Originally published on Wed December 19, 2012 7:35 pm
Advocates of stricter gun control legislation are hoping that history will not repeat itself.
Last Friday's shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., have shaken the country, but it's unclear whether the intense feelings of the moment will translate into legislative action. Many times in the past, outrage over gun violence has dissipated before Congress has chosen to act.
A celebrity who was a serial rapist and molester operated at the BBC for years, was revered, and knighted. After he died, the BBC bungled its own efforts to investigate and expose him.
Robert Bork, nominated by President Reagan to the Supreme Court, is sworn in before the Senate Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearing, Sept. 15, 1987.
Credit John Duricka / AP
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Del., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., on Sept. 17, 1987, during Robert Bork's confirmation hearings. Both Biden and Kennedy ultimately voted against confirming Bork to the Supreme Court.
Robert Bork, whose failed Supreme Court nomination provoked a lasting partisan divide over judicial nominations, died Wednesday at age 85.
A former federal judge and conservative legal theorist, he subsequently became a hero to modern-day conservatives. And as solicitor general in the Nixon administration, he played a small but crucial role in the Watergate crisis. In what came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre, he fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox after the attorney general and deputy attorney general refused President Nixon's firing order and quit.
South Korea will have its first woman president with the election of Park Geun-hye after a very tight election. With most of the votes counted, Park was elected with a small majority over her liberal opponent. Park's father was the country's military dictator for 18 years.
Credit Cartoon by Frank Mack for the U.S. Army. / Courtesy of the Images from the History of Medicine.
The U.S. Army distributed a monthly pinup calendar to GIs, which encouraged them to protect themselves from malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
Credit Cartoon by Frank Mack for the U.S. Army / Courtesy of Images from the History of Medicine
One mosquito bite could ruin a GI's chance of returning to the pleasures back home. The artist Frank Mack designed these malaria pinup calendars given to troops in the Pacific during World War II.
Credit U.S. Government Printing Office / Courtesy of Images from the History of Medicine
More than half of the soldiers in the Pacific caught malaria. This poster from 1944 helped remind troops to avoid mosquitoes that transmit the parasite.
Credit Office for Emergency Management / Archives.gov
Back on the homefront, public health workers were busy stopping malaria around military bases. This poster, printed by the U.S. Public Health Services between 1941 and 1945, reminded folks to keep malaria-carrying mosquitoes out of the house.
Credit Office for Emergency Management / Archives.gov
Mosquitoes transmit the malaria parasite, but when people aren't treated, they help the disease to spread. This public health poster, which was also printed by the U.S. Public Health Services during World War II, was aimed at stopping malaria on the homefront.
Credit Cartoon by Frank Mack for the U.S. Army / Courtesy of Images from the History of Medicine
While the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas focused on stopping malaria in the U.S. during War World II, the U.S. Army launched an aggressive campaign to combat the parasite among troops. In 1945, it distributed a monthly pinup calendar to soldiers in the Pacific, encouraging them to use bug repellent, sleep under bed nets and cover up.
Credit Government Printing Office / Image from the History of Medicine
A cartoon of "Annie Awful," a dangerous female mosquito that reminds U.S. soldiers to protect themselves from malaria.
The Swiss bank UBS has agreed to pay $1.5 billion in fines in multiple countries to settle allegations of manipulating the London interbank offered rate and other benchmark interest rates.
Entertainers are making shifts in their programming because of the killings in Connecticut. The premiere for the violent movie Django Unchained was cancelled and a reality show about a funeral was delayed until January, among other moves.
Maria (Naomi Watts) and her family, including her son Lucas (Tom Holland), fight to survive when they are caught in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Credit Frederic J. Brown / AFP/Getty Images
Naomi Watts has won acclaim for her dramatic roles in films such as Mulholland Dr. and 21 Grams. She has been nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in The Impossible.
The Impossible, a feature film opening Dec. 21, is about a family swept away by the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. It's based on the true story of a Spanish family.
In the movie, they're British — a couple and their three young sons, on vacation in Thailand. It looks like paradise. Then, the earth trembles, and the ocean roars in, bringing with it catastrophe and heartbreak.
The mother is played by Naomi Watts, who spoke with NPR's Melissa Block about the film and its retelling of a grimly familiar story.
An investigative report found that less than a third of Pakistani lawmakers filed tax returns for 2011. The report said Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, photographed in Paris in December, did not file a return, though his spokesman says he did.
Tax evasion is a chronic problem in Pakistan — only about 2 percent of the population is registered in the tax system, and the government collects just 9 percent of the country's wealth in taxes, one of the lowest rates in the world.
But now a new investigative report is making headlines. It says that just a third of the country's 446 federal lawmakers bothered to file income tax returns last year.
Amid the aftershocks of the senseless shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., our ever-more-complex society goes on to publicly discuss what happened and how to avoid such tragedy in the future.
But there are also private considerations and quieter questions of how to respond — on a personal level — to suffering parents.
What can you say to parents who have lost a child? What can you do?
