The Two-Way
1:54 pm
Tue March 6, 2012

Mine Safety Agency Reports Failures Before Deadly Explosion

Credit Jeff Gentner / AP
Mine helmets and painted crosses sat at the entrance to Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch coal mine on April 5, as a memorial to the 29 miners killed there one year earlier.

Originally published on Tue March 6, 2012 5:19 pm

The latest federal review of the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion again blames Massey Energy for the deaths of 29 coal miners and says Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) failures did not directly contribute to the blast.

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Shots - Health Blog
1:27 pm
Tue March 6, 2012

Health Centers At Schools Get A Funding Boost

Credit Kelley Weiss / NPR
April Casanova-Rios (second from right) visits the school health center at Abraham Lincoln High School in Los Angeles with her family. Her son, Isaiah Casanova (to her right), is a sophomore at the school.

Originally published on Tue March 6, 2012 5:19 pm

Under the federal health care law, money is going out around the country to help school campuses boost health services for their students.

At Abraham Lincoln High School in Los Angeles students often visit a modest trailer at the back of the sprawling campus. It's in a neighborhood near downtown L.A. where houses are missing windows and have peeling paint.

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Shots - Health Blog
12:11 pm
Tue March 6, 2012

Upset Men And The Happy Women Who Love Them

Credit iStockphoto.com

Originally published on Tue March 6, 2012 2:14 pm

Men like it when women let them know when they're happy. Women like it when men share their anger and frustration.

Well, that sounds like a bit of a problem.

But the good news, researchers say, is that what matters most in a relationship is whether it feels like the other person is really trying to relate to the emotions, whether they're happy or sad.

It's not so hard to understand why men get satisfaction out of seeing their wife or girlfriend happy. Wouldn't anyone?

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The Record
12:00 pm
Tue March 6, 2012

Disney Songwriter Robert Sherman Has Died

Credit Ezio Petersen / UPI/Landov
Composer/lyricist Robert Sherman (left) and his brother Richard stand next to the car used in the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The brothers wrote the songs for the movie, as well as a musical version that began running in 2002.

Robert Sherman — one half of the songwriting team behind Disney movies and major hit musicals — has died. He was 86. The Oscar-winning Sherman Brothers, Robert and Richard, wrote some of the most enduring Disney songs of all time. Their output was astounding: Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Aristocats.

John Lasseter, of Pixar and Disney, once said, "You cannot forget a Sherman brothers song for your life."

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Presidential Race
11:55 am
Tue March 6, 2012

Super Tuesday: At A Glance

Credit Joshua Lott / Reuters /Landov
Ten states hold nominating contests on Tuesday. Here, a voter walks to a polling station in Phoenix on Feb. 28, 2012.

Originally published on Mon March 5, 2012 9:13 pm

Ten states hold presidential nominating contests on Tuesday. While the scope is smaller than Super Tuesdays in the past, the candidates are still fighting fiercely for delegates.

Alaska

  • Format: Presidential preference poll
  • Timing: Starts at 8 p.m. ET
  • Delegates: 27
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Song Of The Day
11:54 am
Tue March 6, 2012

Lindsey Buckingham: An Oasis Of Acceptance

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Lindsey Buckingham's "End of Time" opens with an inquisition into the infinite.

Originally published on Tue March 6, 2012 5:00 am

Compared to the casualness with which Lindsey Buckingham attended to the first 25 years of his solo career, the past six years have seen a flurry of activity. That goes not just for the speed with which he's churned out his last three albums, but also for the bulk of material they contain.

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Marc Hirsh lives in the Boston area, where he indulges in the magic trinity of improv comedy, competitive adult four square and music journalism. He has won trophies for one of these, but refuses to say which. He writes for the Boston Globe and has also been spotted on MSNBC and in the pages of Amplifier, the Nashville Scene, the Baltimore City Paper and Space City Rock, where he is the co-publisher and managing editor. He once danced onstage with The Flaming Lips while dressed as a giant frog. It was very warm.

Opinion
11:54 am
Tue March 6, 2012

Foreign Policy: My Drone War

Credit Aamir Qureshi / AFP/Getty Images
Pakistani tribesmen shout anti-U.S. slogans during a protest in Islamabad on Feb. 25, 2012, against U.S. drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal region. Obama confirmed that drones target Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants on Pakistani soil, but American officials do not discuss details of the covert program.

Originally published on Tue March 6, 2012 7:49 am

Pir Zubair Shah is a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

"We don't even sit together to chat anymore," the Taliban fighter told me, his voice hoarse as he combed his beard with his fingers. We were talking in a safe house in Peshawar as the fighter and one of his comrades sketched a picture of life on the run in the borderlands of Waziristan. The deadly American drones buzzing overhead, the two men said, had changed everything for al Qaeda and its local allies.

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Planet Money
11:54 am
Tue March 6, 2012

Baseball Teams Are Acting Like Airlines

Credit Charles Rex Arbogast / AP
Starting this year, prices for bleacher seats at Wrigley will rise and fall based on demand.

Originally published on Tue March 6, 2012 7:17 am

Baseball teams are finally doing what airlines have been doing for decades: changing ticket prices on the fly, based on demand.

At ballparks around the country this year, ticket prices will fall when rain is in the forecast and rise when a superstar comes to town.

From an economic standpoint, the only question is why they didn't do it sooner. Why not sell seats on the cheap if they'd sit empty otherwise? Why not charge a premium for sellouts?

For a long time, changing prices according to changes in demand just felt wrong; it was what scalpers did.

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Opinion
11:53 am
Tue March 6, 2012

Weekly Standard: Our Town Meetings

Credit Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Steve Carlton speaks during a debate to vote on a resolution calling for the possible impeachment of U.S. President George W. Bush March 25, 2006 at a town meeting in Brattleboro, Vermont. Vermont's town meetings are one example American democracy.

Originally published on Tue March 6, 2012 7:11 am

Geoffrey Norman edits the website VermontTiger.com.

Today, the first Tuesday in March, is town meeting day in Vermont, as it has been for more than a century. Town meeting was a tradition in Vermont before there was any officially designated town meeting day. Town meeting was part of Vermont before Vermont was part of the Union.

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