Search results for

It's a battle for which city has the hottest New Year's Eve celebration. In New York's Times Square, police estimate a half million people will line the streets in a celebration complete with search lights, lazer beams and 3000 pounds of confetti. But in Las Vegas, 200,000 visitors are expected to celebrate and the big moment will come at 9 pm, with the "implosion" of the Hacienda Hotel. Rooms at adjacent hotels with good views have been booked for months, and "implosion parties" are planned. NPR's Margot Adler reports.

between the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago over Meigs Field, the tiny airport on Lake Michigan, which is very convenient for state officials traveling to and from the capital in Springfield. The State legislature has voted to take control of the airport site, something Mayor Richard Daley promises to fight in court. Chicago wants to make a public park on the land.

NPR's Lawrence Sheets reports from Moscow that Russian police are rounding up and harassing hundreds of ethnic Chechens in the Russian capital in the wake of last month's attack on a Moscow theater by Chechen gunmen. There have also been acts of violence against Chechen residents of the city. Some one hundred twenty Russians died in the theater siege, most when Russian special forces pumped incapacitating gas into the building to disable the hostage takers.

Two students from an inner city school in New Jersey win a $100,000 scholarship in the prestigious Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology. NPR's Juan Williams talks with national science fair team winners Juliet Girard and Roshan Prabhu about their research into the genetic mapping of rice to increase yields.

As anti-war protesters arrive in Washington, D.C., for weekend demonstrations, local police are ready with surveillance cameras. Critics say the presence of the cameras will discourage some people from participating. City officials say the cameras are important to manage resources in case violence erupts. NPR's Larry Abramson reports.

Theresa Schiavone reports on the public television documentary, Two Towns of Jasper, which examines the racial divide in the Texas city where the 1998 racially motivated murder of James Byrd Jr. occurred. Two New York filmmakers, one black and one white, made the movie as a way to reconcile their differing views about race relations. During the Byrd murder trials in 1999, Marco Williams, who is black, interviewed black residents of Jasper; Whitney Dow, who is white, interviewed white residents.

NPR's Gerry Hadden reports from Mexico City on efforts to fight the spread of the AIDS virus, especially among the migrant worker population. Six cross-border programs have been established to provide educational and other resources, but researchers say migrant laborers who contract the virus in the United States and then come home to their families, often spread the virus deep inside Mexico, to areas where there are no AIDS programs. The campaign to halt the spread of AIDS also is hindered by cultural taboos that make it difficult to educate the population and change people's behavior.

Texas Governor George W. Bush has expanded his presidential campaign team to include a squad of his fellow Republican governors. The governors rallied with Bush in Kansas City today before fanning out across the country to campaign for the national GOP ticket. Bush told a cheering crowd that the Clinton-Gore administration has been an obstacle to reform at the state level, because it defended a dominant policy-making role for Washington. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports.

Residents reported a pothole in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and decided to fill the hole with a Christmas tree. City officials have since covered the pothole with a metal plate and made plans to fill it.

In Chinese cities, the divorce rate has tripled since 1980 as the Communist Party has allowed more personal freedom. It is common for men to have extramarital affairs. Men who leave their wives often provide little or no support. China's old divorce law is largely silent on the subject of alimony because private property did not exist when the law was written. Now China is revising the law. Because there is more public debate on these matters, women are helping to shape the new law, wrestling with questions like "should adulterers be imprisoned?" NPR's Rob Gifford reports.