pm

Sat July 14, 2012

Let Them Eat Kale: Vegetarians And The French Revolution

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Credit Wikimedia

The execution of Marie Antoinette. Artist unknown.

Credit DEA / A. DAGLI ORTI / De Agostini/Getty Images

Roman civilization, 1st century A.D. Relief portraying a feast.

By editor

Originally published on Mon July 16, 2012 9:29 am

Saturday was Bastille Day, the French holiday commemorating a pivotal moment of the French Revolution: The storming of the Bastille prison. But in addition to remembering the revolutionaries with a spirited verse of "Do You Hear The People Sing?"* should we also celebrate with a plate of veggies?

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