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Virginia gubernatorial candidates Terry "The Macker" McAuliffe and Ken "Cooch" Cuccinelli may not have much in common politically, but they both do have catchy nicknames. As they meet for their first debate on Saturday, here's a look back at a few other notable political sobriquets.

A little more than a decade ago, Detroit had a celebrated mayor and was viewed as a great urban comeback story. But things went downhill rapidly after Dennis Archer left office.

Somalia now has the dubious distinction of having the worst polio outbreak in the world. The country had been polio-free since 2007. If this outbreak gains a foothold, health workers fear it could spread into the Middle East.

A new video essay compares two 1952 films that resulted from the collaboration of two renowned filmmakers, Vittorio De Sica, a master of Italian neorealism, and David O. Selznick, a Hollywood producer most famous for Gone With The Wind. Guest host Linda Wertheimer talks with filmmaker Ernie Park, who uses a pseudonym, Kogonada.

For the past few years in July, a sleepy Russian provincial town has rolled out the red carpet to host the best in European film.

Professor Chris Lowry needed to collect information on stream levels in Western New York but didn't have enough funding for the traditional methods, so he turned to a more creative option: crowdsourcing. Guest host Linda Wertheimer speaks with him about his research and the future of crowdsourcing in scientific inquiries.

Crime novelist Robert Galbraith was outed as British author J.K. Rowling of the Harry Potter books fame. Reporters were tipped off to Galbraith's true identity by an anonymous tweet, and they turned to an unlikely source to confirm Rowling's authorship: a computer science professor at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University.

A year ago, a gunman opened fire in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., killing 12 people and stunning the nation. Linda Wertheimer speaks with Colorado Public Radio's Megan Verlee about the case.

In Syria, the army of President Bashar Assad appears to be gaining the upper hand on the battlefield, as rebels wait for military assistance from Western allies that has yet to arrive. Guest host Linda Wertheimer examines the simmering conflict with NPR's Kelly McEvers.

The government says the largest exercises since Soviet days are to test Russian readiness. Some analysts think it is to remind China and Japan that Russia remains powerful.