Noel King

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

How much has the war in Iraq cost the United States? All this week, we focus on Iraq as U.S. forces draw down. We continue our coverage tomorrow with Linda Bilmes from the Harvard Kennedy School. She’ll help us untangle the hard numbers. And we’ll continue our conversations with ordinary Iraqi people. We speak to a young Iraqi teacher from Kurdistan to get her thoughts on what she’ll be teaching her students about Iraq’s past — and future.

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

We’re continuing our coverage of the U.S. drawdown in Iraq. This morning, we marked the twentieth anniversary of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait — and United States involvement in the decades that followed. Tomorrow, we’ll move the discussion up to the present for a look at what’s happening in Iraq right now. Speaking before veterans on Monday, President Obama spoke optimistically about the end of combat operations in Iraq. But according to Iraqi officials, July was the deadliest month in Iraq in more than two years. The U.S. disputes this claim. Jane Arraf of the Christian Science Monitor has been reporting from Iraq since the beginning of the war — and we’ll go to her for clarification. We’ll also speak to Lubna Naji — a 25-year-old recent graduate of Baghdad Medical School. Lubna offers her thoughts on what she expects life to be like after U.S. troops go home.

Federal Judge Susan Bolton issued a blow to Arizona's controversial immigration law Wednesday, blocking key parts of the law, including the provision that requires immigrants to carry their papers with them at all times. We take a look at how long the injunction will stay in place and what Arizona's next legal move might be. And we ask what this means for other states that want to craft their own immigration policies. 

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

We begin with a topic that makes many people uncomfortable: the intersection of race and athletic ability. A research team from Duke and Howard Universities says there is a scientific explanation (based on center of gravity and locomotive physics) for why people of West African descent excel at running while people of European descent excel at swimming.

We’ll talk with Howard University’s Edward Jones, one of the scientists behind the study. We ask Jones how these studies fit into a world in which race is increasingly viewed as a social construct. And Latoya Peterson of Racialicious.com explains why studies like this one make so many people squeamish. Is it racist to draw this kind of conclusion?

Noel King, on the day shift, with some stories we're following today.

This morning on The Takeaway we spoke to New York Times reporters Jane Perlez and Eric Schmitt, who reported on the release of more than 90,000 classified military documents by the website Wikileaks.org. Tomorrow, we speak to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange— a man whom some consider a hero and others call a villain.

BP quarterly earnings are due out tomorrow. Bloomberg’s Alice Schroeder tells us what to expect. Meanwhile, Tony Hayward might soon get his life back. Robert Dudley, an American, is expected to replace Hayward as CEO of BP. We’re asking some of our regular guests from the Gulf region to weigh in on what they would like a new CEO to do first.

Arizona’s immigration law SB 1070 is set to take effect on Thursday and we’re asking how residents—documented and undocumented—are preparing. We’re digging into a report out of Pima County that some immigrants are returning home, and that increased security and high temperatures are leading to more and more deaths along the border.

Greg Mortenson, author of "Three Cups of Tea," joins us to talk about how his book became a must-read at the Pentagon. Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute has built over 100 schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He weighs in on the way forward in the region.

And a slice of life from Houston: Reporter Melissa Galvez hit the streets to ask city residents if the Gulf spill is changing the way they think about energy consumption. The answer may surprise you.

Plus, author Gary Shteyngart on his new book “Super Sad True Love Story,” and seventy years of Bugs Bunny.

This week, Democrats in Congress broke a Republican filibuster and passed legislation to extend unemployment benefits. 2.5 million unemployed people will get payments retroactive to the time they stopped receiving benefits. One of those is Michelle Ives, who got her last check in June, and has resorted to desperate measures while she waited for her check (including taking out a 35 percent loan on her car).

You've got something you want taken offline: a drunken Facebook photo, an ill-advised blog post about your flirtation with Satanism, a frustrated tweet you wish you could take back. As Facebook passes its 500 millionth user, we take a look at new proposals to reduce the threat that we users of the internet pose to ourselves. 

In this day and age, we're used to the rapid rise and fall of public officials. This week, the story changed, and instead, we witnessed the rapid fall and then rise of Shirley Sherrod, the USDA official who was pressured to resign after a video of her making racially-tinged remarks was made public by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.

Noel King on the day shift with some stories we’re following this afternoon. 

