NASA's Dawn probe is giving scientists a closer look at two of the most overlooked objects in the solar system: asteroids Vesta and Ceres. Find out why Vesta and Ceres can teach us about the origins of the solar system. Dr. Thomas Prettyman is a member of the Dawn science ...

Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are suing NASA over the Bush administration’s attempts to investigate the scientists’ personal lives. Attorney Dan Stormer is representing the scientists.

War in the Democratic Republic of Congo officially ended five years ago, but an estimated 45,000 people still die there every month. Dr. Richard J. Brennan is Health Director of the International Rescue Committee; Alyoscia D’Onofrio, regional director of the DRC for the IRC, joins us from Bukavu ...

A controversial scientific theory holds that fertilizing the ocean with massive amounts of iron would reduce greenhouse gases - and thus slow global warming. But critics says that large-scale environmental tampering is too risky. Dr. Scott Doney, Senior Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, explains more about the pros and ...

Find out what humans can learn from studying hippo sweat, which may have powerful antibiotic and sunblock properties. Herpetologist Dr. Brady Barr explains more about the promises of hippo sweat, and why he has to don a 200-pound hippo decoy suit in order to collect samples of hippo sweat to ...

The Federal Election Commission (FEC), the agency that administers and enforces campaign finance laws, has essentially shut down due to a shortage of commissioners. We’ll look into the reasons behind the shortage, why the Senate has been in a stalemate over commissioner nominees, and what it could mean for the ...

In Mexico, grupero musicians are being killed at an alarming rate – 13 in the past year and a half. Last month, singer Zayda Pena was shot to death in a hospital emergency room; Sergio Gomez of K-Paz de la Sierra beaten, tortured, and strangled. Maureen Meyer of the Washington ...

People struggling to survive violence, forced displacement, and disease in Somalia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere went underreported in the news this year. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières has released its 10th annual “Top Ten” Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2007. Executive Director of MSF-USA Nicolas de Torrenté discusses the list.

Cyberwars may be the wars of the future. In April 2007, cyberattacks from Russia crippled the banking, police, and government offices of Estonia; in June, the US accused the Chinese military of hacking into a network used by Defense Secretary Gates. Leonard talks to Andrew Macpherson of Justiceworks at the ...

Cellphones are helping to connect the world’s poor to the global economy. Nicholas P. Sullivan is author of You Can Hear Me Now.

US sex offender laws may do harm than good, according to a recent report from Human Rights Watch. Strict notification laws and residency requirements don’t reflect the reality of the risks children face, may not protect victims, and violate the basic human rights of former offenders.

Sarah Tofte is a ...

The war in Iraq gets more headlines, but US soldiers in Afghanistan are still battling it out with the Taliban and Al Qaeda the old-fashioned way – traveling on foot, building crude bunkers, and advancing slowly. Sebastian Junger and photographer Tim Hetherington joined an American platoon in the Korengal Valley, ...

Most of the news from Afghanistan focuses on the Taliban, or US and NATO troops, or the opium poppy crop. We hear very little about what the people Afghanistan think about what’s happening to their country. Pollster and political scientist Craig Charney of Charney Research recently conducted a poll of ...

Former NPR correspondent Sarah Chayes lives and works in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where she’s founded a soapmaking company, Arghand, to help rebuild the war-torn country. She tells us the latest on the resurgence of the Taliban there.

Sarah Chayes' article in the Dec. 2007 issue of the Atlantic Monthly magazine is ...

Belgium has been without a government since June. And there’s a movement afoot to split Belgium apart, into the Dutch-speaking Flanders region and French-speaking Wallonia. Journalist Robert Lane Greene of the Economist joins us for today’s Underreported.

Scientists have a lot to learn from fireflies and glowing jellyfish. On Underreported: a look at the science of biofluorescence, and how it could lead to revolutionary advances in brain research and even military technology. Vincent Pieribone and David Gruber are co-authors of the book Aglow in the Dark.

Aglow ...

Back in August, veteran Sri Lankan journalist Iqbal Athas told us why he was in grave danger because of government crackdowns on freedom of the press. He joins us again today to update us on the situation there, and whether the threats against him have died down.

Radio is THE medium in the eastern Congo. Wanda Hall of Interactive Radio for Justice (IRfJ) produces radio shows there exploring ways to achieve justice and reconciliation post-conflict in the Ituri region of the Congo, where millions have died during the war.

In 2006, Alabama’s Democratic Governor Don Siegelman was convicted of corruption charges, and he was sentenced to 7 years in prison. But top Alabama Republicans involved in the same scandal were not investigated or prosecuted. On Underreported, Adam Zagorin, a journalist for Time magazine, talks about what happened, and whether ...

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been holding prisoners and hostages for years, including high-profile former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, as well as three Americans who were captured after a plane crash in 2003. For the second part of today's Underreported, we'll look into who the hostages ...