"Terri"—which opens today—is the story of an introverted adolescent who likes watching hawks eat mice and prefers to wear pajamas to school. When his high school vice-principal, Mr. Fitzgerald, takes him under his wing, we learn more about both Terri’s vulnerabilities and Mr. Fitzgerald’s.

Months ahead of the 2012 primary elections, wars of words are heating up between political rivals, some of whom aren’t even running for office. Right now, Michele Bachmann landed herself in some legal hot water when she chose to use Tom Petty's song "American Girl," without the artist's permission. This isn’t the first time artists have taken offense with the political appropriation of their work. 

 

The coming-of-age story is a summer book standard. So many of us remember spending our lazy summer days with Francie from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," the March sisters of "Little Women" or Holden Caulfield of "Catcher in the Rye." The next pick for our Summer Book Club furthers this tradition through a uniquely accurate adolescent voice. Jo Ann Beard's "In Zanesville" follows a teenage narrator and her best friend through high school life in 1970s small-town Illinois. The novel is so transfixing, Celeste claimed she couldn't put it down. John finished it and immediately passed it along to his daughters.

Melonie Ware was a daycare provider in Georgia who was sentenced to life in prison for shaking a nine-month-old baby to death in 2004. But in a 2009 retrial, a court declared that the medical examiner's findings were insufficient, concluding that the baby most likely died because complications due to sickle-cell anemia, and acquitted Ware.

Doctors have credited hundreds of untimely infant deaths to shaken baby syndrome over the years. But more and more, medical experts are starting to doubt that baby shaking was the cause of death in certain cases. A new Frontline documentary, airing tonight on PBS stations, examines some of these cases, including Ware's. 

Randy Newman captured a moment of national anger in "Burn On," a song about the polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969. That environmental disaster pushed Congress and the Nixon administration to create the Environmental Protection Agency and pass laws like the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. But today's guest warns that these laws are woefully outdated, and that clean water is becoming increasingly scarce. Access to freshwater, he argues, is the most urgent problem we face in the twenty-first century.

This morning, we got a little window into the group that's attacked MasterCard, PayPal, and Visa servers from "Anonymous" member Gregg Housh. He says he didn't help in this attack, but did tell us how it all worked:

The people behind Operation Payback have come up with a fairly ingenious way to do it, where it’s as simple as downloading a small piece of software, entering one little web address into this software, and hitting a button — and you’ve joining what they’re calling a voluntary botnet. You don’t have to have any talent. You minimize the application and it’s sitting down in your system tray there, and you don’t even know it’s doing anything, and it’s off just joining in. And anytime they change their target, everyone who’s part of the voluntary botnet changes their target and goes after them.

MasterCard.com, PayPal, and other sites are suffering large-scale attacks from a hacker group called “Anonymous”. The group claims it’s retaliating against companies that have stopped working with WikiLeaks.

Are these prankster antics or the start of a technological war?

The foreclosure crisis is not just about subprime mortgages anymore. Because of job losses and rising health care costs, homeowners who were once able to keep up with their payments are beginning to fall behind. Shannon Riggs, a homeowner from Norfolk, Virginia, who almost lost her home after her husband lost his job, tells The Takeaway her story. And Anya Kamenetz, Staff Writer for Fast Company magazine and author of “Generation Debt,” will look at what options homeowners have, and how the Obama administration can better address the problem.

As the planet heats up, water shortages are becoming an important environmental issue. You've been told to reduce your carbon footprint—but what about your water footprint? To help explain this new means of measuring consumption, we turn to Matthew McDermott, Senior Writer for Treehugger.

Continue reading to see the water footprint of some popular foods and beverages.

The news out of South Africa this week indicates there's something for the HIV-stricken country to celebrate. A new report says that HIV infections among young teens are down. In addition, the Western Cape is seeing fewer transmissions because more males are using condoms, and in the last three years the number of HIV infections has stabilized. Is the march of HIV slowing down?

The Takeaway is joined by Dr. Ernest Darkoh, a global health expert known for revolutionizing Botswana's HIV treatment program, to deconstruct the data. Click through for the full transcript of the interview.

Also, check out some intriguing data visualizations of HIV infection rates plotted against life expectancy, from gapminder.org.

The Obama administration has announced the appointment of a compensation czar who will regulate executive pay at seven of the largest companies getting TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funds. He will also develop a compensation structure for 80 smaller companies. The man who is taking on that job is Kenneth Feinberg, a Washington, D.C. attorney who was in charge of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. He joins The Takeaway to tell us about his plans. (Click through to read the interview.)

One of the five pillars of Islam, “zakat,” is the giving of a small percentage of one’s income to a Muslim charity. President Obama, in his Cairo speech, said that he is "committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat." The practice of zakat came under scrutiny under the Bush administration, when seven charities were closed down and jailed leaders accused of helping fund terrorist organizations abroad. Many Muslims fear that if they give to a religious group, they may be accused of funneling money to terrorists. What steps are needed to make it easier for Muslims to practice this important part of their religion?

The Takeaway talks with Jennifer Turner, the Human Rights Researcher at the ACLU. She’s been interviewing Muslim donors and charities the past year for the ACLU and has talked to many in the Muslim community. Also joining the show is Asra Nomani, she is a Professor of Journalism at Georgetown University and author of "Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam," and she's here to talk about her struggles with giving to Muslim charities as part of her zakat.

We've been discussing President Obama's address to the Muslim world from Cairo University. The president touched on a wide range of issues. To hear more global perspectives on his efforts to improve U.S. relations in the Middle East, we are joined by Marcus Mabry, New York Times international business editor, Rami Khouri, editor-at-large of the Daily Star in Beirut, and Muna Shikaki, a correspondent for Al Arabiya.

Not many parents would publicly admit that they thought about throwing their sleep-deprivation-inducing newborn off a balcony. But writer Michael Lewis decided that it was important to tell the ugly truth about the development of parental love. In his book "Home Game," he talks about learning to be a father to his three children. Lewis talks to The Takeaway about the joys and travails of being a dad.
Read an excerpt from his book, Home Game.

With millions of jobs lost in this economy, people are reflecting on how important their jobs are -- and not just for the obvious financial reasons. Philosopher Alain de Botton has been thinking about what constitues a meaningful life. For his latest book, "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work," he followed working people around the world, going behind the scenes with fishermen, career counselors, and cookie manufacturers, to offer perspective on the working person's life.

Last weekend, researchers announced details of a new cancer “vaccine” that keeps some cancers at bay for more than a year. The announcement came at an oncology conference in Florida that’s considered the world’s largest of its kind. But oncologist Len Lichtenfield, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, says that other research that's just as ground-breaking never sees the light of day because of legal and financial barriers.

Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday. It was the first major automaker since Studebaker in 1933 to attempt to restructure under bankruptcy. Three years later, Studebaker emerged from bankruptcy and managed to stay alive for a few more decades until 1966. Joining The Takeaway is Rebecca Lindland from Global Insight, a financial forecasting company; and Robert Farago, a blogger for The Truth About Cars.