Terry Gross

The cease-fire that's kept Shiite militias in check for months is in danger of unraveling. And some U.S.-backed Sunni militias are growing restless. Patrick Cockburn, author and Iraq correspondent for The Independent in London, offers observations on war in Iraq.

Repression in Vladimir Putin's Russia, journalist Edward Lucas writes, is matched by a new aggression abroad. It amounts to what Lucas calls "a new Cold War" fought with cash, natural resources, diplomacy and propaganda.

That guilty feeling after a big meal? It might be about more than calories and cholesterol. New Yorker science writer Michael Specter explains how carbon emissions released during food production are having an impact on the environment.