NPR’s Baghdad Bureau Chief Quil Lawrence discusses Iraq, the disputed election there, and what lies ahead as the U.S. military prepares to start drawing down troops over the course of the summer.

Erratic weather in Niger has disrupted production of millet, one the country’s staple food crops. Now, upwards of 60 percent of the population there is facing hunger. We’ll talk to Concern Worldwide’s country director in Niger, Niall Tierney about the crisis on today’s first Underreported segment.

Earlier this month, eight International Red Cross workers were kidnapped and later released in the Democratic Republic of Congo. On this week’s second Underreported, Jon Elliott, Africa Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch describes the situation in the DRC and why violence there continues.

It has been nearly a year since fighting in north-west Pakistan displaced more than 3 million people. Today, there are still an estimated 1.3 million refugees in the country. We’ll get an update on the situation from Michael Young, International Rescue Committee’s Asia Regional Director, who until ...

Plant-derived ethanol has long been touted as a green alternative to regular gasoline for cars. Since the 1970s, Brazil has embraced ethanol derived from sugar cane and lavished the sugar industry with government subsidies, making the biofuel cheap and plentiful. Today, 90% of new cars sold in Brazil can run ...

President Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review was released this week and has been hailed in some arms control circles for its limits on the first-use of nuclear weapons by the United States. But, the Obama Administration’s FY 2011 defense budget—even when adjusted for inflation—is larger than any Pentagon budget since World ...

As much as 7 percent of the nation’s food is mislabeled to fool consumers into paying more. On today’s Underreported, Lyndsey Layton, National Political Reporter for the Washington Post, explains why food fraud is on the rise and why both large corporations and small-scale producers are looking to ...

On today’s Underreported segment, Jeffrey Levinton, distinguished professor of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University, and Ken Paynter, associate professor and director of Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences Program at University of Maryland, discusses the damage oyster poachers are wreaking in Chesapeake Bay and efforts to restore the ...

For today’s Underreported, Mac McClelland talks about the Burmese government’s secret ethnic cleansing campaign, and her experience living with associates of a US-designated terrorist organization battling Burma's. She’s the author of For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story of Burma’s Never-Ending War.

Geoffrey Parker, a forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Institution has been measuring the size and rate of growth of tree trunks for 22 years. After looking at his data, he determined that many of the trees he was surveying were growing at rate two to four times faster than expected ...

For decades women in Xuan Wei, a county in southern China, have suffered from an astronomically high rate of lung cancer and the reason why has remained largely a mystery. Now, researchers think they have solved the case: the coal that is burned in Chinese kitchens is to blame, but ...

Despite international bans, Zimbabwe continues to mine “blood diamonds” from fields in Marange. On today’s second Underreported, Rona Peligal, the deputy director of the Africa division for Human Rights Watch, describes the human rights abuses there and why they continue.

You can read the ...

In 2008, up to 100,000 Zimbabweans got cholera. On today’s first Underreported, Foreign Policy’s Assistant Managing Editor Elizabeth Dickinson explains why one former United Nations official is now criticizing the organization’s response to the outbreak, and what it says about the UN’s relationship with authoritarian President Robert Mugabe. ...

Last week, the Obama Administration announced at a $1.25 billion settlement in a case brought by thousands of black farmers who were discriminated against in federal farm loan programs. On today’s second Underreported, segment, Krissah Thompson,Washington Post National Reporter, explains why it took 10 years to reach ...

We’ve heard a lot about the home foreclosure rate over the last two years, but what about farm foreclosures? On this week’s first Underreported, Michael Boehlje, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and the Center for Food and Agricultural Business at Purdue University, explains why we ...

A new report by the International Rescue Committee has found that many Iraqi refugees have yet to return home, even as the war enters its seventh year. Many are scattered inside Iraq, but also in Jordan and Syria. For today’s Underreported segment, we’ll speak with Bob ...

On today’s second Underreported, segment we’ll take a look at Iceland’s repeated attempts to dig itself out of financial ruin, and efforts by the country to repay the United Kingdom and the Netherlands money those countries lost in a failed Icelandic bank. We’ll talk to Landon Thomas Jr., ...

On today’s first Underreported, Stacy-Marie Ishmael of the Financial Times explains how Goldman Sachs used a derivatives deal to help Greece’s government hide how serious their debt was. Plus, an update on the negotiations in Europe to bail out Greece.

We discussed Greece's public debt in December. ...