Most Recent Posts

Last month, hopes were raised when the Nigerian military announced a ceasefire with the militants of Boko Haram, who have been fighting for years to impose Islamic law on Nigeria.

But the Islamist extremists denied there was a truce and have intensified deadly attacks and kidnappings in recent weeks.

In the latest attack blamed on Boko Haram, a suicide bomber dressed as a student targeted boys gathered for assembly at the Government Technical Science College, a boys' high school school in the northeastern town of Potiskum. The attack killed nearly 50 students, some as young as 11.

No one has yet claimed responsibility, but Boko Haram insurgents are being blamed.

As soldiers rushed to the site of the school explosion, angry residents hurled stones at them, accusing the military of failing to protect them, say witnesses.

i i

Ramatu Usman, shown here with one of her sons, is a 37-year-old mother of 8. She says she was separated from one of her sons, 6-year-old Yahaya Buba, following an attack. He is still missing. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR

Ramatu Usman, shown here with one of her sons, is a 37-year-old mother of 8. She says she was separated from one of her sons, 6-year-old Yahaya Buba, following an attack. He is still missing.

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR

In neighboring Adamawa state, almost 9,500 displaced people now live in a giant camp. They've found refuge in what was a youth center outside Yola, the state capital. The buildings are crammed full of residents.

Boko Haram has seized a string of towns in recent weeks in this arid and impoverished agricultural region of Nigeria — most recently Mubi on the border with Cameroon.

Sylvanus Papka, director of rescue, relief and rehabilitation for Adamawa's Emergency Management Agency, describes how people scatter under fire.

"When they were attacked, everybody was running away, people running helter-skelter," Papka says. "In fact, that made them separate from their families. That's why people are coming in to check for their loved ones. I know most of them have lost everything. They have been sleeping in the bush for the past five days. The parents are looking for their children and also children are looking for their parents."

Ramatu Usman, a 37-year-old mother of 8, is one of them. Usman says her son Yahaya Buba was lost in the panic following last week's attack on Mubi, which is also in Adamawa state. The 6-year-old boy is still missing.

Some new residents have been displaced twice, like Halima Hasan. In August, Hasan fled a Boko Haram attack on her hometown in Gwoza in neighboring Borno state and escaped to the commercial border town of Mubi.

Related NPR Story

The Two-Way

Reports: Boko Haram May Have Kidnapped Dozens More Girls In Nigeria

But the attack on Mubi forced Hasan and other refugees to find yet another refuge, again trekking many miles to this camp in Yola.

Like thousands of others, Hasan is appealing to the Nigerian government and military to put an end to the fighting and restore peace. Boko Haram's most notorious attack, in April, was the mass abduction of more than 200 girls from their boarding school in Chibok in Borno state.

Now, boys are again the target. The group, whose name means Western education is sinful, says boys should receive only a Quranic education. Some have had their throats slit as they slept in their dorm beds. Girls are warned to give up their books, go home and get married.

The army announced last month that the missing schoolgirls would soon be released as part of a deal with Boko Haram. The group rejects the claim. Its leader tauntingly insists the captives have been married off to his fighters after converting to Islam.

Boko Haram

Nigeria

Africa

Last month, hopes were raised when the Nigerian military announced a ceasefire with the militants of Boko Haram, who have been fighting for years to impose Islamic law on Nigeria.

But the Islamist extremists denied there was a truce and have intensified deadly attacks and kidnappings in recent weeks.

In the latest attack blamed on Boko Haram, a suicide bomber dressed as a student targeted boys gathered for assembly at the Government Technical Science College, a boys' high school school in the northeastern town of Potiskum. The attack killed nearly 50 students, some as young as 11.

No one has yet claimed responsibility, but Boko Haram insurgents are being blamed.

As soldiers rushed to the site of the school explosion, angry residents hurled stones at them, accusing the military of failing to protect them, say witnesses.

i i

Ramatu Usman, shown here with one of her sons, is a 37-year-old mother of 8. She says she was separated from one of her sons, 6-year-old Yahaya Buba, following an attack. He is still missing. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR

Ramatu Usman, shown here with one of her sons, is a 37-year-old mother of 8. She says she was separated from one of her sons, 6-year-old Yahaya Buba, following an attack. He is still missing.

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR

In neighboring Adamawa state, almost 9,500 displaced people now live in a giant camp. They've found refuge in what was a youth center outside Yola, the state capital. The buildings are crammed full of residents.

Boko Haram has seized a string of towns in recent weeks in this arid and impoverished agricultural region of Nigeria — most recently Mubi on the border with Cameroon.

Sylvanus Papka, director of rescue, relief and rehabilitation for Adamawa's Emergency Management Agency, describes how people scatter under fire.

"When they were attacked, everybody was running away, people running helter-skelter," Papka says. "In fact, that made them separate from their families. That's why people are coming in to check for their loved ones. I know most of them have lost everything. They have been sleeping in the bush for the past five days. The parents are looking for their children and also children are looking for their parents."

