All Things Considered

Bernard Farrell obsesses over every bite he eats, every minute of exercise he gets, and everything that stresses him out. And, more than anything else, Farrell obsesses over his blood sugar.

He has to. Farrell, 55, has Type 1 diabetes.

"Pretty much everything affects our blood sugar," says Farrell, of Littleton, Mass.

For the last 18 years, the Essence Music Festival has been the go-to event for African-Americans, especially African-American women. For three days in New Orleans, hundreds of thousands show up for R&B and gospel concerts and panels on politics, financial planning and parenting.

If it's a party, as creator George Wein describes it, it's a party with a purpose.

"New Orleans is a party city and they party," Wein says. "People party here. If you go to the hotels — 40-floor hotels — [there's] like 40 floors of parties."

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

Texas is saying no to key parts of the federal health care law. Today, Governor Rick Perry said Texas will not create a state exchange for people to buy health insurance and will not expand Medicaid. In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Governor Perry called both provisions a power grab, brazen intrusions into the sovereignty of our state.

Here's Governor Perry today on Fox News.

President Obama has called on Congress to extend tax cuts for the middle class, while allowing rates for the wealthiest Americans to go up.

A federal panel on Monday began hearing a lawsuit by the state of Texas against the U.S. Department of Justice, to allow the state's new voter ID law to go into effect. The Justice Department has blocked the law, arguing that it violates the Voting Rights Act by disproportionately harming Hispanic voters, who are less likely to have the required photo ID. Melissa Block speaks to NPR's Pam Fessler.

The southern African nation of Botswana is grappling with a relatively new problem in the evolving AIDS pandemic: It now has a large group of HIV-positive adolescents.

The teenagers were infected at birth before Botswana managed to almost wipe out mother-to-child transmission of the virus. These children have survived because of a public health system that provides nearly universal access to powerful anti-AIDS drugs.