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Economy
4:58 am
Sat October 6, 2012

Holiday Jobs Come With Uncertainty For Workers

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Credit Ross D. Franklin / AP
Retailers expect to hire hundreds of thousands of extra holiday workers this year, but the hours can be scarce — and unpredictable.
Credit Ailsa Chang / NPR
Onieka O'Kieffe, 22, hits the streets of Midtown Manhattan to find a retail job this holiday season. She says she needs the second job because she's only getting 17 hours per week at her current job.
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Originally published on Sat October 6, 2012 6:55 pm

Retailers across the country expect to hire hundreds of thousands of extra workers this holiday season to help with the anticipated spike in sales. Retail workers who have been hustling year-round for more hours are looking at that news with a jaded eye — because the vast majority of these seasonal jobs will disappear after December, sending many of these workers back scrounging for more work.

With a 17-hour workweek, Onieka O'Kieffe is left with a lot of time on her hands. Too much time. She said she very often sleeps 12 hours a day just because she can.

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The Two-Way
4:57 am
Sat October 6, 2012

Fallout From Financial Crisis: Thousands Of Nigerian Kids Poisoned By Lead

Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Women and their children wait for medication and instructions on how to use it at the clinic in Dareta, Nigeria. Treating children with high levels of lead is a painstaking process that works only if their environment at home is free from lead.
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Originally published on Sat October 6, 2012 7:27 pm

Gold in general has great PR. It's slick, it's hip, it's bling. But in a remote corner of West Africa, it's killing children.

Lead from illegal gold mines in northwestern Nigeria has sparked what Doctors Without Borders has called the worst case of environmental lead poisoning in years.

The catastrophe is part of the fallout from the collapse of the U.S. housing market.

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Shots - Health Blog
4:57 am
Sat October 6, 2012

Romney Health Care Debate Claim Gets Corrected By His Own Staff

Credit Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
Mitt Romney speaks during the presidential debate Wednesday in Denver.
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Originally published on Sat October 6, 2012 6:55 pm

Independent fact checkers have not been particularly kind to Mitt Romney since Wednesday's first presidential debate in Denver. But one of the candidate's claims turned out to be so far off the mark that he had to be corrected by his own aides — a fact not unnoticed by the Obama campaign.

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Middle East
4:56 am
Sat October 6, 2012

Graffiti Recalls Revolution In Tahrir Square, For Now

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Credit Mohammad Hannon / AP
An Egyptian man waves a bullet casing in front of a mural that was painted on a recently whitewashed wall in Tahrir Square in Cairo.
Credit Nasser Nasser / AP
A mural (pictured above in March) was whitewashed (below) during a cleanup campaign in Cairo's Tahrir Square in September. Graffiti artists repainted the wall soon after.
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Originally published on Sat October 6, 2012 7:43 pm

A massive graffiti mural in Cairo's Tahrir Square documenting the political turmoil in Egypt was whitewashed earlier this month. The next night, several hundred artists and supporters were back, covering the wall in new images and anti-government slogans.

Medical student and painter Doaa Okasha, 20, was outraged when she found out the original mural was gone.

"It's our history there. This wall explains a lot of what happened in the last months, and it's very important to us," she says. "They easily come and erase everything, and we don't accept that."

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Music Interviews
1:03 am
Sat October 6, 2012

Josephine Foster: A 'Vibrating Voice' To Shake The Soul

Credit Jessica Knights / Courtesy of the artist
Josephine Foster's newest album is titled Blood Rushing.
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Originally published on Sat October 6, 2012 6:55 pm

Don't try to pigeonhole Josephine Foster. She has recorded albums of psychedelic rock and Tin Pan Alley, music for children, blues, Spanish folk tunes, 19th century German art songs and a song cycle based on the poems of Emily Dickinson. Although her soprano may be a little unusual, it's arresting.

Foster recently released a new album, Blood Rushing. She spoke with NPR's Scott Simon about finding her voice, collaborating with her husband, singing at funerals and embracing small-town life.

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