North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il begins handing power to his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un; listeners respond to middle-class indicators; Army specialist Jeremy Morlock to face charges of premeditated murder in Afghanistan; training returning veterans for job placement; a new survey finds most Americans don't know as much about religion as they think they do; why people still believe in alien visitations; Obama administration wants to make it easier for the government to wiretap the internet; Ingrid Betancourt on six years of captivity by the FARC.
Todd Zwillich guest hosts for Celeste Headlee, who is off for the day.
North Korea observers believe the country's dictator Kim Jong-il has tapped his son, Kim Jong-un, to replace him.
Reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has promoted his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, to the rank of general, just one day before a rare meeting of North Korea's ruling Workers Party. The move added to speculation that Kim Jong-un will take over for his ailing father in the future.
Is it income or material possessions? Is it the ability to have a parent raise their children as opposed to a nanny or daycare? Is it being a homeowner or owning your vehicle? Is it a state of mind? These are some of your answers to the question we posed yesterday: What signifies middle class to you?
Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock could potentially face a court-martial after becoming the first of 5 soldiers to face an Article 32 hearing – the equivalent of a grand jury – yesterday, on charges of murdering 3 unarmed Afghan civilians.
Marcus Mabry, associate national editor for The New York Times, has been following this story and shares the developments with us.
Click after the jump to see a video of Morlock confessing to the murders.
The U.S. is scrambling to keep the Palestinians and Israelis talking this morning since Israel's moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank expired on Sunday night. The United Nations, along with the French, British, and American governments have all called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to put a stop to the construction.
Also drawing international attention this morning, Israel's military took control of a boat carrying nine Jewish activists attempting to breach the naval block of Gaza. The incident comes four months after the Israeli military killed nine Turkish activists during a raid on a flotilla also attempting to break the blockade.
For the latest from Israel, we're joined by New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner.
The military ads we see on television often claim that enlisted men and women have the opportunity to gain valuable job skills while serving our country. Whether the dream is to be an engineer or a journalist, the promise is that the military can help that dream to come true. But are these promises real? And what do real veterans face when trying to find work?
A new study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public life has produced some surprising results. Many Americans who identify themselves as religious are vastly ignorant of their own religions, while atheists and agnostics, along with Jews and Mormons, scored highest.
America is the most religious industrialized country in the world, but a new survey finds that few Americans are well-informed when it comes to religion. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life called more than 3,4000 Americans and asked them to answer 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions and leaders. The study found that most Americans answered around half the questions incorrectly. The people that scored highest were agnostics and atheists, with Jews and Mormons following closely behind.
"President Obama is a Muslim!" ... "The U.S. government was involved in the attacks on 9/11!" ... "Area 51 is full of little green men!"
We've all heard conspiracy theories with no basis in observable fact; it's that last one we're looking at today. 2010 has seen a significant increase in UFO sightings, and according to various polls, around a fifth of all Americans believe in aliens. Why? We discusses the evolution of belief systems and irrational thoughts with Professor William Ramsey, specialist in philosophy of the mind and cognitive science and an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
Federal law enforcement and national security officials are pushing Congress to mandate that all online communications, such as Facebook and Skype, must be technically capable of intercepting and unscrambling encrypted messages if a court issues a wiretap order.
Yuri Luzhkov, the longtime mayor of Moscow, has been fired by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev after holding the job for 18 years. Though Luzhkov has been considered a popular politician, Premier Vladimir Putin changed the Russian constitution so mayors and governors are now appointed and dismissed by presidential decree. To tell us how and why fortunes changed for this once powerful politicians, we're joined by the BBC's Olexiy Solohubenko in Moscow.
A little over two years ago, Ingrid Betancourt, former candidate for the Presidency of Colombia, was freed in a dramatic military rescue mission after six years of being held hostage. She and other hostages, incluing three Americans, had been taken captive by narco-terrorists known as the FARC rebels.
She has written a poetic account of those six years in her new book, Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle
Kambiz Hosseini: Iran's Jon Stewart on the Presidential Election
P is for Prison: Sesame Street and Overpopulation in America's Jails
Overpopulation of Prisons, The History of Privacy & Democracy, Will Snowden Be Extradited?
Arming the Syrian Rebels, Voices Against the War on Drugs, The Eiffel Tower as a Musical Instrument
Extradition or Rendition: How Will the U.S. Get Snowden Back on U.S. Territory?
The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
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