NPR Coverage of the State of the Union Address

NPR News will provide extensive coverage of the President's State of the Union speech and the Republican Response. This will be President Obama’s last State of the Union address of his White House term as he heads into the 2012 presidential election campaign.

Facing into an election year, the President is expected to continue pushing Congress on his economic agenda. The GOP response will be given by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.

Melissa Block will host. She'll be joined in the studio by NPR National Political Correspondent Mara Liasson. Our special coverage will augmented with reporting and reaction from NPR correspondents on Capitol Hill, as well as analysis of the speeches from NPR correspondents and outside contributors. NPR will report the Tea Party response in our special as news warrants.

[The program will run through the end of the Republican response.]


Arts & Culture

WAMU 88.5

Art Beat With Lauren Landau, October 7

You can explore one calligrapher's modern take on Korean handwriting, or see two shows that require a little help from the audience.

Food

NPR

Fairfax Schools Pull All-Beef Burgers From Menu, Citing Complaints

Students in a Virginia school system are now eating hamburgers with additives in them, after officials heeded their complaints about the appearance and taste of all-beef burgers it had been serving. The burgers that are now being served include a reported 26 ingredients.

Politics

NPR

No End In Sight: Shutdown Showdown Enters Week Two

Hundreds of thousands of Defense Department civilian employees will go back to work on Monday, but many government operations remain suspended.

Technology

NPR

Wanted: A New Generation Of High-Tech Aviation Workers

Millions of U.S. factory jobs have been lost in the past decade. Now, in North Carolina, high school students are being encouraged to think about taking manufacturing jobs. But this isn't the furniture-making or textile labor of generations past — it's a new kind of highly technical work in aviation.