Here and Now

The Federal Communications Commission has approved a plan to spend $2 billion to increase wireless service in schools and libraries across the country.

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said at a hearing last week that because of the plan, “ten million kids will be connected next year who otherwise wouldn’t.”

Not all find the plan beneficial. There is controversy from some Republicans who oppose the plan, saying that this will lead to an increase in phone bills for some Americans.

When the weather is warm and the days long, we often get a chance to see and talk to our neighbors more often than we do when winter’s cold keeps people indoors.

Of the range of people you can know in the world, the neighbor occupies a curious spot.

From the Here & Now Contributors Network, Sean Hurley of New Hampshire Public Radio has these thoughts on what he’s learned about the people who live near him.

Volunteers in Iowa are getting a great deal — $900 for eating a banana. It’s part of a human feeding experiment to test genetically-engineered bananas.

Researchers hope that blood drawn from the volunteers will show higher levels of vitamin A, so the bananas can head to Uganda, where bananas are a staple and vitamin A deficiency is widespread.

NPR’s Dan Charles joins Here & Now’s Meghna Chakrabarti to talk about the experiment, and what this may mean for fortified produce.

“On Stage” is our look at what’s happening on the boards across the country, from comedy shows to celebrations of slices of American life.

Today, we turn to the Colorado Black Arts Festival, kicking off in Denver today. The festival features three full stages with jazz, blues, reggae and gospel music, as well as traditional African drumming and dance.

Will Lautzenheiser, a former teacher at Boston University, had just started teaching film at Montana State University three years ago when he lost all four limbs to a group A streptococcal infection.

It was shattering for Will, but also for his identical twin Tom Lautzenheiser. Now, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston has given the OK to a rare, still experimental double arm transplant for Will.

LeBron James, considered by many to be the best player in basketball right now, is deciding where he’ll play next year, after his contract with the Miami Heat comes to an end.

Derek Thompson joins Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson to talk about the economics of the NBA, including player contract negotiations.

Crude oil shipments by rail increased by more than 80 percent, nationally, last year. Most of it is coming from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota. That crude is more flammable than other types of oil, and has been shown to catch fire and explode when trains derail.

More than 15 trains of Bakken oil move through some parts of the Northwest each week, en route to refineries and terminals in Washington and Oregon.

The Battle of Wanat is one of the bloodiest battles of the war in Afghanistan. Nine American soldiers were killed and more than two dozen were wounded when hundreds of insurgents assaulted the Army outpost they were building in Waygal Valley on July 13, 2008. It was just after 4 o’clock that morning when the American soldiers were blasted with machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and hand grenades.

When author Cammie McGovern’s oldest son was diagnosed with autism, she looked for an outlet where he could be with other children with similar difficulties. That led her to form the group “Whole Children,” an after-school and weekend program for children with disabilities.

Now, a decade later, those kids spurred her to write the new young adult novel “Say What You Will” (excerpt below).

Citigroup and the Justice Department are reportedly closing in on a $7 billion deal that would settle allegations that the bank sold shoddy mortgages in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis.

The deal is expected to be announced in the next week and comes after months of tense negotiations between the bank and government officials — negotiations that became so tense that in June, the Justice Department threatened to sue if the bank did not agree to the government’s proposed penalty.