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Underreported

A Weekly Feature on The Leonard Lopate Show

Airs every Thursday at noon

Major news events throughout the world continue to be largely ignored until they reach tragic proportions. Underreported, a weekly feature on The Leonard Lopate Show, tackles these issues and gives an in-depth look into stories that are often relegated to the back pages.

Underreported: Tropical Diseases and Poor Countries

The Leonard Lopate Show

January 28, 2010

Today, nearly all of the 1.4 billion people who live below the World Bank’s poverty line are infected with hookworms or related parasites. We’ll look at the impact neglected tropical diseases, such as hookworm, has had on the world poorest countries with Dr. Peter J. Hotez. He is President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, & Tropical Medicine at George Washington University. He recently wrote the article "Gandhi’s Hookworms" in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

More information is available at www.globalnetwork.org.

Underreported: The Mexican Drug War

The Leonard Lopate Show

January 28, 2010

Mexico’s war against drugs has accelerated in recent years—with deadly results. For today’s second Underreported segment, we’ll speak with Ken Ellingwood, a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times based in Mexico City and author of the book Hard Line: Life and Death on the U.S.-Mexico Border. You can read the LA Times's complete coverage of the Mexican drug war here.

Underreported: Limbo States

The Leonard Lopate Show

January 21, 2010

Places like Iraqi Kurdistan, Somaliland, and The Republic of Abkhazian may not have a seat at the UN or show up on many maps, but they still act like quasi-countries in the hopes of one day becoming independent. On today’s Underreported segment we’ll look at some of these places with Graeme Wood, a staff editor for The Atlantic. His article "Limbo World" appears in the Jan/Feb issue of Foreign Policy Magazine.

Underreported: UN Cutting Back on Fraud Investigations

The Leonard Lopate Show

January 14, 2010

In 2006, the United Nations established an anticorruption task force. During its brief existence the unit uncovered at least 20 major schemes affecting more than $1 billion in foreign aid and UN contracts. The UN shuttered the unit in 2009 and transferred its responsibilities to another part of the organization. Now the number of new fraud cases has plummeted and existing investigations have languished. On today’s second Underreported segment, we’ll talk with Associated Press writer John Heilprin about the UN’s ability to police itself.

Underreported: Geoengineering in New York Harbor

The Leonard Lopate Show

January 14, 2010

Geoengineering projects aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change are gaining traction following the failure of the Copenhagen Climate talks last year. A new paper released by a team of Columbia scientists proposes injecting and storing carbon-dioxide emissions into basalt rock formations under the sea, including the area right off the coast of New York City. On today’s first Underreported segment David Goldberg, Senior Scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory explains his idea to stash greenhouse gases in geological formations.

Underreported: Contractors in Afghanistan

The Leonard Lopate Show

December 17, 2009

Earlier this month President Obama announced the United States would increase its military presence in Afghanistan. But more than just extra troops are going to the country—they will likely be accompanied by an additional surge of private contractors in support roles. What’s more, the government has contracted with an additional outside firm to help track all the contractors already in the country. We’ll speak with Jeremy Scahill, he's a correspondent for The Nation and author of the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He recently wrote about this subject for The Nation, and you can read his article "Contractors Watching Contractors" here.

Underreported: Greece's Debt Crisis

The Leonard Lopate Show

December 17, 2009

Is Greece the new Dubai? On this week’s first Underreported, Stacy-Marie Ishmael of The Financial Times, explains what’s behind Greece’s ballooning debt and how the government is trying to address the budget crisis. Plus, we’ll find out how the European Central Bank is reacting to Greece’s troubles and whether the euro will be affected.

Underreported: The Death of Sergei Magnitsky

The Leonard Lopate Show

December 10, 2009

In November, a 37-year-old tax lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky died in a Russian jail cell. Before he passed away, Magnitsky drafted a series of letters and petitions describing the squalid conditions in Russia’s prisons. Now, those documents have leaked and have created an unusual firestorm of criticism in a country where millions once perished in the Soviet Gulag. We’ll speak with Washington Post foreign correspondent Philip P. Pan, who just returned from Russia and has written about the case. You can read his article about Magnitsky's letters here.

Underreported: Alaska's Melting Permafrost

The Leonard Lopate Show

December 10, 2009

It’s estimated that the world’s permafrost contains 1,600 billion tons of carbon. As global temperatures rise, there are growing concerns about that all that permafrost could melt, releasing those gasses into the atmosphere. On today’s second Underreported Vladimir Romanovsky, a geophysics professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks explains what happens when permafrost melts and what’s happened to villages in Alaska that have already been affected by the effects of melting permafrost.

Underreported: The Prosecution of a Right Wing Radio Host Turned FBI Informant

The Leonard Lopate Show

December 03, 2009

For years Hal Turner hosted a right-wing internet radio show from northern New Jersey that catered to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. For most of that time Turner also received thousands of dollars from the FBI for acting as an informant who spied on the same groups he was broadcasting to. Now he’s on trial in Brooklyn for posting death threats against three federal appeals court judges on his blog. On today’s second Underreported, we’ll speak with Mike Kelly, a columnist for The Record of northern New Jersey, who is covering the trial and wrote an exposè on Turner’s story last Sunday. You can read it here.

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