All Things Considered

The nation's housing crisis has touched countless people. Increasingly, the well-off are among them.

Housing counselors around the country say they are seeing more people struggling to keep their million-dollar homes. It's a twist on a familiar story of hardship — but one that involves some very big numbers.

Moving Up, Falling Down

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Stockton's financial morass is an example of challenges faced by many cities these days.

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In the coming weeks, we'll report on urban life in the 21st century with the NPR Cities Project.

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BLOCK: Our Cities Project stories start next Monday and we want your input. What is the heart of your city, your favorite pocket park, plaza or watering hole? Please send us pictures and sound.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: The sound of San Francisco is the BART train.

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It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.

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And I'm Melissa Block. At the University of Virginia this afternoon, a resounding turnaround.

TERESA SULLIVAN: Today, the Board of Visitors has voted to reinstate me as the president of the university.

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BLOCK: Teresa Sullivan has her job back. Just two weeks ago, she was forced out in a behind-the-scenes move by some board members. Students and faculty were infuriated, and the campus has been in turmoil.

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This Thursday, when the Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in the health care case, many fingers will be anxiously clicking on the website ScotusBlog. It'll be live blogging starting at 8:45 in the morning, even though opinions don't come down until 10.

ScotusBlog was started in 2003 by lawyer Tom Goldstein, who's argued many cases before the Supreme Court. And he joins me to talk about his website and how it works.

Tom, welcome back.

TOM GOLDSTEIN: Thanks for having me.

The uprising in Syria began in the spring of 2011 when rebellious teenagers scrawled anti-regime graffiti on a wall in the southern city of Daraa.

The protest against their arrest, and the regime's brutal response, sparked the wider revolt. Throughout the unrest, the country's younger generation has been at the forefront of efforts to end the repressive regime of President Bashar Assad.

At a cafe in the heart of Damascus recently, a young man flips open his cellphone to show pictures of people killed in the uprising.

"Actually, they are my friends," he says.

Kaiser Permanente rose out of Henry J. Kaiser's utopian, industrialist dream.

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Now to a literary construction zone. Commentator Andrei Codrescu is starting a building project using books.

ANDREI CODRESCU, BYLINE: I put out the word that I'm making a house out of books, and thousands of books started arriving by truck, big publishers' remainders, 100 years of bad taste in hardback. My building made of books grew from a shack to a palace the size of Versailles made entirely out of bestsellers.

Summertime means motorcycles are on the roads — and many of the best roads snake through our National Parks. Officials say motorcycles are a major contributor to noise pollution in the Parks. Find more environmental stories at EarthFix.