State and National News

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Some sad news this morning: The world has lost a literary giant. Author Ray Bradbury died last night after a long illness. He was 91 years old. He wrote such classics as "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451" - futuristic tales from a man who never used a computer, or even drove a car. NPR's Arnie Seipel has more on Bradbury and his curious life.

The television journalist Barbara Walters apologized yesterday after leaked emails showed that she offered to help an aide to Syrian President Bashar Assad land a job in the U.S. after the aide helped Walters secure an interview with the despot.

The AP reports:

California's new truly open primary held Tuesday could result in single-party matchups in November for eight of the state's 53 U.S. House seats.

While some results remained unofficial Wednesday morning, five congressional districts were certain to have Democrat-vs.-Democrat races on Nov. 6, while a sixth looked likely; two districts could have Republican-vs.-Republican contests.

Celebrating wild and wonderful early music is the mission of Britain's excellent I Fagiolini, led by Robert Hollingworth. Last year's world premiere recording of Alessandro Striggio's enormous 40-part Mass, paired with another larger-than-life piece, Thomas Tallis' 40-part Spem in Alium, became something of a sleeper hit, scoring surprisingly big sales and winning a Gramophone Award.

Late go-go music legend Chuck Brown had a troubled road to stardom that included time in prison. Host Michel Martin asks whether the America of today still offers the opportunity for redemption that helped Brown find his way.

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, a lot of famous people have gotten in trouble for being reckless with the social media tool Twitter, but now the skilful use of the delete key may not be enough to save them if they are running for office or are already a member of Congress. We'll find out why in just a few minutes.

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, could raising the retirement age help preserve Social Security? A new study suggested that actually might not work, and could also significantly hurt blue-collar workers. We'll talk about that in just a few minutes.

Freeman Hrabowski was named one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World," earlier this year. He heads the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and helped transform the school into one of the country's top institutions in graduating students of color in science, math and engineering. He talks with host Michel Martin.

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Switching gears now, we'd like to talk about a question that is both political and personal. It's when to retire. On a personal level, this can be an emotional and complicated question, but on a policy level, it is, too. And the questions before us, in part, because in April, trustees of the Social Security system reported that, if economic trends hold, the system would exhaust its funds in the year 2033.