As unemployment hovers at just over nine percent, the Senate is expected to vote to extend benefits for out-of-work Americans this afternoon. But here’s a question that’s baffling even economists: Where did all the jobs go? We’re asking listeners and former Takeaway guests, if you’ve lost your job, do you know where it went? And we’ll have an economist break down the national picture. Text the word TAKE to 69866 and tell us.

Updated 6:00pm EST

Arwa Gunja here on the evening shift.

Tomorrow, Senate Democrats are going to reignite their fight to extend unemployment benefits to millions of unemployed Americans.  With a new Senator from West Virginia being sworn in on Tuesday, Democrats are confident they will get the 60 votes they need to push the measure through. But for those tired of waiting on Congress to get some relief, there is another federal program aimed at helping unemployed Americans get back on their feet – job re-training programs. For Sandra Cole, the experience so far has been worthwhile. She retrained as a dental assistant and just last week was hired for part-time position. She is hoping to transition into a full-time job soon, but she recognizes that she is "one of the lucky few." Many people tend not to find jobs as easily, even after going through training. Jeanette Brown is one of them. After being unemployed for two years, she trained in a bookkeeping and accounting program. She completed the training in May and still unemployed. But, she says she is optimistic.

Tomorrow we'll hear from Cole and Brown about their experiences. And if you’ve gone through a similar situation, tell us if you think job re-training works. Were you able to successfully find a new job after going through a training program? Leave us your comments by calling us at 877-8-MY-TAKE, visiting us on Facebook, or leaving a message right here on our website.

In June, 32 members of the U.S. Army took their own lives. That's a sharp uptick compared to the first five months of 2010, when the number of suicides in the Army was actually down thirty percent, from the same months in 2009. What happened in June? 

In an article in this weekend's New York Times Magazine, contributor Emily Bazelon profiles a group she calls "The New Abortion Providers," young doctors who are attempting to move abortion out of clinics and back into hospitals.

Census Data from the years 2002 - 2007 show that the number of minority owned businesses in the US rose by 46 percent during those five years, to about 5.8 million. That's nearly twice the national rate for all businesses during that time.

On Friday, Chrysler will make its last PT Cruiser. Ten years ago, the Cruiser became a cultural phenonenon with buyers willing to wait in line for their chance to own one. Why did the Cruiser strike such a chord?

During this heat wave, many of us are thankful for our air conditioning, despite the power costs. We're talking about the problems with our reliance on A/C and about some of the cultural changes that go with shutting ourselves indoors. We want to know from you, What would your life be like without air conditioning? Would you leave your house more? Interact with more people?

Around 1.3 million people in the U.S. have lost their unemployment benefits since the beginning of 2010.

Yesterday, we talked with two people who have recently lost their benefits: Donovan Marsden in New York and Michelle Ives in Texas. And we asked: does the extension of unemployment benefits provide a disincentive to finding a job? We got an overwhelming number of responses on both sides of that argument. Some listeners thought it was callous even to suggest that people receiving unemployment benefits don't want jobs. A few listeners actually admitted that receiving benefits has made them lazy. Today, we get an economic perspective.

We've all heard a lot about Arizona's controversial and stringent immigration law, SB 1070, which allows Arizona police to question anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally. But 44 other states have introduced immigration legislation of their own since the beginning of 2010. Some worry that the U.S. may soon be facing a patchwork of different laws for different states.

In California, an outbreak of whooping cough — a bacterial infection that results in fits of coughing — has reached epidemic propotions. Five infants, all of them Latino, have died this year. California health officials are urging residents to get vaccinated. Meanwhile, in Colorado, an outbreak of meningitis has killed two Fort Collins residents. The two diseases aren't connected, but their appearance is raising questions about whether we've become complacent about getting vaccinations — or whether lack of access to health care is to blame.

We're following up on a story we did yesterday, from the perspective of Chicago funeral home owner Spencer Leak Sr., about the challenges Chicago is facing in combatting gun and gang violence. On Monday, the Supreme Court struck down a Chicago ban on handgun ownership, a move that divided city residents. Some Chicagoans were thrilled, and say the ability to own a handgun makes them feel safer. Others say even more people will lose their lives. Why is gun violence such a problem in Chicago? The Chicago Police Department says that gang activity was involved in 74 percent of murders in the first five months of 2010. 80 people were shot and thirteen killed over the past two weekends in the city.