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Planet Money
9:01 pm
Thu January 26, 2012

Jack Abramoff Explains The 'Lobbyist Safecracker Method'

Credit Dennis Cook / AP
Jack Abramoff in 2004. He's the one on the right.
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Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been making the rounds lately. He's out of prison. He has a new book. He's in a talkative mood. So I figured it was a good time to ask him about the business of lobbying — not about what he did that was illegal, but the ordinary, legal stuff.

The firm he worked for was called Greenberg Traurig. I chose a year at random when Abramoff was working there, and picked a client who I hoped would be fairly typical. I chose Tyco International, a multinational corporation that in 2003 gave Abramoff's firm $1.3 million.

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Latin America
9:01 pm
Thu January 26, 2012

State-Of-The-Art Hospital Offers Hope For Haiti

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Credit Dieu Nalio Chery / AP
Visitors tour the new teaching hospital in Mirebalais on Jan. 10. The hospital will have a CAT scan machine — one of only four in the country, and the only one at a public facility.
Credit Dieu Nalio Chery / AP
A worker pushes a wheelbarrow past the new National Teaching Hospital in Mirebalais, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Jan. 10. When it opens this summer, the 320-bed facility will be the largest hospital in the country and provide services and a level of care well beyond what's currently available.
Credit Jason Beaubien / NPR
Dr. David Walton, a physician from Boston, oversees the final touches on the staircase of the main lobby of the National Teaching Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti. "One of the lessons this hospital can provide is how to provide really outstanding infrastructure and construction practices at a fraction of what it may cost in other settings," he says.
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Even before the devastating earthquake in 2010, Haiti's public health care system was perhaps the worst in the Western hemisphere. Then the quake knocked down clinics, killed medical workers and severely damaged the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, the capital.

Now, Partners in Health, the Boston-based group, has set out to build a world-class teaching hospital in what used to be a rice field in the Haitian countryside.

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Business
9:01 pm
Thu January 26, 2012

Other File-Sharing Sites: 'We're Not Megaupload'

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Credit alengo / iStockPhoto.com
Folder background.
Credit MediaFire.com
File-sharing sites like MediaFire and RapidShare have tried to distance themselves from Megaupload.com after it was shut down last week for copyright infringement and racketeering.
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Originally published on Tue January 31, 2012 7:50 pm

A week has passed since the landing of an indictment that shut down the website Megaupload for copyright infringement and racketeering. But it seems like it's still easy for people like college student Bobby Azarbayejani to find whatever music he wants.

He has used Megaupload before, but because that site is gone, he is using MediaFire. It's one of the many sites on the Internet where people share all types of files.

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Latin America
9:01 pm
Thu January 26, 2012

Reading The Tea Leaves: Cuba's Communists Convene

Credit Javier Galeano / AP
Fidel Castro made a surprise appearance at the 6th Communist Party Congress in Havana, Cuba, held April 19, 2011. This weekend, the party will meet for the first time since then, and observers will be looking for insight into who may be on the ascendant in the party leadership.
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By Nick Miroff

In Cuba this weekend, President Raul Castro will preside over the first meeting of the island's all-powerful Communist Party since last April. Castro has lowered expectations for any new economic reform announcements, saying that internal party affairs will be the business at hand.

But many Cubans will be watching for signs of who is rising in the party's ranks — and who could take over after Raul and Fidel Castro, both in their 80s, are gone.

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Television
9:01 pm
Thu January 26, 2012

For 'Black Nerds Everywhere,' Two Comedy Heroes

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Credit Comedy Central
Jordan Peele (left) plays President Obama and Keegan-Michael Key (right) plays his "anger translator" in a sketch from Key & Peele, premiering Jan. 31 on Comedy Central.
Credit Danny Feld / Comedy Central
Key and Peele, both biracial, say their challenging experiences with others' expectations growing up now informs their comedy.
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Originally published on Fri January 27, 2012 9:28 am

Comics Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele have known each other for years. They were both in the cast of MadTV. Now they're starting their own sketch-comedy series, due to launch on Comedy Central on Tuesday.

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