All Things Considered

The battle for control of Ivory Coast appears to be reaching a decisive moment. Forces loyal to presumptive President Alassane Ouattara have seized control of much of the nation and now are battling for the final prize — the main city of Abidjan. NPR's Linda Wertheimer talks with reporter Marco Chown, who's in Abidjan for the latest about the heavy fighting.

Since a contested presidential election in November, the West African nation of Ivory Coast has fallen into chaos. The country has long been in the decline, but at one point, it was considered the jewel of West Africa, its economy fortified by profits from cocoa exports. NPR's Linda Wertheimer talks with Yale professor Mike McGovern about the Ivory Coast's history and the events that led up to the current humanitarian crisis.

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, host:

The government of Japan has established a 12-mile evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Within the 12- to 20-mile zone, people can remain where they are, but they must stay indoors because the reactors are leaking radiation into the air.

Outside the danger zone, people are trying to resume normal lives, but it's not so easy, as NPR's John Burnett reports from the city of Soma.

Director Joe Wright's new film, Hanna, tells the coming-of-age story of a teenage girl raised by a single father in a remote Finnish forest.

Oh, yes, and did we mention — Hanna's father raised her to be a stone-cold assassin.

No standard teen heroine, Hanna — played by the Irish actress Saoirse Ronan — spends most of the film on the run, pursued by CIA agents and swiftly dispatching anyone who gets in her way.

This action-thriller is quite a departure for Wright, who's known for period pieces like Pride and Prejudice and Atonement.

In the spring of 1930, a biologist named Israel Aharoni ventured into Syria on a mission. He was searching for a rare golden mammal.

Its name in Arabic translates roughly as "Mr. Saddlebags." Thanks to Aharoni, the little rodent with the big cheeks can now be found in many grade-school classrooms, running on a little wheel in a little cage.

That's right. Aharoni's big find was the hamster.