NPR News

For the past 13 years, North America's medical community has had its own version of The Onion. The Canadian Medical Association Journal's "Holiday Reading" segment in its December issue brings satire and spoofing to its medical studies, with some unintended consequences. Host Audie Cornish talks with Barbara Sibbald, editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

This past week, the Obama administration took aim at a wave of new laws and policies they say will make it harder for some people to vote on Election Day. The state initiatives range from requiring voters to show government-issued I.D. to cutting back on early voting. Supporters of the laws, backed mostly by Republicans, say they are meant to reduce voter fraud. But critics, backed by Democrats, say the measures disproportionately, perhaps intentionally, affect minority voters, a group that supported Barack Obama in 2008.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

A Baptist church in Wilmington, Vermont is holding its first service today since Tropical Storm Irene flooded the town in late August. The New England village is still recovering from the flood, but Nancy Cohen from Vermont Public Radio reports cleanup crews made a discovery in the church that's bringing a message of hope.

Despite the cold and the rain, about 1,000 people stand in line outside a lottery kiosk in Spain. Pawn brokers walk up and down, offering cash for gold.

Among those in the long line is Bartolo Rivas. In this dismal economy, he says he doesn't have a job, but he does have the "help." The "help" is about $520 a month in unemployment, part of which he's spending on lottery tickets.

The "end of days," as soldiers were calling it, started at Contingency Operating Base Adder in southern Iraq. The base was the main staging ground for all U.S. troops exiting the country, and it was the last U.S. base to close.

There were a lot of lasts at COB Adder: the last signing ceremony, formally handing the last base over to the Iraqi government, the last briefing, the last patrol, the last hot meal.

The final convoy from the base left Iraq and crossed the border into Kuwait at dawn Sunday.

A 'Difficult Undertaking'