Beer is marketed in Russia as a healthy alternative to vodka. And it's working. Beer sales are up more than 40 percent in the last decade. Now President Dmitri Medvedev has signed a bill aimed at curbing the use of alcohol.

Po Bronson is the co-author of NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children.

I'm not sure why my friend Todd had genuine AMF white bowling pins at his apartment. But I know the yellow metal Tonka dumpster was a present from him for my newborn son, Luke, something to grow into in a year or so.

In northern Africa and the Middle East, Friday is often a big day for anti-government protests. In Egypt's revolution, many of the biggest protests came after people finished Friday prayers, poured out of the mosques and marched through the streets. Religion writer Reza Aslan talks to Steve Inskeep about the timing of those demonstrations.

In Syria, army tanks have swept into the country's third largest city Homs. It's part of an assault on heavily populated residential neighborhoods. The army assault appears to mark an escalation of tactics to crush the protest movement in Homs.

The city of Oak Ridge, Tenn., is anticipating the arrival of nearly 1,000 tons of nuclear waste from Germany. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a plan in June for an American company to import and burn low-level nuclear waste from Germany.

Radioactive residue left over from the process will be sent back to Germany for disposal, but opponents have voiced concerns that the U.S. will become the world's radioactive waste processor.

But, very little of that opposition is coming from Oak Ridge.

The crippling drought in the Horn of Africa has affected about 11 million people in a region straddling Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. But it's Somalia that has been hit hardest. This week, the United Nations declared a famine in two parts of the lawless nation – Lower Shabelle and Bakool in the south.

Thousands of Somalis are crossing the border into semi-arid northeastern Kenya, in search of shelter, food and medical care. They are streaming into the giant Dadaab refugee complex, which is the world's biggest collection of camps.

Mary Louise Kelly has business news.

Many areas of the country are suffering from "exceptional drought" conditions. That's the most intense level assigned by the federal agency that monitors droughts. Unusually dry conditions are creating ever expanding hardships for farmers and ranchers from New Mexico to Kansas. Oklahoma has been especially hard hit. Kurt Gwartney of member station KGOU reports.

Another hot and muggy day is forecast for much of the country again Friday, as the dangerous heat wave moves to the East. Thirty-two states issued excessive heat warnings Thursday.

Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) talk to Steve Inskeep about the bipartisan deficit reduction plan proposed by the "Gang of Six." The White House and Congress are hoping to move on a deficit reduction plan alongside efforts to raise the debt limit. Many lawmakers say they won't vote to raise the debt limit without a plan to reduce the deficit.