Noel King

In Afghanistan, our partners the BBC have gained rare access to an American prison for Taliban fighters. The BBC's Paul Wood spent time at the Parwan facility and explains how efforts are being made to ready Taliban members to re-enter society by teaching them useful skills, including bread making. 

The national media frequently paints Detroit as a near constant subject of sad stories during this ailing economy. But there are outliers in every struggling economy, and in this city there is a bright and beautiful outlier: The Detroit Opera House is not struggling at all.  It is thriving, thanks in part to the leadership of its director, David Dichiera.

Speaking at a dinner in Newport, RI, in 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, "We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going back from whence we came."

Dave Masch considers himself strongly tied to the sea. He's lived by the Atlantic Ocean for 56 years, and writes a sporadic column on sea life called "Ask Pops." He joins us to discuss the ocean and those creatures who inhabit it.

After the beating Democrats took in last week's mid-term elections, all eyes, including those of our managing producer, Noel King, will be looking at what the GOP's initial moves will be this week. She'll also look at President Obama's continued trip through Asia, along with Charlie Herman, business and economics editor for The Takeaway and WNYC Radio.

David Sloan, an early Tea Party member, wrote to The Takeaway on Thursday that he fears the Tea Party is being co-opted by the Republican Party. We wanted to speak more with him about what his particular fears were, and where he draws the lines of difference between the Republican agenda and his own. 

With a few days left until mid-term elections, we're looking at the fierce opposition that has emerged during this campaign season to President Barack Obama and the Democratic agenda. Historian Jennifer Weber, author of "Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North," explains how today's Tea Partiers are similar to the "Copperheads" of the 1800s that protested Lincoln and his policies during the Civil War.

Today, we take a deeper look at Rhode Island's political landscape in the run-up to the midterm elections. Rhode Island's unemployment rate, at 11 percent, is one of the highest in the country. Democrats are fighting to hang on to Patrick Kennedy's vacated house seat and President Obama has yet to endorse the Democratic candidate for governor, who is locked in a fierce four-way race. 

We talk to Buddy Cianci, former mayor of Providence and current host of WPRO's talk radio program The Buddy Cianci Show.  

Described as a chain-smoking, impassioned literary critic and political essayist, he has spent his adult life advocating for democratic reform in China. Today, he becomes the first Chinese citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And as of now, it is unclear how he will receive that news in his prison cell.

Liu Xiaobo is the winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his nonviolent political reform movement. The 54-year-old is months into an 11 year prison sentence for "inciting the subversion of state power."

On October 7th, 2001, less than a month after the attacks of September 11, American and British forces entered Afghanistan seeking to disrupt terrorist activities and capture members of al-Qaida. Nine years later we look back and reflect on one of the longest armed conflicts the U.S. has ever seen. Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs joins us for the hour.

All this week, we've talked about class on The Takeaway. And we gave you an assignment: take a photo of something in or around your house that indicates what class you're in. 

You sent us some great photos, which you can see after the jump — and we've asked photographer Karen Marshall to help curate them. Marshall is a documentary photographer. She's on the faculty at the International Center of Photography, where she is a seminar leader in the photojournalism documentary program.

Noel King on the day shift – with some stories we’re following for tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg will reportedly announce on the Oprah Winfrey show that he’s donating $100 million dollars to the troubled Newark public school system. Zuckerberg isn’t the first multi-billionaire to donate vast sums to education, but the result of such generosity isn’t always immediate success. Zuckerberg’s $100 million seems like a drop in the bucket when you consider that the district’s yearly budget is $940 million dollars. That averages out to about $22,000 a year spent on each of the district’s 40,000 students. Nevertheless, only half of those students graduate. Why? WNYC’s Bob Hennelly has been covering the city of Newark since the 1980s. He'll put Newark’s education failures into context for us tomorrow. Bob says you can’t look at the schools without considering the entire city.

Plus, we’ll hear the songs that Chile’s trapped miners have asked to be added to iPods sent down to them from the surface. And New York Times finance reporter Louise Story joins us with a review of Oliver Stone’s "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps."

Noel King with some stories we’re following for tomorrow.

2010 has become the deadliest year for NATO forces in Afghanistan following a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan in which nine people — most of them believed to be American — were killed. Zabul province, where the helicopter went down, is controlled by insurgents but NATO did not report hostile fire. Tomorrow, we'll take a look at both the necessity and the perils of helicopter transit in Afghanistan — and explore the helicopter’s place in modern warfare from Vietnam to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the present day.

Noel King on The Takeaway’s day shift with some stories we’re following for tomorrow.

We’ll spend a full hour tomorrow morning drilling down into the aftermath of the Gulf oil gusher. The Macondo well is plugged, but unanswered questions remain. Chief among them: what actually happened to the five million barrels of oil that spilled into the ocean? And what will be the long-term affects of the oil on the environment? 

We’ll check in with friends of The Takeaway who've joined us from along the Gulf Cost: shrimpers, boat captains, local mayors and restaurant owners.

Afghan voters went to the polls this weekend to cast their ballot in parliamentary elections. More than 2,500 candidates ran for 249 seats. According to reports from Afghanistan, many candidates tried to buy the election by paying voters for their ballots and busing crowds of people into polling stations. Meanwhile, election day quickly turned violent in some locations, with dozens of rocket attacks and violence at polling stations. The New York Times reported that more than 12 people were killed in election-related violence. Due to security concerns, some polling stations remained closed or had very little voter turnout.

Tomorrow, we take a close look at wealth and poverty in America. Census figures released Thursday show that 44 million Americans lived in poverty in 2009. That’s one in seven people. Perhaps even more disturbing, that number is up four million from 2008. The recession is clearly what’s impacting people’s fortunes and the number of impoverished people living in America today is approaching the stark percentage that led to the War on Poverty in the 1960s.

Earlier this week, one of three American hikers who had been detained in Iran since last summer was released from prison. Iranian police arrested Sarah Shourd and her two companions, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, in July 2009 on Iran's border with Iraq and accused the trio of espionage. 

Alex Fattal, Joshua Fattal's older brother says all three hikers are innocent and were wrongly imprisoned.

Politics will continue to dominate the news cycle tomorrow as the Republican Party takes stock of Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell’s upset over Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware. We’ll ask where the conversation between Republicans and Tea Partiers goes from here. And we're asking, Are you moving further along the political spectrum this election season? Are you finding yourself moving further left or further right this year? Let us know.

We’re awaiting primary returns from seven states. Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich will join us with a look at whether the returns paint a cohesive picture of the American political landscape — or whether most of these races were local.

We’re looking forward to a bonanza of state primaries on Tuesday, and while it’s tough to find themes that all of the races have in common, we’ll look at two that seem to be rearing their heads nationwide: voter anger and voter apathy. 

This political season, there's a debate raging over whether to suspend tax cuts for "the rich." But what does it mean to be rich these days anyway? The tax code says it's $250,000 a year. We're asking, How much do you think you have to earn to be considered rich?

Noel King on the day shift with some stories we’re following for tomorrow.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the complex world we inhabit requires a “new American moment.” We’ve asked listeners to weigh in on how they define a classically American moment — whether positive or negative. And we’ve picked a few of our own: the March on Washington, shock and awe and American astronauts landing on the moon. What's yours?