Ramatu Usman, a 37-year-old mother of 8, is one of them. Usman says her son Yahaya Buba was lost in the panic following last week's attack on Mubi, which is also in Adamawa state. The 6-year-old boy is still missing.

Some new residents have been displaced twice, like Halima Hasan. In August, Hasan fled a Boko Haram attack on her hometown in Gwoza in neighboring Borno state and escaped to the commercial border town of Mubi.

Related NPR Story

The Two-Way

Reports: Boko Haram May Have Kidnapped Dozens More Girls In Nigeria

But the attack on Mubi forced Hasan and other refugees to find yet another refuge, again trekking many miles to this camp in Yola.

Like thousands of others, Hasan is appealing to the Nigerian government and military to put an end to the fighting and restore peace. Boko Haram's most notorious attack, in April, was the mass abduction of more than 200 girls from their boarding school in Chibok in Borno state.

Now, boys are again the target. The group, whose name means Western education is sinful, says boys should receive only a Quranic education. Some have had their throats slit as they slept in their dorm beds. Girls are warned to give up their books, go home and get married.

The army announced last month that the missing schoolgirls would soon be released as part of a deal with Boko Haram. The group rejects the claim. Its leader tauntingly insists the captives have been married off to his fighters after converting to Islam.

Boko Haram

Nigeria

Africa

One of my favorite arguments — and one I've had in just about every even numbered year since the seventies — is about when to stop talking about politics. A surprising number of people think that since elections are on Tuesday, by Saturday all that can be said has been said, and nothing more should be said.

As a person who's covered politics for decades, I don't believe that. Saturday after the election and the Saturday after that are good days to talk politics. And we need to talk.

We've just done it again — played another round in our biennial ping pong match in which we deliver a stinging rebuke to people in power, vote lots of the other guys into office, and then two or sometimes four years later, we send another strong message — "you weren't listening" — deliver a serious blow to the new guys, and vote the others back. And, as discouraged citizens repeatedly tell reporters, nothing changes.

In fact, the debate does change, the issues and the emphasis do change. The stories covered in the news change as the new leaders put their party's gloss on events and how to respond. As we know, there are major differences on big issues: immigration, taxes, trade, and health insurance.

But those policy debates, while important, seem to be removed from the daily lives of American citizens.

Something that's very big in those daily lives has not changed for a very long time, and that is income. Wages have been stagnant for years, decades. So when politicians and analysts tell us that unemployment is down, jobs are up and the stock market is going up and down but mostly up — when we hear numbers that say the economy is improving, too many Americans still say, "not my economy."

Common sense would seem to dictate that if there are ways to restore prosperity, good jobs and bigger paychecks to all these good hard working people, our leaders should talk. They should confer and consult and maybe even compromise — maybe deliver at least some of what voters want.

We've heard from leaders that they plan to talk and look for common ground. Now, we wait for a couple of years and see if this time they really mean it.

HealthCare.gov barely worked when it launched last fall, with only six people able to enroll in a plan on opening day. But the new version of HealthCare.gov came out sometime Sunday night, and it's available for window shopping for the first time. A few things to know:

What's different about the site this year?

For starters, it's a working website. Its load times have improved substantially, and the administration says it can handle twice as much traffic volume as last year. For customers shopping for coverage, you actually browse plans — get a sense of what they cost, check eligibility for tax credits (which are under Supreme Court review) and decide whether you want to buy.

A Year Later, HealthCare.Gov Has Found Its Footing But Problems Remain

4 min 43 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

Shots - Health News

5 Tips To Get The Most Out Of Obamacare

Open enrollment doesn't start until Saturday, so if you go to the site today, what can you do there?

Besides window shopping, you can get an estimated eligibility of the tax credit to help lower premium costs. This was nearly impossible in the first version of HealthCare.gov, which made users jump through ridiculous hoops in creating a user profile, and then they ran into error after error until they either gave up or the site crashed on them.

What's the administration doing to prepare for high traffic to the site after open enrollment starts?

They have been working on contingency plans. President Obama talked about it a little last week, saying, "We're really making sure the website works super well. ... We're double- and triple-checking it."

The Washington Post got ahold of internal documents at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees HealthCare.gov, and found there's a new system in place that detects traffic overloads faster. If it works correctly, it will send users into separate online waiting rooms, instead of putting them in one long online queue, which is how things worked last open enrollment.

What other challenges could come up this year?

For every major software system, hacking is always a threat. Just today, the Postal Service disclosed hackers hit its system, getting employee information from tens of thousands. So to protect HealthCare.gov, programmers from the Department of Homeland Security are trying to hack into the site once a day to test its security.

One thing this system hasn't faced before that could be a concern is re-enrollment in health plans. We know that about 8 million people signed up for health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges last year. When the open enrollment period begins Saturday, those folks are going to re-up or choose new plans through HealthCare.gov.

It's also just a shorter open enrollment period. This year, it runs from Nov. 15 to Feb. 15. Last year, it opened earlier and stayed open longer. So you have a much shorter time frame to shop and buy, if you're in the market.

Postal Service

President Obama