Who Owns Your DNA?; School Budget Cuts; PTSD Treatments; Five Years of YouTube

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Thursday, April 22, 2010

An Arizona tribe gets $700,000 in a court settlement involving misuse of their DNA; schools across the country face steep budget cuts; Google reveals more of its foreign policy; YouTube turns five; the Army treats soldiers with PTSD; 40 years of Earth Day

Top of the Hour: Havasupai Tribe's Settlement on DNA; This Morning's Headlines

The Havasupai tribe's beliefs about their origins were challenged by a study of their DNA, but they fought back and got a $700,000 settlement; and a look at this morning's headlines.

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Settlement with Havasupai Tribe Means $700,000 for Unauthorized Use of DNA

The University of Arizona has agreed to pay $700,000 to 41 Havasupai tribal citizens to settle claims that the university misused DNA samples given by tribe members over a decade ago.

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Obama Pushes Financial Reform in New York, Congress Debates It on 'Bring Your Kids to Work' Day

President Obama visits Lower Manhattan today, to make his case for financial regulation at Cooper Union, not far from Wall Street. Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich joins us to talk about Obama's visit. He looks at the continuing debate over reform in Congress as well, where it is 'bring your kids to work day.'

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    Your Responses on Goldman Sachs and Education Cuts

    On the Web, Facebook and on the telephone lines, our listeners responded to yesterday's financial coverage. You also had a lot to say about our questions on how cuts in education funding across the country are effecting your schools. In this segment, we check out some of your responses.

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    What is Google's Foreign Policy?

    Last month Google said enough is enough and moved its search operations out of mainland China, causing noticeable diplomatic waves. Yesterday, the company took another step, revealing some of the extent of its foreign policy. It published this explanation of censorship requests from all the governments with whom they deal.

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    China's Controlled Day of Mourning for Last Week's Earthquake

    Over 2,000 people died in last week's earthquake that hit the Qinghai provence of China. Today, the country's government is asking for a day of mourning, but some aespects of the recognition of loss of life has a compulsory feel. An example: all forms of entertainment have been taken off television to run government messaging about the quake.

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    YouTube Stars on YouTube's 5th Anniversary

    Five years ago this week, the first video was uploaded to a new online video sharing site called YouTube. It was grainy, slow-paced, and featured elephants: hardly the sort of thing you'd forward to one's coworkers.

    Featuring YouTube co-founder Jawad Karim, it was soon joined by millions more video clips: some of them polished, controversial, mundane, irritating and laugh-out-loud funny.

    Today, in honor of YouTube's anniversary, we talk with two ordinarly people who found international fame thanks to YouTube.

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    Top of the Hour: Cuts in Education Funding Taking its Toll; This Morning's Headlines

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    Budget Cuts Affecting Schools Across the Country

    Across the country, cash-strapped schools say budget cuts are forcing them to lay off teachers. Secretary of education Arne Duncan has called the layoffs — which may number in the hundreds of thousands — a potential catastrophe for the education system. The Takeaway talks to superintendents on opposite coasts who find themselves in similar positions. 

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    Takeouts: The NFL Draft, Remembering I.O.C. President Juan Antonio Samaranch

    • NFL TAKEOUT: The NFL draft starts tonight in New York City, and sports contributor Ibrahim Abdul-Matin has all the rumors swirling around the event. The St. Louis Rams have the first overall pick, so we talk to one of their fans, Justin Stine, lead blogger of Ramblin' Fan, to find out who who he hopes will be their choice.
    • OLYMPIC TAKOUT: The Olympic world lost one of its most influential leaders yesterday, former I.O.C. President Juan Antonio Samaranch. We're joined by Jere Longman, New York Times sports reporter, who tells us more about the influential figure in the Olympic world.

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    New Treatments for PTSD Among US troops

    Since 2001 almost two million American service personnel have been deployed in either Afghanistan or Iraq. These conflicts have taken their toll on the mental wellbeing of many veterans — thousands have come home suffering from various levels of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Our partner, the BBC, has been investigating some innovative new programs to help identify, treat and prevent PTSD at Walter Reed military base in Washington D.C., and Fort Hood in Texas.

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    Eleven Still Missing in Oil Rig Explosion

    Survivors of Tuesday night's explosion on an offshore oil rig in Louisiana are still arriving home this morning, but the incident still has U.S. Coast Guard personnell searching for 11 people, and seven are critically injured. The fire on the BP-owned rig still burns out of control, spewing crude oil into the air so powerfully that it can be seen from the Louisiana coast. How unusual are these occurances, and what have we learned about the cause of this giant explosion and fire?

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    Earth Day: A 40 Year Long Experiment in Environmentalism

    It's been 40 years since activists got together to set aside a special day to encourage people to think about our environment. Denis Hayes, the principal organizer of the first Earth Day back in 1970, says this day wove together some of the disparate agendas within the fractious environmental movement. But Heather Rogers, journalist and author of the new book "Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution," says that while Earth Day was originally a good idea, a new tension exists today in how the movement should move forward.

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