Mark Thomas is using a pay phone, but he isn't paying. And physically, he's not even that close to the phone.
He's sitting on a bench on the street in Astoria, Queens, checking email on his netbook. It's grabbing an Internet signal from a military-grade antenna on top of a pay phone down the block.
"It's not the speediest but you can't complain about free, right?" Thomas says.
As thousands gather in Washington, D.C., for the International AIDS Conference, the city is battling disturbing levels of HIV/AIDS, particularly in the black community.
According to the D.C. Department of Health, 4.3 percent of the black population in the city is living with the disease, and some advocates argue that black churches should be doing more to fight it.
African migrants fired from Italian factories in the north have joined the swelling ranks of people searching for agriculture work in the south. Originally from Burkina Faso, Karim Suruku (right) is a migrant worker in Calabria in southern Italy. At left is Amidou Denamidou.
Credit Sylvia Poggioli / NPR
Men on cots wait for farm work near Calabria. Poor living conditions for migrant workers, sometimes without running water or toilet facilities, has led the Italian government to set up tents for them.
Credit Sylvia Poggioli / NPR
With its vast citrus groves, Calabria is a major stop for migratory workers in the country.
Italy recently approved a decree that would grant work and residence permits to migrants who blow the whistle on bosses who exploit them in the economy illegally.
But in places like the southern region of Calabria, the law has little chance of being applied at a time when the economic crisis increasingly fosters an illegal, underground economy.
The main activity in Calabria is agriculture. Thanks to vast citrus fields, it's one of the major stops for migratory workers, mostly Africans without legal documents.
A sign for Interstate 81 sits under an overpass in Syracuse, N.Y. City officials and residents are debating what to do about an aging stretch of the highway that cuts through the city.
Credit Zack Seward for NPR
Hazel Miller's home is located about 100 feet from I-81. She moved into the Pioneer Homes, a low-rise public housing project, 40 years ago, when houses were still being ripped down to make room for the highway.
Credit Zack Seward for NPR
Bill Egloff, I-81 project manager for the New York State Department of Transportation, and Meghan Vitale of the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council stand underneath the I-81 viaduct in Syracuse, N.Y.
Interstate 81 runs through the heart of Syracuse, N.Y., where a 1.4-mile-long elevated stretch of the highway is known locally as "the viaduct." Like many road projects built in the middle of the last century, I-81 is bumping up against the end of its life span. While officials say it's still safe to drive on, the highway is crumbling in parts.
Two American women cyclists from Idaho will race at this summer's Olympics. And their events couldn't be more different: Kristin Armstrong races the clock, wearing an aerodynamic teardrop helmet in the time trial.
Meanwhile, mountain biker Georgia Gould combines speed with technical prowess to navigate rocky descents and dirt trails.
Ride and her crewmates rocketed into space aboard Challenger at 7:33 a.m. Eastern Time on June 18, 1983. Ride later described the launch as "exhilarating, terrifying and overwhelming all at the same time."
Credit NASA
Some of NASA's first female astronaut candidates take a break from training in Florida in 1978. From left: Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathryn Sullivan and Rhea Seddon
Credit NASA
Ride floats near Challenger's hatch.
Credit NASA
Ride inside the control room during a simulation of a shuttle flight in 1981.
Credit AP
Astronaut Sally K. Ride, STS-7 mission specialist, communicates with ground controllers from the mid-deck of the earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Challenger in June 1983.
In 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. She blasted off aboard Challenger, culminating a long journey that started in 1977 when the Ph.D. candidate answered an ad seeking astronauts for NASA missions.
The Defense Department planned to buy two Virginia-class submarines, like the USS Virginia, per year. A 10 percent across-the-board cut would fund only 1.8 submarines, making the purchase impossible.
Congress created a monster when it decided that the entire government will face across-the-board cuts in January, unless an agreement on deficit reduction is reached.
The deadline for the automatic spending cuts — called sequestration — is now approaching, and the Pentagon, Congress and the defense industry say those cuts would be horrible.
The Pentagon, perhaps the world's premier planning agency, views the threat of a 10 percent budget cut like an invasion from Mars. It's too awful, too scary and, as Pentagon press secretary George Little puts it, too "absurd."
Mourners create a memorial at the fountain of the Aurora Municipal Center after a prayer vigil Sunday for the 12 victims of Friday's mass shooting at the Century 16 movie theater.
In the days since the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., there's been little discussion of the laws that allowed the gunman to acquire his arsenal.
Authorities say suspect James Holmes, who was arrested at the scene of the shooting that killed 12 people and wounded dozens more, was armed with a modified assault rifle, two pistols, a shotgun and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, told CNN this weekend that the guns are not the problem.
At age 13, I survived almost entirely on green apple Jolly Ranchers and Flowers in the Attic, and to this day I can't look at the book without my mouth watering. My much loved copy must have come from a supermarket (it was impossible to go to a supermarket in the '80s to, say, secretly stock up on green apple Jolly Ranchers, without a V.C. Andrews book lurking by checkout).
Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf is greeted after his election in June. Just weeks later, many Pakistanis expect the nation's Supreme Court may soon attempt to force Ashraf from his position, as it did his predecessor.
An ongoing political crisis has left Pakistan's government paralyzed and near collapse, as the country's Supreme Court attempts to revive corruption charges against the president in an apparent effort to force his resignation.
Accusations of corruption have always clouded the reputation of President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Some time ago, the government of Switzerland opened an investigation into Zardari's financial dealings, but the case was closed with no action taken.
