LA TIMES EDITOR RESIGNS; PRESCRIPTON DRUG PROPOSITIONS; NEW BOMBING IN LONDON; HOW COLD IS MARS?; RUNNING THE WORLD
LA TIMES EDITOR RESIGNS
Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll is leaving the paper five years and 13 Pulitzer Prizes after taking the job. He'll be succeeded on August 15th by Dean Baquet, the paper's managing editor, who'll also be executive vice president. In 1988, Baquet led a team at the Chicago Tribune that won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Carroll was named editor in April 2000 after the Tribune Company bought the newspaper's parent Times Mirror Company. Despite the paper's many awards since then, it's also had circulation and advertising declines.
PRESCRIPTON DRUG PROPOSITIONS
The campaign surrounding two drug measures on the November ballot is expected to be the costliest initiative fight in California history. Consumer groups back Proposition 79 while the drug industry and Governor Schwarzenegger favor Prop 78 both of which are designed to reduce prescription drug prices for the poor and uninsured. Larry speaks with representatives of both measures to find out how they differ.
NEW BOMBING IN LONDON
Explosions struck the London Underground and a bus at midday Thursday in a chilling but far less bloody replay of the suicide bombings that killed 56 people two weeks ago. Only one person was reported injured in the nearly simultaneous lunch-hour blasts, British Transport Police said, but they caused major shock and disruption in the capital and were hauntingly similar to the July 7 bombings by four attackers.
HOW COLD IS MARS?
The current mean temperature on the Martian equator is 69 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Though scientists have long thought our neighboring planet was once temperate enough for water to have existed on the surface a new study shows otherwise. Larry talks with MIT professor Ben Weiss about the report he co-authored.
RUNNING THE WORLD
In Running the World, The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power (Public Affairs, 2005), writer David Rothkopf describes the inner workings of America’s more important governing body for national security. Larry talks to Rothkopf about the Bush Administration, the wars in Iraq and Afghansitan, and other national security issues.