NPR News

First in a three-part series

For years, the United States has been trying to stop Iran's nuclear program and change what it says is Iran's bad behavior in the Middle East and beyond.

The United States has used economic sanctions, censure by the United Nations, diplomatic engagement and the threat of military action to accomplish these goals — all with little or no success.

In the deep waters off Cuba's north coast, a Chinese-built oil rig is due to begin drilling this fall in an area geologists believe may have huge beds of undersea crude.

A significant find could transform Cuba's economy and possibly alter relations with the United States, but it may also present new environmental threats for the Florida coast.

Mariel — the town 30 miles west of Havanna that was a departure point for more than 100,000 Cubans who left the island in the 1980 Mariel boatlift — is being remade into a servicing hub for the Cuban oil industry of the future.

To handle all the water flowing down the Mississippi River, the Army Corps of Engineers is opening the floodgates on a spillway, north of New Orleans.

Opening the Bonnet Carre spillway diverts some of the floodwaters into Lake Pontchartrain and from there to the Gulf of Mexico. But nearly every flood control action taken by the Corps is not without controversy.

Winners And Losers

An exhaustive study of autism in one community has found that the disorder is far more common than suggested by earlier research.

The study of 55,000 children in Goyang, South Korea, found that 2.64 percent — one in every 38 children — had an autism spectrum disorder.

"That is two and a half times what the estimated prevalence is in the United States," says Roy Richard Grinker, a professor of anthropology at The George Washington University and one of the study's authors.

If you open up your mobile phone, or laptop, or iPad, you'll find a lithium battery. If you own a hybrid or electric car, it's likely powered by a lithium battery as well. Lithium is a metal that's light and cheap, and it is increasingly the material of choice for battery makers.