All Things Considered

One of the biggest debates in Washington, D.C., these days has nothing to do with taxes, health care or the economy. It's about baseball and whether the Washington Nationals should end the season of their young pitching star, Stephen Strasburg, just as the team may be headed for the playoffs.

Two years ago, Strasburg's promising career was threatened when he tore a ligament in his pitching arm. He needed surgery and couldn't pitch for a year.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block.

As the Republican convention kicks off in Tampa, the party will highlight some of the politicians who could be its future stars. We're going to hear about two of them now who both speak tonight. In a moment, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, tonight's keynote speaker. But first, the Republican Senate candidate Ted Cruz. If he wins in November he'll be the first Hispanic senator from Texas.

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We're going to stay on the Gulf Coast for a moment. Earlier today we caught up Acy Cooper. He's a shrimp boat captain. And when we reached him, he had sought safe harbor on the intercoastal waterway near Belle Chasse. As you just heard, many of the locals have braved these storms before and Cooper is no exception. He lives in the town of Venice, but today we found the captain docked on his boat far inland from his home.

Debbie Elliott has spent the day driving along the Mississippi coast as people prepare for Isaac. The storm has dumped heavy rain across the area. She speaks with Audie Cornish from Gulfport, Mississippi.

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In the Israeli port of Haifa today, a judge ruled that the military was not responsible for the death of a young American activist. Back in 2003, Rachel Corrie was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer during a protest by pro-Palestinian activists in the Gaza Strip. Today's ruling came in response to a civil suit filed by Corrie's parents who say they will appeal the decision.

Malcolm Browne was a first-rate reporter who spent decades at The New York Times, covered wars around the world and won the Pulitzer Prize for his writing about the early days of the Vietnam war.

And yet he will forever be remembered for one famous picture, the 1963 photo of a Buddhist monk who calmly set himself on fire on the streets of Saigon to protest against the South Vietnamese government, which was being supported by the U.S.

Naylea Omayra Villanueva Sanchez, 22, lives on the edge of the Amazon rain forest in Tarapoto, northern Peru.

"Where I live, there's only jungle," Villanueva Sanchez says through an interpreter. "A university education is inaccessible."

And that's true in more ways than one. Villanueva Sanchez is in a wheelchair, the result of a motorcycle accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

A judge has given Ohio unions a preliminary injunction stopping a new state law that could endanger provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct, even if the cause is poll worker error.

Officials in Texas say they will cut off state funding to Planned Parenthood following a federal court ruling last week. The decision by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the state can defund the health clinics because Planned Parenthood is associated with abortion.

The late Stephane Grappelli is perhaps the best-known jazz violinist in history. His collaborations with guitarist Django Reinhardt have influenced countless musicians. A comparison to Grappelli is one of the highest honors a young, rising violinist can receive.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block.

The movie 2016: Obama's America just did something that's hard for any political documentary to accomplish: it took seventh place on the list of this weekend's highest grossing movies. Usually, when any documentary pulls in more than five million dollars, it's about, say, Katy Perry. But 2016 looks at the ideologies and global movements that it says helped intellectually mold the President of the United States from a critical, conservative perspective. And the ending imagines an America economically undone by four more years of an Obama presidency.

First, three stories from Thomas Peterffy's life as a trader:

Story #1:

When Peterffy was a kid growing up in communist Hungary in the 1950s his buddy went to Austria and brought back a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. Peterffy bought the pack, broke the sticks of gum up into little pieces, and sold them at a profit. The principal at his school was not amused. "Where's your communist conscience?" the principal asked.

Not surprisingly, given story #1, Peterffy moved to the U.S. as a young man.

Story #2:

The gains by Afghan women are seen as one of the country's most important achievements over the past decade. But as the international community draws down its military and aid presence, those hard-won gains are at risk of being lost, according to activists.

Women are still being beaten, raped and forced into early marriage at alarming rates. And women's advocacy groups say they are already seeing signs of backsliding by the government when it comes to protecting women, and fear this could accelerate in the coming years.

A 16-Year-Old's Struggle